Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [223]
*
The blue and silver banner of Culter, dark against the westering sun, was far along the Kelso road, and the burnished helmets of his men at arms, following at speed, bubbled like quicksilver by the calm waters of Tweed when Lymond caught up with his brother.
Among so many pounding hooves Richard Crawford, travelling too fast too early in a lengthy day’s ride, did not hear him approach; did not see him until at his elbow, where he had asked no one to ride, there came, neck outstretched, a bay horse as good as his own which—God!—he knew. His throat cold with unnoticed air, his abdomen lodged, it suddenly seemed, in his chest, Lord Culter drove his spurs, like a fugitive, into his splendid mare’s sides. She widened her eyes, the rims white above her hard-breathing nostrils, and lengthened her already stretched stride. Lymond’s bay did the same.
Insanely, Richard did not even look at his brother. With more than a hundred men streaming breathless behind; with two hundred eyes watching, he put his horse flat out on the meadowland, and knew that he was forcing Francis to use his spurs without pity, too. For what seemed a space endless in time, they remained side by side. Then Lymond’s horse, bearing a lighter man but not, Richard knew, in a childish thundercloud of outraged pride, better ridden, began to draw past.
It was not to be borne. His teeth clenched so that the ache of it, noticed later, drummed in every bone in his head, Richard forced the mare forward. She was a good beast, and he had cared for her. She responded, with a pumping heart, and they were level again.
When he felt the bay begin his next drive to the front, Richard was ready. With spurs, with whip, with knees and thighs like cramping-irons, he held his mare to her pace and past it until she matched the bay nose for nose, and then bettered it: nose forward; ears; neck clear of the bay’s head; then shoulders in front. And finally, her great thighs revolving, she was a clear length in front of his younger brother.
Richard Crawford, his grip slippery, his breeches sodden with the sweat that poured like a gutter down his spine and dripped from jaw, eyebrows, nose, on to his cuirass, looked back and laughed. Far behind, in a pounding cloud of dust, his company laden with armour and weapons, were striving to follow. A length—two lengths, now, behind, Lymond had slackened his grip, the bay’s flanks heaving and foam coating his bit.
Where Richard was limply dishevelled, Lymond’s short, thick hair clung, fronded with sweat to his head; his eyes bright with the moment’s exhilaration in a face as white as Richard’s own. He waited. Then, as the leading horse eased, the race won and its effort expended, Lymond let the bay have the second wind he had been nursing so carefully all along. With an effort that was audible, the big horse pressed itself from canter to gallop again, and from gallop to full racing speed.
It was too late this time for Richard’s horse to respond. In the second it took Culter to gather her, he knew she had relaxed too far already. When he pressed her she pecked, and a rider less excellent than Richard would have gone over her head. Then, although she recovered and put her foot forward bravely enough, the bay was close to her side. A moment later Lymond leaned over and gripping the mare’s bridle hard by the bit, dragged them both to a halt.
By then, the two hundred men for whom Lord Culter was responsible, the familiar faces and the familiar names from all about Midculter were far behind; and towards the river, towards the rising ground on their left, and ahead at the approaches to Kelso were only strangers; distant hurrying groups; men with their own troubles to attend to.
For a moment, overcome by stress and no doubt by other emotions, the two men on horseback, so similar, so dissimilar, were silent. Then the younger brother took his hand away, his eyes brilliant still from the ride, and unexpectedly laughed. ‘Poor Richard. Always suffering from being such a bloody bad actor; I thought you were going to be