Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [48]
The bullocks puffed gently, and a mare snickered. She was answered by one of the other horses.
Above the wheel-rumbling, someone cursed. “Hold her nose! We don’t want the whole God-damn percussion band.” But as he said it, one of the cart horses threw back its head and presented the night with a splitting neigh.
“Wait a minute!” They listened; while the speaker laid hands on the ox harness and the procession rolled to a halt.
There was silence—broken by a dim beat far out in the night. Then the first tap was begetting others and the pattern was recognizable. Horses, in a solid body, were sweeping in on them from the moor.
A crackle of orders arose; hurried movements and sudden, heavy breathing: bows, pikes and lances readied, they made for the shelter of the carts. They barely got there before, out of the night, dim forms came flying, heaving, nudging, bouncing and kicking in a cacophony of horse language. Lost in the flailing morass, with their own mounts rearing and threshing, the supply men had a confused impression of barrel ribs, rolling eyes and merciful, saddleless backs.
“Blood an’ bones!” They were hoarse with anger and relief. “It’s a damned great herd of wild ponies. Get away with you! Off! Off!” And they rose out of shelter, cursing and whipcracking at the steaming bare backs and flying manes. Hoofs sparked on the stones; horses neighed, nosed, bumped and reared.
The hill pony is a stout and independent citizen: bold, uncatchable, inquisitive and gregarious. The herd went seriously to work, exploring all these and fresh talents. The mares were going silly and even the oxen were beginning to plunge.
“Hell an’ thunder!” said someone, taking a moment’s breathing space to have a good look. “That’s funny!”
“What the hell’s funny about it?” snapped someone else, bucketting past with heels flapping like windmills.
“Well, for instance,” said the first speaker, gasping, “every one of these brutes is a stallion.”
But nobody heeded him, for just then the leading wain rolled in bovine panic off the road and sank two wheels up to the axle in mud.
They were attempting to drag it out, to calm the bullocks, to chase off the ponies and to control their mounts when Lymond’s men descended like moths; and even then they lost seconds in realizing that these horses had riders. The infiltration was neat and unspectacular, involving close-quarter cudgel work and little injury: there were simply fewer and fewer vertical English and finally none at all. It took them longer to round up the ponies again than it had taken to capture the train.
It was a first-class haul. Matthew supervising, flour, biscuits, oats, meat, and leather powder bags with serpentine and corn powder were unloaded and put up in creels ready strapped to their own horses. One cart with hackbuts, bills, bows and arrow sheaves was unstrapped from the oxen and harnessed to a team of ponies. The rest of the ponies, without exception, carried beer.
A wooden box, heavily padlocked, yielded to maltreatment and proved, satisfyingly, to hold the end of the month’s wages. It was tied to Matthew’s saddlebow.
Lymond watched, moving everywhere. To Scott, roping prostrate bodies together, he intoned: “Sawest not you my oxen, you little, pretty boy? With hemp, with howe, with hemp.… Any familiar faces?—No, of course: you wouldn’t know.”
He looked over the silent row of gagged figures. “Unfortunate. A Spanish captain, and not worth his own weight in olive stones. Take ’em all to Melrose, and the rest of the wagons too. How many do you want for escort?”
Scott said quickly, “I have ten men: that’ll do.”
“All right, Barbarossa. Allez-vous-en, allez, allez. You’ve a job to do before dawn.”
Scott nodded earnestly, and rode back to load up the leading cart with his prisoners.
* * *
The English lookout at Hume Castle, slumped in the empty fire pan on the roof, was doing sums gloomily in his head. Below, night hid the great sweep of the Tweed valley and the Merse. Slabbed with fortifications, packed with soldiers,