The Renegade(52)

Rob had listened to the familiar Annandale names roll off his grandfather’s tongue, recognizing each one as it came, from family lore. These were the descendants of the men who had followed the very first Lord Bruce into Scotland, and they had settled here, never to leave the service of the Bruce family. Fiercely loyal with a feudal devotion seldom to be found beyond their dale of Annan these days, they were proud people and ferocious warriors in defending their own.

“So be it,” his father said. “I’d best be away, then, if we’re to catch up to you before you reach Stirling.”

Annandale crossed to open the door and lead them out, beckoning his waiting factor. “Fresh horses for Earl Robert,” he instructed, but then stayed the fellow with an upraised hand. “How many men will you take with you?” he asked his son.

“There are two and thirty of us.”

“Hmm. I doubt we have that many horses left. Do we, Alan?” The factor grimaced.

“We hae ten, I ken that. But I wouldna be willin’ to swear beyond that.”

“Well, that takes care of your escort. Take your nine best men and leave the others here.”

“I’ll take eight. Rob will need a horse, too.”

“No, Rob will stay here and travel wi’ me. It’s time he and I came to know each other. Away wi’ you now, quick as you can, and we’ll be watching for you by Stirling.”

The sun broke briefly from between massed banks of heavy, rainfilled clouds as Rob stood on the knoll that protected the fortress’s main gates and watched his father’s small force dwindle into the west. He thought about the name he had so recently overheard applied to his grandfather. The Noble Robert. He had always been aware of his grandfather’s nobility. Now he realized, it had been the nobility of birth and lineage that he had acknowledged, whereas the title he had heard used a mere hour before had been of another nature altogether. The knights of Annandale were dour, blunt men with scant regard for the pretensions of the world beyond their valleys, and courtesy of any kind meant little to them. Tempered by the harsh realities of life in their rough countryside, they had no time for the proprieties of courtly behaviour in faraway places, and titles meant nothing to them. They gauged a man by what he did and what he was, and they were scornful, to a man, of titles and honours that were conferred by kings and not earned by merit. And yet the manner in which he had heard them refer to his grandfather as the Noble Robert had been completely lacking in either irony or condescension. The title had been used respectfully. It had emerged with the ease of long and proper usage and with all the dignity of great regard. And it occurred to Rob that there must be a great deal more to his forbidding grandfather than he had ever suspected.

As his father’s party dwindled into the distance, they were replaced by newcomers arriving from widely differing directions, some alone, some in groups. He turned and looked back at the great bulk towering behind him, idly wondering whether he would see his grandfather again before they set out in two days’ time. Even as he turned again to look back down the hill, the first of the approaching riders had reached the road leading up to the summit, and he knew that Lord Robert would be far too involved with his own plans to have time to spare for an inconvenient grandson. Unsure whether he ought to be relieved by that, he moved away in search of Nicol MacDuncan, hoping that his uncle would help him while away what promised to be a long and barren afternoon. He had seen no one even close to his own age since his arrival in Lochmaben, but even had the place been swarming with young people, he would have been too preoccupied with his own concerns to approach them. Nicol, he knew, would find plenty of things to occupy both of them for as long as was necessary.

And so he did, beginning with an hour-long, bone-jarring bout of practice with the quarterstaves that had become the insignia of trainee swordsmen from the far north of Scotland to the southernmost shores of England. Rob had been training with the quarterstaff from the age of eight, beginning with a small one suited to his size, and though it had been a puny thing compared with the heavy, fivefoot-long ash dowel he now used, it had taxed his muscles fully and started his unflagging growth towards the status of knight and warrior. Now, at the age of sixteen, he weighed three times more than he had eight years earlier, and all of it, every pound of weight and rope of muscle, was in peak condition, so that he fought his uncle as a man, giving no quarter and expecting none. Nicol was now on the downward side of his middle years, but few watching him fight could have noted any loss of speed or stamina in his performance. Eventually, though, he dropped the point of his staff to the ground, waving a hand in surrender.