‘Sergeant,’ he said.

‘Ay sir.’

‘You and Red Sandy start searching the way I told you.’

‘Ay sir.’

Carey settled himself with his back to the wall of the house, perched on the edge of a water trough, watching John Nixon’s face. As Dodd and Red Sandy trampled noisily around the farm and outbuildings, Carey quietly sat and watched, privately laying a bet with himself. Dodd had left the pigpen till last and sure enough as he went in, there was a flicker of John Nixon’s eyelids.

Carey stood upright, took the dag in his gauntleted hand and put it behind his back. Seconds later there came a lot of shouting from the stye, and a crunching sound. Dodd came reeling out to land in the mud. Andy Nixon charged past him, grabbed the dag out of his unresisting hand, vaulted two sows and the fence and then slowed. He advanced on Carey pointing the gun squarely at his chest. Carey smiled.

‘Well, Andy Nixon,’ he said, ‘I must arrest you in the name of the Queen for the murder of Jemmy Atkinson.’

‘I didna do it,’ said Nixon, still advancing. ‘Now get out of my way.’

Carey brought his gun out and levelled it at Nixon. ‘This dag is loaded. That one is not. Do you think the Sergeant would let you get your hands on a loaded gun so easily? Shame on you, Andy.’

He and Dodd had spent ten minutes discussing ways of arresting Andy Nixon without having to fight him, something Dodd was keen to avoid. It was the best they could come up with.

Andy growled inarticulately and threw the useless dag at Carey’s face. He jerked back, fired and missed at pointblank range, shooting one of the unfortunate pigs instead. It went berserk, charging round its pen and biting anything that got in its way, which included Dodd who was just trying to get to his feet.

Carey stayed upright, dropped his gun, pulled out his sword.

‘Carlisle garrison to me!’ he roared, and Andy Nixon looked over his shoulder to see Bangtail Graham and Long George crowding the gate, their lances ready. However, he could see that wave them though they might, neither of them were anxious to come and help. Andy drew his sword awkwardly, then transferred it to his left hand. Carey drew his poignard lefthanded and advanced on the man, his blades en garde before him: Dodd had been very insistent about the importance of not getting to close-quarters with Andy Nixon. On the other hand, Carey wanted him alive to confess, be tried and hanged, a scruple that Dodd clearly thought insane.

Dodd had managed to struggle stinking out of the pigpen and was menacing Andy’s father with his sword, in case he got excited. The wounded pig continued to buck round the pen squealing like a human child.

Andy Nixon and Carey moved around each other, Carey trying to keep himself between Nixon and the horses. Nixon, who was desperate, moved in swinging his sword awkwardly. Carey parried with his two crossed blades and tried a quick underarm stab with the poignard, but Nixon skipped backwards too fast. Not in fact lefthanded, then, but holding his sword in his left hand because his right was hurt somehow. Simon Barnet had said something about his hand in a sling. And his face wasn’t only smudged with pig dirt but also badly bruised about the cheeks and jaw. It was a square young-looking face on a square barrel-chested body, solid all through and very determined. Now after the fizzing excitement of anticipation Carey felt that cold narrowing down of focus, the hard beat of his heart and the strange sensation of everything being very slow and crystal clear, which was there whenever he fought. He liked it. That feeling was one reason why he had come to the north.

Andy Nixon’s face tightened, the betraying flicker. Carey waited for him, caught the rhythm of his attack, slipped sideways and struck backhanded with his sword at Nixon’s. Metal screeched as the blades slid past each other, he flicked his wrist, and Andy’s sword was on the ground. Andy stared at it, panting slightly.

‘Now, Andy,’ Carey said reprovingly. ‘Why don’t you...?’

Andy cannoned into him frontally from low down and Carey was knocked backwards onto the ground practically under the hobbies’ hooves. He had dropped his sword with the shock. The horses skittered nervously backwards and forwards, hooves coming and going, distractingly enormous right next to his face, while Carey found himself held down by immensely strong shoulders. He could have used his poignard, which he still had, but he wanted Andy Nixon alive, and anyway, Andy was holding his left wrist down. There was something flawed in that grip; Carey couldn’t move the rest of him—where the hell was Dodd?—but he twisted his arm, jerked up on his elbow, reversed the poignard and managed to hit Andy across the head with the pommel.

He didn’t even notice, except to land a punch on Carey’s face which sent stars whirling through the sky. The horrible weight came off Carey’s shoulders; Andy Nixon was getting into the saddle of one of the hobbies. Carey gasped some air into his lungs, heaved himself up still blind, grabbed Nixon’s foot and shoved him up and off the horses’s back on the other side. Nixon landed with a crunch on the ground. Carey ducked under the horse’s head to grab him and was met with a kick like a mule which he saw coming just in time to turn and take it on his hip instead of his crotch. The force of it knocked him back and into the hobby which whinnied and swung about until stopped by the tether. Somehow he had dropped the poignard. Andy was on his feet again, rocking, gasping for breath, but up. Jesus, the man wasn’t human, what was he made of—and where the bloody hell was Dodd? Carey dimly heard a sound of cheering... Cheering? Were his troop of useless scum enjoying this?

More enraged by that thought than by anything Andy Nixon had done, Carey forgot all about not coming to close-quarters with Nixon and launched himself at him. There was a confused moment, during which his legs and Andy’s seemed to become mysteriously tangled, and then the ground was leaping up; he had landed bruisingly on his stomach and Andy was about to break his arm backwards over his shoulder. Carey kicked and bucked, there was a second when he thought he might get free at the cost of dislocating his arm and then there was a brisk movement above him, a dull thud and Nixon was keeling over with a sigh. Carey lay for a moment, cawing for breath, and then levered himself up off the ground with his hands, came to his knees. Dodd was there, a large rock in one hand, offering him the other. He took it and climbed back onto his feet. He stood for a moment while he concentrated on breathing and felt his wrenched arm and his incompletely healed ribs. Then he looked at Nixon who was lying there, bleeding from a graze on his head.

‘Where the... hell... were you... Sergeant?’ he rasped.

Bangtail and Archie Give-it-Them came forward with care, picked up the floppy Andy Nixon and tied his hands before him as fast as they could. Then they hefted him up over the lead hobby’s saddle just as he began to mutter and connected his bound hands with a rope under the horse’s belly to his feet.

Sergeant Dodd was grinning inanely. ‘Och, I thought ye were making such a bonny fight of it wi’ Nixon, ya didna need my help.’

If he had had the energy he would have punched Henry Dodd.

‘B... bonny fight...’ he got out. ‘The... bastard... nearly broke my arm.’

‘Ay,’ said Dodd, not at all abashed. ‘Ye did verra well, sir. Andy Nixon won the wrestling last summer for a’ Cumberland, knocked Archie Give-it-Them out cold, and beat three Scots after.’

Carey sat on the edge of the water trough and spat some blood out. Nixon’s punch to his face had cut the inside of his mouth against his teeth.

‘The... the bastard nearly... broke my arm,’ he said to Dodd again, still unable to believe such perfidy.

‘Ay,’ said Dodd. ‘He beat ye right enough. I’ve won half a crown off Bangtail and...’

‘Wait a minute. You... you bet on me to lose?’

‘Ay sir. It were a safe bet.’

‘Jesus Christ! I am going to kill you, Dodd.’

‘In that state? I wouldna bet on it, sir,’ said Dodd with great good humour.

Carey shook his head to clear it and picked up his morion whose chin strap had broken at some stage in the fight. He looked round at his men who were settling bets and nodding approvingly at him, then saw John Nixon who was being held by Red Sandy and Long George.

‘Mr Nixon,’ he croaked. ‘I’m arresting your son Andrew on the charge of conspiracy and premeditated murder. If I have any trouble on the way home, I’ll cut his head off. Understand?

John Nixon nodded.

Weapons were scattered all over the yard. Dodd had already retrieved both of his valuable Tower armoury dags; Carey himself picked up his sword and poignard, sheathed them, went over to Dodd to take his guns and reeled at the smell.

‘Do something about the pigshit, Dodd,’ he said drily. Dodd went to the water trough, picked up a bucket and poured the water over himself, which helped a little.

They mounted up. Red Sandy took the reins of the hobby carrying Andy Nixon because Long George was in the middle of a sneezing fit, and they started back to Carlisle. At the Eden bridge Carey told Dodd to begin the patrol and wait for him at the Gelt ford. He led the hobby himself as he turned the horses in towards Carlisle town with the sun dying in fire behind the Castle and the clouds. He had Archie Give-it-Them Musgrave on the other side to help if Nixon should get free.

Andy Nixon was conscious again, turning his face sideways to keep his graze away from the horse’s flank and wriggling occasionally when the horse jerked. He had already been sick, there were traces of it on the horse’s belly. Carey supposed the head-down position, the motion and the smell would make you sick, come to think of it. Good. Serve the bastard right. Not a scratch on him after fighting fifty-odd Grahams and outlaws that morning—and then he went to arrest one rent-collector and ended up feeling as if he had been run over by a cart and nursed by the Spanish Inquisition. His whole shoulder was aching with pulled muscles, his ribs were griping him again, his hip was sore though his jack had softened some of the force of the kick, and his face was bruised which made him talk out of one side of his mouth. He doubted there was an inch of his body which didn’t have some complaint and he sincerely hoped Nixon was feeling much worse.

Nixon croaked something inaudible.

‘What was that?’ Carey asked.

Nixon lifted his head and yelled, ‘I didna do it.’

Carey rode along in silence for a moment, thinking. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Nixon,’ he said flatly. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were the kind of man that would let a woman face burning alone.’

The head flopped to hang downwards again. ‘Ah Christ,’ came a muffled groan.

There was no more chat until they got back into Carlisle and tethered their horses at the Keep. Carey had to keep fighting the illusion caused by taking an afternoon nap, that in fact he had fought the Grahams the day before.

A young man called William Barker was keeping the dungeons for Scrope, deputy to his grandfather who was officially the Gaoler. He stared with surprise as they rode into the inner yard and Archie Give-it-Them heaved Andy Nixon down from the horse.

‘Fetch the irons, Barker,’ Carey said.

The youth fetched them out of the little locker. Carey put them on Nixon’s wrists before he cut the ropes binding him. Nixon’s eyes looked like a cow at the slaughter. When he cut the rope, Carey saw the puffiness of Nixon’s right hand.

‘What happened there?’ he asked.