Katrin could see it then, how the lay of the land favored the English rather than the Scots. The charging Scots were held up by the rough ground and a stone wall near the bottom of the gully that separated the two forces, and were slain by the sleeting arrows. They stumbled on the broken ground as many more fell. With screams tearing from their throats, others ran on.
Katrin had never experienced a battle and was ill prepared for the sheer noise of it, a crashing blast that washed back over their waiting division like a wave upon a shore. Howling, screaming, bellowing, a racket of fighting and dying. She wanted to run. She could not, for those she loved stood here, and so also would she stand.
“The archers!” she cried to no one. “The archers!”
So many of them. They stood in ranks behind the screen of their footmen and knights, and fired. Fired again and again. Was there no limit to the numbers of their arrows?
And whence had they come by their thousand when the Scots had been told England lay open before them, all the English soldiers in France?
A lie. A deadly one.
The Scots army shifted down the slope, closer and then closer to death. They possessed archers also, but not so many. Most of their vast forces consisted of footmen armed with spears, far less effective on this broken ground. For a spearman had to get within reach of hisopponent before he could take him down. An archer could slay him from afar.
Their own archers fired to good effect. Yet even some of them fell to the enemy fire.
Beside Katrin, Da began to swear. A warrior, if an aged one, he could see what was happening and how the battle went. All of them could see.
Laird Stewart’s commanders came through again. Katrin saw Reagan, still at the head of their company, speaking to one of them. Gesturing wildly. He wanted in on the fight.
Despite her dismay and horror, Katrin’s heart bounded, unable to do anything but respond to such courage.
A warrior, was Reagan O’Hanlon, to the bone.
A warrior headed out to die?
Soon after Laird Stewart’s commander rode on, Reagan came back to speak with Da.
“They are holding us in reserve. We will go in soon.” His gaze slipped over Katrin and latched on to Finlay. “Ye will be ready?”
“It does no’ go well,” Da rumbled.
“Nay,” Reagan agreed. “Not yet. But a battle can change swiftly. Be ready.”
The rain slackened, and then came down so heavy that Katrin could no longer see the stone monument on the opposite rise. Time slowed and, like a trickster, sped up all at once, and the sickness inside her grew.
The one thing that did not change was the sound of it—the groaning and cursing and screaming and pleading and exhorting that made one great, ululating cry. It filled Katrin’s ears, and her mind.
She could not have said how much time passed before they were given leave to move. When the order came, they swung around the flank of their own army and charged down the slope through the rain. Into the flying death of the arrows, which did not cease.
Da drew his sword, a hard look in his eyes. Unlike many of the Scots forces, he had a shield. Katrin could only hope it might protect him.
They pushed forward and steeply downward. A cry went up. “The king! The king—he is struck!”
Katrin turned her eyes to the place where King David had been holding a front position since the battle began. His knights had gathered around him in a clutch. She could not see—
“Keep moving!”
Reagan glanced back at them. Finlay touched Katrin on the arm and began to speak. She could see agony in his eyes—he wanted her to fall back, her and Da. But it was too late, too late. They could not hold back for the press of men behind them and around them moving in a great wave. For the sake of courage, she would have to fight.
They charged. Into the hail of arrows. Into the deafening sound of it and the death all around.
The broken ground underfoot made it almost impossible to go at a steady pace. Ahead, Katrin saw the Gallowglass engage the enemy, and her heart reached for Reagan.
Let him survive.
Then the battle was upon them and it did not seem anyone would survive.
The arrows took out fully a third of their company before they engaged the enemy, either maiming or killing them outright. Snarling faces were everywhere—with some part of her mind Katrin imagined they were ugly English faces, but she did not truly focus on that then. The deadly barrage of arrows came from behind those faces, piercing into flesh, felling men she knew. Horses thundered past them in an effort to cut off their charge.
