Despite his groan, Robert's fall from the horse left him only bruised and rattled in his joints; the warrior was not young as he once had been. Robert's pony, though, fell alongside its master, screaming horribly. Arthur Thomson's sword had severed the horse's spine near its hindquarters, and the pony's rear legs were terribly still - but its forelegs flailed helplessly at the sod, and the beast's eyes rolled with agony and terror.
Arthur Thomson's sword was still inextricably embedded in the horse's back; the foeman cursed as his weapon was wrenched from his hand. He reached out and seized the lance which Job had earlier left embedded in one of his first victims; the weapon still rose like a flagpole from the dying man's chest. Arthur's gloved hand closed around the spear's haft, and he tore the weapon from his kinsman's dying body; the fallen warrior groaned and expired. Thus rearmed, Arthur wheeled his horse around and lowered the lance to point at Robert's chest.
But before he could make a move, Job - who had somewhere acquired a replacement lance and who was coated in gore like a demon from hell - came riding out of the swirling melee and slammed his new spear into Arthur's pony. The lance-head cut through the beast's croup and rent its intestines asunder; there was a sudden reek of excrement in the air, and the animal reared and screamed. The spear itself snapped in Job's hand from the force of the thrust.
Desperate to stay in the saddle, Arthur seized the horse's mane and uttered a foul oath. Then, realizing that his pony was slain, the foeman let go and fell to the ground, his own lance still in his hands. Arthur landed hard and rolled twice across the sod, but then he was on his feet, his spear aimed at Robert. A lance was an unwieldy weapon for a dismounted man, and Arthur was bloodied and breathing hard. But he attacked nonetheless, using the length of the lance to keep Robert at a distance as he made short, savage thrusts at the Elliot's chest and gut.
Job's increasing body count, meanwhile, had attracted the attention of his foes, which was never a good thing in a Border skirmish. Three of the remaining Thomsons turned on him at once. One, a lean man with a lance, spurred at Job from the front, his spearhead aimed for the chest of the Elliot's mount. A second man, burly and wielding a broadsword, attacked from Job's left, raining blinding blows at the warrior's head. And a third Thomson reined in behind Job, and carefully aimed a snaphance. This time, the weapon fired with a thunderclap and a plume of thick smoke - and the ball shattered Job's armor and punched a bloody hole through the meat of the Elliot's shoulder.
Though he had also been wounded, Iron Kenneth met with more success. The Thomson on whom he rounded was taken by surprise; the boy had assumed that Kenneth would attack the same man who had just wounded the blacksmith. The young man's mouth opened in shock and horror as he saw the foreleg of his horse reduced to pulp; the boy scrambled in his saddle, trying to escape his mount's fall, and accidentally moved directly into the path of the return stroke of Kenneth's hammer. The heavy steel weapon crunched into the side of the lad's head, and his morion crumpled like paper. By the time that Kenneth's third blow pulverized the head of the boy's horse, the Thomson lad was already falling to the ground as dead as a stone.
The Thomson who had actually wounded Kenneth was not so easy a mark. He reacted immediately as Kenneth reined in his mount and attacked. To strike across one's own body and hit a moving horse head-on is a terribly difficult feat; Kenneth attempted it, but he did not quite succeed. The Thomson hauled on his reins, and managed to pull his horse's head away from Kenneth's hammer; the blow swept through open space. But then the Thomson's forward movement brought his own leg into the space which his horse's head had vacated. Kenneth's heavy hammerhead, still sweeping through the air, cracked into the foeman's knee and literally tore the Thomson's shin and foot off; only a few strands of flesh and the pressure of the stirrup kept the otherwise severed limb attached. The man howled in agony and kicked his mount with his good foot, spurring away into the fray in a desperate attempt to escape. A moment later, Grim Adam Elliot shot the wounded man dead with a latch-bolt to the face.
Near the edge of the battle, Tall Rory neatly snap-shot the first of his three pursuers out of the saddle; the Elliot's bullet punched through the Scott's jack o plaite and made mincemeat of the man's heart. The rider was dead before he hit the ground. Rory's skill at arms even allowed him to reload in time to fire again - but by then, the Elliot's two remaining pursuers were almost upon him. Rory fired his second shot when one of the riders was just a dozen feet away. The ball smacked into the man's helmet and blew his brains out the back of his head.
But less than a second later the third man had reached Rory, and the Scott was swinging his sword; the blow tore through the Elliot's sleeve and laid Rory's forearm open in a long, shallow gash. Now, as Rory hauled on the reins and spurred his horse toward the nearby copse of pine trees, the sole surviving Scott galloped after him - he held his sword extended in front of him like a lance, and as the moonlit moor flew by beneath the two horses' hooves, the blade's tip inched ever-closer to Rory's back.
At the center of the battle, the huge axe-wielding Scott in cast-iron armor brought his weapon down upon the head of Willie the Wolf's crippled steed; the animal's pathetic screams mercifully ceased. Then the big man stepped menacingly toward Willie himself. The Elliots' black sheep had landed hard, and he could not picked himself up off the ground before his foe reached him. Still kneeling, Willie swung his blade, but the axe-blow was weak and low, flying almost harmlessly toward the Scott's armored belly.
But then, before Willie's desperate attack could land, Fleetfoot Marcas gave the lie to his name: the young man rode up behind the Scott at a full gallop and struck him between the shoulder-blades with an axe. Cast-iron armor is brittle but enormously strong, and Marcas' axe was too blunt to penetrate the foeman's cuirass. But his blow still connected with the force of a thousand pounds of man and horse moving at thirty miles an hour. The sheer impact alone was enough to knock the Scott, staggered, to his knees. And so when it connected, Willie's waist-high axe-blow did not strike the man's armored torso; instead, it struck his neck. A spray of arterial blood hit the fallen Elliot's face, hot and salty, soaking his shirtfront and his victim's beard. Then the mighty Scott fell limply to the ground, gasping his life away into the blood-soaked sod.
All around, the battle swirled on, men fighting and bleeding and screaming and dying. But it was clear that the Elliots, taken by surprise and outnumbered by three to one, could not hope to win out. Red Duncan and about a dozen other reivers, including Roger Elliot, had formed a circle near the Esk Water; they were surrounded, but the foe had only a few riders between the knot of Elliots and the river. Red Duncan cast a desparate look around, and then stood tall in his stirrups and bellowed at the top of his lungs: "Elliots! Elliots for Harelaw! Rally on me! To me! To me! Rally to me!" The big man's voice rang like thunder over the rocks and the heather.
The situation was clear; only one desperate course remained. The reivers had to regroup and make an all-out break, together, for home. If they could not rally and concentrate their force, then they would be separated, surrounded, and killed off one by one. Victory was lost; the only remaining options were escape, or death.
