When the new king’s decision to break off the feckless fight and march back into Scotland ere the bulk of English arms caught up to them was bruited about, there was a roar of general acclamation for the newmade sovereign. Only a few of the lesser lairds and chiefs thought to wonder when King Alexander had been seriously enough wounded to die, as he had led the actions in full-plate and had shown no signs of having suffered hurt . . . and of how the Legate, who had not fought at all, had suffered fatal wounds. But for all their private doubts and questions as to just precisely how James V had won the throne—for fratricide, patricide, and regicide were neither new nor novel in the violent and volatile Royal House of Scotland—they gladly followed him north, into the relative safety of the hills of home.
Foster sat his spotted stallion on the hill just southeast of Whyffler Hall and watched the Scottish army break camp and head north into the Cheviots, leaving their hundreds of dead heaped about the unbreached defenses of Whyffler Hall. After dispatching a galloper to seek out King Arthur, he toed Bruiser forward to slowly descend the hillslope, his escort of dragoons following him and the foreign nobleman who rode at his side.
Reichsbaron Manf ried von Aachen had but recently landed at Hull, paused briefly in York, then ridden on to find the army, pressing his escort hard every mile of the way. Arrived, he had immediately met long and privily with Reichsherzog Wolfgang and the King. Then Wolfgang had summoned Foster.
Throughout the introductions, Foster could detect the grief and sorrow in the voice and bearing of his friend and new overlord; when at last the rote was done, he was informed of the reason.
The Emperor is dead,” said Baron Manfried, flatly, his English far better and less accented than Wolfgang’s. “Killed he was by an aurochs bull during a late-winter hunt in the Osterwald. The Electors met hurriedly and decided upoa Otto’s eldest son, Karl, but before their messengers could reach him, the Furst was slain in battle with the heathen Kalmyks. The Electors then decreed that Karl’s younger brother should succeed their father, but, if he too be dead, that the Purple should pass to his uncle, Reichsherzog Wolfgang.”
Wolfgang had sat throughout with his chin on his breastplate, sunk in his private sadness. Now he raised his head “Zo, good mein freund Bass, ride you must, if necessary through all the Schottlandter host, und soon to reach Egon’s side. The Empire at var mit neither Church nor Schottlandt iss, zo safe you und your men vill be mit the Imperial Herald, Baron Manfried . . . or zo vould you be mit any civilized monarch, let us to hope that these verdammt Schottlandters better know the usages of diplomacy than the practice of var.”
“You mean,” demanded Foster incredulously, “that Egon von Hirschburg is, has been all along, a royal prince? But you always said …”
Wolfgang shrugged his heavy shoulders. “I said that His Imperial Majesty a young noble of the Empire vas und mein godson. These true vere. For the rest . . . veil, better vas it thought that no vun know that a son of mein binder mit an excommunicant fought, better for Egon, better for the Empire und her relations mit the Church.
“Of course,” he zighed deeply, “nefer did any of us to think that efer Egon vould to rule be schosen. But a goot Emperor vill he make, ja, far better than vould I. Gott grant he safe still be!”
The track of the Scots had been easy to follow, a blind man could not have missed it in a snowstorm—crates and bales of stores, casks of gunpowder, dead men and dead horses, discarded weapons and bits of armor, a wide track of mud churned up by countless hooves and feet and cut deeply through with the ruts left by the wheels of laden wagons— though twice they had swung wide of that track to avoid contact with bodies of southward-marching troops, first a couple of hundred armored horsemen, then three or four thousand pikemen and crossbowmen quickmarching to the beat of muffled drums. On each occasion, Foster had detached and sent back a galloper to alert the King and Reichsherzog of these units proceeding to meet the English army.