Knights Templar - Temple And The Crown Part 18

Midnight and a rime of sleety mist blanketed the southern Ayrshire coast, where Torquil Lennox watched on the forecastle of the king's galley. It was one of a ?eet of fourteen vessels drawn up in the shelter of the Isle of Arran's southernmost tip. Off to the left, the broad sweep of the Clyde estuary stretched northward toward Glasgow town, dark under the stars as far as the eye could see. To the east, but a few miles away, lay Turnberry Point and the castle guarding it, backed by the shadowy ma.s.s of the hills of Carrick. The castle once had belonged to Bruce's mother, but was now in the hands of Edward's man, Sir Henry Percy.

Knuckling at his eyes, weary after his long watch, Torquil returned his gaze to sweeping that distant sh.o.r.e, his leather jack creaking as he shifted position. The only faint lights showing aboard the galley came from covered lanterns strung fore and aft. Most of the men were taking their rest, either sprawled between the oar benches or curled up in the cargo s.p.a.ce astern. The only sounds were the distant murmur of gentle surf and the closer sounds of wavelets lapping against wooden hulls, the occasional muted creak from a ship's cable. Presently a familiar muf?ed ?gure joined Torquil at the forward railing.

"No sign yet?" the king asked.

Torquil shook his head. "No, nothing."

"Well, it's early yet," Bruce breathed, adding wryly, "Nothing's come easy on this venture so far, has it?

But the balance of luck is turning in our favor."

That much, Torquil reckoned, certainly seemed to be true. Though their crossing from Rathlin Island, off the Ulster coast, had been hampered by late-winter storms, most of the ?eet had survived the voyage with only minor damage. One galley had gone afoul of rocks off the Mull of Kintyre, but the men aboard her sister ships had managed to rescue the crew before she broke up, with no lives lost.

Their biggest recent piece of luck had come two days before. Whilst reconnoitering on the Isle of Arran, Robert Boyd and an advance force had surprised and captured a number of supply boats arriving at Brod.i.c.k Bay to reinforce an English garrison at Brod.i.c.k Castle, thereby gaining a valuable haul of food and weapons. Encouraged by this success, the rebels were now contemplating a more ambitious prize: Turnberry Castle itself.

It was a chancy undertaking, but worth some risk if they succeeded. Four hours earlier, young Aubrey and a man called Cuthbert, one of Bruce's retainers from the local area, had gone ash.o.r.e to spy out the English positions in the castle's vicinity. It had been agreed that if conditions were favorable, they would light a signal ?re on the beach at Maidens, out of sight and just to the north of the castle. The two had been gone long enough that the signal could come at any time, but Torquil had to keep reminding himself that a proper a.s.sessment of the situation could take longer than expected. Still, he could not shake off a nagging sense of uneasiness.

The waning moon, a quarter past full, came out from behind cold-looking clouds, its pale radiance highlighting a range of snow-powdered hills to the east. Sighing, Bruce surveyed the scene with a crooked smile, half-pained and half-reminiscent.

"My brothers and I used to hunt in those hills," he recalled. "Neil once-" He broke off, shaking his head, for Neil was dead; but he quickly resumed.

"I promise you, Torquil, these are still my lands, and the folk are still my people," he said steadily, "whatever Edward Longshanks says to the contrary. It would take more than any edict by an English king to turn their hearts and minds against me-and more than the death of a brother to make me give up the ?ght!"

As he spoke, a ruby spark like a dragon's eye ?ared from the dark stretch of beach at Maidens, swiftly blossoming into a bright amber bloom. With a little gasp, Bruce started up, his eyes alight with excitement.

"That's it!" he murmured. "All right, men, it's time," he called more loudly, as his men began to stir.

Swiftly, the galleys unshipped their oars and made for the distant sh.o.r.e, beaching only long enough to off-load their landing parties. When the men had regrouped, just at the edge of a sprawling ?r wood, they began moving southward, skirting the base of Turnberry Point. They were deep among the trees when the forward scouts slipped back to report a second armed party coming the other way.

Silently the order was pa.s.sed for everyone in the vanguard to take cover. Fading back with Bruce and Boyd behind a screen of mature trees, Torquil strained every part of his body to listen. Gradually, through the breeze-rustle of the surrounding forest, he began to make out the muted scrunch of many booted feet advancing along the trail, trying to be quiet.

Waving Bruce and Boyd to better cover behind another tree, not far away, Torquil set his hand ?rmly on the hilt of his dirk and waited. The stealthy footsteps drew nearer, then stopped, to be replaced by a bristling silence. Straining to pierce the darkness, Torquil caught a glimpse of a single tall shadow detaching itself from the surrounding trees, gliding soundlessly from tree to tree in a zigzag pattern.

Not daring to breathe, he eased his dirk from its sheath, waiting until the other was almost abreast of him before he sprang. The newcomer wheeled aside with a startled grunt, evading the arm that would have muf?ed any outcry, but gave no alarm, though steel ?ashed brie?y in the tree-?ltered moonlight. In the course of their quick but silent tussle, Torquil's grasping hands fumbled against a stout leather scabbard slung across his opponent's back-sword harness that was entirely distinctive.

"Aubrey?" he breathed, though he did not loose his grip.

Instantly his opponent's struggling ceased, and a breathy sigh of relief escaped the other's lips.

"Jesu, Torquil, what are you doing here?" Aubrey exclaimed. "Why did you land? And where's the king?"

As they helped one another to their feet, several other shadows separated themselves from the undergrowth.

"I'm right here," Bruce said in a low voice. "We saw your beacon-that's why."

"We lit no beacon!" Aubrey protested.

"Well, someone did."

As he spoke, there came a crackling in the undergrowth behind them. Instinctively Bruce and his companions reached for swords and dirks as a swarm of armed men materialized from the darkness, but Aubrey's lack of alarm con?rmed that the men were allies, not foes. In their vanguard, the missing Cuthbert escorted a handsome young woman dressed in breeches like a boy, who unshielded a horn lantern and thrust it before her.

"Robert, it isn't safe," she said. "I don't know whether you've been betrayed, but you mustn't attack."

Torquil would have interposed, but the king checked him with a hand on his shoulder.

"It's all right," he said. "I know this fair champion. 'Tis Christian of Carrick, a kinswoman of mine." And a former mistress, according to what Bruce once had told Torquil.

Christian seized the king's arm with urgent familiarity, her other hand holding the lantern so he could see her face.

"You must away from here at once," she warned. "Sir Henry Percy commands the castle. He has over three hundred men billeted there and in the village. An attack on the castle would be sheer folly."

The village was less than half a mile away. As Torquil exchanged glances with Aubrey, he felt a queasy pang to think how narrowly they had escaped walking into disaster.

"Were they expecting us?" Boyd murmured.

"Maybe. I don't know. It may be that-"

Christian stopped short, biting at her lip in distress, and Bruce laid a hand on her shoulder.

"What is it?"

Mutely she shook her head.

"Christian, if there's ill news to come, speak out and we'll bear it. It may be that-what? I have to know the worst of what I'm up against."

Christian closed her eyes brie?y and took a deep breath. "Your brothers Thomas and Alexander have come to grief in Galloway, at the hands of Dungal Macdouall."

Stunned, Bruce merely stared at her for several heartbeats before whispering, "Killed?"

"Not-there."

"Dear G.o.d."

"I didn't intend to tell you until this was over," she went on dully. "They were captured almost as soon as they went ash.o.r.e, together with their following. The reports we've had are garbled, but this much is clear: Macdouall killed some of the others on the spot, then sent your brothers to Lanercost as a gift to King Edward-dragged at the tails of horses."

An appalled silence met this declaration. No one present had any illusions about the fate reserved for anyone so closely connected with the rebel cause-especially Bruce's own brothers. Neil Bruce had already suffered a traitor's death at Edward's orders.

"Both of them are dead, then," he whispered dully.

"Aye, Robert. I am so sorry."

The king turned abruptly away, burying his face in one hand as he sti?ed a sob. But as Torquil made to move the others back, to afford the king a moment of privacy for his grief, Bruce drew himself erect and turned back to face them, unashamed to let them see the tears glittering in his eyes.

"The English will pay for this," he vowed quietly. "One day, there will be a reckoning."

"That's why I've come," Christian said. "Here are forty volunteers from my household, ready to serve you, if you'll have them."

As she gestured behind her, at the ranks of her followers, Bruce ran his gaze over them gratefully, recovering his equilibrium.

"You know that I can offer you nothing at present but hardship and danger," he told them. "That, and the chance to strike a blow against our enemies."

"We ask no more than that, Sire," one of them replied.

A bleak smile trans?gured the king's countenance. "Then, swear it on your blades," he told them, "and vow loyalty not to me, but to this realm of Scotland!"

"So do we swear!" they replied, amid the slither and hiss of steel being bared as, to the man, they gave him their troth.

On the heels of this new development, Bruce and his chief advisors fell back brie?y to reconsider their strategy. They now had forty men added to their strength. What was more, they still held the element of surprise.

"If Percy's got three hundred men garrisoned in and around Turnberry," Gilbert de la Haye pointed out, "it isn't likely we can successfully attack and take the castle itself."

"No, but we still might make him regret this night," Cuthbert said coldly. "We could go for the garrison itself, fall on them while they sleep. It isn't pretty warfare, but it worked for William Wallace."

Bruce's expression hardened, though ordering such an attack would be at odds with the ethics of his training as a knight. But desperate times called for desperate measures- and his Highlanders were bred to such silent cut-and-thrust work. And then, there were three dead Bruce brothers to avenge.

"Organize it," Bruce said to de la Haye.

They attacked a short time later, silent and deadly, falling on the sleeping town like wolves, slaughtering the English soldiers where they slept. There were a few pockets of resistance, quickly overcome, but the element of surprise helped Bruce's men carry the night.

In the company of Torquil and Aubrey, the king was helping clean out one such pocket, his dirk reddened by English blood, when all at once a serious counterattack came-and from a totally unexpected direction. As they emerged from a foray down a lane near the edge of the village, a sudden shadow pa.s.sed across the face of the moon. Torquil's startled glance upward caught a brief impression of dark wings and a toothed avian bill as, in that instant, the thing dropped out of the sky like a thunderbolt.

Only a handful of others were anywhere near the king; Aubrey was closest. At Torquil's warning cry, the younger Templar simultaneously glanced up and grabbed a handful of Bruce's sleeve to yank him out of the creature's path as it swooped to kill, ?inging himself bodily between the king and almost certain death.

One black wing buffeted him aside with stunning force, tumbling him into the undergrowth, but its target clearly was Bruce, who rolled clear as talons of darkness s.n.a.t.c.hed at empty air.

Hissing with frustration, the creature instead seized one of Bruce's men in its toothed beak and carried him, struggling and screaming, out over the water, where it let him fall on the jagged rocks below.

Horri?ed, Bruce started to pull himself up, but Torquil could see the monster veering about on the wing.

"It's coming back!" he cried. "Robert, stay down!"

"No!" Bruce shouted back, shifting his dirk to his offhand and drawing his sword. "It wants me! The rest of you, scatter!"

It was no time to argue. The shadow was almost upon them again, beating wings brie?y splayed against the moon. Torquil started toward Bruce, sword in hand, but his legs seemed to be wading through cold treacle, and he knew he could never get there in time. Words of desperate pet.i.tion welled from his heart, taught him by the Columbans.

"I wrap me in the mantle of the grace of the Chief of chiefs!

Michael's shield is over me, Christ's shelter is over me, The ?ne-wrought breastplate of Columba preserves me- from these wings of Darkness!"

The creature was stooping in a new attack, seconds away from contact, but the faith behind Torquil's prayer yielded a clarion ?ash of revelation. All at once, he knew the focus of the creature's power: a glittering point of murky brightness in the center of its chest that pulsed like a living heart-discernible, as the creature hurtled toward them, as the ghostly image of a bright-glinting object the size of a man's ?st, that looked very much like a cl.u.s.ter of jewels.

Somehow, Torquil did manage to reach the king before the monster struck, interposing himself between them to ?ing Bruce to the ground and stand astride him, sword raised to repel the attack.

"Daystar of battles, be our shield!" he cried. "Christ before me, Christ behind me-"

Miraculously, the monster recoiled just short of him and wheeled to beat skyward again, casting its demonic glare back on this human who had dared to challenge it. Screaming de?ance, it opened its bill and spat as it once again plummeted toward him, vomiting forth a scalding shower of venom.

Torquil ducked his face partway behind one arm to shield his eyes, at the same time swiping at the creature with his sword, but the blade sang as it pa.s.sed harmlessly through the creature's shadowy body, causing no injury and leaving no mark behind.

No substance! a part of Torquil's mind screamed. And in the next instant, an explosion of winged turbulence knocked the sword from his hand.

It was hovering a few feet above his head, and spat at him again-more stinking breath than venom, this time-and the blast staggered Torquil off his feet, to sprawl akimbo over Bruce, shielding him with his body but also pinning one arm beneath him. He struggled to wiggle free as the bird again beat for alt.i.tude and came around for another pa.s.s- and suddenly felt the raking pressure against his hand of the rough setting that clasped the pommel jewel of the dirk Fingon had given him.

Hope stirred in his breast along with his gasping breaths-and Bruce's-as his ?ngers closed around the hilt of the weapon and drew it out in a blaze of cool blue light. The jewel shed gentle radiance like sunlight seen through water, enfolding and protecting him like a mantle of mercy.

It was the moment for which Fingon had given him the weapon. As the serpent-bird plummeted toward him, nearly upon them, Torquil suddenly could discern the web of power that sustained the creature-and at its heart, its focus and its anchor point, what he now could see was the unmistakable image of Bruce's brooch, with ?laments joining it simultaneously to Bruce and to the creature's summoner.

In that instant, he knew the creature's vulnerability-and that of its summoner. Almost of its own volition, his hand thrust the dirk skyward between himself and the hurtling bird, at the same time launching a ?nal, desperate prayer: "Saint Columba, guide my hand!"

His blade and his clenched ?st met resistance with a jolt and an explosion of black feathers, in a sensation like punching through rotting ?esh. A rending scream rang in his ears, and the dark headland winked out of existence. Suddenly it seemed to Torquil that he stood in a ?relit room, his dirk half-buried in the cl.u.s.ter of jewels that a wide-eyed man was trying to claw from his bare chest.

Instinctively Torquil shielded his own eyes with his free hand and gave another thrust and a twist to his dirk, repeating the prayer he had murmured in another time, another place-and was answered with a rending scream as the man staggered desperately backward, pulling free of the dirk but clutching at his chest in a blind rictus of pain and shock. Just as the web of power snapped, Torquil had a ?eeting impression of blood welling from a strange birdlike tattoo beneath the other's breastbone.

The next instant, he was back in the darkness beneath the stars of Ayr, piled atop Bruce, who was struggling to sit up.

"Christ, get off me! I can't breathe!" Bruce demanded. "What happened? Are you all right?"

Dazedly, his breath coming hard, Torquil let himself be shifted onto the ground and to a sitting position.

The dirk was still in his hand, its blade bent out of true and even fractured near the hilt, but of the demon-bird there appeared to be no sign.

"Where did it go?" Bruce murmured, using one of Torquil's shoulders to lever himself upright. "Did you kill it? Christ, what's that on your hand? Is it blood?"

Still a little dazed, Torquil took a closer look at his hands. There was, indeed, blood from the earlier battle. But what besmeared them and the dirk was no ordinary blood, and almost seemed to glow in the darkness. He had done the creature hurt-or its sender.

"It isn't mine," he said, getting to his feet and then helping Bruce to his. "But we must be away from here."

"You don't think it will come back, do you?"

"No, but Percy may, when he learns what we've done to his garrison."

"You're right." With a nod, the king beckoned to James Douglas, who was approaching on the run with Gilbert de la Haye.

"Have the men scavenge what armor and weapons they can carry, and be quick about it," he ordered.

Torquil's hands had started to shake in afterreaction, but he made himself clean his hands and the dirk on a fold of a dead man's plaid before sheathing the blade-or trying to sheath it. The blade was bent too far to ?t the scabbard, and snapped off when he tried to straighten it, so he ?t the broken pieces together as best he could and thrust the damaged weapon back into his belt. He hoped he would not need to use it again before it could be repaired-if it could be repaired. His sword he found a few feet away and sheathed that as well.

"I wonder who sent that thing," Bruce said to him, as their thwarted invasion force headed off into the Carrick hills. "Any ideas?"

Torquil shook his head.

"None," he said ?atly. "But I hurt him. And I do know that if I were to meet up with him again, I'd recognize him instantly."

Chapter Nineteen.