Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [194]
Inside, they stamped out where they could, and for the rest resorted sparingly to Lymond’s precious water. Two men, leaning out to pick off incendiarists, had so far been shot dead, and there were some Kerrs in the yard who would never fight a blood-feud again. ‘We’ll do it,’ said Will Scott comfortably, shouting over the tumult. ‘If it’s no more than an hour, we’ll do it.’
‘Christ, I believe you’re sorry, you flaming maniac,’ said Lymond. ‘Don’t I keep telling you that this is bloody childishness, and don’t you keep agreeing?’ He had given his bow to Scott, and was standing watching as the young, auburn-haired giant picked his mark for each arrow, steadily and accurately, as he had been taught.
Will Scott drew back the cord and loosed, and an agile gentleman clambering up the ale-house’s low roof gave a squeal and crashed to the ground. ‘Batty Home of the Cowdenknowes,’ he said. ‘A cousin of Tom Kerr. Don’t tell me you’re not enjoying this fine.’
‘Your blasted Nanny should have taught you what mine did,’ said Lymond. ‘The things you enjoy most aren’t good for you. Mauldicte soit trestoute la lignye. I’m going to inspect the junior ranks.’
A second later he was back, with no words to waste. ‘The impossible has happened. They’ve got in below. You’ll have to lose some men, Will. We need a crossfire nothing can live through, or they’ll set fire to the basement.’
They lost eight of their best men, shooting as fast as they knew how to prevent the stream of Kerrs dodging and rushing into the storeroom with all the wood they could get. The big doors, oak and iron, hung drunkenly open until, with two blows of an axe, someone under Cessford’s direction felled one to the ground and, dragged away, it became a shield for the ant-like traffic to and from the lower ground floor. Lymond called Randy Bell from the upper floor, where he had been in charge of guarding the rear. ‘You can say your prayers now. Unless Malett comes soon, all they’ve got to do is set fire to their double boiler below and we frizzle. Or more probably suffocate first. Will: what’s most inflammable of the stuff you put in yourself?’
‘There was a vat of pure spirit out there,’ said Buccleuch’s son helpfully. ‘I poured most of it into the well, but there’s some to the right of the door.’
‘Was there, by God?’ said Lymond. ‘That’ll do, then. They’ve got all the ladders out, and they seem to be busy piling everything high so that the fire will have a chance of cracking the vault. There’s a murdering-hole, isn’t there, down to them?’
There was, locked and barred. ‘Right,’ said Lymond. ‘If we surrender we’ll get our throats cut anyway. Let’s go out in a blaze of glory. Let’s start the fire first.’
It was worth it, Bell said, to see the expressions, reflected in the red glare, on Cessford’s and Ferniehurst’s faces. Under Lymond’s direction, the wooden floor over the basement was swilled with the last of their water. Then, when the noise below seemed at its height, the rusty bolts of the trapdoor were withdrawn. For a second, peering below, Scott watched while a dozen Kerrs in angry zest worked on their pyre. Then he lobbed down his torch. It fell full on the big jar of spirit, and the open door from the store to the courtyard was sealed off by a curtain of fire.
Will Scott didn’t linger to see if any of his besiegers escaped. Slamming down and rebarring the trap, he got to his feet and followed the rest up the twisting stairs to the highest point of the Keep. There, crowding into the open air of the roofwalks, they prepared stoically to wait.
Once lit, nothing