“Wait,” I grunted, scrabbling with my feet. “I can walk. Let me up.” The two men hauling me stopped and looked down at me skeptically. “Really, Ewan, I’m fine. I had the wind knocked out of me, but I’m fine now.”
I looked back at the scene we were leaving and was unsurprised to see bodies everywhere: the six men-at-arms who had been carrying Will, the four loud-mouthed archers, the sergeant who had been so determined to kill me, the four guards of his detachment—none of them was moving. My gaze went then to the gate in the hedgerow, and I could not believe that no one had come to see what the commotion was about. There must have been at least two hundred men in that encampment.
Ewan removed his hooked arm from my armpit and helped me to my feet. I swayed there for a moment, collecting myself, then nodded towards Will, who was still being carried by the man Shoomy and three others. “How is he? I couldn’t tell.”
“No more could I,” Ewan growled, “but he’s breathing. Now come, we have to get away from here.”
I fell in beside him, moving quickly, aware that we were less than thirty paces from the edge of the trees that would screen us from the camp gates, but knowing, too, that the pursuit that would follow was bound to be both grim and determined. We had killed English soldiers, and, irrespective of the provocation that had caused it, their companions would want our heads hoisted on poles, to show the world that English lives could not be taken lightly. We would not easily escape punishment for today’s escapade, and that thought made me lengthen my stride.
The group of freed prisoners, still in their iron collars, scurried to keep up with us.
“What about them?” I asked Ewan.
He glanced over to see who I was talking about, then shrugged. “What about them? They’re alive and they’re free again. Outlawed, for a fact, but free.”
“But what will happen to them?”
We had reached the edge of the trees, and Ewan turned, waving to the stragglers to hurry and get themselves out of sight. As soon as the last man had passed us, he braced his foot and pulled down the top of his bow stave, bending it until he could remove the bowstring. “Can’t use a bow in the deep woods,” he murmured. “What will happen to them? They’ll continue as before, living in a Scotland that might soon be ruled by England.”
“No,” I said, “that will never happen. We have our own King now. Where’s your bow case?”
“That way, about a hundred paces in.” He pointed the way and I followed him. “Once we’d seen where we had to go, we went back in and left everything there.”
We emerged into a small clearing, where Ewan’s companions were snatching up their bow cases and the other weapons they had left. Knives or swords were distributed to some of the Scots prisoners. Everyone knew we had no time to waste if we were to get away safely, for the English would be hard on our heels, and their outriders would all be mounted.
We split up, with orders to reassemble in the woods behind Sir Malcolm’s house as soon as could be after dark that night. I ran with Ewan’s group, now numbering seven, and as we slipped away from the oak clearing, we heard the first distant shouts of discovery coming from Bek’s camp.
CHAPTER TEN
1
We began to feel increasingly concerned about Will. We were about an hour along the road from Bek’s encampment, and we had fully expected him to wake up cursing at us for our rough handling of him, but still he had not regained consciousness. Shoomy insisted that we set him down and examine him for fatal wounds that we might not have noticed in our rush to get him away, but we could see nothing that looked life-threatening. He had been badly beaten, evidently with clubs or quarterstaves, and there were other abrasions on his body where he had been kicked and trampled. He was still bleeding sluggishly in places, too, from a scalp wound and a deep puncture that looked like a stab wound in one thigh, but we found nothing to explain why he should remain unconscious for so long.
We had stopped right outside a farmyard, and when Shoomy declared that we could carry Will no farther, for fear of injuring him more gravely than he already was, the yard was the first place we looked for some other means of transporting him. A dog began barking as soon as we approached the gate, and moments later the farmer himself came out to investigate. He took one look at us in his gateway and turned to run, but one of Shoomy’s men was already leaping to restrain him, and before he could shout to warn anyone else, the hapless man found himself with his back against a wall, a hand over his mouth, and a knife point at his throat.
Shoomy stepped up beside his man and pulled the knife wielder’s arm down to his side. “You are in no danger from us, no matter what you think,” he said quietly to the farmer. “We are Scots and freemen, but we had a tulzie wi’ some English soldiery a few miles back along the road. They’ll be following us, but they’ll no’ bother you, I think, so be it we’re long gone by the time they get here. But we ha’e an injured man wi’ us and we need some way of carryin’ him. If ye can help us, we’ll pay ye for your time and trouble and be on our way quickly. What say you?”