Kingdom (6 page)

Robert’s hand moved up to his throat, his finger trailing over the leather thong on which was bound the fragment of the crossbow bolt that had been pulled from his shoulder. James, more than anyone, should know he could not falter now, despite what had happened in Dumfries. There was a time when he would have done whatever the high steward commanded, but he was no longer a youth marching to the drums of his elders.

He was king.

A moth tilted at the candle, then fluttered away, burned by the heat. Its shadow played huge across the canvas, black wings beating the air. Gradually, Robert’s breaths evened out and his limbs, still stiffly encased in layers of mail and padding, yielded to the heaviness that weighed on them.

He was almost asleep when the night was filled with screaming.

Chapter 3

Methven Wood, Scotland, 1306 AD

Robert wrenched his broadsword from its jewelled scabbard. The cries outside had been joined by the clash of swords, tearing undergrowth and the shrill screams of horses: a dense wave of sound that seemed to crash in at him from everywhere at once. Fionn had gone, barking frantically. Robert plunged after him, out into the night.

It was midsummer and the sky wasn’t fully dark. By the pale twilight that filtered through the canopy, punctuated by the bright flare of campfires, Robert saw men running. Many were shouting, their voices high with panic and fear. Others, who had been asleep on the mossy ground, were staggering up. Robert’s servants were already on their feet, Nes with them, staring through the trees to the east.

‘
Attack!
’ came a harsh cry.

A surge of blood fired Robert’s limbs. Diving back into the tent, he grabbed his leather pack. Emerging, he shouted at Nes. The knight jerked round and caught the pack as Robert tossed it at him.

‘Saddle Hunter,’ Robert shouted to one of his grooms, who hastened to obey, as Edward Bruce and Neil Campbell burst into the clearing.

‘English!’ Edward yelled, seeing his brother. ‘Valence’s forces!’

Before Robert could respond, the rapid throb of hooves filled the air and six horsemen plunged into their midst, shields painted with the white and blue stripes of Pembroke.

Edward threw himself back as one swung a sword at him. Neil Campbell reacted quickly, dropping and hacking his blade, two-handed, into the front legs of one of the horses. The animal pitched forward, its leg buckling beneath it. There was a heavy crunch as it ploughed into the forest floor, hurling its rider over the high pommel of the saddle. Neil swooped as the knight crashed to the ground. Crushing his boot into the man’s throat, he shoved his sword, wet with horse blood, through the eye-slit in the helm. Blood burst from the visor. The knight’s body convulsed as Neil wrenched the blade out of his brain.

Robert caught all this as a series of brief images, broken by the legs and trappers of the horses as the rest of the knights galloped on through. One horse vaulted the campfire, its hoof clipping a burning log and causing the fire to burst apart in a billow of sparks. Closer, just in front of him, his servants were falling back from the swords of the enemy. There was a flash as a blade reflected the firelight. Robert felt something hot spray across his cheek. Patrick spun towards him, hands rising to his face, which had been split diagonally. The white of bone and teeth gleamed briefly in the bloody furrow that separated his lips, nose and right eye, before the servant collapsed.

‘Sire!’ His groom was pulling Hunter through the undergrowth. The warhorse was rearing, teeth bared.

Grabbing hold of the reins, Robert hollered for his brother and Neil to mount up. He hauled himself into the saddle, and shortened the reins in one hand, the other still gripping his broadsword. Hunter wheeled and stamped beneath him. Where, for Christ’s sake, were the scouts? Alexander Seton’s voice echoed in his mind, filling him with icy truth.
I say again – I believe you are walking into a trap.
Dear God, he had ordered his men to make camp and they had dutifully spread out across the hillside. He had made them lambs in a field. Now, the wolves had come.

Nes reappeared at his side, mounted on a palfrey, the leather bag over his shoulder. He was carrying a helm and a shield, the chevron of Carrick a bold red arrow on the curved white surface. ‘Here, my lord!’

As Robert forced his hand through the iron grips, securing the shield against his arm, John and David of Atholl and Malcolm of Lennox came riding into the clearing at the head of several score men, Niall Bruce, Simon Fraser and the Setons among them. Not all were fully prepared for battle, a distinct lack of helms among their number, but they were armed and determination was livid in their faces. ‘
With me!
’ Robert roared, snapping down his visor and urging Hunter into a charge.

As his men rode around him, their battle cries a fierce clamour, Robert glimpsed a grey shape streaking through the undergrowth. Fionn. A twig shattered on his helm, pulling his attention forward. A larger branch loomed in the narrow slit of his vision and he cuffed it away with his shield. There was a smell of smoke in the air and a ruddy haze of fire somewhere ahead. Suddenly, men appeared out of the gloom, dozens of them, running towards him. Robert raised his sword, then realised they were his own soldiers, most of them commoners clutching spears, confused and leaderless. As they scattered before the oncoming horses, Robert caught faces filled with fear.

John of Atholl bellowed at them over the thunder of the charge – switching from French into Scots. ‘Fight in the name of your king! On the English dogs!
On them!
’

David rode beside him, lips peeled back as he echoed his father’s cry.

Many of the peasants heeded the command. Panic changing to purpose, they hefted their spears and made after their king, sprinting in the wake of the cavalry.

Ahead, through the trees, a fire was spreading – some device of the enemy, or a campfire burning out of control. It had been a dry June and the flames leapt through the brushwood, smoke curling thickly. Silhouetted by the blaze, men and horses made a grotesque shadow-play of rearing heads, thrusting swords and arching bodies. Agonised shrieks juddered through their mass.

Valence’s knights had fallen hard upon the infantry on the edges of the camp. Those who survived the first moments of the attack had gathered together and were fighting furiously, but peasants in woollen cloaks were no match for armoured knights, who had trapped them in a killing ground, ringed by slicing blades. Other knights were already breaking off to penetrate deeper into the woods, cutting down Scots as they went. As Robert and his men plunged towards the chaos, one such band came riding out of the flame-lit dusk.

At the sight of them, Robert rose in the stirrups, his sword swinging up in his hand. ‘
For Scotland!
’ he roared, locking on an English knight, whose horse reared in alarm. Lowering his great head, Hunter barrelled into the animal, the momentum adding lethal force to his bulk. Robert felt the wind of one of the horse’s hooves before it connected with the side of his helm. It was a glancing blow, but forceful enough to knock the helm clean from his head, just as the animal was lifted up and thrown back. Swinging his sword in a savage downward cut, Robert felt the concussive impact as the blade crashed into the falling knight’s back, but he didn’t see what damage was done as he was swept into the battle, flooded with that familiar vertiginous thrill, caught somewhere between terror and excitement.

It was a tight ground, hemmed in by trees and the spreading fire. Without the encasement of his helm, Robert had a wide view of the battle. He glimpsed a few dozen mounted Scots on the other side of a press of English knights. James Stewart was there, alongside James Douglas and Gilbert de la Hay. Before Robert could break his way through to them, a sword slashed at his face. He ducked and raised his shield, the crack of the blade biting into the wood harsh in his ears. Shoving the sword away, he punched his own weapon into his attacker’s side. The tip tore the rings of the English knight’s mail and drove the padding beneath into his flesh. Robert twisted the blade in the wound, before wrenching it free. The knight doubled over. As his horse pitched forward, he was tossed down among the pummelling hooves where scores of dead already clogged the ground.

Robert felt something thump into his back, but the impact was lessened as Hunter buckled, his hoof skidding in something slippery. The horse lurched upright in the press of men and animals. Robert went to strike at another knight, but found himself carried deeper into the fray by a sudden shift in the tide of the battle. Many of the Scottish peasants, bloodied and exhausted, were falling back, allowing the cavalry to surge forward. Some remained, most of them Highlanders with their long, lethal axes. One thick-necked man, close to Robert, roared as he chopped his blood-slicked weapon into the head of an English knight’s horse. Wrenching it free as the animal collapsed, the Scot brought the axe swinging solidly into the knight’s chest with a splintering of bones.

Robert heard John of Atholl shouting behind him, but he dared not turn, acutely aware of the blades carving all around him, horribly exposed without his helm. A man on foot came at him from the side, face contorted, soaked in blood. Robert blocked his blow. Their swords crossed in mid-air with a clash that shuddered through his arm. He battered away a second strike, before hacking at the man’s neck. The man hoisted his shield to block. As Robert’s sword smacked into the wood he saw the symbol painted upon it: a white lion on a blue background. Stunned, he left his defences open.

The man’s eyes widened in anticipation and he lunged again. Suddenly, there was a volley of ferocious barking and a blur of motion. The man’s sword went wide, missing Robert by inches, as Fionn leapt at him. He went down screaming, the hound on top of him, ripping bloody chunks from his face. Looking around him, Robert now saw white lions everywhere, on shields and surcoats, dotted among the arms of Pembroke and the myriad colours of his own men. The reason for Galloway’s brooding emptiness was suddenly clear. The Disinherited had joined the English.

Robert’s gaze locked on James Stewart, some distance away, surrounded by English knights. Malcolm of Lennox was converging on his position, along with Simon Fraser, both men fighting savagely, but even as Robert watched, James’s horse rose up, a spear embedded in its neck. He yelled, seeing the animal go down, the steward disappearing beneath the seething tide of men. James Douglas was battling to reach his uncle, but he had been unhorsed and was no match for the knights amassing all around him. Robert glimpsed Gilbert de la Hay grabbing hold of the young man’s cloak, pulling him back while fending off blows with great strokes of his broadsword. Malcolm of Lennox had been cornered. Simon Fraser had disappeared.

Another Scot marked with the white lion of Galloway rushed in at Robert. The man checked his blow at the last second, his face registering shock. He lunged instead for Hunter’s reins. ‘
I have the king!
’

Hunter tossed his head, but the man held on, pulling the bit painfully through the warhorse’s mouth. Robert stabbed out with his blade, but couldn’t reach him. Then, Christopher Seton was sweeping in from the side. With a vicious arc of his sword, the knight cleaved the man’s head from his shoulders. The man’s hands continued to clutch Hunter’s reins until the horse bucked away and the headless corpse collapsed, spewing blood. But the Scot’s shout had done its damage. More men were turning on Robert, eyes alight at the promise of such valuable prey.

Away across the jostling crowd, through the clouds of smoke, Robert caught sight of a powerfully built man astride an armoured destrier, its trapper striped white and blue. The man’s helm was crested with a spray of feathers. He had snapped up his visor and his gaze was on Robert.

Aymer de Valence’s lips peeled back. ‘
Bruce!
’ he bellowed, thrusting his sword in Robert’s direction.

John of Atholl was at Robert’s side, as were Edward Bruce and Neil Campbell, hacking desperately at the Galloway men pressing in on all sides. Hands reached out to grasp the man who had overthrown John Balliol, their former lord, and had murdered his nephew, John Comyn. There were too many of them.

‘We must pull back!’ Atholl cried hoarsely.

Smoke and sweat sour in his mouth, Robert wrenched Hunter towards the trees, into the shadows of which many Scots were fleeing. Yelling the retreat, he and his men spurred into the gloom, quickly overtaking foot soldiers and the wounded. The ridge echoed with fighting, many English having ridden deeper into the camp, aided by the men of Galloway. Men scattered through the trees in all directions like panicked ants pouring from the ruptured cone of a nest.

Robert passed a group running pell-mell through the undergrowth. He caught a glimpse of a youthful face and felt a shock of recognition, certain the young man was his nephew, Thomas Randolph. Then he was thundering on, no chance to slow or turn, the stampede carrying him out of the trees and down the steep hillside towards the river.

Chapter 4