by Wayne Grant
“I called Roland Inness a traitor to our people when first he came to us with this bargain,” he said. “I thought him a creature of the Normans, but he has stood with us in this fight when he could have run.” He stopped and gathered himself. “I take back my words,” he said flatly. “Roland Inness is a Dane.” With that, he limped to his place and nodded curtly toward Roland. Roland nodded in return, then spoke to the assembled fighters..
“Each man will hold his place on the ridge as long as possible,” he began. “When the mercenaries began to break through, Thorkell will blow three blasts on a hunting horn. It’s your signal to turn and run for the clearing in the valley. The enemy will not be far behind and if they run us to ground, we are all dead men.” He stopped to let his words have their effect. “But that will not happen. Those men have shields and mail and even if they did not, they could never outrun a Dane.”
“Not one who’s running for his life!” someone called from the crowd to nervous laughter.
Roland smiled. Men who could jest were not yet beaten.
“Aye, we run for our lives, and we could outrun them all the way to Chester, but we won’t. Your families cannot outrun them, so we must slow them. When these bastards think we are no more than hares to be chased, we must turn and show our teeth. You longbowmen, you will find the lowlands to your liking. There’s not a man among you that can’t drop a deer—or a man at two hundred paces, but here,” he said, gesturing to the surrounding mountains and thick forests, “you rarely can see a man at more than fifty paces. Below, the land is flatter and there are open fields with nowhere for them to hide. There are a hundred places between here and Chester where we can strike at them and fall back before they can close on us. We might not be able to kill them all, but, by God, we will bloody them all the way to Chester if needs be.”
He finished and looked at the tired faces of the men in the clearing. It was a simple enough plan, but he had not told them all the risks. If the infantry could get within lance and sword range, the advantage of the archers was lost and the foot soldiers would slice them to pieces. It was true that the Danes could easily outrun the more heavily armed infantry, but it was not the infantry that left him unsettled—it was the cavalry.
The Danes could not outrun cavalry.
If mounted men found them in the open they would close on the archers too quickly for their bows to save them. Declan’s scouts had counted four hundred armoured knights among the foreign troops. If even a small part of that force caught them on the march, it would be a bloody slaughter.
Mounted troops were useless in the mountains and none had been seen in the valley at the base of Kinder Scout. Perhaps they had moved on toward York and were not a real threat, but with the foot soldiers engaged against the Danes, he doubted they were far off. The valley where Castleton lay had excellent pasturage for mounted stock and he guessed that this was where the cavalry was encamped, waiting for the infantry to clear the mountains.
He had held his tongue about the threat of cavalry. But once the foot soldiers fought their way to the summit of Kinder Scout and realized that the Danes had fled, they would send word for the mounted troops to take up the pursuit—if that force was as near as Castleton. Roland hoped to delay that until at least early afternoon. That would give the fleeing families a twelve hour head start. It was the best he could hope for.
The men left behind continued to feed wood to the flames so that the glow in the sky was visible to the men on the far side of the ridge. Roland wandered away from the campfires to think. He had done the same the night before he led the assault on the Bridgegate at Chester in the spring. That night, Millicent de Laval had found him standing in the dark and his life had not been the same since. He wondered what she would think when he led nine hundred Danes into Chester. She would have to figure out how to feed that many more mouths should the mercenaries lay siege to the city.
Let’s cross one river at a time.
He turned to the east and looked off in the direction of the lowlands, toward the Irish Sea and Chester. It was a beautiful summer evening and in the high country the night sky was clear. Even with bonfires roaring behind him he could see a blaze of stars above. He turned back toward the clearing and saw Oren had already curled up to sleep. That was good.
Tomorrow would be a long day.
***
William de Ferrers stood outside his tent and looked to the west. All across the eastern slopes of the hulking ridgeline of Kinder Scout, there were points of light where fires burned. His mercenaries had almost reached the crest in the afternoon and had been ordered to hold their advanced positions even as night fell. They would spend the night under arms and continue the assault at first light.
Above the ridgeline a fainter glow could be seen that could only be the campfires of his stubborn enemy. The Danes were still there and that pleased the Earl of Derby. By sundown tomorrow, his troops would overrun what was left of the defenders on the mountain, then he would have his accounting with Danes.
The men he would hang as traitors—and the rest? They would be dispersed throughout Derbyshire as serfs to his favoured tenants. This high country that had been their redoubt for a hundred years would be scoured clean of them. The land was practically worthless and would be left for the deer and grouse to roam.
Turning away, he raised the flap of his campaign tent and entered. His servant had his cot prepared. The tent had been specially made for him and was far more spacious and well-appointed than the quarters of the mercenary commanders. Still, he hated sleeping out in this wilderness and would have preferred his accommodations at Peveril Castle, only a league away. But this was no normal night and he knew he would sleep well in these rough conditions.
For tomorrow he would put an end to the Danes.
Chester
Declan O’Duinne had just begun to wolf down his midday meal when a young man burst into the barracks at Chester. He was one of the boys from the city who had come forward to join the new garrison and he almost tripped over his spear entering the small room off the kitchen where the men took their meals. A month ago he had been a labourer at the tannery. Now he manned the Eastgate.
“Sir, armed riders at the Eastgate. Say they’ve come from London, sir. We closed the gate. Thought we should check with you before lettin’ ‘em in.” All this he got out without taking a breath.
Declan finished swallowing a mouthful of leek pottage and wiped his mouth.
“How many?”
“I counted thirteen, sir”
“What were their horses like?”
This caused the young gate guard to pause. He was no expert on horses, having never ridden one, but he knew a spavined nag when he saw one.
“They looked to be of poor quality and hard used, I would say.”
Declan nodded and picked up a chunk of black bread.
“Let’s go have a look.”
When he arrived at the Eastgate, there was a small crowd of garrison troops and idle citizens looking over the wall at the road below. He climbed to the wall walk and looked himself. There were, indeed, thirteen men in the group and they looked as worn out as their horses. All were armed, after a fashion. None had mail, but all carried a spear or sword. They looked nervous, but resolute. Declan sent the gawkers on their way and called down to the men outside the gate.
“Identify yourself.”
A lone man urged his horse forward. He was small and lean and fatigue showed on his dust-lined face, but his eyes were keen.
“We’ve come from London. Been six days on the road to get here. We are soldiers—all of us—veterans who served with the King. We hear there are others like us who have done some proper soldiering out in these parts and we’ve come to join them. We’ve come to find the Invalid Company.”
Declan looked more closely at the men on the dusty road outside the gate. The man who had spoken had a hook where a hand should have been. Another was missing an arm to the elbow. A man near the back appeared to have a disfigu
red face, covered in part by his hood.
More broken men.
“I have patrols out east watching the roads,” he called down to the men. “Were you not stopped?”
The lean man rubbed his chin.
“We don’t ride in strange country, my lord, without we keep a scout out ahead of us. He saw yer lads and they didn’t see him. So we just went around. Plenty enough small roads and trails, if ye’ve a mind to use ‘em.”
Declan smiled. Patch had charge of the eastern approaches to the city. He would not be happy to hear these men had got around his boys. He turned to the lad who had fetched him from the barracks.
“Run, go bring me Patch. He’s asleep in the barracks. Tell him to come to Eastgate. He has visitors.”
The boy turned and ran down the steps to the street and off toward the centre of town. Declan turned back to the men outside.
“Drop your weapons on the road.”
There had been too many unpleasant surprises at the gates of Chester for him to risk another. The men on the road looked nervously at each other.
“You’ll get them back—after we’ve had a closer look at you.”
There were harsh whispers between the men, but the wiry man with the hook hand drew his sword and dropped it in the dust. Then one-by-one the others dropped spears and daggers and bows as well.
“Open the gate!” Declan commanded and the men in the gatehouse began to crank the windlass that raised the portcullis. Before it cleared the arch of the Eastgate, Declan saw Tom Marston, known to all as Patch, hurrying up the street from the barracks. He arrived as the men from London rode in and dismounted. Declan met him beside the gatehouse.
“These men have come from London. They look for the Invalid Company.”
Patch inspected the newcomers with a baleful look in his one good eye.
“Looks like they’ve spent the summer sleeping in the gutters of London,” he said under his breath.
The Irishman smiled.
“You looked much the same the day we first met outside the walls of Oxford, Tom.”
Patch hooted.
“Aye, true enough. I didn’t get proper sober until we were two days on the march. So let’s take a look at these men.”
He turned and called to the group of thirteen men who stood beside their horses in the street.
“Who here fought with the King at Acre or Arsuf?”
The wiry man stepped forward.
“All save three of us fought with Richard in the Holy Land. Henry back there,” he gestured toward the man with the maimed face, “took a crossbow bolt through the jaw outside of Messina when the King was chastising Tancred. John and Alfred,” he pointed to the two tallest men in the group, “were badly wounded when the King seized Cyprus from the Byzantines. We all fought for the Lionheart, one place or another—every one of us.”
“And why are you here? Did you grow weary of the hospitality in London?”
“Aye, ye might say that. I’ll not deny we’ve partaken of the drink and the women of London, but that’s what a soldier does when there’s no fightin’ to be done. We hear there might be work for men such as us in Chester. We hear that there are others—like us—that have done some proper soldiering out this way. We come lookin’ for the Invalid Company.”
Patch seemed puzzled by the man’s answer.
“So Sir Declan informs me, but how did you come to know of the Invalid Company, or where to find us?
Now the reed-thin man smiled for the first time.
“Let me sing you a song makin’ the rounds of the taverns in London.”
***
A mile east of Chester, along the main road that ran from the city down to Wroxeter, Millicent de Laval sat on her favourite bay mare, a wide-brimmed hat on her head to gain a little shade in the blazing afternoon sun. She had ridden out that morning, both to see how the harvest was progressing and to simply get out of the city and move.
She and her mother had been tasked with replenishing the food stocks at Chester and there were endless issues to attend to—but none more important than getting in the harvest. William de Ferrers had taken the city through treachery the year before and had stripped the storehouses of grain. That grain had been shipped off to London or Ireland or France for gold—gold to fill Prince John’s coffers—gold to hire a mercenary army.
Earl Ranulf had reclaimed his city in the spring, but now he had to defend it with too few men and no stores. The wealth stolen from Cheshire had paid the mercenaries who had captured the castle at Nottingham. Those same mercenaries could, on the Prince’s whim, turn on Chester at any time.
Chester’s walls had repelled many enemies over the centuries since they had been thrown up by the Romans. Britons, Welshmen, Saxons, and Danes had all tested those walls and had died bloody deaths in the ditch that lay at their base. In the early years of his rule, Ranulf had paid little attention to the defence of his city. The walls had fallen into disrepair and the ditch had eroded and become choked with weeds and brambles. The Earl’s garrison had been undermanned, poorly trained and undisciplined. But Ranulf had learned a sobering lesson when de Ferrers had snatched the place from him.
Once he’d recovered his city, the Earl put the people of Chester to work repairing the walls and cleaning out the overgrown ditch, which was deepened and lined with sharpened stakes. Over the summer, a good four hundred men had been recruited from the town and surrounding countryside for the city garrison. They were green, but had been given sufficient training to man sections of the wall.
Those walls stretched for two miles around the city. A thousand men would have been needed to properly man them, but Chester was fortunate. It was nestled in a great bend in the Dee, making attack from the south or west nearly impossible. The garrison need fully man only the north and east walls. It was a thin force, but four hundred men, well led, could probably hold those walls.
Millicent had been pleased to learn that a new group of veterans had arrived just the day before to expand the ranks of the Invalid Company, the hard kernel of the Earl’s fighting force. And in ways few had expected, Ranulf of Chester was finally growing into a leader of men—a true Marcher Lord.
Chester was prepared to withstand a direct assault, but it was a siege that worried Millicent. Without the harvest, the city would begin to starve in a fortnight. All summer she had watched anxiously as the crops ripened in the fields. The growing season had been kind. There had been enough rain, blowing in from the Irish Sea to the west and more than the usual amount of sun.
The harvest traditionally began the first week of August, but by mid-July the seed heads had turned golden and drooped with their weight. The yield promised to be better than she had hoped—more than enough to fill every grain bin in the city. As she watched the crops ripen, Millicent prayed they would be able to bring them in from the fields before John’s army turned back toward Cheshire.
The day before, as though in answer to her prayers, those who tended the crops declared the winter wheat ready for gathering. It was a full fortnight sooner than expected and the spring barley was only a few days away from ripening. Overnight, Lady Catherine mobilized half the population to march out of the city and begin the reaping at dawn.
Millicent watched as rows of men and women bent low and rhythmically swung their scythes, leaving a foot of wheat stubble standing for the cattle to graze. Another row came behind gathering up the precious stalks into bundles and loading them onto wagons. Some of the reapers moved with the steady rhythm of long practice and others, more used to city occupations, cut and gathered clumsily, but all worked with an energy born of fear. They had heard of the starvation at Nottingham.
Once the wagons were filled, they trundled from the fields through the Eastgate and the Northgate—delivering the bundles of grain to barns within the city. There the grain was threshed and sent to the granaries or to the grist mills that took their power from the weir that held back and channelled the waters of the Dee.
The weather
for harvesting was ideal, hot and calm. If they got the wheat in along with the barley, they could sustain a siege for five months, perhaps longer. It would be time enough for the King to return from the crusade and put a halt to his brother’s plans. Time enough for her father to return.
Millicent looked through the haze at the far horizons to the east and north. She knew that Declan O’Duinne had sentinels watching every major road leading to Chester from those directions and patrols that ranged even further afield. If a mercenary army marched on Chester, they would not be surprised. The city had changed hands twice in the past year through surprise assaults and Earl Ranulf was determined that it would not happen again.
Satisfied that all that could be done was being done, she turned her horse’s head and rode back toward Chester. She trotted through the Eastgate and slid from her saddle at the stables that stood a block inside the city wall. It had been a long hot day, but she was restless. She thought she would go to the wall at sunset to watch the river cascade over the weir. Watching the waters of the Dee made her think of her sunset strolls with Roland Inness on the walls overlooking the river.
He had been gone for almost a fortnight now. The days had not been so bad, caught up as she was in the whirlwind of her daily tasks. But come evening, her mind could not help but go to him. She wondered where he was and if he was safe. She wondered when he would come home. She wondered all the things a soldier’s woman wonders when her man has gone in harm’s way.
***
A lone rider arrived outside the Eastgate of Chester at sundown on the second day of harvesting. He announced that he was a courier, come from London with a message for Lady de Laval. The Corporal of the Guard escorted him to the castle where the evening meal was about to be served. The courier stood patiently while the Corporal spoke quietly to the Captain of the Guard who then ushered the man into the great hall.
There were only three people taking their meal at the table. They all paused as the courier approached. He stopped and bowed, then withdrew a rolled parchment from his tunic. It had an impressive red wax seal on it.