“Mibby I’m a waster, but I’m not feckless when it comes to strategy,” Craig Douglas tells his army, “We cannae win this fight, but we won’t lose it if you do what I say. I and Joe Dryhope will take the rear guard, Colonel Wardlaw the right wing, Archie Elphinstone the left. Wat leads the van with three picked men who take their cues from him. The outcome depends on that … No spying! This collogue is private,” he tells the public eye. It soars upward while the Ettricks pull on their helmets and form a circle.
The public eye is now so high above the standard that hill and moorland and armed companies are spread beneath like a map with streams of ants pouring across.
“Four minutes from now the massacre of the decade begins,” says a voice. “The day is mild and dry, visibility good, the ground in fine condition. General Craig Douglas said he has a strategy which will prevent defeat. What can it be, Wolfgang Hochgeist?”
“I cannot possibly say,” says another voice, “For I do not think it can be done. The remark was, I fear, a nervous one. The nervous Craig Douglas nature appears in all males of that blood, especially in Wat Dryhope, the General’s eldest son.”
“So what can Craig Douglas do?”
“He can form a compact mass round the standard and fight on the spot till the last man drops, but too many of his soldiers are children for such a Teutonic stand. The Scottish temper and steepness of the hill indicate a downhill charge toward a more defensible standpoint. There are three: Blind Ghyll Quarry half a mile to the west; a windbreak wood to the south; and to the east, where the sea cliffs descend to an old atomic power station, the most tempting standpoint of all — a long concrete jetty in good condition. If the standard could be got there a troop of forty might hold off a thousand till nightfall, but Dodds commands five armies and has held back three to block approaches to the jetty, quarry and wood.”
“The Ettricks are unpegging the guy ropes of their standard!” cries the other voice. “Where they aim it when lowered will give a clue. Here comes the umpire!”
A white airship appears between clouds overhead, a red cross on the side and fifty small aircraft fixed to the underside. From a porthole comes a vivid flash then the clang of an enormous bell. The Ettricks stay in a tight mass round their standard on the hilltop. Three columns of Northumbrians approach the hill from different sides and start climbing to the top in curving paths that leave no straight opening for the force on the summit to charge through. The company on the summit regroup round their standard which dips to horizontal. Ropes, banner are swiftly twisted round the pole, it becomes the spine of a central column with a short column in front, longer ones on each side and behind. Dodds’s vanguard is nearing the summit when the Ettricks charge from it and crash like a torpedo through Shafto’s column.
“Where are they going? Where are they going? Where are they going?” demands the public eye at an altitude which keeps the whole field of action in view. Among the soldiers below other eyes record the bloody strife of individual bodies.
“To the jetty by way of the cliff,” says Hochgeist, “But it is too far, much too far away for them! Hopeless!”
“Yet most of Ettrick have passed through Shafto’s men with surprisingly few losses and now run into Milburn’s ranks like a knife into butter! Dodds’s men on the hilltop are breaking formation and pouring down after them like an avalanche. The best the Ettricks can do is let their heels defend them. Their central column has gained the bottom of the slope and now pushes by the shortest way to the cliff top, why? They can’t mean to pitch their standard into the sea?”
“Indeed no,” says Hochgeist, “Their last ten victories would be discounted by the War Council in Geneva. Craig Douglas may wish his clan to perish on this promontory for sentimental reasons. I believe the Picts made a historic stand here once.”
“But his clan will be wiped out before they reach it! Craig Douglas turns with his rear guard to face the enemy and now he’s really in the thick of it! What a man! Look at the action of that sword! But the Northumbrians are overwhelming him while the rest chase and surround the Ettrick standard which is shedding its defenders like an onion shedding skins yet fighting and thrusting upward all the time with Wat Dryhope in the lead! And they’ve reached it — the cliff edge — what are they trying to do? Are they actually raising the standard for a last flap of the old flag?”
“Aha!”
“There’s hardly a dozen left!”
“Aha!”
“Why won’t they surrender that damned pole? What are they trying to do, Wolfgang?”
“Something very clever which has never been done before and which only a hopelessly outnumbered force in exactly this cliff-edge situation could achieve. I have underrated Craig Douglas. What a pity he did not live to see his plan carried through. But his nervous son may actually succeed.”
The Ettrick standard, wagging like a corn stalk in a gale, is planted a yard from the cliff edge by its last few defenders. Wat holds the pole while landward of him three youngsters grasp ropes which stop it toppling into the sea. An Ettrick remnant hack and thrust to hold back a Northumbrian throng whose main wish is now to grab these very ropes.
“Get a hold before you kill them!” screams Dodds from the rear.
“Now!” yells Wat. At once the ropes are flung aside and grasped by Northumbrian hands. The pole too has been released to a Northumbrian. Wat stands a pace away, eyeing him. There is a pause.
“You surrender?” screams Dodds from the rear. Soldiers round the standard, Ettrick and Northumbrian, stare at Wat whose great height and sudden composure make him seem the only man fit to answer. Though bruised and bloody he no longer looks clumsy. With a goblinish grin he shouts, “No!” and lunges at the Northumbrian holding the pole.
“The Ettrick survivors now assault the Northumbrians holding their standard!” says Hochgeist. “Though hopelessly outnumbered the surprise of their attack in this narrow space has made the four or five Northumbrians holding the ropes release them and … OVER SHE GOES!”
The public eye takes in a picture to be replayed in slow motion for centuries to come: a toppling steel pole tipped with an eagle, a flame-like banner unrolling behind like the tail of a comet, both going down toward the wrinkled blue-grey silk of the North Sea, then striking it obliquely and passing under with a splash. Half of the silvery length shoots up again at an angle then the whole length settles and finally sinks.
“Was that allowed by the rules?”
“I think so, yes,” says Hochgeist, laughing,
“Because the rules do not forbid it. The Northumbrians captured the standard in fair fight. It was they who let it fall in the sea after an Ettrick counter-attack in a battle which still continues.”
“Yes the Northumbrians have gone berserk,” says the public eye. “It’s an ugly sight, but who can blame them? After half a century of victories Clan Ettrick has drawn on a technicality so even if the entire Ettrick army is exterminated it retires unbeaten. Exterminated it will certainly be unless — good! There goes the bell for end of play. And now as the Red Cross aircraft descend on the field of honour some of you may want to switch to the banks of the Alamo for a peep at the big fight between the Tex and Mex sharpshooters; but I know many will stay with us here to learn the final body-count as the medicals get down to business.”
The Northumbrian to whom he released the standard was the first man Wat Dryhope had deliberately killed. In previous fights his blows had been dealt in the thick of things, as much for defence as aggression, but his lunge at the Northumbrian had not been parried. His sword pierced a heart below a bewildered