The Kingdom Series Books 1 and 2: The Lion Wakes, The Lion At Bay. Robert Low
– enough of that.’
The new voice brought Tod’s Wattie round in a whirl, in time to see one of the castle’s garrison come panting up, sweating in his helmet and leather jack. He staggered to a halt and leaned on his spear, looking from one to the other.
‘What’s all this?’
Tod’s Wattie had turned to help Agnes back on to shaky legs and he felt her hanging on him like a wrung-out dishcloth, which only made him angrier. He waved a free hand at Malise, who was on his hands and knees, retching and whooping in air.
‘He was footerin’ with Agnes here,’ Tod’s Wattie declared. He knew the guard, Androu, was sweet on Agnes, so he was not surprised at the narrow-eyed look the man gave Malise.
‘Was he so?’ Androu said, then looked at Agnes. ‘Is this right?’
Agnes nodded and Androu shut one eye and glared grimly with the other, while Malise climbed, wavering, back to his feet.
‘Right you,’ Androu said, scooping up the dropped dagger. ‘You and me will see what Tam … the Sergeant … thinks of this.’
‘Mistake,’ Malise managed to croak, appalled at the ruin of his voice. He has torn my throat, he thought wildly. I will be dumb.
‘Aye,’ said Tod’s Wattie viciously. ‘It was a mistake right enough. If ye make it again it will be your last.’
Androu soothed him, then prodded Malise with the spear butt, so that he was forced to weave off. Tod’s Wattie, Agnes leaning on his arm, started to help her back to the kitchen.
‘Dog Boy,’ she said, but the Dog Boy was gone.
Dog Boy was not having the finest of days. He knew this when he ran in blind panic from the man, sure he could hear the boots scuffing after him. He went back across the Ward and found himself heading for the only safety he knew, the kennels.
He knew it was a mistake when he skidded round the wattle-and-daub corner, into the raised, curious faces of the kennel lads, carrying the dirty straw out to the courtyard. Gib and The Worm stopped and straightened.
‘Blood of Christ,’ The Worm declared, snorting snot from his nose. ‘It’s yon hawk botherer who was too fine for the like of us.’
Dog Boy saw Gib’s pig-faced pout. Almost everything irritated Gib and Dog Boy knew that included him – even more after the showing-up he’d had during the hunt and because Dog Boy had been plucked from the castle kennels to serve with the Lothian lord.
Now he wandered around with only two big dogs to see to, which was not work at all; Gib was convinced it should have been him chosen and that, somehow, Dog Boy had contrived his downfall.
‘What are you seeking?’ he demanded, slightly more curious than angry but still careful to sneer. He always sneered these days.
Dog Boy stumbled his tongue on an answer. The sight of them had been cold water on his panic and he realised, suddenly, that the man was nowhere to be seen and almost certainly not pursuing him. He felt confused and embarrassed.
‘N-n-nothing,’ he stammered eventually.
‘N-n-nothing,’ mimicked Gib in a piping voice, then chuckled nastily. ‘Looking for hawks, probably.’
The Worm hooted at this, a few others joined in and Gib’s sneering smile broadened with the audience. Dog Boy kept silent, for he knew Gib’s moods well enough. He waited, leaden with inevitability, wanting to back away and unable to move.
‘Well? Answer me, you dropping?’
Answer what? I gave you an answer. Dog Boy wanted to say this but stitched his mouth in a neat, tight hem and said nothing, sick with what he knew would come next.
‘Whore turd,’ Gib spat. He liked the sound of it and repeated it, rolling it off his tongue, savouring. The Worm laughed. Everybody laughed. Dog Boy tried one and Gib scowled at him and stepped closer.
‘Think it funny, do you?’ he snarled and cuffed Dog Boy hard. The blow stung, but Dog Boy made no sound and only half-ducked. Gib did it again, excited by the first one. It was an act worn by use, the steps in it as set as any dance, and Gib knew it well. He would strike a few more unresisted blows, then he would spring on Dog Boy, wrestle him down, punch him, then bounce on him until he had suitably shown his superiority among all the dog-boy barons. It was what always happened.
Except this time. Gib’s second blow met air and his belly met a hard nut of fist that drove the air from him. Then Dog Boy’s bare foot slammed into his cods and drove shrieking agony into him.
Dog Boy hardly knew he had done it. He wanted to leap on Gib and beat him to bloody paste, but his nerve broke as Gib, howling, fell to the filthy, dog-turd straw and writhed, curling and uncurling round his clutching hands. Dog Boy turned to run and the rest of the pack sprang on him and bore him down.
There was a confused welter of dust and flying fists, snarling faces and curses. Then came a series of sharp cracks and yelps and the bellow of a deeper voice until Dog Boy, curled into a ragged, bloody ball, found himself hauled up into Malk’s scowl, while the others nursed the marks of the whip he had used on them.
Dog Boy wiped his bloody nose. It had been a bad day. He did not think he had ever had a worse one, or that this one could grow more rotten.
He thought to revise the opinion in the dim of the gatehouse arch, where the torch flickered red light on Berner Philippe’s face. When he smeared the smile on it, he looked to Dog Boy like one of the devils cavorting on the walls of the church in the nearby town. Gib moaned.
‘Get in,’ he ordered and Dog Boy swallowed. The black square gave off a faint stink of grave rot and led to the pit of the pivot bridge, a black maw where the weighted end hung and the great pivots waited to be greased.
Dog Boy felt Gib tremble and started to shake himself; they would climb into the pit with a pot of stinking grease and a torch and, in the tomb dark of it, they would labour, smearing grease on the pivots. It was Berner Phillipe’s clever idea for punishment and Dog Boy never even dared point out that he was no longer the Berner’s to command.
‘The torch will burn for an hour,’ Philippe said, the smile still a nasty streak. ‘I will return in that time – give or take a minute or so. Take care of yon light, or you will be left in the dark.’
They stared into the pit, the dank, cold stink of it reaching out like coils of witch hair, the wood and knotted rope ladder dangling into the dark; Dog Boy sat on the edge, turned gingerly and slithered down. The grease pot was handed to him, then a shivering, weeping Gib thumped down beside him and the torch was flung in.
The trapdoor shut, cutting out the last of the dim, dappled sunlight under the gatehouse arch. With the final shunk, they were alone with torch and the flickering shadows and the huge roll of the bridge weight, locked in place by timber supports shoved through from the walls on either side.
‘Jesu, Jesu, Jesu,’ muttered Gib.
Dog Boy looked at his nemesis, at the pinch-face and the tear-streaked cheeks, then handed him one of the two flat sticks. Worldlessly, dry-eyed and shaking, he moved to the steps, climbed to one of the great pivots and began slapping grease on it. He could not believe he had been afraid of leaving Douglas and now could not wait to be quit of the place and all the folk in it.
Malise massaged his throat and fumed. Thomas the Sergeant had been no more than an old, scarred man-at-arms, no better in rank than Malise himself, yet he stood there like some belted earl and lectured, finally throwing Malise out of the castle.
Black scowled, Malise collected his horse and tried not to worry about bumping into Tod’s Wattie, though he saw the dim grey shapes of the deerhounds in the depth of the stable. An idea came to him.
He went out and found what he sought – the discarded pot of offal, thrown away by that little rat-runt. The flies had found the contents, but nothing else