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back toward the head of the glen in a listening attitude, the gray eyes held an odd, fey gleam.
"Fifty paces back and to our right." he ?nally muttered, in a ?at tone Torquil had never heard him use
before. "There's a hidden ravine. Armed men are waiting to ambush us when we start down the
glen-several hundred of them- men of Lorn."
Aubrey registered a blink, and Torquil laid a staying hand on his sleeve, looking at Bruce askance. John
Macdougall of Lorn was cousin to the slain Red Comyn.
"I know what I'm talking about," Bruce insisted. "I can see them."
And Torquil had no reason to suppose that Bruce could not, or to question that it was not with his eyes
that Bruce saw. The king had never shown any visionary powers before, but Torquil's own experience
had taught him that such abilities could lie dormant for years-an entire lifetime- until a moment of crisis
unlocked their potential. Whether this revelation was a gift of the Stone of Destiny or the bequest of some
other benevolent power, Torquil had no idea; but he also had no doubt but that the vision was true.
"That's good enough for me, Sire," he murmured, warning Aubrey to silence with a look. "Let's get back
and warn the others."
Swiftly and silently they retraced their path, doubly cautious now that they knew an enemy was nearby.
Upon rejoining the others, Bruce summoned his close advisors for a hurried consultation.
"How in God's name could they have found out we were coming?" Neil Bruce exclaimed, casting a
nervous glance in the direction of the waiting ambush.
"Aye, you'd almost think it was sorcery," Gilbert de la Haye muttered.
The notion had already occurred to Aubrey, but it chilled him to know that Gilbert also had thought of it.
Nor would this be the ?rst time that Bruce's adversaries had struck a bargain with the powers of
Darkness.
"Well, we daren't turn back," the king said, dismissing the possibility of avoiding an engagement. "There's
precious little concealment to our rear. If we simply turn tail and run, they could harry us all the way back
to Killin, without ever losing sight of us."
"So, what are we to do?" Alexander Lindsay asked.
"Make a stand here-but on our terms," Bruce replied.
Brie?y he explained what he had in mind. His proposal was audacious enough to draw a chuckle of grim
appreciation from James Stewart, the aging Earl of Atholl.
"It sounds sae daft, it just might work," he said under his breath.
Bruce turned to his brother Neil. "They haven't any horses. How many have we got?"
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"About thirty, not counting your own," Neil replied.
"Then, count mine," Bruce said crisply, as he swung down from his mount and handed the reins to his
brother, also beckoning Alexander Lindsay and Stephen Boyd to join them.
"I'm putting all the horses at your disposal," he told them, though his focus made it clear that Neil Bruce
was in command. "Make up a mounted escort party for the queen and the other women, and mount as
many more men as you have horses, for a decoy. When the ambushers break cover to give chase, and
we've engaged them, be ready to ride like the Devil himself is after you. We'll do our best to cover your
escape."
The rebel band split up at the intersection of the two streams. As the decoy party got into position, and
the rest of Bruce's men faded into the trees, he exchanged brief farewells with his wife and daughter, his
sisters, and his friends.
"God keep you!" he bade them, when he had outlined his plan. "Whatever befalls us from this moment
on, I promise you, as God is my witness, we shall meet again in triumph!"
Elizabeth de Burgh pressed her hand to her husband's cheek, her dark eyes troubled, faintly rebellious. "I
like this not, my lord. I pray God to guard you as well." She grimaced, shaking her head. "Sometimes it
seems to me that we are as children playing at a summer game of kings and queens."
Bruce said nothing, but pressed his lips to her hand a ?nal time before passing on to embrace his
daughter. His sister Mary was bending to take her leave of her husband, Neil Campbell.
"You'd better go now," Bruce said to his brother, who sat waiting on his own mount. "Ride north into
Aberdeenshire. Make for the safety of Kildrummy Castle-and failing that, press on to Orkney, and
thence to Norway. Our sister Isabella will give you sanctuary."
Most of Bruce's following had now dispersed into the trees, fanning out in preparation to deal with the
waiting ambush. Torquil and Aubrey, like the rest of Bruce's following, had given up their horses and
waited on foot with Edward Bruce and several others.
"Give us until the count of three hundred," Bruce said to his brother, clapping a hand to his stirruped boot
in farewell. "Then ride like the wind!"
He watched them go, then turned to rejoin his brother Edward and James Douglas. Torquil and Aubrey
fell in to ?ank them as they headed into the trees with the others, where Bruce selected a coppice of
young elms and hunkered down in the midst of them. Drawing their weapons, the two Templars dug
themselves in amid the bracken close by.
Spears bristled in the shadows among the low-hanging boughs, and an expectant hush gathered, broken
only by the gurgle of the stream in its stony bed. Then, abruptly, the air was riven by a shout of alarm,
followed by a brief but convincing ?urry of confusion, both on the trail and in the woods all around them.
Even as startled exclamations rang out from the hidden ranks of the ambush party ahead, hoofbeats
thundered off at the gallop, rapidly receding.
"After them, you fools!" an authoritative voice roared above the rest. "They're getting away!"
The men of Lorn burst from cover, shouting and brandishing weapons as they poured down from the
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neighboring ridge. Bruce's hidden forces held their ground until the attackers were well onto the forest
?oor before rising up to confront them with a shout that set the vale ringing.
The two parties collided head-on. Above the harsh clang of weaponry, battle cries turned to screams of
pain. Torquil cut down one man armed with a battle-axe, then wheeled to take on another. Off to his
right, Aubrey rushed three attackers at once, driving them back in their tracks with great, scything
two-handed sweeps of his sword, though he was somewhat hampered by the trees.
More of the men of Lorn came rushing up from the rear. For several seconds, Torquil had his hands full,
just staying alive; and by the time he fended them off, he had lost sight of the king. Alarmed, he looked
around for Bruce-and had to take on another assailant. At the same time, he spotted Bruce off to his left,
locked in hand-to-hand struggle with a hulking behemoth in a leather jerkin. The king was ably holding his
own, but at that moment more men of Lorn burst from the shadowed wood, swords and axes and spears
in hand, yelling and shouting as they came. The silver glint of a heavy shoulder brooch set apart one of the
men, taller than the rest-quite possibly John Macdougall himself.
"Back-stabbing coward!" the man snarled, hurling himself at the king. "I'll gut you like a herring and feed
your liver to the gorcrows! You murdered my cousin!"
He launched into a savage exchange of attacks and parries that put Bruce on the defensive. Before
Torquil or Aubrey could go to his aid, they were cut off by more of Lorn's henchmen.
Bruce and Lorn traded a ?urry of clashing sword blows, amid a whirlwind shower of sparks that glittered [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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