Chapter Twenty-One

 

 

 

“Where the hell is de Holland?”

The messenger flinched at Lancaster’s bellowed question. Niall remained motionless behind Lancaster’s chair, carefully avoiding drawing the Earl’s enraged attention.

Unfortunately, the messenger had no such option.

“As I said, sire, he remains at Dalbury,” the thin, short man replied tentatively.

“He remains,” Lancaster said slowly through clenched teeth. “At Dalbury.” His temper snapped then. His ice-blue eyes widened with outrage. “That is only six bloody miles from here! Why the hell hasn’t he arrived with his men yet?”

The messenger took a cautious step back from the table where several of the nobles sat within Lancaster’s lavish tent. He angled himself so that he would be out of range if Lancaster decided to do something rash, like yank the ornamental sword from his hip and run him through.

Niall’s gaze flicked to Mairin. She stood behind Lancaster’s other shoulder, watching silently. Like Niall, she was tensed and ready to react in case Lancaster snapped, but for the time being she held herself motionless.

The poor messenger tried again. “Lord de Holland invites you to join him at Dalbury so that your forces may be combined and—”

“Why in the name of the devil would I abandon my position to ride north to Dalbury?” Lancaster roared, his fist slamming onto the oak table. Flecks of spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth. “I would be ceding the River Trent and Burton Bridge if I did that. I might as well hand Edward all of northern England on a silver platter. Is that what de Holland would have me do?”

“Mayhap that is exactly what he wants,” Hereford said grimly from his chair beside Lancaster’s.

“You think he has abandoned us?” Lancaster demanded.

Hereford flicked a finger at the messenger. “Leave us. And order de Holland one last time to join us at Burton. Tell him if he does not, he will be crossing the future King of England.”

The messenger bent in a hurried bow before scurrying from the tent.

“De Holland could have returned his loyalties to Edward,” Hereford said once the tent flap had closed behind the messenger. “It would explain why he is delaying joining us.”

“And why he would attempt to lure you to abandon your position here,” Audley added. He plastered an oily smile on his face and lifted his goblet in a salute to Lancaster. “After all, the fact that we’ve held Edward south of the river for so long has been a victory unto itself.”

Lancaster smoothed a hand over his black and silver hair, rolling his neck as if to relieve some of his frustration. “Aye, our position is key, but I would hardly call these past three days a victory,” he replied tartly.

For once, Niall agreed with Lancaster. Though the rebels and the King’s army had indeed engaged the morning after they’d made camp on the north bank of the River Trent, the battle had been a stalemate thus far.

True to his word, Lancaster had positioned hundreds men at every bridge or ford for ten miles along the Trent, concentrating most of his forces on Burton Bridge. The bridge had proven easy to occupy—it was several hundred feet long, but only fifteen feet wide, making it nigh impossible for Edward’s men to cross with Lancaster’s army in position.

Yet the bridge was just as easy for the King’s soldiers to hold against Lancaster as it was for Lancaster to hold against the King. Neither side had made any progress, despite the fact that men from each army had been nigh constantly engaged in battle on the narrow bridge. Besides a few volleys of arrows that had mostly landed in the swollen river and a hundred or so men lost on either side, little had happened in the last few days.

Unfortunately for Lancaster, the idleness of his men had only allowed the discontent Niall had noticed earlier to fester. Blessedly, the rains had ceased, and the river had begun to abate slightly, but with little to do, the soldiers spent the days milling about their sodden, muddy camp. The nobles must have noticed the low morale, for they too had grown restless for action. As had Lancaster.

Lancaster straightened his ermine-trimmed cloak with a huff of annoyance. “A good position is worth little if we cannot make headway against Edward,” he continued. “What we need now are men if we are to overpower him. De Holland is a bloody traitor. I should send my man Bruin to punish him for his betrayal.”

Niall kept his lips tightly sealed against the urge to point out that more accurately, the real traitors were Lancaster and his supporters, who’d initiated this civil war against their King.

But as he’d told Mairin that first night they’d made camp at the river, it didn’t matter who was right in this battle. Both Lancaster and Edward could rot as far as Niall was concerned. They only had to keep the arrogant, reckless Earl alive—an assignment that grew more challenging by the day.

As if sensing the disloyalty of Niall’s thoughts, Lancaster glanced over his shoulder and looked directly at Niall for the first time in what felt like a fortnight.

“And the Bruce is little better than de Holland,” Lancaster said, his lip pulling back in a sneer. “He claims to be an ally, yet where is he? He should have given me a whole horde of barbarian warriors by now. What good is the support of the bloody King of Scotland if he only sends me two useless bodyguards—and one a mere woman at that.”

Lancaster’s disdainful gaze began swinging to Mairin, but Niall jerked into motion to draw the Earl’s attention back to him. He stepped to the side of Lancaster’s chair, clasping his hands tight behind his back.

“The Bruce has pledged to keep you alive,” he ground out. “That is more than can be said for some of your other so-called allies.” He lifted his chin toward the tent flap to indicate the messenger representing de Holland.

That drew a few snorts and surprised guffaws from the nobles. Good. Let them direct their impotent outrage at Niall—he could take it.

“Careful, Beaumore,” Lancaster said, his voice dangerously quiet. “You may have given your loyalty to the Scottish King, but you are in England now. Your precious Robert the Bruce cannot protect you this deep into my country.”

“The Bruce is a man of his word,” Niall replied evenly, ignoring Lancaster’s threat. “If he promised you men, you’ll have them sooner or later.”

Niall had no idea if that was true or not, but it seemed to be enough to divert the worst of Lancaster’s temper—for now. Lancaster snorted but said no more. Niall stepped back from his side, and the Earl shifted his cold stare to his nobles.

Lancaster launched once more into a taut string of complaints about the stalemate they were in. As he carried on about disloyalty and the need for more soldiers to overpower Edward, Mairin caught Niall’s eye. Her gray gaze was clouded with worry, but she tilted her head in a small gesture of gratitude for redirecting Lancaster’s anger.

“…break his hold on the south bank,” Lancaster was saying. “Without de Holland, we’ll have to rely on de Ferrers arriving on the—”

A low rumble began outside the tent. Lancaster’s voice died as he and the others began to look around in confusion.

As the noise grew, Niall’s stomach dropped. The rumble was turning into the roar of hundreds of men.

“What the bloody—”

“Sire!” A foot soldier exploded into the tent, his eyes rounded and his breaths coming short.

“What is the meaning of this? What goes on out there?” Lancaster demanded.

“It’s King Edward’s army, sire,” the soldier panted. “They’ve breached the river.”

Lancaster stood up so fast that his chair toppled over backward. “How can that be? Burton Bridge was ours!”

“Not Burton Bridge, sire. They crossed a mile or so south, at Walton.”

“Every bridge and landing was secured,” Lancaster grated out.

The soldier dropped his gaze, shifting restlessly from foot to foot. “Aye, sire, but only with a few hundred men. It seemed to be enough at first, but now that the river has retreated slightly, the King’s army was able to cross. And with so few men on our side…They overpowered us, sire.”

“And now?” Lancaster demanded.

“More than four thousand men are marching on our camp, sire.”

It seemed that Lancaster and his nobles had spent far too much time strategizing inside the comfort of their tents than actually paying attention to the conditions of the river, Edward’s movements, and his overwhelming superiority in numbers.

Several of the nobles hissed curses. Belatedly, Niall realized he too had muttered an oath. While the nobles would have to scramble for a plan to save their hides, he and Mairin’s task to keep the rebellion—and Lancaster—alive had just gotten infinitely more difficult. And more dangerous.

“Fetch our horses,” Badlesmere, who was first to find his tongue, bellowed to the soldier. As the soldier darted from the tent, the other nobles scrambled from their silk upholstered chairs and began dashing about like startled chickens.

Niall moved instinctively to Mairin’s side.

“My bow and quiver,” she said, her gaze jerking toward where their tent lay beyond Lancaster’s.

Like Niall, she’d strapped her sword to her hip the first morning they’d held the bridge, but with Lancaster tucked in the safety of his tent these last three days, she’d had little need of her bow.

She turned toward the tent’s opening, but he caught her arm.

“I’ll get it,” he said. “Stay close to Lancaster. He’s arrogant, but not a fool. He’ll stay well back behind a wall of his own soldiers.”

Mairin opened her mouth, but with no time to do aught but agree, she nodded. He gave her arm a squeeze before hurrying out the lavish tent.

In the small confines of their own tent, he wasted no time. He snatched up their saddlebags in anticipation of the possibility that the whole army would have to make a hasty retreat before they could even break camp. He slung Mairin’s bow and quiver of arrows over one shoulder and their bags over the other, then abandoned the tent.

Instead of making his way straight back to Lancaster and the others, however, he wove his way deeper into the camp. The soldier who’d been ordered to bring the nobles their horses likely wouldn’t think to fetch two more for Niall and Mairin. Yet if the battle took a turn for the worse, Niall wouldn’t let them fend for themselves on foot.

The camp was a roiling mass of chaos beyond the nobles’ inner circle of tents. Soldiers scrambled for weapons, slipping in the mud as they ran in every direction. From the rising din of shouts and clanging metal on the southwest edge of the camp, the battle had already begun in earnest.

Unease churned in Niall’s gut as he hurried on. What little order or leadership there had ever been amongst Lancaster’s army was already crumbling at the first challenge from Edward’s soldiers. What state would he find the spineless, glory-hungry nobles in when he returned?

There wasn’t time to cut all the way across the camp to where the horses were kept in the trees to the west, he realized. Just then, a soldier pulling several saddled and bridled horses in the opposite direction broke through the sea of canvas tents and scrambling men.

“Halt,” Niall ordered in his most commanding voice.

The soldier blanched, his eyes widening in fear. Belatedly, Niall realized the man was likely deserting, for he’d been scuttling away from the sounds of battle.

“Give me two of those horses, and I never saw you,” Niall said, dropping his voice.

Wagging his head all too eagerly, the soldier disentangled two sets of reins and thrust them at Niall before dashing away.

Niall angled back toward the nobles’ tents, driving himself faster as his sense of disquiet ratcheted higher. The sounds of warfare were growing louder, even though he thought he’d begun moving away from the core battle on the southwest edge of the camp.

When he reached the cluster of large, lavish tents once more, Lancaster, Mairin, and the others were nowhere in sight. Now the unease turned to viselike fear that gripped his innards, compressing them into a stone. Where the hell were they?

Niall broke into a run, pulling the two horses behind him. At the northern edge of the camp, he had his answer.

Lancaster and the other nobles had managed to secure horses for themselves. They clustered together into a tight ball in the center of a thin ring of Lancaster’s soldiers. The soldiers battled against a surge of Edward’s men flowing from both the west and east in a seemingly endless stream of red tunics and dull chainmail.

A heartbeat later, Lancaster’s men began to crumple inward. Edward’s soldiers surged forward into the disintegrating ring of men.

Niall’s gaze frantically swept over the erupting battle for Mairin.

There, on the ground beside Lancaster’s horse, she stood with her feet planted and her sword in hand. She had positioned herself in front of Lancaster, as if her small body could shield him against the onslaught of Edward’s army.

Just then, one of Edward’s spearmen broke through Lancaster’s soldiers, lowering his spear and charging forward.

Directly at Mairin.

Before he knew what he was doing, Niall broke into a sprint.