The Steps to the Empty Throne

“Do you not see? You must break out. While you may. Or you are a dead man.”

“You … you would have me leave these? Abandon my folk?

Away with you, Bruce.” That was thickly, unevenly cried out.

The man was obviously far from clearheaded.

“You can do no good here now. Come away. And fight again …”

“No! Run from my friends? Never!”

Others were pleading with him now, arguing, pointing—Scrymgeour his standard-bearer, Blair the priest, Boyd. Bruce saw behind them the drawn and anxious face of James the Steward.

And Crawford. All the nobles had not deserted the Guardian.

Desperately Bruce remonstrated, his voice breaking as he heard the battle joining behind him, the English recovering from their surprise and beginning to hurl themselves against the light Scots horse.

“Wallace!” he yelled.

“You are the Guardian. Of Scotland.

All Scotland. Not just these. If you fall now, Scotland falls. Mind who you are-the Guardian …”

Nigel was shouting now, at his side.

“These others can break.

Into the marsh, and away. Where horse cannot follow. Many will escape. If you stay, all will die.”

“Aye! Aye!” All around men saw the sense of that, and cried it.

Hands were pushing and pulling Wallace forward, towards the Bruces.

The 700, or what was left of them, now formed a chaotic barrier between the Bruces and the enemy, those towards the rear turned to face outwards and taking the brunt of a so-far disorganised English attack. Others were mounting fellow-Scots behind them.

“Get the Steward,” Bruce ordered his brother. He waved to others.

“Crawford. Lennox. Scrymgeour. I take Wallace…”

A Mar-man pushed up with a riderless horse.

“Here—for Wallace.”

“Aye …”

Eager, desperate hands were propelling the reluctant giant forward, all but lifting him on to the head-tossing, wild-eyed gar ron He seemed to be no longer actually resisting.

Hardly waiting for the big man to be astride, Bruce grabbed the other’s reins. A swift glance round had shown him that the only possible route of escape was southwards, up the Westquarter Burn. There were English there, yes—but not in the numbers that were behind them, massing everywhere.

“Come!” he commanded.

“After me. A wedge again. Keep close.” He dug in his spurs.

It was a ragged and much smaller wedge that began to form again behind him, to pound away southwards, along the front of spears. Many of his men had fallen, not a few chose their own route of escape, the rear ranks were too closely engaged to break away with the others. But perhaps two hundred could and did obey his call, and made up a formidable enough phalanx for any but an organised English squadron of cavalry to seek to halt.

They were burdened now, of course, with two men to most horses. They had no longer the advantage of a downward slope.

And they were in softer, boggier ground. But this last militated more against the heavier enemy horse than themselves. It was no headlong gallop, but at best a canter. But a determined canter, before which the scattered enemy swerved away, even if thereafter they closed in on the flanks and rear. Indeed, from all sides the English gave chase rather than sought to intercept, but even double-burdened, the nimble hill-ponies were swifter, lighter, than chargers.

Wallace, swaying about alarmingly in the saddle, his long legs

positively trailing the ground, was pounding along between Bruce and

Nigel, who now had the Steward clinging behind him, heavily-armoured and a great weight. Bruce heard trumpets braying a new and distinctive call, from across the valley. He guessed what that meant, and his heart sank.

The arrows began to come at them in a matter of moments thereafter. They were nearing extreme range, and a moving target—but the bowmen needed only to loose off into the brown mass.

Havoc quickly followed. Nigel’s horse was one of the first to fall, pierced through the neck, and throwing both riders. They were all but ridden down immediately. Bruce, reining round violently to the right, more uphill, to increase the range and change of direction of flight, yelled for his brother and the Steward to be picked up-but did not himself slacken pace or leave grip of Wallace’s reins. Somehow the pack behind him swung after him, their formation much broken. And still the arrows hissed down on them, amid the screams of men and horses.

Bruce was surprised to find his right ankle gripped, and glanced down to see Nigel leaping along beside him, mud covered, bare-headed and lacking his sword now also, but apparently unhurt. Bruce reached down a hand and somehow his brother, after three or four attempts, managed to haul himself up behind him, lying stomach down over the beast’s broad and heaving rump.

“Steward safe … safe,” he gasped in Bruce’s ear, as he got himself upright.

“Many down?”

“Aye. Curse the bowmen!”

“Not long now. Range. Too far…”

The hail of arrows had at least one advantage; they effectively inhibited over-eagerness on the part of the English pursuers.

These advisedly left a very clear field for their archer colleagues.

Bruce was now leading almost directly uphill towards the wood but perhaps quarter of a mile further south than where they had come down. This meant, of course, that it was the rear ranks of his party which had to take the main punishment from the bowmen, with only the odd spent shaft failing forward amongst the leaders. Only a heroic dolt would have had it otherwise—and Robert Bruce was not that.

At last, in the blessed shelter of the trees, Bruce pulled up his spume-covered, panting, almost foundered horse. All around him others did likewise. Wallace gripped his saddlebow and stared blindly ahead of him, wordless. The Steward came up, spitting blood on a gar ron from which the owner had fallen. Scrymgeour and Blair came running to Wallace’s side.

Bruce looked back, downhill, on chaos and confusion. There was no longer any pattern to the scene, only a hopeless medley of men and horses, heaving and surging this way and that, darting, circling eddying—or not moving at all. The schiltroms had finally broken up, and most of the spearmen appeared to be seeking escape through the marshland, where the cavalry could not follow, or even in the loch itself, splashing through the shallows, or swimming in deeper water. Some were fleeing uphill towards these woods. Many would escape—but more would the.

Bruce was looking for more than the fleeing foot. Scattered all over the littered slopes, the remnants of his own seven hundred were striving to make their way up here, in ones and twos and small groups, avoiding contests and heroics. Most seemed to be likely to succeed, with the enemy perhaps lacking in enthusiasm for any difficult chase and the battle won; after all, Edward’s host was said to be next to starving, horses’ fodder as scarce as men’s.

Bruce was thankful to see that many of his Northerners were winning clear-for no more than one hundred and fifty had managed to follow immediately at his back.

He turned to Wallace.

“You are wounded, Sir William? Can you go on? Sit that beast? Or … shall we make a litter?”

The big man stared downwards.

“I … am … very well,” he said.

“That you are not! But can you ride …?”

“I am very well,” he repeated, heavily.

“But others … are not.

Those who looked to me …”

“Here is folly, man! A battle lost, aye—but others to be fought. And won! What good repining …?”

“So many dead. Fallen. Pate Boyd. Sim Fraser. Rob Keith.

Sir John the Graham. Young Mac Duff of life, the Earl’s son.

Sir John Stewart…”

“Aye, my brother,” the Steward broke in thickly.

“I saw him shot down. An arrow. And my son…? Where is Walter?”