Both Sides the Border: A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower by G. A. Henty (literature books to read .txt) 📗

refuge by travellers who arrived when the Liddel was swollen, and the ford impracticable.

When the riders had come within a few yards of this building, two men, hearing the sound of horses' hoofs, came out. As their eye fell upon the party they gave a shout, ran out into the road, and drew their swords.

Roger and Oswald rode at them. Parrying a thrust of one of the men, Oswald cut him down; while Roger, with a tremendous blow from his staff, stretched the other man on the road.

"Ride on, girls! We will follow you," Oswald shouted.

Jessie was sitting behind John, and they and Janet dashed forward, and rode into the water. Oswald and Roger followed, as six men, armed with spear and sword, ran out from the house. Seeing that they were too late, the leader shouted to the others: "Fetch out the horses, and chase them!" and, before the party had gained the opposite bank, their pursuers dashed into the water.

"Don't press your horses too hardly," Oswald said, as they galloped along. "They are too close behind us for us to get help from any of the small villages, but they dare not follow us into Longtown, and we have barely a ten miles' ride."

They had some two hundred yards' start, and for the first four miles held their own; then their pursuers began to gain upon them. One of the horses was carrying double, and Roger and Oswald were both heavier than any of the moss troopers.

"We shall have a fight for it, Roger."

"That is just what I was thinking, master. Well, there are three of us; and, as there are only six of them, we ought not to have much trouble. John will be a match for one. Methinks you and I can each make short work of a man when they first come up; and with but three of them against two, it will be mere child's play."

The road was a narrow one, and little used; and, when they came to the foot of a sharp rise, Oswald called to those ahead to stop.

"Jump down, Jessie, and mount behind Janet, and ride on ahead. We will soon get rid of these fellows. Be quick!"

The moss troopers were now but seventy or eighty yards behind.

"I shall fight on foot," Roger said, as he leapt off his horse. "I want both hands, for this staff."

Turning his horse, and bidding John to do the same, Oswald reined back his animal three or four lengths; and when the Bairds' party were within twenty yards, touched it with his spur and dashed at them, meeting them just abreast of Roger. The first man he met thrust at him with his spear, but Oswald parried with his sword, and with a back-handed blow smote the man just under the chin, and he fell with a crash from his horse. At the same moment he heard a blow like that of a smith's hammer, as Roger's staff fell upon the steel cap of the first who attacked him.

John was less fortunate, for his opponent's spear struck him in the throat, and he fell heavily from his saddle.

"Well stricken, Jock!" one of them shouted. "Ride on after the women. We will settle with these fellows."

But before the moss trooper could obey the order, Oswald, with a touch of the spur and the bridle, caused his horse to curvet round, and smote the man so mighty a blow on the shoulder as well-nigh to sever his arm from his body. As he wheeled his horse again he was nigh unseated, by a spear thrust that struck him on the breast piece; but, upon recovering, he struck his opponent, as he passed, so heavy a blow in the face, with the pommel of his sword, that he sent him senseless to the ground.

The other two men had furiously attacked Roger, but, whirling his staff round his head, he had kept them both at bay; then the staff descended between the ears of one of the horses, which fell headlong; and before the rider could get his foot from the stirrup, the staff struck him below the steel cap, just in front of the ear, and without a cry he fell dead beside his horse. At that the last of the moss troopers turned his horse, and galloped off at full speed.

"We have not taken long over that, master," Roger said, with a grim smile. "Five men in a minute is not so bad."

"I am afraid John is killed, Roger. See to him."

"Ay, he is sped," Roger replied, as he turned the body over. "The spear struck him full in the throat. That is what comes of not learning to use your weapons. What shall we do with him?"

"He was a faithful fellow, Roger, and as there is no need for haste now, we will give him some sort of burial, and not let him lie here in the road."

"We have nought to dig a grave with," Roger remarked.

"No, but there are plenty of stones about."

He dismounted, and with Roger's help carried the dead man a short distance away, laid him down by the side of a great boulder, and then piled stones around and over him.

"That will do, Roger. 'Tis not like that anyone will disturb those stones, for years to come. He will rest as well there as if he lay in a grave. Now, let us look to the others."

The man he had struck across the throat, and the last Roger had hit, were both dead. Two of the others were but stunned, while the one upon whose shoulder Roger's blow had fallen was lying insensible, and evidently was fast bleeding to death.

"We can do naught for him," Oswald said. "Even had we the king's leech here, we could not save him. Now let us be off."

"Shall we take the horses, master?"

"No, they will be but an encumbrance; and now that poor fellow has gone, we have one apiece. Bring his horse along with you."

Mounting, they rode quickly on, and at the top of the hill came up with the girls; who, having seen the result of the combat, had waited for them.

"Now we are safe and free, thanks to you both," Janet said. "Jessie looked back, and saw the fight as we rode. How quickly it was over! But I am grieved, indeed, that John has fallen. We saw you carrying off his body, and covering it. Jessie had noticed him fall, and we feared 'twas all over with him. He was an old retainer of our father's, and a faithful one."

"I am sorry, indeed, that he has been slain, Janet; but we could hardly expect to come out altogether scatheless."

"Are all the others killed?" Jessie asked.

"No. Two of them are but stunned; and will, ere long, be able to mount and ride off again."

"Master Oswald has gained the most honours in the fight. I killed one, and stunned another. He has stunned one also, but has slain two."

"I had a better arm, Roger."

"I know not that," Roger replied. "A quarterstaff, of that weight, is a fine weapon. I say not that it is to be compared to a mace but, when on foot, I would as lief have it as a sword."

"Now, Jessie, do you mount John's horse. We can ride quietly, for Longtown is but some three miles ahead."

They rested there for a couple of hours, then mounted again, and crossed the Pentlands by a horse track between Cristindury and Gele Craigs. Coming down into Tynedale, they put up for the night at the first place they came to. At daybreak they set off northwards, crossed Reddesdale, and came down, in the afternoon, into the valley of the Coquet, within two miles of Yardhope.

Great indeed was the surprise and joy of John Forster and his wife, when they made out the two girls riding, with Oswald, towards the hold.

"What miracle is this, lad?" the former said, while his wife was embracing her nieces. "We heard, but two days since, of the raid on the Armstrongs, and how the girls were carried off by the Bairds."

Here Oswald put his finger to his lips, to stop him from saying aught of Jane Armstrong's death. He had, after dismounting, whispered in his mother's ear, before she had time to speak to the girls, that as yet they knew nought of their mother's death, and that he had left it to her to break it to them.

"I have been, since, scouring the country," his father went on, "to try to get my friends to take the matter up; but in truth, they were not over willing to do so. All know that it is no slight enterprise to attack the Bairds in their stronghold. We fared but badly, last time we went there, though that was but a blow and a retreat; but all know that the Bairds' hold is not to be taken like a country tower. 'Tis greatly bigger and stronger than ours, and scarce to be attempted save by a royal army; especially as the whole countryside would be swarming round us, in a few hours after we crossed the border. This time, too, it is no quarrel of my people; and, as they say, the risk would be indeed great, and the loss very heavy.

"I sent off a messenger this morning to Armstrong, to tell him that I feared I could not raise more than sixty spears; but with these I would ride to Hiniltie, and join any force he could collect, and try with him to surprise the Bairds' hold and rescue the girls, though it seemed to be a mighty dangerous enterprise."

"He will have learnt, yesterday morning, Father, that we have carried them off. We could have brought you the news last night, but to do so we must have ridden fast and, the girls being with us, we thought it were better to take two days over the journey. So we slept in Tynedale last night."

"And how did you manage it? For unless you and Roger flew into the Bairds' hold, and carried them off on your backs, I see not how it could be managed. Why, the place is so strong that even the Douglases have not cared to carry out the terms of the treaty, for the arrest of William Baird as a notorious breaker of the truce between the two countries."

"It was because I knew Armstrong deemed that it was scarce likely a force could be gathered, by you and his friends, strong enough to undertake such an enterprise, that we decided to rescue them by strategy. The affair turned out to be easy enough."

And he then related, in detail, the manner in which he and Roger had obtained entry into the hold, and had succeeded in rescuing his cousins.

"By the bones of Saint Oswald, from whom you got your name, lad," John Forster exclaimed, when he had finished his story, "you have carried out the matter marvellously well! Hotspur himself could not have contrived it better; and I own that I was wrong, and that that fancy of yours, to be able to read and write, has not done you the damage that I feared it would. Henceforth I will maintain, with all my might, that these things in no way tend to soften a man; but on the contrary, in some way sharpen his wits, and enable him to carry out matters with plans, and contrivances, such as would scarce be conceived by men who had not such advantage.

"But why do we not go inside?"

"I have been keeping you here, Father, because I doubt not that my mother has been breaking the news to the girls, of their mother's slaughter. I said nought to them about it. They knew the hold was burnt, and I told them that Allan was wounded; but I thought that, if I gave them the worst part of the news, it would throw them into such deep grief as to unfit them for the journey. It might not have been discovered till two hours after we had started that they had escaped, and in that case we should have been mounted before the Bairds overtook us, and it would have been a ride for life, and the girls would have needed all their strength and courage to keep them up."

"It was as well so, Oswald, and doubtless your mother will break it more easily to them than you could have done. Women are better at such things than men, who are given to speak, bluntly and straight, what has to be told."

Chapter 15: Another Mission To Ludlow.

While Oswald was talking with his father, Roger had taken the four horses round to the long shed, that ran along one side of the wall; and had there been telling the moss troopers the same story Oswald had been