Kingdom 01 - The Lion Wakes by Robert Low

Author:Robert Low
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-04-13T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Cambuskenneth Brig, Stirling

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity – August 11, 1297

This was no place for a bowman, and Addaf, jostled and elbowed, was not the only one to think it. As he cradled the bow-bag to his front, protecting the fletches and shafts from the crush as if it was a babbie, he heard other voices curse in Welsh.

‘Make room for us,’ Heydin Captain bawled, red-faced. ‘Make room.’

There was no room; the horse had crossed and the foot after that, but the line of enemy was a distant raggle of spearpoints – about ten times our killing range, Addaf thought, measuring it with one closed eye as they staggered in the press.

The horse was closer, waiting impatiently for the crush of foot to sort themselves out from a mass of iron-rimmed hats and skull caps, spears, round shields, bucklers – not one of them, Addaf thought to himself, is armed the same as the next. Only the Welsh, he corrected, as a knot of them panted past in padded jacks, their spears and shields ready and the trailing red and green braid round their kettle helmets marking who they were.

He saw the last of them run off the bridge, lumbering like upright bears.

Far away, a horn blared.

Malise came up the causeway from Cambuskenneth at a fast lick on the horse, fearful that the Lothian men were hunkered and hidden, even though he had risked this throw of the dice by betting on all of them not wanting to miss the fight.

It had come as a shock to find the Abbey surrounded by hidden men – the thought that he had ridden so close to the likes of Tod’s Wattie made his hole pucker enough to shift him in the saddle.

Having arrived, he found himself no closer to the Savoyard Bisset had told him of – the stone carver had panicked at having an enemy so close and had sneaked off. How he had got out was a mystery to Malise but, he thought savagely, it left me the one seeking sanctuary.

On his right, the Abbey Craig loomed like a hunchback’s shoulder. Malise glanced to his left, seeing the banners and pennons waving, the fat white flags with red crosses snapping in the breeze, the St Andrew’s cross flags whipped steadily in answer. No sign of hunting men . . .

Let them fight, Malise sneered to himself. If things contrived out the way he had planned it, he would skirt the left of Wallace’s rebels and come up into the camp. There he would find the Countess – at last – and remove her. There, too, he might find the Savoyard, or a clue as to why the Lothian lord Hal hunted him and, more importantly, for whom he did so; there was Bruce in it, Malise was sure of it and he wanted to take the certainty of it to his master, the Earl of Buchan.

The horse skidded on the muddy road almost pitching him off and he cursed, steadied and slowed a little – no sense in panicking now.

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