CHAPTER XLII.

SHOLTO STANDS IN THE BREACH

Sholto stood in the breach, waiting. Never soldier about to die looked his enemy more steadily in the face. I think, if my babe had lived, he would have been a soldier like Sholto, a man like him. I could not wish a better wish for him. May the sons of all good mothers be even as Sholto M‘Kim, is the prayer of a sonless woman.

Behind him the castle towered up grey and massy, the vast rent in its northerly side, for which the stormers were striving, making a black irregular patch on the cliff of stone and lime. That, at all hazards, he must defend. Once entered there, not only would the whole castle lie void of defence, but from the water-gate and the balcony the king’s men could shoot at their ease the swimmers across the Pool of Thrieve.

In the first rush of the stormers were Hugh Morton and Laurence.

“Stand back there!” cried Sholto. “I desire not your blood, brother!”

Gripping with both hands, Sholto swung his axe once--and Hugh Morton, smitten through the guard, fell with a cry to the ground. The ashen shaft had been cunningly strengthened with iron at the end nearest the axe-head. It could not be cut with a sword.

“Hold, brother!” answered Laurence. “I also have no quarrel with you. Let James Douglas come forth! He hides behind you! For this I laid aside my robe of abbot to cross swords with him.”

For as yet none of the assailants knew the attempt that was being made to afford the chief of the house of Douglas a last chance of escape.

“I am here in this place to do my duty, against you or any man!” quoth Sholto, balancing his axe with loving particularity.

And for a long minute none dared to try that path perilous across the breach. But there was one behind, somewhat less active than the youths who led the first rush of stormers, who yet toiled manfully in the rear. Malise M‘Kim it was who came across the grass, his great two-handed sword naked in his hand. He paused a moment, looming up vast and weighty by comparison with his son, as Mons Meg herself set on end beside a pennon-lance at a tent door.

Father and son stood face to face. A certain hesitation, not unnatural, manifested itself among the assailants. Laurence had no wish to slay his brother, nor yet to be slain by him in such a quarrel. Though the fall of young Hugh Morton had stayed the first rush of the stormers, yet, as Laurence well knew, the end was certain. But Malise had other thoughts in his mind. There was no halting or compromise in that sombre red eye.

“Sholto,” he cried, “stand aside! Or, by St. Bride, I will e’en slay thee with my hand--first-born son of my body though you be!”

“Slay!” said Sholto. “This is my place. I will stand here till I die--or till that is accomplished which I fight for!”

“You fight, then, to let James Douglas, the traitor, the enemy of your own house, escape?”

“Even so!” said Sholto calmly.

Then Malise M‘Kim, the madness rising suddenly in his eyes, raised his two-handed sword over his shoulders, and smote. Lightly Sholto stepped aside. The swing of the blade, taking the edge of the breach, cut through part of the sea-shell plaster, and jarred with terrific force against the freestone of a lintel. The shock brought the armourer to his knees, and in that moment, if so he had chosen, Sholto might easily have slain his father.

But, stepping quietly back, Sholto permitted the smith to arise, contenting himself with swinging his axe and measuring once again the length and freedom of his stroke. Whereat, seeing him as they thought embarrassed, a pair of Lothian men, Crichton of Brunston and Mickle Rob of the Nine Mile Stane, sprang forward together. But the axe of the Captain of the Guard had two faces, and with them Sholto struck this way and that with the swiftness of lightning. Shoulder to the right and face to the left bore witness to the virtue which abode in the cunning bend of that ash shaft a foot from the axe-head, which, together with Sholto’s wrist-action, doubled the spring of the stroke.

Of the two, Brunston proved the luckier, and Mickle Rob went visage-marred for the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, Malise had recovered himself, and, strangely, he was angry with his son--indeed, far more angry than before.

“Sholto M‘Kim,” he cried, “deliver to me that man--James Douglas! Or else I will make a road to him over your dead body and cloven skull. That you are my son matters nothing. That you keep me from my revenge matters all!”

He advanced upon Sholto again with the dull fury in his eye kindling red like a smithy fire when the bellows are plied.

“Stand forth like a man and fight!” he cried. “No dancing-master tricks will serve you a second time!”

“Father,” said the young man, “slay me if you can. I will strike you no stroke. But I have my duty to do. I fight to foil, but not to wound--not to kill. You are my father!”

“You speak as you fight, to waste time. Let me pass--yea or nay?”

“Nay, then, my father!” said Sholto.

Whereupon half a dozen of the king’s men, impatient at the delay, were about to rush the breach.

“He cannot slay us all--at him, I say! Fall on!” cried Angus Douglas, eager to be done with the fray.

“Leave this young man to me,” shouted Malise. “I who have given him life will rieve the life from him. I will render him the death of a traitor to his own house--of one who hath shamed his sister, the daughter of his mother!”

Against his father Sholto could only oppose his youthful litheness and such defence as he was able to make, using his Lochaber axe as a shield.

The armourer’s blow descended a second time--furious, annihilating, even had it been sustained by an armoured man. But Sholto, gliding forward, let it fall on his axe-head between the falcon-spur and the blade. The first it shore completely away, but the young man dexterously lowering his weapon, so directed the stroke that the blade of the two-handed sword glided along the steel strengthening of the shaft, and finally struck harmlessly, scoring the ground at his father’s feet.

Then arose a great crying and running about the defences of the castle. Some mounted on the fallen tower and began shooting arrows into the Pool of Dee. The fugitives had been discovered. But by this time, owing to Sholto’s stubborn defence, the distance was too great from any part of the castle accessible to the archers. Had these been able to mount the battlements of the castle, or above all to penetrate to the water-gate from which Andro the Penman and James Douglas had gone forth, they might have marked the swimmers down at their leisure. Even as it was, the young Captain of the Guard of Thrieve had several anxious moments.

But Sholto’s defence had been sufficient. The forefeet of the white charger were already on the turf of the Balmaghie shore. The light saddle, which Andro the Penman, swimming strongly, had carried across on his head, was in its place, and all scathless James Douglas was galloping southward through the thick woods, by paths which he knew perfectly, ere a final rush of stormers, directed in a fierce stream through the breach, carried Sholto off his feet. His father’s sword descended on his head as he fell. He was dashed this way and that, even carried into the interior of the castle by that turbulent, overwhelming tide of men.

Unconscious, as if in sleep, the waters closed over the Captain of Thrieve. The strong castle which he had held, as it had been with his sole arm, passed for ever out of the hands of its ancient possessors. But there was a man, black with the grime of Mons Meg, a man with nothing of the king about him save a red scar on his face, who stood over him crying aloud, “Save the young man! Lay him in a safe place! Do not trample on one so brave. The time is at hand when I shall have need of such!”

And it was indeed the king. For once the last and best friend of the fallen house owed his safety to their worst enemy.

On the strand of the Pool of Thrieve, vainly cursing, imprecating, foaming at the mouth with baffled fury, Malise the smith stood watching James Douglas--the man for whom so many had flung away their lives, ride comfortably into the deep, green solitudes of the Balmaghie woods. Ah, if he could only have gotten once within arm’s length of his unconscious son--at that moment Sholto M‘Kim would have paid the penalty from which he had saved the enemy of his house.

It is the testimony of all that Malise M‘Kim was never the same man after this terrible disappointment. He had been baulked of his vengeance when it seemed within his grasp, and from that time forth a film of the red stood between eye and brain. From that moment reason and memory abode but occasionally with him.

“Mons Meg! Mons Meg!” he would cry, striking his clenched hand on the table till the whole house rang again. “What is this prate of Mons Meg? What hath she done? Sandy Weir the Dumfries cooper had done as muckle with a wine-vat laid on its side! Dung down Thrieve, you say, given victory to the king? Bah! what of that? A puff-ball that cracks under one’s foot on the green! _Doth not James Douglas live?_ And was he not saved by the sword of my son? Answer me that!”

But there was none that could make denial--nor indeed dared.

“Then,” he would cry, having put all to silence, “let me hear no more prating of Mons Meg!”

And had the king not prevented, the fit being on him, he would have taken a forehammer and destroyed the great cannon with his own hand.