Foster was never to regret his next, impulsive words. “If your sword is for hire, Sir Ali, why not rent it to me? I ride to war and am ever in need of good men, noble or common.”
“Only if the contract includes Master Smith,” said Sir Ali. “I owe him much and he cannot live well or long here, in this ruin.”
Foster nodded. “An honorable man always pays his debts. Fm beginning to like you already, Sir Ali, but Td have taken Dan Smith along, at any rate. Good smiths are hard to come by, and besides, I know him of old. So, what do you ask for your services, sir knight?”
After the usual haggling, they settled on armor, pistols, clothing, and necessary gear as pay for a period of six months or the length of the campaign; in addition, Sir Ali would have the use of a charger until he could either seize one in battle or win enough loot to purchase one. His place would be with Foster’s bodyguards for the nonce, while Dan Smith would take his place on the march with the packtrain.
Foster did not lead his force directly south to the marshaling rendezvous at Manchester—rather did he ride southeast, toward York. For one reason, he was running perilously low on shells for his anachronistic sawed-off shotguns-cum-horsepistols; the other reason hinged upon Pete’s last letter before the snows had effectively closed communications between Whyffler Hall and points south.
“While Buddy Webster is hobbling around, out on the Archbishop’s farm, up to his knees in manure and loving every minute of it, this old boy’s been busier than a one-armed paperhanger. After I come back from the King’s camp, I put my factory in high gear, twenty-four hours a day—we got enough light to work nights with these reflectors I worked up—and, come spring, not only should we ought to have finished enough worked-over long guns and cylinder sets to give every one of the king’s harkay-bussers fourteen quick shots, but I should have at least five dozen pairs of them long-ass pistols altered from slowmatch to flintlock, like you and Buddy and me used to talk about. So you bring your boys down here on your way, next year, and I guarantee you a good half a hundred of them will have them a real edge on any other pistol-toters they run acrost.”
So they marched onward, making fair time despite swollen streams and deep, seemingly endless mud. They came across no brigands, nor did the folk to be found working the fields in preparation for planting have much to report of any skulkers, for the winter had been both long and hard and, in a land all but denuded by the Scots’ army last year, few if any of the bushwhacker bands had survived it.
The town of Hexham, pillaged and burned by Alexander’s Scots just before his army met that of Arthur, was being rebuilt and was a buzzing hive of noise and activity. But with the arrival of the van of Foster’s force, construction was abruptly given over to a rousing welcome for royal horse and—when it was established that the leader of this force was not only Lord Commander of King Arthur’s Horse, but that very paladin who had smashed the left wing of the late and unlamented King Alexander’s army, had turned that wing with only his squadron of cavalry and so, or so said many men, ensured the great victory wrought that night by English aims—the welcome became a tumultuous festival; nor were Foster and his men able to tear themselves away in less than three full days.
South of Hexham, the column’s wjiy lay along the range of small hills whereon had sat the Scottish reserves and baggage. Here and there among the heather and other rough growth gleamed a picked-white skull, and rib bones crunched now and again under the hoofs of the horses.
Dan Smith and some of his cronies ranged out hi a thin skirmish line, afoot, on either flank of the column, seeking anything of value missed by earlier battlefield looters. With a yelp of triumph, the big man wrenched from the skeletal hand that had held it a long and heavy and very old cross-hilted sword—broken-pointed though it was and with the wood and leather of the grip rotted almost away from beneath the wire wrappings, still was there much good, reusable metal in the rusted blade.
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