First one, then a second horse careened down a wooded hillside, slipping and sliding on icy rocks and patches of old snow, but somehow retaining their balance. Once safely on the more level surface leading to the gap, the two riders spurred the obviously tired mounts to the best speed they could maintain, but would have stood little chance of keeping their lead had the party pursuing been as fortunate in negotiating the hillside.
There was not room for the score or so of heavily armed riders to descend abreast on the narrow, winding track—even four would have been too many, and the canny Scots should have known as much—nonetheless, six essayed the trail, with
disastrous results. Almost at once, a horse and a rider went off the righthand side and out of sight of the English watchers, followed very shortly by one, then another on the left The shrill screams of the injured animals were clearly audible to Foster and Lloyd, as were the guttural shouts and war cries of the Scots.
Fourteen of the pursuers managed to reach the bottom of the slope mounted and unhurt, to take up their hot chase afresh. A couple of shots were loosed off at the escaping prey, but, now more than halfway to the gap, they were well beyond the range of horsepistols. But the flight of arrows that followed was a much more successful and deadly ploy.
The second horse shrieked and surged ahead, briefly, then fell all in a heap, quivering all over, legs churning the snow, while gouts of steaming blood poured from mouth and distended nostrils. The rider sailed from the saddle, bounced once, and rolled to a stop, then lay still . . . terribly still, his head at an impossible angle.
The leading rider and his horse both seemed to suddenly sprout jouncing, jiggling slivers of wood—the horse, in his straining offside haunch, the rider, in his right arm, just below the shoulder. But the now-wounded man retained his seat and firm control of the pain-maddened horse.
There was something tantalizingly familiar about that rider’s bearing, and Foster sharpened the focus of his binoculars in an attempt to discern more. But the man’s head and upper torso were wrapped in a faded, dirty length of tartan and his face was obscured by the long, whipping mane of his shaggy mount.
The Scots formed up and resumed the hunt, lancepoints and broadswords glittering in the sun. Scots they certainly were, but Foster could see nothing in their clothing, armaments, or appearance to differentiate them from a like number of the armed retainers of Sir Francis or John Heron—jackboots, rough trousers, buff coats, most wearing some model of helmet, several in cuirasses and a couple in three-quarter armor.
Beside him, the Musgrave lancer grunted, “Robsons, Jaysus domn ’em! Twill be ane gude an’ holy killin’, we’ll be doin’, fer a’ I pitty the puir De’il an’ Him havin’ tae tek on sae scurfy a pack.”
Foster was just about to remark that they were here to observe only, not to become embroiled in border feuds, when the wounded horse, which had been slowing as bright-red arterial blood continued to geyser up the shaft of the arrow, stumbled once, twice, then simply stood, swaying, head sunk low. The rider turned in the saddle, looked at the oncoming Scots, then half slid, half fell from his dying mount. Hobbling, decidedly favoring his left leg, he came on toward the gap, and it was then that Foster first saw his face.
“Edgar!” He gripped the junior officer’s arm so hard that the Welshman winced. “Mount the patrol. At once! That man the Scots are after. That’s Egon von Hirschburg, the Reichs-herzog’s godson!”
Even when faced with a far superior force, the Scots declined to forsake their quarry and died to the last man, most of them shot from their saddles long before they came close enough to have made use of their lances or steel.
The young ensign lay unconscious in the snow by the time Foster got to him. In addition to the arrow in his right arm, the broken shaft of another stuck out from his left hip, and the wound it had made was oozing pus through folds of the stiff, smelly bandage wrapped around it. The evil stench of the wound filled Foster with a chill foreboding.