Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [212]
The town smoked morosely on its hill. Tom could see the Abbey tower, the prison, the tall houses of the church offices and the solid town gates, halfway up the hill. The streets seemed to be crammed with people. He dropped his eyes, and witnessed a small drama nearer at hand: a man, spurring his horse without mercy, was approaching the bridge from this, the north side. As he reached it, another rider galloped toward him across the turf, calling something: the sun glinted on fair hair, and Erskine held his breath.
He saw the man at the bridge look around for a second and even hesitate; then he raised his arm and with a slap of his hand, sent the rowelled horse bounding over the river. Erskine saw Lymond’s horse leap forward also, and then race flat out for the bridge; but there were two hundred yards between the two men, and Lymond was not closing it. Erskine swore under his breath.
Behind him, his men were arriving on the crest and halting, arrested by his arm. Culter was nearly last. He rode to Erskine’s side, his eyes, reddened and painful with dust, searching the new landscape; and suddenly pointed. “There they are!”
“Yes. I’m going after them,” said Erskine. “Stokes!”
“Then I’m coming.…”
“You’re staying here,” said Erskine sharply. “So are the men. Stokes: there was a building of some kind back there; a burned-out one. See what shelter you can get there for yourselves and the horses. Not more than two hours.” And he put his horse down the cliff.
The last thing he saw, as he held the mare’s neck high and felt her haunches slither among the scree of rough sandstone, was Stokes’ hand on Richard’s rein, and Richard trying to fight off three of his men. It came to Tom, wryly, that the round, blackened building he had seen was a dovecote.
* * *
Adam Acheson, arriving at last at his destination, found the whole of Hexham in the street and in the market at the top of it, bent on commercial prey, and squeezing a quick fortune from Wharton’s men-at-arms.
While taking no risks in open country, Acheson had no political reason for distrusting Lymond. On the contrary, his relationships vis á vis his own countrymen and the English were from Acheson’s point of view perfectly satisfactory. The attempt to delay him was Acheson’s main grievance, and he was willing to overlook it if the fellow, abandoning this irrelevance, had arrived at Hexham after all.
So, when the porter at the gate looked at his safe-conduct and read laboriously, “And bodyguard?” Acheson jerked his bead down the road, and waited while the porter, after argument, found an escort for him to the Abbey. Acheson was ready to grant that Lymond’s presence was conclusive guarantee of his good faith. Still, there was the matter of the opened dispatch he had slipped into the other man’s baggage. He wanted the credit of delivering the fellow, but without undue personal risk.
But the Master, it seemed, bore him no ill-will. He rode up as Acheson, dismounted, was chatting with the three men of his guard. He looked a little wild-eyed, perhaps, but with nothing threatening in his face.
Admitted through the gate, he guided his horse toward Acheson, smiling, and drawing abreast, bent down to address him.
Only one of the four men standing around them saw the twelve inches of steel in Lymond’s hand, and he shouted too late. Acheson took the stab full in the chest, propelled backward with the force of the blow; then the blank amazement in his face gave place to vindictive fury. He straightened. The dagger, falling from the rent cloth over his breast, betrayed the sparkle of chain mail beneath. Acheson was unhurt, and five men leaped at Lymond.
There was one weapon left to him. Driving his feet hard into the mare’s flanks, Lymond dragged her soft mouth back and guided her plunging hoofs. Acheson, isolated under the iron soffit of the rearing horse, screamed once, the blood leaping from a great cut on the temple, before he was kicked to the ground.
There was just time for Lymond to see as much before he, too, was overpowered.