Carey nodded and looked pleased. If he had any worries about it they didn’t show.

‘Sergeant, if you were the Graham leader, where would you be taking the animals?’ asked Carey.

‘Into Liddesdale across the Bewcastle Waste,’ said Dodd instantly. ‘There’s plenty of nice valleys in the dale with pens for holding booty in, no better hiding hole.’

‘I take it we don’t want to be pursuing them directly into Liddesdale?’ said Carey.

Dodd winced while Red Sandy looked appalled.

‘No sir.’

‘Name me a meeting place within two miles of the mouth of Liddesdale.’

Dodd named the Longtownmoor meeting stone which was a mile from Netherby, held by an unfortunate Milburn who paid blackrent to everyone.

Carey smiled at Tom’s Watt, drew him aside, spoke for a time and gave him a ring from his hand before drawing his gloves on. Dodd mounted up and trotted between his men to see all of them were properly equipped. The few who owned calivers had left them behind because of the rain. Dodd himself took the burning peat turf on the end of his lance that signified a hot trod. The horn he was supposed to blow in warning if they had to cross over into Scotland was at his belt.

‘Sergeant, do you know the Bewcastle Waste well?’

Dodd considered. ‘Ay sir. Well enough.’ Red Sandy snorted at this modesty.

‘Up here by me, then. I know it not at all and am in your hands.’

With the Carlisle bell still clanging irregularly into the night behind them, they walked their horses through the town, glared at by cats interrupted in their own reiving. Once through the gates they came to a canter northwards, the darkness about them sparsely sequined with signal beacons.

They picked up a trail of several dozen cattle a little to the south of Lanercost, the hounds lolloping and panting along and giving no tongue as they had been trained. At least Carey seemed in no hurry to close with the Grahams. As soon as he could the Graham leader dodged into the Waste, and as the sky greyed and the rain fell again, Dodd was threading through the bogs and scrub with Carey uncharacteristically quiet beside him. He rode well enough, Dodd allowed grudgingly, perhaps a little too straight in the saddle for endurance, a little too reluctant to let his mount judge her own pace.

Always Carey wanted to be round to the east of them and the strategy seemed to be working for the Grahams let themselves be herded westwards rather than northwards. Dawn was theoretical rather than real as they wove in and out of ditches and up hills, while the Grahams doubled back and crossed water to try and lose the hounds, all of it cruelly rough country. By the time it was full morning, Carey at last had lost some of his bounce, and began to take on the experienced loosebacked slouch of Dodd and his men.

By the sourness of his expression, Henry Dodd’s men could tell he was enjoying himself, countering every Graham turn and ruse, and reading the man’s mind ahead of himself, until he lifted his head, turned while Carey urged his hobby through another little stream, and nodded with supreme satisfaction.

‘There they are, sir.’

Ahead of them they could make out against the grey wet curtains drooling out of the clouds, the lances and lowing of the raiding party.

‘Where are we?’ Carey asked, a little breathless.

‘One mile south of the meeting stone,’ said Henry and nodded to the right. ‘Liddesdale’s that way sir.’

‘No sign of Elliots or Armstrongs.’

‘Doesna mean there are none,’ said Dodd, hoping his various cousins by marriage might remember who he was if they were there.

‘What are they doing now?’

‘Rounding up the cattle again, sir, ready to take them into the Debateable Land.’

‘How long will it take them?’

‘Five minutes.’

Carey scraped his thumb on his lower lip where his nicely trimmed courtier’s goatee was invading upland pastures. Like all of them Carey was caked in mud and the slogging through the Waste seemed to have dulled even his enthusiasm for movement. They had come about in a broad anticlockwise arc.

‘What do you think of them, Sergeant?’

Dodd blinked into the rain and considered.

‘They’re slow, sir.’ A thought came to him unbidden but he suppressed it. As Lowther had said to him many times, it wasn’t his job to think.

‘Could be the cattle.’

‘No, see, sir, I could have had the cattle into Scotland by now.’

Carey raised an aristocratic eyebrow.

‘Are they waiting for us?’

‘Might be,’ said Dodd reluctantly, ‘I don’t know. They might be waiting for us.’

‘So the betting is they’ve got someone to back them hiding in the valley?’

‘Ay sir.’

‘Where have they set the ambush?’

‘I’m not sure, sir,’ said Dodd cautiously.

Carey smiled. ‘As an expert, speaking from your past experience.’

Dodd sucked his teeth again, thought and pronounced his opinion. By the end of his explanation, Carey had begun to look worried. He peered over his shoulder at the miserable pale sun where it was struggling against the clouds and squinted at the western horizon. For a moment it almost seemed to Dodd that he was listening. Far away came the peewits of green plover disturbed by the reivers. Carey urged his tired horse to a fast canter up a slight knoll, stood in his stirrups, looked all around, and came trotting back cheerfully again.

‘Let’s have them then,’ he said.

‘Now sir?’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’ He stood in his stirrups again. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said at large to the men, ‘we’re taking back the cattle. With God’s help, we have friends on the other side of the Grahams who will come and join the fun.’ He didn’t mention the possibility that the Grahams might have friends too.

There was the clatter and creak of harness as men tightened the straps on their helmets, loosened their swords, gripped their lances. None except Carey had firearms but Carey’s were a beautiful pair of dags with a Tower gunsmith’s mark on them, ready shotted and wound.

‘Nineteen of us?’ said Dodd.

‘Twenty,’ said Carey quietly, letting his horse back and snort nervously as he took one gun in each hand. Bloody show-off, thought Dodd, I hope the recoil breaks his wrist.

‘There’s twenty-five of them at least from their trail,’ Red Sandy said reasonably, ‘and ten others and the Elliots unaccounted for... We could likely come to some arrangement...’

Carey’s eyes narrowed. ‘Now we come to it,’ he said, ‘do I have grey hair? Is my face red? Do I look like Richard Lowther to you?’

‘No sir, but...’