Read Online The Complete Kingdom Trilogy by Robert Low - Free Book Online

tiring.
    The huntsman thought this whole farce the worst idea anyone had come up with, for a battue usually achieved little, spoiled the game for miles around for months and foundered good horses and dogs. He drew the ratty fur collar of his stained cloak tighter round him – he had another slung on the back of the horse, for experience had taught him that, on a hunt, you never knew where your bed might be – and prayed to the Virgin that he would not have to spend the dark of night in this place. Distantly, he heard the halloo and thrash of the beaters.
    White Tam glanced sideways at the Sientclers, the Auld Templar of Roslin and the younger Sientcler from somewhere Tam had never heard of. His hounds, mind you, were a pretty pair and he wondered if they could hunt as well as they looked.
    He watched the Lady Eleanor cooing to her hooded tiercel and exchanging pleasantries with Buchan and saw – because he knew her well now – that she was as sincere as poor gilt with the earl. That yin was an oaf, White Tam thought, who rides a quality mount to a hunt and would regret it when his muscled stallion turned into an expensive founder. An Andalusian cross with Frisian, he noted with expert eye, worth seven times the price of the mount he rode himself. Bliddy erse.
    He considered the young Bruce, easy and laughing with Buchan’s wife. If she was mine, White Tam thought, I’d have gralloched the pair of them for makin’ the beast with two backs. It seemed that Buchan was blind or, White Tam thought to himself with years of observation behind it, behaving like most nobiles – biding his time, pretending nothing was happening to his dignity and honour, then striking from the dark and behind.
    White Tam knew that men come to a battue armed as if for war was no unusual matter, for that style of hunt was designed for the very purpose of training young knights and squires for battle. Still, the old hunter had spoored out the air of the thing and could taste taint in it. The young Sientcler had confirmed it when he had come to Tam, enquiring about aspects of the hunt and frowning over them.
    â€˜So we will lose each other, then,’ he had said almost wearily. ‘In the trees. Folk will scatter like chaff.’
    â€˜Just so,’ White Tam had agreed, seeing the worry in the man and growing concerned himself; he did not want rival lords stalking one another in Douglas forests. So he spilled his fears to the Herdmanston lord, telling the man how there was always something went wrong on a hunt if people did not hark to the Rule of it all. Foundered horses, careless arrows – there had been injuries in the past and especially in a battue. Beside that, a bad shot, a wild spear throw, a stroke of ill luck, all frequently left an animal wounded and running and it was a matter of honour for the person who had inflicted the damage to pursue it, so that it did not suffer for longer than necessary. Alone, if necessary, and whether he was a magnate of the Kingdom or a wee Lothian lord.
    â€˜Provided it is stag or boar,’ White Tam had added, wiping sweat drips from his nose. ‘Stag, as it is the noblest of God’s creations next to Man and boar for they are the most vicious of God’s creations next to Man and the worst when sair hurt.’
    Anything else, he had told Hal pointedly, can be left to die.
    Now he rose in the stirrups and held up a hand like a knotted red furze root, mottled as a trout’s belly. Then he turned to Malk, who was valet de limier for the day.
    â€˜Roland,’ he said quietly and the dog was hauled out of one cartload. White Tam dismounted stiffly and, grunting, levered himself to kneel by the hound; they regarded each other sombrely and White Tam stroked the grey muzzle of it with a tenderness which surprised Hal.
    â€˜Old man,’ he said. ‘Beau chien, go with God. Seek. Seek.’
    He handed the leash to the grim-faced Malk and Roland darted