While I was listening to the young squire and trying to confirm what he would told me with the other Dunster riders, the archers had been busy stripping the dead men and our prisoners of their clothes and weapons and going up the road to look for Charlie and the supply horse he had been leading.
We found Charlie’s body with our missing supply horse grazing nearby. His riding horse was gone. We never did find it and Charlie was our only death. All we knew was that he would have been leading his file’s supply horse and bringing up the rear when the Dunster men came up the road behind us.
Charlie had apparently tried to escape when he finally realized their murderous intent but could not get the supply horse to run fast enough. He should have dropped its reins and fled, but he did not. It was Charlie’s shouts and effort to flee that had alerted the others and sent them galloping down the road to join me.
My two messengers hurriedly left, leading a horse with the young squire tied to its saddle. Each was riding one of the newly captured Dunster horses and leading his own to keep it fresh in case he ran into more trouble and had to run for it. After they left, we had the prisoners dig a grave and buried poor Charlie where he fell. The men took off their caps and were somber, but seemed quite pleased when I gobbled a few prayers in Latin to help send poor Charlie on his way.
There remained only the five captured riders to deal with. We had kept them separate from the others and had not freed them when we sent the Dunster foot home carrying their wounded. Now I had to decide what to do with them. Killing the prisoners was not an option even though Charlie’s sergeant suggested we should and offered to do it. Not a chance, I told him rather huffily; we do not want to ever get a reputation of killing prisoners because it would discourage surrenders. Besides, I had never hear the end of it from Uncle Thomas.
*******
All of the travellers and pedlars on the road had either hurried away or disappeared into the nearby woods as soon as the fighting started. There was no trace of them except for a wain with two oxen in its traces that had been abandoned on the road with a great load of hay.
One of the archers used his knife to cut strips of linen from the tunic of one of the dead knights. We used them to tie the arms of four of our remaining prisoners behind their backs. The fifth was not tied. It was not necessary. He had two arrows in him and was in such agony that I considered letting one of his friends kill him as an act of mercy; he would not be a threat.
While the prisoners were being examined and tied, I had some of my men unload the hay and throw the prisoners and captured arms and saddles into the wain while others of them removed the oxen pulling it and replaced them with two of the captured horses. We took the rest of the captured horses with us for use as remounts. One of the archers picked up an apple left behind by a fleeing roadside pedlar and began eating it. He offered to cut a piece for me but I was too busy and too excited to be hungry.
Two very frightened and ragged serfs came out of the woods while we were loading the prisoners into the wain. They hesitantly approached us, and got down on their knees in front of me and began gobbling a local dialect I could hardly understand. They were obviously a father and son.
It was obviously their master’s wain and the father was terribly afraid of what would happen to him and his son “who is much too small to be whipped and beaten and might be sold” if they lost the wain and the oxen.
“Well, we cannot have that, can we?” I said once I understood.
“Alright then; you can drive the wain with the prisoners to Okehampton and bring it back to your master when we are finished with it.”
The man seemed relieved to the point of tears when he understood my words; he tried to kiss my hands and put my foot on his head. They must have a terrible master. It moved some of my men as well. Immediately afterwards, I noticed two of them talking intensely to the father and pointing in the direction of Cornwall.
A few minutes later the wain started its long trip to Okehampton with three outriders riding along side of the wain as its guards. The prisoners and the serf driving the wain did not know it, of course, but I had told the chosen man in charge of the patrol to immediately abandon the wain and its cargo if they run into trouble. If they do, they are either to ride back here or for Okehampton, whichever they think they would most likely reach safely.
I was deep in thought as my eight remaining men and I mounted our horses and once again began to move down the road towards where I had been told to establish a watching camp. We left as soon as the wain and its dispirited cargo of prisoners headed off in the other direction towards Okehampton and their uncertain future.
We left the dead Dunster men and their knight for the crows.
****** Lieutenant Raymond at Okehampton
George’s latest message was a great surprise and quite shocking; and, after a few words with the outriders who brought it to me and the captured squire from Dunster, I was sure it was true. The Earl of Devon was gathering some the dissident barons together to march against Cornwall. The young squire he would captured did not know why or how many. I was fairly sure I knew why; it was almost certainly an effort to seize the relics before we had a chance to sell them.
I talked things over with my wife, Wanda, as I always tried to do before I make a decision or send a message. She is from beyond the great desert and very good at thinking in her head.
Wanda pointed out that I could not be sure of anything. All I knew for sure was that at least one of the dissident barons was on his way to join up with the Earl of Devon and that a party of men led by one of the baron’s knights attacked George and his men.
If the squire was telling the truth, and I was rather sure that he was, it had been a king’s messenger on his way from London to Devon who had reported the presence of George and his men heading eastbound on the London road. Sir Joseph and his men had been sent to see who they were and what they were doing. But why had Sir Joseph and his men attacked George and his outriders? It was all very confusing.
In any event, my wife and I agreed that Captain William needed to know all this as soon as possible. I immediately had my new apprentice sergeant scribe a parchment reporting what had happened and sent two gallopers to deliver it to William at Restormel.
I asked Wanda what she thought William would make of my report and what he would do when he read it? She did not know.
Chapter Six
Who is coming for the relics?
Raymond did exactly the right thing when George sent in his message reporting his battle with the Dunster men, and what he would learnt from the men he captured—he sent a pair of gallopers straight to me to tell me all about it. I immediately summoned my available lieutenants, Thomas, Peter and Henry, and read them the message.
We could not be certain what it was all about. That was what my lieutenants and I decided after we talked it over. But it would appear that King John may have made peace with Devon and the barons, and agreed to grant them some of the things they wanted if they would get the relics so he could send them to the Pope. It was the only possible explanation—unless the barons were acting on behalf of Phillip of France or someone we did not know about. Why else would the barons and their men be gathering to attack us?
****** George
My greatly reduced force of outriders, eight men plus myself, continued on down the road after our fight with the Dunster knight and his men. We had lost almost an entire day, but our basic assignment, to watch the road for armies moving towards Cornwall, was not changed by our fight with the Dunster men or the information we had tortured out of our prisoners.
If anything, or so it seemed to me, watching the road and reporting on its travellers became even more important. In any event, my men were quite chuffed by our victory and began loudly telling each other all about it and what they had seen and done. Truth be told, I was fairly chuffed myself.
My men and I camped well off the London road on the night of the battle with the Dunster men and continued moving eastw
ard at sunup the next morning. Everything was normal along the road the next day, except that everyone we met already knew about the fighting and asked us about it.
Travellers fleeing the scene, it seems, had spread the word about the battle. It grew in size as we moved further and further away from the battle site until the breathless accounts from the travellers we met, to say nothing of the drinkers in the alehouses and the roadside pedlars along the way, had many armies involved and foretold the end of days.
The people we met seemed quite taken aback, even disappointed, when they heard our version of the story—that there had been an incident on the road with some robbers and they had been quickly put down even though, quite sadly, we had lost a man in the process. We were, we assured everyone who inquired, continuing on our way to Hathersage and London on our annual trip to get horses for our riders and increase our herd of brood mares.
******
Two exhausted gallopers bringing messages and supplies from Okehampton caught up with us on the second day after the battle. The gallopers came in on lathered horses with a staggering supply horse loaded with the cheeses and two flapping and squawking strings of the chickens I had requested. They reached us just as we were turning off the London road to set up a permanent camp on a hillside overlooking it.
It is a good thing the gallopers found us when they did; they would have missed us and continued on down the road if they had arrived ten minutes later. Their arrival increased my force to a total of eleven horse archers including me.
I did not lead my men and the two gallopers straight to the area I had selected for a campsite when we turned off the road. To the contrary, because there were a number of travellers and pedlars on the road watching, I led my little band up a little valley on the south side of the road—and then, much later, by the light of the almost full moon, we circled all the way around in the dark and re-crossed the road to reach the distant hillside site I had chosen north of the road. We had watch the road from here.
And we had watch from the other side of the road as well. I left two of the outriders and their horses on a hill on the south side of the road. They were to stay there out of sight, and ride for Okehampton to report if we were attacked and driven out of our main camp.
******
The messages the two gallopers brought in from Okehampton merely repeated what I had already been ordered to do by Uncle Raymond—continue to watch the road and every day send a courier in with a report as to what we have seen and heard. So that was what we did. Early the next day, before the sun came up, I sent a single rider to Okehampton with a report. I had him awake and on the road before daylight so no one would be able to know from whence he would come.
My courier always rode one saddled horse and led another; and he rode light carrying only one quiver of arrows, a water skin, his longbow, and a small sack of oats for his horses. If he rode hard, and was not delayed or intercepted, he should be able to make it to Okehampton by late that night or early the next morning.
******
Each day for the next three days, two gallopers arrived and I sent one of my men back with a “nothing important to report” message. The only significant message I received was a parchment order from my father on the second day—if we come across another armed party, and we are certain it is heading for Cornwall, my men and I are to immediately send a warning message and commence picking off the enemy couriers and foragers whenever we can safely take them.
We were, in other words, to begin doing as much damage to the enemy as possible, and keep it up for as long as possible. In the meantime, a messenger was to continue to be sent to Okehampton each day even if there was nothing of importance to report.
I immediately assembled my men and read the order to them—and promptly began worrying about the two archers on the big hill across from us who would not know what to do.
The next two days were idyllic and boring. We sat in the shade and watched the road, picked our teeth with blades of grass, and looked after our horses and our clothes and weapons. We also made some ancient weapons—sharpened wooden spears and a couple of old fashioned battle hammers with a large stone attached to the end of a cleft stick using strips of leather.
Each day two messengers arrived and each day I sent one messenger back to Okehampton with a “nothing special to report” report. I made no effort to contact the men on the hill on the other side of the road. I did not want to alert the pedlars and travellers on the road that we had two posts watching it.
I could have sent out two messengers each morning, of course, but I decided one man leading a spare horse had a better chance of getting through. Besides, it let me build up the number of men under my command to ten plus the two men on the hill on the other side of the road.
******
Everything changed on the fourth day after our battle with the Dunster men. It occurred four or five hours after I had sent off the day’s messenger in the early morning hours to once again report that everything was quiet.
It was late in the morning and I was leaning back against a tree and snoozing when I first heard our lookout’s excited call from down at the edge of the woods.
“Hoy, Sergeant. Riders on the road to the east. Looks like a lot of them and they are coming this way. Maybe soldiers on foot as well, but I am not sure yet. Please come quick.”
I started down the tree-covered hill towards the lookouts and so, quite dangerously, did all the rest of my men.
“Everyone stay where you are. Sergeants and chosen men, see to it.” I shouted. Then I added a bit of explanation. “We do not want them to see everyone moving about and know we are up here.”
Then I pointed at Samuel, one of my two file sergeants, and motioned with a "come on" motion of my hand for him to follow me. We hurried through the trees on the hill to the tree line and crept in next to our lookouts who were crouched down behind a fallen tree at the edge of the woods.
Once we were in place, Samuel and I carefully and slowly raised our heads to look at the road running through the valley below us. Of course, we raised them slowly; every experienced soldier knows it is movement that attracts the eye. Uncle Thomas made much of it when he was putting the learning on us in his school.
What I saw coming down the road towards us from the east was instantly recognizable for what it was—an army on the move towards Devon and Cornwall. There were hundreds of them, thousands more likely. The column soon stretched out along the road for as far as I could see. Travellers on the road below us were hurrying into the fields and forests on either side of the road to get out of its way.
What I did not see were any outriders scouting for enemies out in front of the column or off to its side. Whoever it was, they thought they had nothing to fear.
“Have you seen any outriders come past?” I inquired of the two lookouts as I settled in next to them. I looked at them keenly as I asked. It was an important question.
“No sergeant,” said the lookout closest to me, a chosen man with two stripes on his tunic gown. It was Alfred who had fought by my side at the tin mine. I smiled at him and gave him a nod of recognition.
“The damn fools. Well, they will pay for that mistake.” I said it loudly so all three of the men, not just Alfred, could hear; I wanted it to get back to the rest of my men so they had know we had be fighting an incompetently led army and their spirits would rise.
As the riders at the head of the column came closer and closer I could see that the army, for that was certainly what it was, was quite large, moving slowly, and very disorganized. In many ways, it was as if it was a long column of many different small armies instead of one large one.
I finally realized as the slow-moving army got closer and closer, that there were separate mini-armies of various sizes being led by lords and knights on horseback. Each lord was independently leading his own force of knights and retainers behind his own banner.
What I had not yet seen, at least not so far, was a great gathering of mounted men with
banners or a huge retinue of toadies and guards such as I would expect to see if King John or the leader of his army, William Marshall, were present. Maybe they are in the back of the column or will come later.
I had seen enough, however, and I wanted my messengers to get on the road safely ahead of the men in the slowly moving column. I motioned for Samuel to follow me as I slid backwards for a few feet and then turned around and ran through the trees until I reached the rest of my men. Before I did, however, I told Alfred and the other lookouts to start counting the mounted men and to put one stone in a pile for every ten knights and armed horsemen who rode or led a horse past us.
“And do not forget to include those who are walking and leading their horses or having a servant do it.”
******
“Fred, Guy.” I shouted as I ran up to my anxiously waiting men, all of whom were seeing to their horses and preparing for a rapid departure. “Each of you two take a spare horse as a remount and ride for Okehampton as fast as possible. Split up and travel on alone if you run into trouble. Do not stop until you reach the castle.
“Tell the Lieutenant that there is a large army, thousands of men and horses, on the road and moving slowly, very slowly, towards Devon and Cornwall. Tell him I said they are not likely to reach the turnoff to Okehampton for five or six days unless they speed up.
“Also tell him they appear to be very disorganized with each baron leading his own men and that they do not have outriders out to warn against attacks, although that may change once we start picking off their foragers and stragglers. Also, and this is important, tell him that, at least so far, there is no sign of the king or any of the king’s men.”
“Good man, Fred.” I said as he leaned down from his saddle to string his bow and then grabbed the reins of his remount. “Be careful and go with God. You too, Guy.”
The Captain's Men Page 5