Chapter Sixteen #3
Yet despite the danger ahead, Morggán found his thoughts straying once more toward the clearing behind them.
Toward a small rough house hidden beside the trees and the woman standing there watching him ride away.
And he realized with unnerving clarity that the relief he felt this morning hadn’t been about strategy at all.
It had been relief that he did not yet need to leave her.
***
They found Finlay and the trackers shortly before midday, concealed as they were along a rocky rise overlooking a narrow stretch of forest below.
The English encampment lay partially visible through the trees beyond.
There was muted movement amongst dark trunks, scattered horses tethered beneath drooping pine boughs, and only wisps of smoke rising thinly enough from shielded cookfires that less experienced eyes might have passed right atop the ridge, not noticing the danger below.
Morggán slid from the saddle and crouched beside Finlay without a word. Lucas joined him a moment later while the remaining riders stayed farther back amongst the trees holding the horses quiet.
Finlay pointed downslope. “Rear company.” His voice barely carried above the wind moving through the branches overhead. “Near a hundred men mayhap. Mostly infantry guarding the last supply wagons. Main force stretches another quarter mile northward.”
Morggán studied the position carefully. The English had chosen poorly, clustering too tightly amongst the trees where narrow ground and heavy wagons restricted movement.
Horses crowded together beside the lower slope.
Several supply carts remained half sunk in softened earth from earlier efforts to drag them through the boglands northward.
And while they watched in silence for several long minutes to understand completely, and miss nothing, it seemed to Morggán that discipline had loosened.
Some men rested while others supped. A handful had removed helmets entirely.
One wagon stood open while a pair of soldiers argued over sacks of grain nearby.
There didn’t seem to be anyone watching for the approach of others.
Lucas saw it too. “I always appreciate a disorganized enemy,” he murmured.
“Aye.” Morggán’s gaze moved through the trees and the camp once more. “They must imagine the forest hides them.”
Lucas glanced past Finlay to Morggán, suggesting, “Strike fast enough, and the front will nae be able to assemble before we’re gone.”
Morggán nodded. No grand strategy was required here. Only speed and violence.
“And the wagons?” Airril asked quietly behind them.
“Set them ablaze,” Morggán decided. “They’d only slow us down.”
Lucas concurred with a nod, examining the trees below.
Orders spread swiftly, still quietly, through the mounted Scots waiting amongst the trees above. Men loosened swords, checked bowstrings, shifted shields from saddle to arm.
Morggán mounted again and drew his sword slowly free. The familiar weight settled comfortably into his hand. Beneath him the gelding tossed its head once, sensing what approached.
Then Lucas lifted one hand sharply.
The riders descended through the trees almost soundlessly at first.
The English below scarcely understood what was happening until the first arrows struck. One man pitched sideways immediately from beside the wagons with a shaft buried through his throat while another screamed as a horse collapsed atop him in the mud. Then the Scots were amongst them fully.
Chaos erupted.
Morggán’s horse crashed through the outer edge of the encampment just behind Lucas’s own mount.
English soldiers lunged for weapons too late while frightened horses screamed and strained against their tether lines.
Morggán cut the first man across the face before the fellow had fully risen from beside a cookfire, wheeled sharply between two wagons, then drove his sword into another soldier attempting to rally men near the rear supply carts.
The fighting never properly formed into battle, but then, that was the point.
The Scots struck in small violent pockets throughout the camp before the English could organize ranks or shields.
Arrows flew constantly from the tree line where several mounted Thain archers remained partially concealed amongst the pines.
Wagons caught fire one after another as torches and oil were hurled beneath canvas covers and grain sacks.
Smoke thickened rapidly beneath the forest canopy while terrified horses broke loose and tore blindly through the encampment dragging ropes and shattered stakes behind them.
Morggán glimpsed Lucas briefly near the center of the confusion cutting down two men beside a burning cart with brutal efficiency before disappearing again through the smoke.
An English horn finally sounded somewhere farther north through the trees. Another answered it within seconds.
Already the mac Ruaidhrí and the Thains were breaking away in disciplined groups exactly as planned even as Morggán and Lucas’s voices rose above the nose to shout for them to go.
Several wagons burned fiercely enough now that thick black smoke rolled upward through the trees while English soldiers shouted conflicting orders through the confusion trying desperately to form proper lines.
Morggán wheeled his horse sharply uphill toward the forest slope just as several mounted English riders finally burst through the northern timber attempting pursuit.
One came dangerously close, sword raised high enough to catch weak daylight along the blade.
Morggán barely turned in time to catch the strike against his own sword with a jarring crash that shot pain straight through his healing ribs.
But then his horse slipped half a step in the churned mud near the burning wagons, opening enough space for Morggán to drive his blade brutally beneath the man’s raised arm.
Blood sprayed hot across Morggán’s hand as the rider toppled sideways from the saddle.
Then arrows hissed from the trees above. Two more pursuing English riders collapsed almost simultaneously before the rest wisely reined back from the forest edge altogether as the archers covered their retreat.
The Scots vanished uphill amongst the trees moments later.
Behind them smoke and shouting still consumed the rear English encampment while burning wagons crackled loudly beneath the pines.
Finlay laughed breathlessly somewhere ahead through the trees. “Christ, did ye see them scrambling?”
“Aye,” Tormod called back darkly. “Like kicked ants.”
Morggán’s pulse still hammered hard from the brief clash while sweat cooled rapidly beneath his tunic despite the morning chill.
For one dangerous instant during that collision he had genuinely thought the English rider might drive him backward beneath the horse line and pin him there before the others could turn.
And what had flashed through his mind in that instant had not been Ard Cael, not his mother or sisters or even Robert Bruce or Scotland’s freedom.
He’d thought of Avery, saw her standing inside her derelict bothy, saw the fire beside the narrow bed, pictured Charlie asleep near the hearth. Clear as day, he’d pictured Avery standing in the dim light with damp strands of hair against her cheek watching him as though reluctant to see him leave.
The realization struck him with no small amount of severity as the riders pressed deeper into the forest once more.
Years earlier, when he was scarcely more than a green lad himself, he remembered Tormod saying something not long after a battle that had nearly destroyed them all.
The fighting had turned ugly before noon and worse by dusk, their smaller force driven hard against marshland while English cavalry closed in on them from three sides.
Morggán still remembered the awful certainty that death would find him there amidst muck and blood and screaming horses.
Afterward, once the surviving men regrouped beside the riverbank, Tormod had glanced across at him and snorted quietly. “Christ, lad, ye look like ye’ve seen the Devil himself.”
Morggán, still half sick from what they had barely escaped, had muttered, “I kent I’d never see home again. Saw my mother’s face clear as if she stood before me.”
To his surprise, Tormod had laughed softly at that. “Och, then ye’ve sense enough after all.”
Morggán remembered frowning at him while wiping blood from his hands.
Tormod had shrugged then, looking back toward the field behind them where the dead lay thick beneath the darkening sky.
“When death comes near,” he’d said, “a man sees what matters most to him. If ye see nae one at all, well, then, lad, ye fight for nae one and might as well lay down yer sword.” He’d spat into the grass. “That’s a poor way for a man to live.”