The Splintered Kingdom c-2

by James Aitcheson

‘That’s right.’ It was so long since I had been back to the land of my birth that most of the time I regarded myself as French, so it was always strange to hear someone call me that. On the other hand I knew that the Bretons as a people were said to be kinsfolk to the Welsh, and perhaps that slight link counted for something with them. Certainly I had heard it mentioned that our two tongues were closely related, and I had come across more than one Breton merchant who claimed to be able to converse freely with people of the various ports they frequented in Wales. Perhaps they possessed a better ear for language than I did, however, for while I could sometimes pick out a word or two that sounded familiar, and others the meaning of which I might be able to guess, the Welsh had a strange way of pronouncing everything that seemed harsh to my ear and which I still found largely impenetrable, despite having often crossed paths with their kind in the past year.

  ‘Fitz Osbern has told us a great deal about you,’ said Ithel. He was slightly rounder, with a ruddy complexion and ears that stuck out from the side of his head.

  ‘Only good things, I trust,’ I replied, managing a smile. In all the time I’d spent in these parts I hadn’t known anyone from across the dyke who was not my enemy, and I couldn’t help but be suspicious of them, even though outwardly they seemed honest enough.

  Roughly speaking both were of an age with myself, I reckoned, though at first glance one would have been forgiven for thinking that they were some years older, for their stony expressions and cold gazes seemed to me those of men who had trodden the sword-path for several years. Their faces were lined with the scars of battle: scars that spoke to me of faded glories, of victories long-forgotten, of kingdoms stolen and birthrights denied.

  Even if I hadn’t known beforehand, I would have guessed that they were brothers. As well as being similarly featured, both were dark-haired and possessed the broad shoulders and thick arms of a blacksmith. They wore their hair short, as did most of their men, who came in all sizes and ages, from long-limbed youths to large-bellied men of forty, armed with all kinds of weapons from simple knives, hunting bows and short-handled wood-axes to long spears and swords. A diverse band if ever I saw one, though what mattered most of all was their temperament in the heat of the melee, and that I could not know. Still, they looked like men who could acquit themselves in a fight, which was more than I had been expecting.

  Before we left Lord Robert came to wish me luck. He was equipped for war, ready to ride out under the Wolf’s banner: dressed in hauberk and chausses, the chain links newly polished and gleaming in the light of the morning. For all that, though, he did not look entirely comfortable. Whilst he was proficient enough at arms, he was not a warrior by nature. He lacked the battle-hunger of a man whose living was made by the sword as mine was, and we both knew it.

  ‘I hope you realise what it is you are undertaking,’ he said. ‘Beatrice said before that you were foolish, and she was right. You didn’t have to put yourself forward.’

  ‘If you’d wanted, you could have prevented me.’ He would have been within his rights as my lord to do so. The fact that he hadn’t I took as a sign of his respect for me.

  ‘I have no desire to lose you or any of my vassals,’ he said. ‘But I won’t deny you this opportunity, so long as you understand that by accepting this task you take your fate into your own hands. This is not as simple as hunting down a pack of raiders as you did last month. The Wolf, Fitz Osbern and I need to rely on you if we are to succeed.’

  ‘I know that, and I understand.’

  ‘Be sure that you do.’ His expression was stern. ‘If I have one piece of advice to offer, it is this: be wary of the princes Ithel and Maredudd. They will remain loyal only as long as they have something to gain by doing so, regardless of what oaths they might have made. Keep a close watch over them, and trust them only as far as you have to.’

  ‘I will, lord.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate the enemy, either. The Welsh are more cunning than I think even Fitz Osbern realises, and with Wild Eadric and the English rebels on their side as well, they will be more confident than ever.’

  If he thought I didn’t already know this, he was mistaken, but I listened patiently regardless. There was a certain anxiety in his demeanour that I rarely saw, although it was impossible to know whether he was nervous for my sake or because he was mindful of the challenges facing him also. Whichever it was, it sent a chill through me. Only then did I realise the immensity of the responsibility I was about to shoulder.

  ‘God be with you, Tancred,’ Robert said.

  ‘And with you, lord.’

  We bade each other farewell and he returned to where Earl Hugues was mustering his forces across the river, leaving me a conroi of his knights and Wace and Eudo too. The three of us had not ridden together in so long, and my mood lightened, though only briefly, as from the other direction I glimpsed the stout figure of Berengar with more than a dozen men beneath a banner decorated in horizontal stripes of scarlet and sky blue. He stopped his snorting destrier in front of me, though he did not deign to dismount.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, more out of surprise than anything else.

  ‘Rest assured I haven’t come out of choice, if that’s what you mean,’ Berengar replied sourly. ‘Fitz Osbern in his wisdom has decided I should accompany you on this reckless enterprise, though God only knows why he thinks I’d wish to take orders from the likes of you.’

  To say that his abruptness didn’t rankle would have been a lie, but if we were to fight alongside one another then somehow his quarrel with me, whatever it was, had to be settled. ‘Berengar, if I’ve offended you-’

  He cut me off. ‘Don’t waste your breath trying to win me over, either. I’ll do my part, have no fears about that. But let me warn you from the beginning that you’ll get no favours from me.’

  Before I could say anything in reply, he gave a signal to his men and then rode off in the direction of a group of lords who were gathering by the banks of the river where they had planted their pennons.

  ‘What was that about?’ asked Wace as he and Eudo joined me.

  I shrugged; he had about as much notion as I did. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘You always were quick to make enemies,’ Eudo said with a grin. ‘What did you do this time?’

  When first we had met as boys, Eudo had not much liked me either, although that was due to the bloodied nose I had given him, and the wound to his pride.

  ‘If only I knew,’ I muttered, casting a glance towards the river, where Berengar was laughing at a joke told by one of his knights, in better spirits all of a sudden. Whatever the cause of his ill humour, it seemed it was reserved for me alone. Already in spite of myself I was taking a dislike to his pudgy face and his ridiculous beard.

  I changed the subject, not wishing to dwell on it any longer. ‘Are these the last of the men who’ll be joining us?’ I asked, nodding towards the conroi that had recently arrived.

  ‘As far as I know,’ Eudo said.

  I called for Snocca to bring me my helmet with its newly attached strips of scarlet cloth — the tail that signified that I was the leader of this expedition — and then vaulted up into Nihtfeax’s saddle. After waving to Pons, who promptly gave the two sharp blasts upon the horn that were the signal for the rest of our host to rally, I beckoned to Eudo and Wace to join me as I rode to the head of the column. The new day was already upon us, the bright disc of the sun breaking over the clustered rooftops of Scrobbesburh, and as it did so a thrill stirred within me: a thrill that I had not felt in many months.

  For the black hawk was flying proudly in the breeze, its wings spread wide, its talons outstretched as if stooping upon its prey, and Tancred a Dinant was at last riding to war.

  Our route led us south at first. We could have followed the wide valley of the river Saverna, since that presented the easiest country for riding, but the enemy would be expecting that, and it was known they often sent out scouts down either bank to keep watch for any sign of hor
semen and to carry back warnings of impending attack. By taking the Roman way towards Hereford instead, I hoped that we might fool them into thinking that we were simply sending reinforcements to the castles that held the southern end of the March.

  We kept a steady pace for half the day, maintaining the ruse for long enough that even the wariest of the enemy scouts who might be watching should have abandoned their suspicions. A few miles after Stratune, then, we left the road and made for the long mountain that rose to the west. Up steep-sided vales we climbed, through dense woods and across clear-tumbling streams. The paths were narrow and ill travelled, overhung by thick branches that forced us to dismount, and often we had no choice but to go in single file: a long string of men and horses stretching for as much as a mile and possibly more. Whenever we found ourselves in open ground I called a halt so that the rearguard could catch up, and so we did not make nearly as much progress as I would have liked, but it was progress nonetheless, and I tried to be content with that.

  By dusk we found ourselves leading our horses across high heathlands, bright with purple flowers that matched the colour of the sky. Valley after valley stretched out before us: creases and folds in the fabric of the earth, endlessly rising and falling all the way to the distant horizon. Rocky outcrops rose like islands out of the sea of heather, and as the light faded we set up camp in the lee of one of those tors, not because it was especially sheltered, but for want of anywhere better, and because at least there was forage enough for our horses. We had some way to go before reaching the plains on the other side of this mountain, and I thought it better not to risk our mounts’ necks descending the slopes in the dark. At the very least I hoped that there we would have some protection from the wind, which swept across the land in fierce gusts from the west: a sure sign of worse weather to come.

  If truth be told it was far from the best sleep I’d ever had; the ground was hard and littered with jagged stones, making it hard to settle. Nor did the tor offer as much respite from the elements as I had hoped; some of the men lost their tents entirely and were forced to share, sleeping four or five together, which did nothing to improve their moods the next day.

  No sooner had we left Scrobbesburh behind us, in fact, than quarrels began to break out between the Welsh and the French parts of our host, who resented being made to march together, and while few of those came to blows, the further we travelled, the more frequent they grew. Thankfully Maredudd and Ithel were as eager as I was to foster a closer spirit between the two camps, and to set an example we made sure to ride together in the vanguard when we set out that second day: myself with my conroi, which included my knights as well as those that Robert had placed under my charge; and they with their teulu, which was almost the same thing, being the name they gave to their hearth-troops, their household warriors, their ablest and staunchest fighters; men who would give everything short of their lives in the service of their lords. It did not stop each side hurling insults at the other, but at the very least there was no more fighting after that, and that was enough to satisfy me. I only hoped the peace would last.

  ‘Once they sniff enemy blood, they will be much happier,’ said Maredudd confidently. ‘There will be less trouble then, I think.’

  I cast him a sceptical look but said nothing. In my experience once men discovered the bloodlust within themselves it was a hard thing to shake. I had seen with my own eyes many occasions when as many men had died fighting between themselves over the spoils of victory as had been slain in their pursuit.

  Within a few hours of breaking camp we had left the mountain behind us, eventually crossing the dyke shortly before midday. The deeper we marched into Powys, the more familiar the princes grew with the country, and the more swiftly we were able to travel. They knew not only which landmarks we ought to watch out for but also the best places to ford each river, whether to skirt around or else to cut through the woods that clung to the sharply rising slopes. We foraged as we went, filling our wineskins at springs and streams, sending small bands of men out to hunt deer or to steal cattle and sheep from the villages and farms we passed, all the while taking care to conceal our true numbers. News would quickly spread that a Norman raiding-party was afield, and that was all part of Fitz Osbern’s intention, but our exact strength I wanted to remain a secret, since that way the enemy would be kept guessing.

  Not that we saw much sign of them; not, that was, until late on the second day. The brothers and I had sent out our fastest riders to scout out the land ahead and to our flanks to determine what our next move should be, and one of those returned that afternoon saying that he had spied a band of Welshmen one hundred strong mustering inside some ramparts not an hour’s ride upriver.

  ‘Caerswys,’ Ithel said as he wiped some of the sweat from his brow, and his brother nodded sagely.

  ‘You know of it?’ I asked them.

  ‘Know of it?’ Maredudd echoed. ‘We fought there once against the English many years ago, and won ourselves a great victory, short-lived though it was.’

  Ithel nodded solemnly, and in his eyes I saw sadness. ‘Not a month after that our father lay dead, our once-proud army was shattered and our kingdom was stolen from us.’

  Much as I felt for their plight, this was not the time for reminiscences. What mattered was those hundred Welshmen, and what we planned to do about them. ‘What about the place itself?’

  ‘It’s one of the forts left behind by the Romans,’ Ithel replied. ‘When we were there we erected a stockade on top of the ramparts and set sharpened stakes in the ditches, but even if those are no longer standing, it is a hard place to capture.’

  Of that I had no doubt, but then I had little intention of trying to take it. The likelihood was that the enemy did not mean to garrison the fort in any case: if the scout’s estimate of their numbers was reliable, they had too few men for that, and besides there seemed little reason to defend this spot when it lay so many miles from the borderlands. Instead I guessed they were merely stopping there, and that tomorrow they would march northwards to join the rest of Bleddyn and Rhiwallon’s host.

  Any lingering hopes I might have held of storming that stronghold faded when first I glimpsed it. Night was fast approaching by then and it was hard to discern much in the gloom and the mist settling over the flood plain, but they had made campfires inside the stronghold and their faint glow was enough for my eyes to make out a series of earthen banks and ditches arranged in a rough rectangle, with the remains of what looked like a stone gatehouse at the eastern end. A timber palisade did indeed run along the top of the earthworks, although from such a distance it was impossible to tell its condition: whether it had been repaired in the years since Ithel and Maredudd had made their stand there, or whether it was already rotten, in which case all that would be needed were a few swift axe blows before it fell.

  ‘There’s a breach on its northern side,’ said Eudo, whose sight was better than mine. ‘Too narrow to make an attack, though.’

  Not that any of the other approaches looked more promising, for Caerswys stood at the meeting-point of two fast-flowing rivers, meaning that it was protected by water to south and west, and while the Welsh brothers assured me that both were fordable I knew it would be all too easy for the enemy to see us coming and hold us at those crossings. The only other choice we had, then, was to try to assault the gatehouse, but that would be well defended and would surely mean the loss of many lives, which we could ill afford, especially when we had other choices at hand.

  ‘What do you suggest?’ asked Wace.

  ‘We wait until morning,’ I said. ‘They’ll leave sooner or later, and when they do, we’ll be ready for them.’

  After posting sentries to keep a lookout for any signs of movement, I returned to where the rest of our host were waiting. From there we marched along the ridge that rose to the north of the fort, travelling in groups of no more than twenty at a time so that we would be less easily seen. Shadows shrouded the hills and cloud obscured the skies, and so
it seemed doubtful that the enemy would spot us, but even so, one could never be too careful.

  Several cart-tracks led out from the fort, heading in all directions along the two river valleys as well as into the hills, but only one led north. Suspecting that was the one that the enemy would take, I left Maredudd around half a mile from the fort with a contingent of spearmen and the forty or so archers we possessed. The gorse was thick enough there that they could easily lie hidden within arrow-shot of the road. At the same time his brother Ithel and I took the rest of our host — some three hundred men, most of them mounted — over to a clump of trees that stood a further quarter-mile away on the other side of the track, on the highest part of the ridge, where we might see the enemy but they would find it difficult to see us.

  And there, with our trap set, we waited. By the time our whole host was in place, though, I reckoned it could only be a few hours until first light. My eyes stabbed with tiredness but I knew that I would not be able to sleep even if I tried; already I could feel my heart beginning to pound, my sword-arm tensing, though the prospect of battle lay some while off still. My feelings were shared by Eudo and Wace, as well as my own knights, and so in order to keep them busy I sent them all to keep watch whilst I did the rounds of the men, conferring with the other barons and making sure that they all knew what they were supposed to do. We held the advantage not just in numbers but also in position, and so it ought to be a simple victory, but all the same I knew better than to get complacent. When it came to war I was only too aware that things were never quite as easy as one imagined.

  ‘Your plan had better work,’ Berengar said when my path brought me to him to his companions. ‘Otherwise I’ll see that you pay for each one of my men who loses his life fighting in your cause.’

  I shrugged. ‘If it doesn’t work, we’ll all be dead men.’

  He scowled, but evidently could think of nothing else to say, and I moved on. Yet even as I walked away I could feel the weight of his gaze pressing upon my back, and I shivered in spite of myself, sensing that if I were not careful his knife might be in there before too long. Straightaway I castigated myself for the thought. Whatever grievance he harboured, surely it was not so serious that he would wish me dead because of it?