The King sat astride a warhorse in his battle armor, his tabard of cloth-of-gold, the lion of Scotland rearing, bejeweled, on its front. In caught the fading red rays of sunset.
It seemed strange to James that so large an army could be silent as they waited for the King to speak.
“In the morning we fight. At sunrise we hear mass and with banners flying we meet our enemy. A powerful enemy–one that would fill us with terror, in their numbers and their might and strength.
“But they mistake, for we have strengths they have not counted. First, that they despise us, spit on us, and attack us in our own land. But it is our land. Second, if we defeat them, we are steeped in spoils and in glory. But there is a third reason, the most important.
"We fight for our lives, for our children, our wives, our country's very freedom. They fight only because they hate and would destroy us. Well, I promise you this, if we stand with courage and valor, they will rue the day."
Men cheered, if grimly, and shouted.
“We cannot forget that if we are cowards, if we lose this battle, no worse fate can befall us than to fall into their hands. They have no mercy. As they killed Wallace and my own brother, Nigel, deaths more horrible than we can imagine, so they would kill us.
“There was a day, long past, when we lived in thralldom to the English and their might. No more! You demanded your freedom. Now we stand together, and we can win. What they do is evil, not blessed by God. They are moved only by a desire to conquer, by greed. We are moved by love of our homes and our people.
“We are not here for plunder nor prisoners nor riches. We are here to defend our homes and all that we love. Prepare yourselves for battle on the morrow. For our strength is in God!”
A snarling cheer, ferocious and angry, rose from the rank upon rank of men. Most had waited a lifetime to throw off, once and for all, the yoke of their conqueror.
The King inclined his head in dismissal and turned his horse's head to ride to his pavilion. James walked through the scattering men. He was conscious of the talk of the coming battle all around him. He felt the eyes that followed him as he wended his way through the crush.
The late summer dusk settled over the camp. The banners turned to black, the men passing shadows. Walter Stewart spoke to him from out of the murk, “No cookfires tonight.”
“No. We must fast for the Mass anyway.”
As they walked, around them the camp sank into an uneasy silence. The men were gathered into their own camps in battle array, Edward de Bruce in the van. James found Gelleys and Allane passing between them a skin of wine. They gave a guilty start when he clapped Gelleys on the shoulder. “I won't tell the priests if you don't,” James said.
He heard the deep rumble of Fergus's laughter booming through the dark. He followed it to where a dozen of his men sat on their haunches on the cold ground. He squatted in their midst. “You're to sleep in your armor.”
“I was too far to hear,” Philp said. “What did the King say?”
James gazed up at the midnight blue of the sky scattered with stars. How small their battles sometimes seemed in the dark of the night. “He said that tomorrow we win or we die.” James put a smile in his voice. “And the Black Douglas is not going to die.”
Fergus broke off half an oat bannock and handed it to him. “Dawn comes early on a midsummer day.”
“Aye. So it does.” James's stomach rumbled, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten. He ruefully crammed the bannock in his mouth. Chewing, he found a dark spot under a scrawny little tree. He pulled off his helm, unbuckled his sword belt and laid them beside him as he settled against the rough trunk. He thought he should pray but no words came to him. He could die on the morrow, might well die on the morrow. But in the quiet of the night with stars above them and the familiar smell of sweat and iron and leather, it seemed not such a bad thing. Perhaps if he did, he would... No, he'd not think of that. It was his duty to live and to keep his men alive.
James took his sword from its sheath and tested the edge on his thumb. He sucked the blood from the cut off with a smile. He went to sleep, smiling.
He awoke to a hand shaking his shoulder in the dove-gray light of near dawn. Grunting, he shook his head and used the trunk of the tree to lever himself to his feet. Walter handed him a cup of stale water. He swished it around his teeth and spit on the ground. The morning breeze carried the scent of the distant sea. “Wat,” James called, “why is my banner not flying? Where is Walter's banner?”
The camp was a murmur of low voices, the clatter of pikes, the creak of leather armor.
“The Mass is about to begin,” Wat answered.
“Raise my banner,” James said as he dropped to his knees. A rock gouged into in shin. Down the slope, like a phantom the Bishop raised his hands over his head. James strained to hear the words of the Mass, but the Bishop was too far. When the men around him muttered “Christe elèison,” James added his voice. Christ have mercy indeed.
As he rose to his feet, William de Irvine trotted up and bent over his horse's withers to say, “The King sends word that Sir Edward's schiltron is in position and moving. You know what to do.”
“I know.” Irvine's face was a pale moon in the faint light. “Go with God.”
“And you.” The young man pulled his horse's head around and rode into the murk. It was too dark for James to tell if the other of the divisions were in position. They had to trust. Especially they had to trust that the marischal, his good-father, would lead the cavalry to break up the archers. If he failed them...
James shrugged. He had his own job to do. Dawn stained the faces around him with a faint golden light. He shoved his pot helm onto his head and buckled his sword belt. “Ready?”
Walter nodded.
“Hurry!” Wat was saying as he went from man to man. “Into position. Pikes at the ready.”
“Gelleys.” James put his hand on the man's shoulder. “Hie to Earl Thomas's position. Run back and let me know when they start to move forward.”
He pushed Walter towards the schiltron. They would take up a position within the square, protected but with their own duties, to command and to fill any breach when men went down under the weight of charging destriers or the shattering of their own weapons. Even the knights, except for the cavalry with the marischal, would fight afoot.
“My lord,” Gelleys called. “The earl has begun to charge.” The man grabbed up his pike from where he had dropped it and jumped into position.
“Now,” James said. “Stay together, men. Shoulder to shoulder.”
At every step of the long march down the slope, James strained to hear the sound of battle. It was eerily quiet. He could smell the nervous sweat of his men. The crunch of a thousand footsteps in the dry bracken. Walter's fast breath. The flap of their pennants over their heads. So long a march...
To his left, a trumpet sounded one long blast. James lifted his visor and worked spit onto his dry tongue. “Kneel,” he commanded and dropped to his knees one last time. All around him rose the murmur of a heartfelt prayer:
“Pater Noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.”
Trumpets shrilled and called from the direction of the far scattered English army. To arms, to arms, to arms, to arms, they cried.
A shout bellowed from the left. “Scotland! Scotland!"
James cursed that he couldn't see beyond his own men. "Onward," James ordered. James couldn't see the battle beginning but he heard it. Trumpets. Hoofbeats from thousands of mounts that shook the ground under his feet. The skin-crawling screech of impaled horses. The crash of shattering pikes. And the war cries. "A Bruce! Scotland! Moray! Moray!"
Then his men began to shout, “A Douglas! A Douglas!”
“Keep moving,” James shouted as knights, so close-packed they couldn't turn, hurtled themselves onto their pikes. “On them!”
A horse reared, hooves slashing and was gutted, gushing a crimson fountain. There were grunts and curses as his men forced another step forward. Another draped all in blue rammed into Philp's pike. It shattered with a crash. He went down. The knight slashed right and left in great figure eights. James dashed forward, caught the blade on his shield and whacked at his helm. “Close up!” he shouted. The knight lifted his sword for another swing. He stopped. His sword slipped from his hands as he went to his knees and then flat on his face.
Walter put his foot in the middle of his back and jerked his blade free. The blood on his gauntlets glistened red. James thumped his shoulder and turned back to the battle. Another step. James darted between two of the pikemen who had spread apart. A knight, mounted but helmetless, hacked at his head. James dodged. He slashed the knight's leg open and dashed back. The man would bleed out without his help.
Allane's pike shattered. A knight wearing the blue and red of the earl of Pembroke drove his lance through the man's chest. James hacked at him. Another pike went through the neck of his horse. James slipped in the gore and slid sideways in ankle-deep muck. His sword spun out of his hand.
He grabbed his dirk from his belt and lurched to his feet. It was a chaos of fighting. The King's trumpet blew a triple call, the signal for the Keith to attack. An arrow landed in front of him and one bounced off his shield. He wondered if the marischal was faithful and then he was fighting again.
Men lurched between the pikes of the spreading schiltron. James grabbed up a fallen sword. He swung it, shouting, “A Douglas!” Some men he killed. He wounded some. Others went down under someone else's blade. Always there was another. And another.
He looked up and saw that the sun was high in the sky. How long had they fought? James was too tired to remember. His arm felt leaden as he raised it to swing. In front of him, Philp stumbled and went to one knee, holding himself up with his pike. James cursed. “Up,” he grated. “You must get up.”
The man raised his blood-splattered face to stare at James. “It's too many.”
James swayed. “On your feet, damn you.”
Philp pushed himself using his pike. He lurched back into the line of pikemen. James turned back to the raging chaos. His feet squelched in the torn, bloody dirt. Before him, a confusion of banners waved over the sea of struggling men; mounted knights hacked against the press of the pikes in a pandemonium of screams and shouts and blood and mire. He pressed on, stumbling, floundering, wading, and cursing. “On them!” he said, his throat raw from shouting.
He suddenly realized that there were no arrows raining on them. Hadn't been for some time. The Keith had stood true.
Some of the knights, tabards blackened and slime streaked, threw themselves from their saddles and hacked at the line of pikes with their lances. James slashed at the points. His men struggled to stay shoulder to shoulder against the press. One of the unhorsed knights was trampled underfoot by another knight, adding his screams to the cacophony.
Trumpets blew to his left. The King's. James lurched and thrust his sword into the ground to catch himself. Walter stumbled, and James grabbed his arm, righting him. He looked behind him past the hard-fought spaced they had bought, littered with bodies. “Look!” He turned Walter by his arm.
Down the hill, men shouted, “Scotland! Scotland!” Banners flew over their heads as they ran. Their shouts added to the groans and screams all around.
“Who...?” Walter swallowed.
“The ghillies...” The ones on the hill. James tried to work spit into his mouth, his tongue dry as leather. “A few of Angus Og's men. Priests. Grooms.”
Walter groaned. But there were screams and shouts on the other side of the hedge of pikes. The line of knights and horses seemed to shudder. It wavered. There were screams of “Flee!”
“On them!” James shouted through his raw throat.
English trumpets shrilled, again and again, Retire! Retire! cutting through the madness.
“They fail! They fail!” The shout rose all around James. He hacked at another blade, but the thick press of English buckled, and one of the knights slashed at his horse as he jerked its head around. But there was nowhere for him to go in the press of his own men
“On them!” James laughed, drunk with victory. “They fail!”