“They’re tricked us,” William said.
“What’s the crazy man saying, Lord?” Stephen of Ireland asked looking toward the stars.
“The dogs have a scent. My scent, Someone must have given it to them,” William said quietly.
“Who could do such a thing?” Stephen said with a wide-eyed look of Irish astonishment.
“Exactly,” William said. “Who?” And he pulled out his dagger.
Back among his contingent of swordsmen and royal hunting dogs, Lord Pickering felt the excitement of the impending kill. He sensed it from the dogs; he sensed it in himself. The prey had stopped running. The dogs barked frantically; they tugged so hard at their leashes that the handlers were almost dragged along. The lead handler turned and called back, “Be ready! We have them!”
The soldiers gripped their weapons, ready to take their prisoners. Pickering had already told them he wanted Wallace alive; it was always best to make an example of rebels by allowing those who shared their sentiments to witness the execution. Now he called again, “Remember, I want Wallace a prisoner!” Only a few of his soldiers heart it; most were strung out in a long line stretching far behind the dogs, but Pickering was not too worried, for he had made sure his most experienced and reliable soldiers were in front.
The dogs, their handlers, and the lead soldiers burst into the small clearing. The dogs found a body, stabbed, his throat cut; the dogs plunged their snouts into the gore and yipped wildly. The handlers had to fight furiously to tear the dogs from their bloody prize.
Lord Pickering approached the body and looked down. It was Faudron, mangled now but identifiable, with the new scarf he had given William in place of William’s own tucked into his shirt.
“Damnation! Damnation!” Lord Pickering bellowed, and seizing the arm f his assistant, he dragged the man over for a close look at the body. “That is Faudron, isn’t it"? Isn’t it?”
The assistant peered down at the bloodless face; the dogs had gotten to it, but they had left enough for the assistant to be sure who it was. “Yes, m’lord,” be told Lord Pickering.
Pickering ranted. He had conceived the plan of an infiltrator, had even picked Faudron from among the likeliest candidates. This should have worked! How could Wallace have known? Hell with it, he could wonder at that later. “After him! Get them going again!” he shouted at the dog handlers.
“Their noses are drowned in new blood. They’ll follow nothing now, m’lord!” the lead handler said. The dogs were milling around, barking aimlessly.
And just as the realization, hit Pickering that he couldn’t pursue Wallace any further, something else hit Pickering: the dagger of Stephen of Ireland, who had covered himself in a cloak and slipped in among Pickering’s men. Pickering’s eyes went wide, then rolled back as Stephen’s dagger slid expertly through his back ribs and into his heart. As Pickering fell and his men realized what had happened, Stephen had already ran back into the trees.
The soldiers hesitated for a moment, then a captain said, “After him!”
Three men raced into the darkness of the forest in the direction Stephen ran. Suddenly they heard the whistling of a huge broadsword, and the unmistakable sound of steel cutting through bone could be heard with the faint death groans of the soldiers. Then the head of one of them came rolling out of the trees, into the clearing, to stop at the captain’s feet.
The English soldiers crowded together, event he dogs whimpered and picked up the fear of the men around them. It was like they were surrounded by around them. It was like they were surrounded by something superhuman and demonic.
Then Wallace’s voice came booming out of the darkness; he played up the spookiness of it all. “Eeeinglishmennnnnn!” William shrieked.
The soldiers were terrified — and rightly so. They were realizing that they were lost in this forest; their leader had been murdered right under their noses. Suddenly they were not even secure in their numbers, for most of the other soldiers hadn’t even reached the clearing yet.
The weird Scottish voice roared from the blackness around them: “You seek William Wallace. You have found him. Tell your masters — those of you that make it home — that when you come armed into Scotland, you come into hell!”
A pause; nothing but silence and fear. Then with a bloodcurdling yell, three wild men tore out of the darkness from different directions, their swords slashing. They cut down soldiers, and the others panicked. They ran anywhere they could. Terror spread through the forest.
Wallace, Hamish, and Stephen were left alone in the heart of the woods. They howled, barked like dogs, and snarled like wolves — and then laughed like hyenas!
“I thought I was dead when ya pulled that dagger!” Stephen Said.
“No English lord would trust an Irishman!” Wallace said.
Hamish squinted down at the little Irishman, thought for a moment, and said, “let’s kill him anyway.”
They laughed again until their sides hurt.
Then William Wallace’s laughter leaked away. He found the tree where he had fallen asleep and stood beside it now and stared into the dark forest where he had seen Murron in his dream.
29
THE NEWS OF WALLACE’S VICTORY OVER LORD PICKERING raced across Scotland like an Atlantic gale.
It spread to Inverness, where tow men were drinking in the town alehouse and one said, “William Wallace killed fifty men! Fifty if it was one!”
The same tale was exchanged by two farmers at a cross roads below Glasgow, only here it was said, “A hundred men! With his own sword! He cut through the English like — “
In the taverns of Edinburgh, the story was going: “—like Moses through the Red Sea! Hacked off tow hundred heads!”
“Two hundred?!” doubted one of the listeners, still sober enough to b incredulous.
“Saw it with my own eyes,” the speaker insisted.
But in the string of valleys where William Wallace had spent his boyhood, all looked absolutely normaclass="underline" sleepy and peaceful. The clansmen who lived here never spoke of William Wallace. If an outsider mentioned his name, the farmers, their wives, and even their children all took on bewildered and rather dull expressions and seemed never to have heard of the man.
It was here, between the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon, that a Highlander, a runner, slipped through the inky blackness and tapped on the door of the house belonging to Stewart the farmer, who opened the door immediately and invited the man inside. But the runner did not stay; he whispered with Stewart for a moment and then ran on up the valley.
Hamish Campbell watched the runner from behind the closed doors of the barn. When he was sure he had gone, he turned and moved to the back of the barn, where the soft light of a shielded lantern glowed on twenty Highlanders lying in the hay. Steward had fed them well; he had found fresh clothes for some and sound weapons for others. Now most of them were asleep.
Hamish did not trouble them; he climbed the ladder into the loft, where his father and Stephen of Ireland sat cross-legged on the hay. They had been whispering for hours about the secret crafts of rebellion: how to use farm implements in battle, how to set an ambush, which kinds of moss are best to stop bleeding. The old Scot and the young Irishman had much in common. When Hamish arrived, they kept right on whispering.
Hamish moved past them to the dark corner in the very back of the barn, where he found William Wallace asleep. Hamish knelt and watched him, not wanting to disturb his friend’s slumber; and yet that sleep clearly was not peaceful. William’s face twitched, his body jerked, his lips moved as if they desperately needed to speak but could not make the words come.