There was a loud rustling and crunching sound. For a moment Carey wondered which idiot could be making it, when he saw a small bundle of spines wander into his field of vision. It stopped short, stared at him out of little black eyes. He stared back. Never before in his life had he been nose to nose with a hedgehog, though he had once eaten one, baked in clay.

The hedgehog snuffled out a slug and began eating it noisily with every sign of enjoyment. Carey was irresistibly reminded of one of the Queen’s councillors eating a bag pudding and had to swallow hard not to laugh. He swallowed too loudly. Disdainfully, the hedgehog finished the slug and trundled off into the leaves like a small battering ram.

The cramp in his foot was getting worse. And the ants were exploring dangerously high up his thigh. And he desperately wanted to scratch his scalp. Where were the raiders?

Without moving his head, Carey looked for Dodd. Between the leaves the Sergeant seemed quite at ease, his long limbs sprawled and relaxed, peering over his horse’s neck. He wasn’t like a statue, more along the lines of a bolster on a bed. Blast him.

Nothing happened. Carey wondered what a German from Augsburg was doing in the Scottish Borders and why King James wanted him and what for: he wove several wonderful webs of possibility, but the facts would have to wait until he got back to Carlisle and even then he might never know unless he went into Scotland. The ants seemed to be excited about the discovery of his boot-top. Perhaps they were planning a new nest. Would they have time to build it? Probably the itch in his hair was a louse. Perhaps the ants would form an alliance with whatever other vermin he had picked up in Carlisle...

He thought of the Latin poem he had recited for her a few days before, one of the muckier ones by Catullus that every schoolboy found easy to remember.

His tutor had translated it, disapprovingly, ‘Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand...’ It was pleasant to imagine kissing Elizabeth Widdrington, breaking through all her honourable propriety, her entirely misguided faithfulness to her elderly husband, lifting her skirts and petticoat and the hoops of her farthingale and her smock and...

No, it wasn’t only his heartbeat. Hooves pointed the metre: soft unshod hooves on the turf. Carey peered through leaves cautiously and saw horses pass like shadows nearby. There was a pause and another shadow departed, on foot, loping like a wolf in their tracks.

‘Sir!’ That was Dodd’s scandalised hiss. ‘Sir, wake up!’

‘I wasn’t asleep,’ he hissed back quickly. ‘I was thinking.’

‘Oh aye. Well, they’ve come and gone whilst ye was thinking and Red Sandy’s gone off after them. Ye can let your hobby up to stamp about a bit now.’

Knowing he was bright red and still hindered by the effects of thinking about Elizabeth, not to mention the cramp in his instep, Carey staggered to his feet. The horse lurched up and shook out its mane, Carey brushed astonished ants off his boots and got bitten half a dozen times.

They stayed in the bushes, for what seemed like another hour while Carey tried to keep his mind on his job and off his fantasies. Girls he had known at Court flitted irritatingly to and fro before his mind’s eye—he surely was in desperate need of a woman. Sorrel nuzzled at him with his broad low-bred nose, and Carey patted him absently.

At last they heard pelting feet, a single man, sprinting down the hill towards them. Dodd cocked his head, led his horse out of the bushes.

Red Sandy himself arrived, breathing hard.

‘Bastard Elliots, about seven of them, all mounted,’ he whispered triumphantly. ‘Wee Colin Elliot’s wi’ them. They’ve taken twelve sheep off one of the Routledges an’ they’re on their way.’

In the distance the sound of protesting baas floated to them, and horses.

‘Keep the light hidden,’ Carey said and got a protesting ‘Ah know that, sir.’

His heart settling to a steady fast thumping, Carey came up close to Dodd.

‘This wasn’t done by any arrangement, was it?’

‘With Elliots, sir?’ Dodd was scandalised and Carey remembered that the Sergeant’s surname had a fifty-year-old blood-feud running with the Elliots.

‘No, obviously not. Well then, let’s see if we can catch a few to hang.’

Dodd nodded dourly. Clearly, taking the trouble to capture Elliots was not his highest priority. Carey grinned at him, the prospect of a fight raising his spirits as always.

‘One or two will do,’ he amended.

Was that the faintest flicker of an answering smile at the edge of Dodd’s mouth? Probably not.

The sheep arrived first, milling about confusedly and baaing. Dodd and he rode between them, straight at the reivers, while the rest came around from both sides of the flock. For a moment there was confused shouting; the reivers weren’t sure what was happening: Carey fired both his dags, missed both times. A couple of arrows whipped into the ground, Sim’s Will rode past with his lance in rest and his horse tripped over a sheep.

‘A Tynedale, a Tynedale, Out, Out!’ roared Dodd happily, barrelling lance first at the widest mounted shadow.

Carey hauled his sword out, felt rather than saw something coming at him through the night, turned his horse and struck sideways. The sword went into something, there was a splash of hot blood and the blade stuck. He twisted and wrenched it out. Then a horse cantered past on his other side, its rider jumped onto his back and hauled him to the ground, giving him a headful of spinning lights and a nasty twinge from the ribs he had cracked two weeks before. A snarling face was lit up briefly by a bright red flash; dimly somewhere in the distance he heard a very loud bang and a sound of shrieking, but he was too busy to wonder who had been hit.

He elbowed his enemy in the face while neither of them had any nightsight, rolled to loosen the man’s grip and brought his sword hilt down on the white patch of face he could just see under the helmet. He tried to get to his feet, there was a blow on his side, the man was trying to grapple his neck, he managed to pull his dagger free with his left hand as he twisted away and stabbed under the man’s arm, heard the grating of metal and a gasp. This time he could get his legs under him, he raised his broadsword up and swung down, there was a satisfying meaty thunk and the man’s head came off. He hopped backwards quickly to be away from the blood.

Somebody still mounted came riding towards him with a lance, black shadow on a bigger shadow, the shadow of a lance. Carey’s world focused down to its point and time slowed. He waited until the last possible minute, then threw himself sideways into the horse’s path. The hobby reared, frightened of the movement, one of the hooves caught him a glancing blow on the helmet, he caught the nearest stirrup, reached up, hefted the man out of the saddle and onto the ground. They both tangled in the lance-haft and fell down together and just as Carey got on top of the man, and was preparing to stab him lefthanded in the throat, he realised it was Sim’s Will Croser.

For a moment he simply knelt there stupidly as his sight cleared. Then he got up.

‘Are you hurt?’ he demanded.

‘Nay,’ said Sim’s Will. ‘Sorry, sir, Ah mistook ye.’

Both of them were on their feet. Carey picked his sword off the turf, looking around for enemies but none was left. Hooves thudded off in the distance. He wiped his blade down with handfuls of grass and sheathed it. The body of the man Carey had killed was still bleeding into the ground, four horses were trotting around shaking their heads. Further off the shrieking was fading to gasps. Carey went over to the source of the sounds where two others of his men were standing by helplessly. Dodd cantered up and dismounted.

‘They’ve run,’ he snarled. ‘We got two of them, I think, but it seems my brother canna count. There were at least ten. And Long George is hurt bad.’

That was an understatement. Long George Little was kneeling on the ground, hunched over and making short gasping moans. He looked up at Carey like a wounded dog, his face spattered with black mud. With a lurch under his breastbone of sympathy, Carey saw George was cradling the rags of his right hand against his chest. All the fingers were gone, the thumb hanging by a piece of flesh with the splintered bone sticking out of the meat. Long George had his other hand gripped round the wrist, trying to slow his bleeding.

‘Anybody else hurt?’ Carey asked.

‘Nay,’ they all answered.

‘Who’s got the bandages?’

All of them shrugged. Carey suppressed a sigh. ‘There’s a dead man over there,’ he snapped, pointing. ‘Go and cut long strips from his shirt.’

Red Sandy trotted off with his dagger and came back a few minutes later with some strips of grey canvas in his hand. Carey tied up what was left of Long George’s hand and made a tourniquet with the rest of the strips. Long George gasped and whimpered as he did it, but managed to hold still with his eyes shut, while Dodd patted his shoulder. A trickle of blood came from his mouth.

‘Well, we rescued the sheep,’ said Red Sandy brightly. ‘That’s something.’

‘Thank you, Red Sandy,’ said Carey repressively. ‘Can you ride your horse, Long George?’

‘Ay, sir, if ye give me a leg up,’ whispered George.

Red Sandy and Dodd helped him over to his horse, lifted him on, while the rest caught the other loose horses and linked them together. Long George was already starting to shiver, something Carey had seen before: when large quantities of the sanguine humour were lost, a Jewish Court physician had told him once, then the furnace of the heart began to cool and might cool to death. Warmth and wine were a good answer, but they could give him neither until they got to Carlisle.

Carey rode up close to the shaking Long George. His face was badly hurt too, he realised now: what he had taken for mud on the right side of it was a mess of cuts and burns that had laid his face open to the gleaming white bone.

‘Can you ride as far as Carlisle?’

‘Nay, sir, take me home. My farm’s by the Wall, not far fra Lanercost.’

‘Of course. Red Sandy, do you know where?’

‘I know,’ he said sombrely.