Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [159]
“Oh!” said Gideon.
“Quite,” said Lymond cheerfully. “Your horse was killed, so I rolled you like Sisyphus’s stone to the nearest shelter. Everyone was much too busy high up to notice what was happening in the long grass. You had it wrong, you know. It was to be an evisceration party, not a rescue.”
His cords? wondered Gideon vaguely. Cut them on his, Gideon’s, sword, probably: it was missing. Damn. Aloud, he said, “I suppose we have young Scott to thank for all this. I might have done more to warn Lord Grey, except that I found it hard to believe you would put yourself within reach of your own countrymen.”
“Don’t blame Scott. I sent for Buccleuch and Lord Culter,” said Lymond. “Which is only just, since Lord Grey didn’t bring my Mr. Harvey. In other words, we have all been energetically cheating. Although I should have sent the message in any case.”
“Inviting the evisceration party? That seems a bit odd,” said Gideon dryly.
“It nearly turned out to be very odd indeed. But then, I didn’t expect to be among the welcoming party—or if I had been, I expected to be enjoying the society of Mr. Harvey, which would have altered things a trifle. However, as it happened—”
“As it happened, it seems to me you were abnormally lucky to escape from your own cross fire.”
Lymond agreed dreamily. “Nemesis nodded. I know.”
“And now?”
“And now you shall come with me to my home for a change …
“Now in dry, now in wete,
Now in snow, now in slete
When my shone freys to my fete—
It is not, Mr. Somerville, all easy.”
The horses Lymond had captured were tired, and the journey to Crawfordmuir took the two men rather longer than it need have done.
About halfway there, they came across the redheaded boy.
He was a formidable and well-grown young man, on a horse almost as weary as their own, and beside him a small swarthy gentleman on a long-faced brown pony. Lymond reined instantly before the boy’s drawn sword, and effervesced into gnatlike mockery.
“Will Scott! With chin driven into his chest as if he’s been thumped on the head with a fact. Facts and Mr. Scott never meet: they collide. What’s wrong now?”
Scott! Gideon’s eyebrows shot up; the black-haired man grinned; and the young man exclaimed with an unhappy, controlled violence, “What have you done with my father?”
“Exercised him and sent him home. Johnnie, you shouldn’t frighten the child.”
The dark person smiled, showing beautiful, sharp teeth. “I didn’t. He got the story elsewhere and was wearing himself out trying to track you all down. I thought it would be handier to help him find you.”
Scott ignored it, his whole mind set on Lymond. “I thought I was the person wrapped ready for sale; but no. I was nothing—the grease around the candle, the keyhole for the key. You sold my father and your own brother to the English, but by God, you’ve still got a reckoning to face for it! Get down.”
“Make me?” invited Lymond, and unfurled himself with terrifying suddenness. There was an explosion of movement. Scott, swordless, was ripped from his horse and stood gaping, while Lymond addressed Gideon.
“We’re not always so uncouth. I’m sorry. You were at Heriot. Would you say that the Scots who surprised you were falling into a trap?”
Gideon, fascinated, spoke the truth. “Oh the contrary. Scott of Buccleuch and his friends had prepared a very efficient trap of their own.”
“I told him,” said Johnnie virtuously. “I gave all the help I could to Buccleuch.”
Scott’s hands were doubled. “But you completed the bargain somehow. You’ve got Harvey.”
Prompted by the eye of his impresario Gideon responded, amused, to the cue. “My name is Somerville,” he said quietly. “I’m afraid Lord Grey steered rather an erratic course as well. He didn’t keep his promise to bring Harvey north.” And out of charity, he added, “Your father took no harm in the fighting. They didn’t get any prisoners through a chance intervention of mine, but both Buccleuch and Lord Culter got away quite safely.”
Scott’s eyes never shifted from Lymond. “I seem to have