The Renegade(53)
“Enough,” he gasped. “I’m spent. I couldn’t lift this thing again if my life depended on it.”
Rob, feeling no whit less tired, grinned through bared teeth. He dropped his staff and bent forward to rest his hands on his knees. “Thanks be to God,” he wheezed. “I thought you were going to keep at me till I dropped, which would have been at any moment now.” He lowered his head and concentrated upon his breathing until it grew less laboured, then looked up at Nicol. “What now?”
Nicol straightened up and placed his hands on his hips, then arched his back and rotated his torso as far as he could from side to side, grunting with the effort before he stopped. “Well,” he said quietly, straining to breathe normally, “two possibilities I see. One remote, the other necessary. You could go and find your grandfather, spend some time with him … ”
Rob grimaced and waved a hand in the direction of the main castle yard, now crammed with men and horses. “I think the Noble Robert has his hands full at the moment. What’s your second possibility?”
“A long, hard run followed by a bath in a friendly stream before the heat goes out of the sun. What say you? We haven’t had a long run together in months and it’ll do both of us good. Might kill me, mind you, but I’ll be too exhausted to fret over it.”
“I would enjoy that, if I had the strength to stand upright. Can we cool off for a while before we start?”
Nicol shrugged. “Aye, but the chances are fair that we’d stiffen up … Or I would. Better to start out walking right away, until we find our wind again. Then we can start running.”
Within the quarter-hour they were at the base of the fortress hill, where they swung right to follow the southerly track they had crossed earlier. There were still several hours of daylight remaining, and the reapers were still working diligently in the fields, the air heavy with the rich smells of dusty, newly cut oats and barley. Rob was fully refreshed by then, feeling as though he could run forever, but he said nothing that his uncle might take as a challenge, content to leave it to Nicol to change from walk to run. Another party of four riders came sweeping along the road from the south at full gallop, and the pair moved aside to let them pass.
“Right,” said Nicol, when the riders had gone. “Are you ready for the road?”
They struck off the sun-baked track and ran overland for what Rob guessed to be a circular ten miles at an easy, loping pace that varied from time to time as one goaded the other to race on a particularly challenging slope. When they broke from a dense copse of trees and found the tower of Lochmaben in view again, and less than a mile away, Nicol called a halt and led the way back through the trees to a looping stream they had passed before entering the woods, noting its steep banks and a pool deep enough to swim in. Rob threw off his belt with its sheathed dagger and took a shallow, running dive into the water fully dressed, and for the next quarter of an hour they bathed and played the fool together like a couple of schoolboys.
It was growing dark quickly by the time they entered Lochmaben again, and the temperature had dropped sharply as soon as the sun set, a humourless reminder through their still-damp clothes of the winter’s chill that lay in the months ahead. Tired to the bone after their long day—seven hours in the saddle and then heavy physical exercise all afternoon—Rob agreed without demur when Nicol suggested they beg something to eat from the kitchens and then get themselves to sleep as quickly as possible. And so they shared a fresh-baked loaf of crusty bread and a large clay bowl of hot venison stew that they washed down with fresh spring water from the fortress’s deep well.
They ate in silence, Nicol staring aimlessly into the distance, engrossed with his own thoughts, while Rob found himself almost fearing the prospect of spending a number of days in the company of his grandfather. It would be the first time he had ever been physically close to the old man for anything longer than a few hours, and he wondered how long it would be before he tried the gruff patriarch’s patience sufficiently to attract the rough edge of his tongue.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE PATRIARCH
R ob awoke suddenly, gasping for air and flailing wildly at the threatening face that hovered over him, but even as he swung his arm he knew that the despairing strength of his blow was false and that his arm had only flapped weakly. He had been dreaming, a vivid, terrifying dream, and its aftermath was sharp, filling his throat and chest with flaring panic before he remembered where he was: in his grandfather’s stronghold of Lochmaben, in the family quarters of the great tower.