Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [306]
It was not a situation where reason or soft words had any hope of prevailing. On the first night of the march, after a small but successful encounter with a troop of foraging Flemish cavalry, the footsoldiers from Saxony, elated and hungry for plunder, burst their ranks and made, jumping over the fields, for the village used for the enemy’s ambush.
It needed only ten minutes more for a repetition of the scenes the army had endured ever since Thionville: the firing of the straw stacks and thatches, the hysterical barking of dogs and the screaming of women and children; the spread-eagled boys split by pikes and the other, living figures pinned threshing under their predators.
They were half over the fields when Lymond had his trumpeters blow the recall, and three-quarters when his line of hackbutters dropped to one knee and opened fire on them.
Ten of the Duke of Saxony’s men dropped in their tracks. The rest hesitated, slowed, and then turning, raised their hands in surrender.
Captain de Forcés rounded them up. Those common soldiers who survived were brought back and whipped; the leaders were hanged from the treetops. Then the force was re-formed, fed, watered and set marching till daylight.
Jerott, extremely uneasy at the quality of their silence, followed an old campaign rule and, dismounting, dropped back and marched beside them. Guthrie, de Forcés and Lymond were already there, each keeping pace with an ensign. He found a group of men with whom he could converse in stumbling Spanish, and listened jealously to the eager, competitive note in the voices round Francis.
The Marshal, from his days as a mercenary, spoke mercenaries’ German, as well as dealing out mercenaries’ justice. The army and he, it appeared, understood one another.
At dawn they found a wood to sleep in, the men in the open and the four chief officers under canvas. It was Alec Guthrie who, missing Lymond, found him alone with his back to a tree, at a place further out than his pickets.
He did not move as Guthrie came up, but despite the dearth of welcome, the older man continued until he stood, hands on hips, looking down at him. ‘Remorse?’ Guthrie observed.
‘No,’ Lymond said. His eyes were closed, and he did not open them.
‘You want to prove that even after that you won’t be found with an accidental knife in your back in the morning?’
‘They wouldn’t risk it,’ said Lymond. ‘Not in camp. A shot in the head, perhaps, during the fighting.’
‘Perhaps you’re right. When did you last get a night’s sleep?’ said Guthrie abruptly.
This time, Lymond opened his eyes and looked up at him. ‘When did I last have peace to get one?’
‘You weren’t asleep. You weren’t asleep last night either. Whatever it is,’ Guthrie said, ‘that demands this depth of self-analysis, you would be as well to dismiss it while fighting. Men depend on you. Without a routine, you cannot expect to keep healthy.’
He paused, his bearded lips pursed. ‘There are various traditional methods of relieving tension. Jerott, I understand, is an expert.’
‘If Jerott puts a girl in my tent,’ Lymond said, ‘I shall kill her.’
He had been expecting something, but the suddenness of it caught Guthrie unprepared. For a long time, his mind busy, he said nothing. Lymond, his eyes closed, was breathing with great regularity. Then Alec Guthrie said, ‘I see. And what solution do you propose?’
‘The King’s Cure,’ Lymond said. ‘Le Roy te touche. Dieu te guérisse. The problem is not, unfortunately, amenable to communal management.’
‘There is no shame in the wine flask, now and then,’ Guthrie said. ‘It doesn’t solve problems, but it makes them a little more tolerable.’
‘I have a suggestion in that case,’ said Lymond. ‘You two have the orgy, and I’ll keep the drinker’s headache. Assuming, that is, you mean to spend every hour of the twenty-four haunting me.’
He was