Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [7]
Familiar words. He checked over the possibilities. Traquair was wounded in bed. Thirlstane wouldn’t trouble him. Scott of Buccleuch and most of his relations were at Melrose, and Andrew Kerr had bribed every cottar in miles not to let the news through. There were plenty of steadings, of villages and keeps in the district, but none so crazy as to throw a handful of men against five hundred English, for the Scottish army under the French Commander and the Earl of Arran, the Governor, had withdrawn to Edinburgh.
Unless it had advanced from Edinburgh again. ‘What colours?’ Grey said sharply.
‘Red and white, my lord. They seem in great numbers. Advancing down the Craig Hill from Traquair.’
From Traquair. From Peebles. From Edinburgh. And wearing the Governor’s colours.
And then Lord Grey saw them, with his own eyes, through the veiling rain, glittering between oakscrub and thorn, threading through the wet beeches and the flaming clusters of rowan, pouring down the hillside like cod from a creel; steel helms by the hundred, with swords brandished among them, and pikes sparkling, and small firearms, let off here and there as his enemy paused to take aim.
If Arran had come, he wouldn’t have less than a thousand foot, and at least a company of light horsemen as well. With all the impetus of that hill behind him, he would crush Grey’s smaller force as he liked. Grey’s men were tired; they had nearly finished their work; they had a criminal disadvantage of terrain.…
On his left, bruised mud running over the hill, was the Tushielaw Pass to Ettrick Water. Lord Grey called, loud and clear. His trumpeter blew. And the English army, wheeling, started south at a gallop over the hill pass into Ettrick, followed by twenty men and eight hundred sheep in steel helmets.
By the time Lord Culter and his brother plunged down the last of Craig Hill to the road, the force of Lord Grey of Wilton was a thin ribbon coiled on the bare hillside, pricking faintly with steel. Lymond drew rein beside his brother. ‘The wind is dropping.’ It was true. Already, on the low ground, the white mist was thickening. As the twenty screaming men behind him jostled to a halt he added, ‘We could follow and see the fun. If they hear us, they’ll run all the faster.’
Richard, his face scarlet, was hoarse with shouting and laughter. He said, ‘I was going to follow anyway, and I’m damned sure you were. Come on.’
Beside him, ‘Come oan?’ said a voice. ‘Aw, but that’s hardly right, master. That isna fair on the yowes.’
Through the reverberant air, Richard gazed at one of the two shepherds at his knee. ‘On the yowes—ewes?’ he repeated. ‘We’ve done with them. They can go back uphill where they were. And I’ll see your masters don’t lose by it.’
‘It’ll take half the nicht tae put them back, they’re that excited.’
‘I’m sorry. But you won’t regret it, I promise.’
‘Ach, it’s no that,’ said the older of the two shepherds dourly, and a sudden grin cracked the furzy face wide open. ‘But I’m awful anxious to get hame afore nightfall. The sicht o’ eight hunner sheep in steel helmets is fairly going to put my auld dame off the drink.’
Thus, pursued by shadowy hoof beats, my lord Grey, as he omitted to report that night to his loving friends, E. Somerset and J. Warwick, hurled himself up Megs Hill and down the Kip to meet Ettrick Water at Tushielaw; and to meet also Buccleuch’s hundred Germans’ rising fremescent from their ambush in the mist and thinly echoing, with frightening aptitude, the native cries of their fellow-countrymen under Grey.
There was a Teutonic crash of great brevity; then the English company set off east up Ettrick valley, hotly pursued by a small number of Germans on horseback, the Crawfords and a great deal of noise.
At Oakwood, soaked, exhausted, their cold flesh chafed raw by their armour, the English army careered round a hillock to see, looming up through the mirk, the porcupine spears of Wat Scott of Buccleuch. Hung with fur, feathers and jewellery,