Lion at Bay Read Free

lord,’ Sim Craw drawled and Segrave turned his wither on the white-streaked black beard and the broad, black-browed face it swamped. Unmoved, Sim nursed a powerful crossbow, wrapped against the rain, close to his great slab of body. ‘I like my weemin with their chins shaved,’ he noted casually.
    There was a moment as the realization seeped in to Segrave, then he roared at a startled squire, ‘Bring them back. Bring them back – God curse it …’
    He turned to Bruce, but too late. He had missed that man’s silent flick of signal; all he found was the back of the chevronned jupon, trailing a tippet of riders behind him away to the west.
    Treachery. The word sprang at Segrave and he felt anger and fear in equal measure. A trap, by God, with Clifford a good gallop behind and Bruce running away and leaving him with yet another Scotch battle against odds. The thought settled something slimed and cold in his belly and he turned to survey his last score of men as the first hundred breasted the ridge and vanished.
    Malenfaunt had spotted the women at once, tucking up their skirts and running for the shelter of the woods beyond them like scattering ducks. He gave a whoop, peeled off the constricting great helm and flung it away, along with the lance to free up one hand, then set his horse flying at the runner, leaning sideways a little in the saddle to make it easier to reach out and grab.
    Those immediately behind checked a little, mainly because his powerful warhorse kicked up a spray of muddy gobbets, while to right and left lances and helms went bouncing, carelessly dangerous, as the knights followed Sir Robert Malenfaunt’s example and spurred on.
    They saw Malenfaunt lean out as he slowed to a canter so as to better judge the snatch at the fleeing woman’s wimpled head. They saw the woman turn, the wimple and barbette flying away to free a wild tangle of infested hair, the face a bearded snarl; Malenfaunt had time to realize the enormous horror of it before the man dropped to a crouch, brought round the two-handed axe he held hidden in his skirts and scythed out the legs of the
destrier
.
    It was the saving of Malenfaunt. At the same time as he was reeling through the air in a tumble of moss and trees and sky, the edge of the wood spat a sleet of arrows from two points. Between them, moving ragged and relentless, came a clot of spearmen; the shrieking falsities in women’s dresses raced to join them, their lure complete.
    Segrave, down at the foot of the small hill, heard the whoops turn to shrieks, almost felt the blows that rang like bells on the shields of the unseen knights, audible even at this distance and through the muffle of the great iron bucket of his helm. He urged the huge warhorse forward, surging up the sodden slope, the handful of men behind him.
    Ruin was beyond and Segrave saw it in a single glance when he breasted the rise. Horses were down, screaming and kicking, others cantering in aimless circles, the riders struggling to get up. Arrows sprouted from tussock and body, and a dark, bristling hedge of spearpoints – three hundred men in it if there was one – approaching. All the men who had ridden off with Malenfaunt were unhorsed, crawling like sheep, with horses scattering to every part, or kicking and dying.
    He saw, too, the figure in black with surcoat and shield, the silver
cinquefoiles
bright as stars and his heart thundered up into his head in a howl of triumph – Fraser, who had all but ruined him in Roslin Glen. By God, Segrave swore, he will not do it again.
    A flurry of arrows took the man next to him out of the saddle and set the great Frisian warhorse bolting, screaming from the pain of another two shafts in its chest, before it crashed to its knees and finally ploughed its proud Roman nose into a furrow of bog, kicking and snorting blood.
    The men with him balked at charging a hedge of points backed by three-score of Selkirk archers, but Segrave had fire and rage shrieking in his