ON THE FIELD
And kiss me...my bonnie sweetling...”
Conn groaned as Sir Douglas started to sing. Not just because the man had a marvelous example of a bad voice, but because the words of the song tore into his already worried heart. They were in the middle of a field, the sea breeze buffeting against his hair as they rode along the coast. He was tired from the long ride, saddle-sore, and worried. The last thing he wanted to think about was sweethearts back at home – the thought cut into his already-worried mind.
Will Glenna be safe?
He tried to drown out thoughts of her, but the infernal marching song about a soldier leaving his woman on the night before the battle wound through his thoughts and turned them all to thoughts of her.
“Douglas?” he shouted.
“Yes, Conn?” the man called cheerfully.
“Would you mind holding your whist the next while? I'm feeling jumpy as it is.”
Someone riding beside Douglas chuckled. “That's the way, Conn. Much more o' that and I'd be rampaging off the cliffs. Just for the quiet, like.”
Conn bit back a smile as Douglas turned on the man with a sharp retort.
“Damn you, Greer,” he said. “You're just jealous.”
Greer laughed and Conn joined in with his own chuckle. They rode on in relative quiet.
“Whoa,” the man leading the column, Sir Ivan, called back. “We're getting closer. If you want victuals, now's the time to have them. We'll not stop.”
“Aye, sir.”
Conn shrugged and reached back to the bag slung over his saddle, fumbling for a slice of bread and bit of cheese. It wasn't wise to fight on an empty stomach. He looked over the landscape as he rode. The place was flat and barren, with wide fields and stands of scrubby trees. It was a good landscape for fighting, he reckoned – no hills or valleys or woods to give the enemy cover or chances to ambush them.
“Conn,” Douglas called, riding up alongside him.
“Mm?”
“Any idea whether old Strikestaff is going to be with us?”
Conn frowned. That was what the men called Alexander behind his back. None of them liked him. “Would he not be with us?” he asked.
“Well, some have stayed behind,” Douglas said, frowning. “We've lost Norrie, for example.”
“Oh.” Conn nodded. Sir Norris was a kindly older knight, second-in-command of the Guards. “Must have stayed at the castle,” he said with a frown.”
“Mm.” Douglas nodded. “One third stayed back. If luck's on our side, that damn feller's one of them.” He said it vehemently. All the men hated Sir Alexander.
Conn paused. He felt tendrils of worry go down his spine. The last thing he wanted to consider was Alexander at the castle, free to cause whatever mischief he could there. Glenna could be in danger.
“Not sure I want him back there either,” Conn said mirthlessly. “That man's no good no matter where he is.”
Douglas chuckled. “Never a truer word. Want one?” he asked, fishing a bannock out of his saddle-pack.
“No thanks.” Conn shook his head.
He felt slightly ill, thinking of Alexander at the castle without him being there.
Nothing I can do about it, he told himself, feeling wretched. Except pray.
As they rode on, the wind rising and snapping the long pennants carried by the standard-bearer, Conn saw Sir Ivan give a signal.
“Whoa,” he called back. “Over there. We'll halt here.”
Conn strained to see ahead. He could see a low fortress, the wall a little higher than his head, no towers protruding from it. All the same, it was a solid-looking place. If their enemies were holed up in there, it could take months to get them out. He felt his heart thud faster at that thought.
I can't leave Glenna there with Alexander for so long.
He felt his fingers clench with worry on the pommel of his saddle. It was worse because he felt, in a way, that it was his fault. If he hadn't been so foolish, if he hadn't shown his affections so publicly, then she would not be endangered.
“Halt, men!” another voice was calling to the rear ranks. “They'll come out to talk.”
Conn raised a brow, feeling hopeful. True enough, the gates of the big stone fortress had opened and a party of riders emerged. He watched as Sir Ivan and the standard-bearers rode out to meet them. Then they all waited tensely, eyes on the six men who rode to the center of the field.
When Sir Ivan rode back, it was clear from his posture that something was happening. He was sitting rigidly upright, back stiff and straight. He looked alert and grave. “We will face them.”
Whew. Conn felt almost as much relief that the fight would be over soon as he felt nerves about the fast-approaching battle.
Suddenly, the field around him was full of activity. Men drawing swords to check their smooth draw from the scabbard. Men hefting shields. Some men praying.
Conn closed his eyes a moment, and then reached for his sword where it hung in its scabbard on his back. It was loose in its sheath. Good.
The battle lines formed fast. Conn sat on his horse, straining to see over the heads of the men before him. His eyes widened when he saw that the force arrayed against them was mainly infantry. They were all on horseback also. He hissed out a long sigh as he saw the infantry opposite them heft spears.
“We need to sit and wait for them.” He whispered it under his breath. Absolutely no use in taking a charge onto those spears. They would reduce mounted knights to a pile of mangled limbs of men and horses in minutes. However, if they came to them, their danger was reduced. In close combat, the spears were almost perfectly useless – too long for stabbing, too thin for cudgeling.
He saw Sir Ivan raise his hand and knew he was thinking the same thing. They all sat tight. Waiting.
When the charge came, it was as Conn had expected. The spearmen broke the front ranks and found themselves in the midst of a ring of steel, suddenly inadequately-armed. Conn rode forward cautiously, joining the fight. He hated this: often the spearmen were serfs and cottagers, serving their lords because they had no other choice. More often than not, they had very few skills on the field and killing them was too easy.
He hung back, watching dispassionately. He could hear the ring of steel on steel and he kept an eye on the enemy cavalry. If their opponents had any sense, they would let their men charge now.
“Here they go.”
Thirty horsemen shook the field with the roar of their hoof-beats. Conn yelled to the other knights in the rearmost ranks.
“There! On the left!”
All of them had seen the new threat and their commander hastily sent them forward. Conn felt his mind narrow to the space between the plates of his helm, all other thoughts coming slowly through to him, giving him space to think and act but not to feel.
Clang! Someone was raining a blow on the left shoulder of his armor. He tensed and wheeled, slicing down the sword he held in a blow that must have half-severed the rider's hand. He didn't stay to see, and was heading right, then riding for a man who was cleaving blows left and right. He shouted a challenge as he rode, drawing him onward.
The opponent turned, blank visor raised as Conn yelled. He spurred forward, directing his horse by squeezes with the knees.
Conn gritted his teeth as the man's blow raked down his arms, deflecting it with his own parry in a way that rang the swords together; steel making sparks.
He turned the blade and twisted it away, and then came in from the left. He was feeling his arm tiring, but had to keep on or the consequences would be fatal.
This man is determined! He watched with amazement as his blows kept coming with the same monotonous regularity. He seemed never to tire, while Conn's arm was growing tired fast now. He moved his ankles, guiding his horse to step back, and they jolted sharply out of the range of a blow.
Conn felt sweat on his brow and the sunlight sparked off the sword-blade, dazzling him. He knew it was somewhere, but he was sun blind.
He heard a yell and suddenly his opponent was falling away. He saw that the man he had ridden to assist had stabbed the man in the right side, under the plate where the cuirass met the arm-plates. He shouted.
“Thanks!”
The man was already turning away and Conn wheeled right, heading toward the fray.
He lost track of everything except the swing and parry and block of his sword, the shivering of blows down through aching elbows and into his shoulders. His shoulders burned, the act of lifting and turning the heavy blade slowly becoming harder and harder.
He shouted a warning to a comrade without knowing he did it, and in turn obeyed a warning shouted to him, ducking as a blow whistled across to his head. He didn't know who'd alerted him, but he was grateful as he moved back quickly.
He was near the front now and the ranks sent against them were thinning. They were no longer even in numbers, and the Guard outnumbered them by a few to one. He felt relief flow through him.
“Alexander!” he shouted. The man was sitting on horseback at the edge of the field, apparently unconcerned. He swatted away a blade from a foe and then he looked at Conn, face calm. He wore no helmet and his tatty straw-pale hair was a long pennant, loose over his shoulders.
“Breaking sweat, Sir Conn?” Alexander sneered. He chuckled and spurred to his right, heading toward the fighting around their commander.
Conn sighed. He blocked a blow to his shoulder, wrenched his blade and sent a ringing blow onto his opponent's helmet. The man staggered and moved off.
At least I know he's here.
Strangely, in the midst of all the chaos, the knowledge that Alexander was on the battlefield brought him a long moment of calm.
“Back!” Sir Ivan was shouting suddenly. “Regroup. One last assault now. Then they're through.”
Conn raised his head and looked to where the standard-bearer moved the white-and-blue pennant, signaling them to mass on the top right corner of the field. He rode to join them just as the last of the enemy's cavalry, clearly held in reserve for this moment, a squadron of perhaps ten heavy horses, plunged toward them.
“Easy,” he murmured, though whether he spoke to his horse or the jumpy recruit who rode beside him he had no idea. “Just one clash and they're through.”
He watched the enemy come closer. As it was, Sir Ivan had been very good in the way he chose to place them. Here, in the top corner of the field, the enemy advance was blocked by the mass of fallen foes and shields and spears. The iron-hard charge became a disjointed group of horsemen, riding two at a time toward them.
Conn watched as the front-most ranks of their own men engaged the enemy, and then rode forward to help finish them off.
His arms ached and his vision blurred. He was wet with perspiration and his vision was a tunnel of black, through which enemies moved and struck and he struck and they moved away.
“Stop!” Sir Ivan was shouting then. Conn shook his head to clear it. What was he saying? It made no sense.
“Stop!” another man closer was shouting. “It's done.”
Whew. Conn felt his arms collapse. He leaned forward on the saddle, sword gripped loosely in his nerveless fingers. He drew in a long, slow, shuddering breath. Then another. And another. Somewhere in his chest, his heartbeat slowed and he felt a soft, numb peace flow through him, into him, and over him.
It's over.
They had won.
He rode toward the commander, where he sat at the front of the field, one standard-bearer still beside him. The other was finishing off a skirmish on the left.
As Conn rode to join the rest of their knights grouped around their leader, he felt his heart clench dully, looking at the field. So many of their men seemed injured. The field was littered with men, prone forms that were either still with the stillness only death imparts, or shifting, groaning, clearly in pain.
“We'll make camp here tonight,” Sir Ivan said curtly. “Dismount. Rest. Assist the wounded. I'll send to the abbey and request a priest.”
Conn nodded. He and the men fanned out, riding to the left-hand side of the field, where the few squires who'd accompanied them were already setting up camp.
He accepted some water and drank as if he'd never seen water. He was so, so thirsty. As it trickled down his throat, he felt some of his senses return, the fog that had descended on his brain slowly abating.
“Come on,” he said to a man close by, who turned out to be Sir Adair. “Let's make a fire.”
The camp slowly grew up around them. Conn removed his armor, wincing as he found his left elbow locked, the tendons cramping and swollen.
“Damn it,” he swore. He sat down heavily on the grass near a tent-pole and watched, with a sort of dull horror, as the wounded were helped in for treatment.
Sir Blanchard grinned lopsidedly at him as he was helped in – his head was bleeding profusely from a cut that went down the middle of his hairline. Conn winced.
“Cheers!” Sir Blanchard called ironically. “You weren't wounded.”
“No,” Conn called back. He flexed his elbow and hissed out a pained out-breath. “Not really.”
The man chuckled and let his unwounded comrades help him into the tent.
When the screams began, Conn dragged himself to his feet and moved off. The sounds and sights of wounds being cauterized were not the sort of thing he liked. He walked past men as dazed as himself, heading toward the coppice of trees that grew up just behind the site where they had camped. The whole camp had an air of weary numbness. The evening mist was descending, the day falling into darkness.
I need a moment to think.
He wandered out into the evening, back to the line of blood and gray on the horizon where the sun sank, splendid, into the mist. He breathed deeply, letting the peace of the forest settle on his soul.
Then he turned. He couldn't have said why he did exactly, except that his left eye caught a movement, something coming up from the path toward the encampment. He turned around. Two horsemen were approaching, riding from the direction of the town of Edinburgh. He narrowed his eyes. It was dark and he could barely make them out. He felt his fingers grip his sword, wanting to alert the nearest sentries. However, something held him back.
That rider in the front. He's riding oddly. There's something wrong about that silhouette. He slit his eyes and looked more closely. There it was: some kind of protrusion on the horse's right side. Like something fluttering there.
As if the rider wore a cape on one side only. Or...as if they wore a skirt. Riding sidesaddle.
His eyes widened. This close, the two riders resolved into two tall, stately forms on horseback, with long hair and long dresses. Riding sidesaddle.
He bowed abruptly as the lead horse came to a screaming halt, hoofs throwing up sods of earth from the damp battleground.
“Sir!” a young voice shouted out confidently. “Kindly inform your commander of our arrival.” She threw aside the reins and jumped lightly down.
Conn stared.
The lady in question – and it was undoubtedly a lady – wore a long, dark, velvet riding cape, her hair was loose under the cape-hood that had fallen back from her hair, and it streamed out around her head in a cloud of curls.
“My lady?” he frowned. “Gladly I shall inform him of that. But, pray, who do I say you are? I do not know you.”
She grinned. “Tell him it's Lady Amabel,” he said.
The second rider had come up now. She was taller than the first, and her gray velvet cape had a wide hood that covered a long plait of hair. From under the hood's shallow cowl peeked a serene oval face with wide brown eyes and a full, neat mouth, a long nose and high, elegant cheekbones.
“Glenna,” he murmured.
She nodded. “Hello, Conn,” she said. Her voice was sweet and musical and she stepped forward, reaching for his arm. “I'm so glad you're alive.”
Then, before either of them could have said who did it first, they were reaching toward each other blindly and standing with her in his arms.
He held her to his chest and stroked her back, his left elbow burning in silent agony. However, none of that was something that he noticed any longer. Glenna was here, with him, safe and well. Moreover, he was alive. At that moment, there was no feeling quite as good as that.