As I finally began to pull my wits together, one of the six bearers grunted something to the others and began to count aloud, and on three, they heaved in unison and sent their burden toppling heavily to the ground in front of the gate, where it sprawled in a puddle left from the previous day’s rain. They drew away then, preparing to leave, and I heard what I knew was my own voice whining in wordless protest as I ran to Will and dropped to my knees beside him, but even as I landed, a booted foot struck me high on my right side and sent me reeling. One of the archers stood over me, looking down and grinning as he drew back his boot to kick me again.
But then an arm interposed itself, thrusting him back and away, and the largest of the four bowmen reached out one-handed, almost casually, and rapped me viciously on the knee with the heavier end of his quarterstaff. In that instant of flaring pain, I became a student with a quarterstaff once again, facing a drubbing from Ewan Scrymgeour.
I seized the end of the fellow’s staff and jerked it towards me, using it, along with his surprised resistance, to support my weight as I surged to my feet, and then I twisted the weapon from his suddenly unresisting hand, switched my grip, and cracked the heavy butt above his ear before his mouth could even open in disbelief. As he fell sideways I spun towards the others, whirling the staff in my hands until it formed a blurred, semi-solid shield in front of me. I know not, honestly, who was the more surprised by the development, they or I. They certainly had not anticipated finding a scrawny Scots cleric who handled a quarterstaff with authority. I, on the other hand, had not thought to find myself suddenly facing nine armed and soon-to-be-vengeful enemies.
Even as I weighed the situation, though, it began to change. The man closest on my left began to sway towards me, raising his staff, and another swung away to circle around and come at me from behind. I dropped the first man with a straight-armed chop to the top of his skull, then flung myself sideways, spinning completely around and dropping into a crouch as I brought the full, accelerating weight of my weapon against the back of the other’s knees, felling him like a tree.
By that time, though, my short-lived advantage had worn itself out, and I felt the weight of a smashing blow across my shoulders, driving me down and onto my face, and I knew as I fell that I would not be rising to my feet again unless someone helped me, which seemed highly unlikely at that point. I sprawled across the body of the man I had hit last, and he was already moving again, scrabbling and kicking in his efforts to stand up. I felt hands grasping me, pulling and heaving at me, and I ended up on my back, my shoulders flat on the ground, gazing up at the foul-tempered gate sergeant who had leapt to straddle me, roaring to everyone else to keep back as he swung a rusty, heavy-bladed sword high in both hands, aiming to cleave my skull. I saw his arms reach the top of their swing and pause there, and as he chopped the blade down towards my head, I remember thinking, “God never wanted me to be a priest,” and I started to close my eyes.
Before I could, though, something extraordinary happened. The man above me went away. He went very swiftly and suddenly. There one moment, focused tightly on splitting my skull apart, and abruptly gone the next, his disappearance marked by a single flash of disbelief on my part as I saw the tail end of a squared steel rod sprout from his elbow.
It was a crossbow bolt. Fired by Big Andrew from close range, it had struck squarely and with immense force on the man’s downward-sweeping left elbow, driving his upper arm bone straight back with sufficient violence to shatter the shoulder socket and throw its owner several paces backward in a spinning mass of whirling limbs and gouting blood. I blinked and saw another man go down, hurled backward by an arrow that struck him in the centre of his chest and pierced his iron cuirass and the linked-mail shirt beneath it as if they were made of cloth. Bodkin, I thought, recognizing the only kind of missile that could punch through armour, and then I became aware of the hiss and snap of arrows all around me, and the meaty thump they made when they hit human targets.
Someone leaned over me, and I heard Ewan Scrymgeour’s voice close to my ear. “Lie still, and we’ll ha’e ye out o’ here in no time. Shoomy, ye have him? Right, then, let’s away. Alan, bring they people wi’ us, cut them loose. Come on, now, quick, afore they come lookin’.”
I was not badly hurt at all, merely stunned by the blow I had taken across my back and shoulders, and as Ewan and another fellow dragged me hurriedly away, their arms hooked beneath my armpits, I realized that they had ignored Will’s wishes and followed him anyway. And their instincts had been right. Had they not been there, Will Wallace and I would both have died there in front of the camp gates.