Free The Lion Rampant by Robert Low Page B

guard her well.’
    The big German Templar blinked, paused uncertainly, and nodded, the forked ends of his black beard trembling with indignation. Doña Beatriz, with a slight smile, swayed to the companionway that led below, the dark Piculph at her back.
    ‘That’s a tangle of “nots” ye have there, Brother,’ Sim said, unwrapping his swaddled bundle and bringing the bairn – a great steel-bowed arbalest – into the daylight. ‘I hope you are mistook.’
    Unlikely, Hal thought. If Pegy Balgownie could not tell the Maryculter from any other cog, then the reverse held true – yet no ship would flaunt that Beauseant banner of the heretic Templars unless it knew at whom it was waving.
    ‘And if it is not the Maryculter ,’ Kirkpatrick finished, after Hal had hoiked this up for everyone to consider, ‘then it is flying a false flag in order to gull us anyway.’
    ‘Which means it expected us and was lying in wait,’ Hal added and the rest was unspoken: we have a traitor, who might even be aboard. He met the eyes of Kirkpatrick and Rossal, saw the acknowledgement in them – saw, too, a lack of surprise that thrilled anger into him; this pair have knowledge kept from me, he thought bitterly. As if this old dog was not capable of learning the new trick of them, or did not matter in the scheme of it.
    Kirkpatrick, oblivious to Hal’s bile, sucked a whistle through his teeth and grinned at Sim.
    ‘Bigod, man, that is a fearsome weapon you have. Sma’ wonder the Pope has banned it.’
    ‘Holy Faithers has scorned this, our king, the Kingdom an’ these Templars,’ Sim growled back. ‘Seems to me like every wee priest who sticks on yon fancy hat wants to put a mock on something.’
    ‘Lord bless and keep ye,’ Kirkpatrick answered, signing the cross over Sim, but it was hard to tell whether it was in chastisement or admiration, while his wry smile did not help.
    ‘God be praised,’ Sim answered, checking that the winding mechanism of his fearsome beast was oiled and smooth.
    ‘For ever and ever.’
    The rote reply went almost unnoticed, while Sim worked methodically.
    ‘Are you fit for this?’ Hal asked and felt a fool when Sim looked at him and frowned, all trace of sickness burned away by the fire of imminent action. He said nothing, but his look hurled the same question back and Hal was not so sure he could answer it truthfully.
    ‘Aye til the fore,’ Sim said suddenly, grinning at him, and Hal felt the rush of years, like a whirl of leaves in a high wind. Still alive – the greeting that they had given one another as they staggered, amazed at the miracle of it, out of other lethal affairs.
    Aye til the fore . The names of all the others who had fought reared up in his head and he wondered where they were – those he had last seen alive, at least. Sore Davey and Mouse; Chirnside Rowan and Jeannie’s Tam and a handful of others. Auld men, he thought, like me. If they lived yet.
    Then he thought of Dog Boy and wondered where he was and if he was safe.
    Herdmanston, Lothian
    At the same moment …
    Dog Boy could not help glancing behind him every other minute, for the sick lure of the Herdmanston remains would not stop itching a spot between his shoulderblades.
    There, high in that arched folly of a gaping window, was where he had shinned down in the dark and sneaked off to find help when the tower was besieged by the Earl of Buchan and Patrick, the son of the March Earl. Now that same Patrick had taken the title and Dog Boy wondered if the ruin of his face, scalded by boiling water during the assault, was still as sorry a sight as the tower, gawping at the rain, draped with misery and withered grass.
    There was where he had sneaked through Herdmanston’s garth, stumbling over the bodies of his slaughtered deerhounds, but then he’d had to scale the barmkin wall and now it was more gap than drystane.
    The wee chapel was sound enough and had managed to take some of Jamie Douglas’s riders in shelter