The Complete Kingdom Trilogy by Robert Low

Author:Robert Low [Robert Low]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2011-12-24T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Herdmanston, Lothian

Feast of Saint Cuthbert of Dunbar, March, 1306

Even God rested on the seventh day, Hal thought, but Malenfaunt thinks himself greater than that – besides, he has the grim face of the Devil himself at his back, shaped for this occasion like the Earl of Buchan.

He and the young Patrick, heir to the earldom of March – here to legitimize the affair – had arrived at Herdmanston’s tower in a smoke of righteous power, ostensibly to assert the rights of Malenfaunt to Herdmanston and capture one of the foul slayers of the Lord of Badenoch – though the truth, as everyone on the besieging side was careful to step round, was more to do with Buchan’s wife and her lover.

There was a rustle and scrape as Sim scuttled to his elbow and both cautiously peered out between the roof merlons, the rain steady as sifting flour.

‘Is that the young Patrick there?’ Sim demanded and Hal raised himself a little to look. There was a dull thump of sound, a faint tremble up through the soles of their feet and both men instinctively ducked.

‘Mind yer head,’ muttered Sim, his badger-beard face dripping with sweat, rain and scowl. Hal slithered his back to the merlon, face to the wet-black sky; he did not think the springald bolts would be a danger to his head at this height, for they were aimed where they had been pointed since the arrival of the besiegers – at the Keep entrance.

The stout oak door, studded and banded with iron, had cost the enemy four dead and twice as many wounded to drench with oil and fire down to cinders and twisted hinge metal. Now the springald was trying to shoot through the archway to the metal grill of the yett, but had succeeded only in scabbing stone from round the entrance and putting everyone’s nerves on edge.

Sim promised himself that he would shoot one of the springald bolts up the arse of the wee hired mannie who had brought the bits and pieces of it to Herdmanston for the Earl of Buchan’s revenge.

He would like to have put a bolt from his own crossbow in him, but the range was too great – peering out cautiously he could see the timber-box shape of the springald, three clever wee Flemings painstakingly rewinding the contraption, checking the chucked tilt of it to raise it by another quim hair. Near it, proud on a prancing destrier draped with dripping heraldry, Patrick of Dunbar waved his arms and made suggestions which the Flemish ingeniators ignored.

Sim slithered round to sit, shoulder to shoulder with Hal in the wet misery of the roof.

‘The Earl o’ March’s boy himself, the wee speugh o’ Dunbar, sent to puff out his chest feathers on our fortalice,’ he voiced bitterly and left the rest hanging, thick as aloes in the wet air. Patrick of Dunbar was here because his da, the Earl of March, was too old for the business – and his mother Marjorie was a Comyn, sister to Buchan himself.

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