“Maybe I shouldn’t have done that,” she said doubtfully. She went down on her knees and felt along the bottom row until she reached the fourth stone from the left. To enter, she had pushed against the left side, which now would be on the right. She placed her hand on the right side now and pushed again.
CLACK!
The door swung open again, and she breathed a sigh of relief. The thought of being trapped in here was not a pleasant one. Now she knew she would be able to get back out the way she had come in, and the sense of foreboding that had been growing in her chest was eased.
“Nothing to it really,” she said, mocking herself.
“Then let’s see where this tunnel goes,” she replied. She closed the door once more. Holding the lantern up, she stepped carefully into the dark tunnel, her feet slipping on the uneven clay beneath them.
A tangle of cobwebs brushed her face, and she shoved them aside impatiently. As she moved farther into the tunnel, she felt it sloping sharply beneath her feet. Again, she heard the skitter of paws and claws on the rock and clay. But she saw nothing.
“They’re more afraid of you than you are of them,” she said. Then she replied, “Are you afraid of them?”
This time, she didn’t answer. She preferred not to lie to herself.
She went on, stepping carefully as she felt the ground become softer underfoot. She held the lantern low and studied the tunnel floor. The clay was wet here as water forced its way through the roof and walls and dripped down. Her shoulder brushed the wall—there really wasn’t a lot of room down here—and left a smear of wet clay on her jerkin.
The air was chill and smelled of damp. More water dripped from the ceiling, and she pulled her collar up to shield herself from it.
“I must be under the moat,” she said, with some wonder in her tone. She tried to remember how wide the moat was. She seemed to recall it was eight to ten meters across, and she shuffled on, placing her feet carefully and counting her steps. The floor of the tunnel was level now. It was no longer sloping down.
Then it began to slope up once more and the dripping water gradually tapered off. Something was hanging from the ceiling of the tunnel, and she brought her lantern up to study it more carefully. It was a dense tangle of roots. She recognized it as the root ball of a sizable bush.
“I’m outside the walls,” she said. She looked along the length of the tunnel ahead of her, where the darkness swallowed the dim light of her lantern, and wondered how far it went. “Only one way to find out,” she said. And set out into the dark tunnel.
16
“How many do you think?” Gilan asked. Horace had been studying the enemy force, his eyes narrowed.
“At least a hundred,” he said, the anger evident in his voice. “Someone’s been lying to us,” he added. More troops were emerging from the trees and forming up with their comrades.
“That’s closer to a hundred and fifty,” Gilan said. “Three times the number we were told to expect.” The enemy formation was almost complete, he saw. They had formed in two ranks, spreading across the edge of the cleared ground. As they came closer, Gilan knew, the two ends of the line would advance ahead of the center, to enclose the small force on the riverbank. He turned and called an order. “Archers, two ranks. Here!”
He indicated a spot a few meters to their front. The archers ran to form up in two ranks of ten men each. Their equipment rattled and jingled as they moved, then fell silent when they were in position.
“Open order. Go,” Gilan said quietly, and the front rank stepped forward two long paces. They moved as one. Archers might not be much for parade ground drilling and moving like mindless puppets while a sergeant called the step. But this was different. This was part of their fighting technique, and they had practiced it over and over.
Horace nodded approvingly as they turned side on, each man with his bow ready in his left hand and his right resting on the nock of an arrow in his belt quiver. He turned to the cavalry officer.
“Lieutenant. Form your men on either side of the archers, please.”
As the lieutenant shouted his orders, the cavalry split into two parties. Half of them rode to the left flank of the archers, the others to the right. They formed in a single line, waiting.
“Shields,” the officer called. They had all been carrying their shields on their backs, and now they shrugged them around to the side, slipping their left arms through the arm and hand straps. Each man carried a long lance and they held them upright now, the butts supported in the small leather buckets on their right stirrups. The horses, bred to fight, moved restlessly, snorting and sniffing the air, sensing that a battle was imminent.
“They’re keen to go,” Gilan said easily.
Horace shrugged. “Horses can’t count,” he said. They were outnumbered more than three to one, as he’d noted earlier.
“So what now?” Gilan asked.
“We let them come to us,” Horace said. “No sense in charging them. They’ll simply form a shield wall and we’ll lose men trying to break it. Let’s use the archers to discourage them.”
Gilan nodded. Across the open ground, they could hear a series of orders being shouted.
“They sound like Sonderlanders,” he continued. “Whatever happened to ‘fifty men, untrained and poorly armed’?”
“At least there’s no cavalry,” Horace observed. “That’s something to be grateful for.”
Each of the men facing them carried an oblong shield made of wood, covered with hardened leather and rounded at the corners. Some were armed with spears, some with axes and the remainder with long swords. Most of them wore metal helmets. The others made do with hardened leather caps studded and banded with metal reinforcement.
“I’d say they’re mercenaries—at least some of them. Maybe half. And they’ve provided weapons and armor for the rest. As I said, somebody’s been lying to us.”
“Yes. We’ve been sold a pup. That looks certain,” Gilan agreed. “And it’s obvious that the six we’ve been following knew we were behind them and led us here into this ambush.”
“I can’t wait to speak to that villager who set us after them,” Horace said. “That is, if he’s still in the village. Odds are he’s rejoined his friends in the Foxes. Here they come.” He added the last as a command rang across the grassy space and the enemy line started to move forward.
“Archers!” Gilan called. “Five shafts each, alternating volleys. Ready!”
There was a whispering sound as twenty arrows were drawn from sheepskin-lined quivers and nocked onto bowstrings.
“Not yet,” Horace warned.
Gilan smiled sidelong at him. “I have done this before, you know.”
Horace made a small pacifying gesture with his right hand. “Sorry,” he said.
The Ranger Commandant let the enemy force advance another half dozen paces, then began to call his orders.
“Front rank, shoot!”
The front rank of ten men brought their bows up, sighted and released. They immediately sank to their knees. Before the arrows had reached their targets, Gilan called again.
“Rear rank, shoot!”
Another ten arrows whipped away, flights catching the air and creating a whistling sound as they did so.
“Front rank, shoot!” The front rank had stood once more as soon as the rear rank’s arrows were away. Now they drew and shot another volley. As they released, the sound of their first volley striking shields and men echoed across the field. Two of the enemy went down. Another three staggered from the heavy impact of the arrows on their shields, opening gaps in the line. At the same moment, the second rank’s volley smashed home and more gaps appeared.
“Rear rank, plunging volley, shoot!” Gilan called, and the second rank raised their aim point so that their arrows soared high into the air and plunged down onto the enemy’s rear line. Too late, the men b
ehind the front line raised their shields overhead. Four of them screamed and fell.
“Pick a target!” Gilan shouted. “Don’t just let fly! Front rank, shoot!”
Another volley slammed into the enemy formation. More men fell.
“Rear rank, shoot!”
The enemy advance hesitated, then stalled. Individual soldiers crouched and cowered behind their shields in the face of this deadly, implacable shooting. The archers were the pick of the Araluen bowmen. They had trained under the eagle eye of a retired Ranger and, aside from the members of the Ranger Corps itself, were probably the finest bowmen in the kingdom.
“Front rank, shoot!”
More arrows whimpered away, slamming into shields, helmets, and exposed arms and legs. Having the two ranks shoot alternately meant that the enemy was facing a continuous hail of arrows, a withering blizzard of death and injury. It was too much. One of the men in the front rank rose from his crouched position and shoved his way through the men at the rear, holding his shield behind him to protect him from those pitiless arrows. Then another joined him. Then three more. Then the entire force was running back toward the tree line and their furious commander.
“Cease shooting!” Gilan called, and the deadly hail stopped. But it was too late for the enemy to reform their men. They ran blindly back into the trees, past their officers, who leaned down from their saddles to strike at them with the flat of their swords.
“Nestor!” called Gilan to the commander of the archers—who he knew to be an above-average shot. “See if you can hit that fellow on the black horse for me.”
One of the mounted men at the tree line was obviously the leader of the enemy force. He was shouting abuse and insults at his men as they ran past him. The archer whom Gilan had addressed grinned as he nocked an arrow to his bowstring. He narrowed his eyes, estimating the range, then raised his bow past the horizontal, leaning back at the waist to do so, drew and released in one single movement.
They could follow the flight of his arrow until it disappeared against the bright sky. Gilan, with the skill of long experience, counted it down.
“Three . . . two . . . one . . .”
The enemy commander gave a sudden yell of pain and twisted in his saddle as the arrow plunged into his left shoulder. Caught by surprise and unbalanced by the heavy impact, he swayed, then fell heavily to the turf. Two attendants ran forward and half lifted him, dragging him back into the safety of the tree line.
“Well done, Nestor!” called Horace, and the others, cavalrymen and archers, applauded the shot. “You’ll have an extra ration of meat tonight.” He paused, studying the enemy, demoralized and cowed, their disciplined formation totally broken.
“Don’t think they’ll try that again.” He urged his horse forward and addressed the archers.
“How many of you can ride?” he asked, and all but five raised their hands. “Bareback?” he added and the hands remained raised.
“Us can’t afford fancy saddles.” One of the men grinned and the others laughed. After routing the enemy as they had, any joke would gain an appreciative reaction.
“What have you got in mind?” Gilan asked.
Horace indicated the troopers’ remounts, tethered to a rope line between two trees. “We’ve got twenty spare horses,” he said. “If we’re all riding, we should beat that rabble”—he gestured contemptuously at the enemy force—“to this ford your man told us about.”
“What about the five who can’t ride?” Gilan asked.
Horace pointed to the small cart that carried their provisions, camping equipment and spare weapons. “They can ride on the cart. It’ll be quicker than walking. But we should move now, before the enemy manage to reorganize their men.”
Quickly, they set about assigning horses to the men who had said they could ride. The five who couldn’t clambered aboard the supply cart.
“Your troopers are all expert horsemen,” Gilan pointed out. “They could let the archers have the saddled horses.”
But Horace shook his head. “If my men have to fight, they’ll need saddles and stirrups,” he said, and Gilan nodded, understanding. A man on horseback needed the support of stirrups and a saddle if he was going to use his lance and sword effectively.
“Good thinking,” he said. “Better detail two of your men as horse holders if the Foxes attack again. My archers will need to dismount and form up in a hurry, and we don’t want their horses getting away.”
Horace agreed and passed the order on to his troop commander. A few minutes later, the force was mounted and he signaled to Ellis to lead the way to the ford. The party trotted off, then increased speed to a canter, hooves thudding dully on the grass.
Horace glanced back over his shoulder at the Foxes. They were nursing their wounds and reluctant to move from the cover of the trees. On the green field between the trees and the river, eleven of their comrades lay where they had fallen.
17
It was cold in the tunnel, and the darkness seemed to swallow the light of the lantern after a few meters. Maddie walked in a slight crouch, because the roof was low—although occasionally it seemed to open upward for at least another meter. Judging by the way the ground underfoot became unsteady and uneven, she guessed that these were places where the tunnel ceiling had collapsed.
“Hope it doesn’t choose to do that while I’m down here,” she muttered. The possibility of being buried down here was an unpleasant one, and she realized, with a twinge of discomfort, that nobody knew where she was. If anything went wrong, she could be buried permanently. Maybe Uldred would remember that she had said she wanted to find the secret tunnels. But before any rescue party could set out after her, they’d have to solve the mystery of the concealed chamber in the lower cellar, then figure out how the secret door opened.
Then the ceiling became lower and the path became less cluttered and uneven, and she pushed the thought aside.
It was awkward making her way in the restricted space. With no light other than the glow of her lantern, she had no reference points to tell her how far she had come, and none to indicate how far she might have to go. Too late, she realized that she should have been counting her paces, to give her a rough idea of the distance she had covered.
“Some explorer you are,” she sniffed with disgust.
At least the walls and floor were dry, unlike the section that went under the moat. That had been unpleasant in the extreme, with water dripping down from the roof and the ground squishing underfoot with each pace.
Abruptly, she came to a blank wall of rock. It loomed out of the darkness, lit by her lantern, massive and unyielding. She felt a deep sense of disappointment. The journey ended here, in a dead end. There was no secret way out. The original diggers must have felt the same sense of despondency when they realized there was no way they could tunnel through this solid wall of granite that confronted them. She stepped forward, raising the lantern to study the rock more closely, and realized that this wasn’t the end after all.
The tunnel took a ninety-degree turn to the right to avoid the massive boulder that barred the way. The resultant path was narrow, and she had to turn side on and hold her breath to squeeze past it. But then the tunnel opened out and gradually curved back to resume its original direction. Her confidence grew once more as she followed the cleared path. Then the tunnel began to incline upward.
She stopped. After at least half an hour of stygian darkness, she thought she could see something up ahead. Unthinking, she advanced her lantern, and the brightness of its tiny yellow flame overpowered whatever it was she had seen—or imagined—in the distance. She lowered the lantern and held it behind her body to shield the light. Gradually, her eyes became accustomed to the near-total darkness around her, and then she could see it again.
A faint circle of light.
She held the lantern forward again, and the small gray circle disappeared. She
trudged on, stumbling occasionally on the rough floor of the tunnel, saving herself from falling with her free hand against the cold rock walls.
Ten paces. She had begun to count now. Then twenty. And now, the gray circle in the distance seemed to be clearly visible. She hid the lantern again and the grayness stood out more strongly, becoming almost white.
And it was twice the size it had been originally.
She had no way of knowing how far it was. She just kept trudging and stumbling over the uneven ground, trying to avoid staring directly at the lantern. Whenever she did that, it took several minutes for her vision to recover and become reaccustomed to the gloom.
She knew she must be getting close. The gray circle of light was growing larger with every pace. Gradually, it lost its circular shape and became oblong—more like a wide slit than a hole. The bottom was wider than the top, which tapered sharply.
She knew she was looking at the end of the tunnel now, and she increased her pace, stumbling once or twice in her impatience. Suddenly, she just wanted to be out of this dark, gloomy hole in the ground. She wanted to breathe fresh air and see the bright sunlight once more.
The exit didn’t open directly to the outside world. It made another right-angle turn—this time to the left—around a rock outcrop. She squeezed around the rock and found herself confronted by a thick mat of foliage, overgrown branches and leaves that hid the tunnel exit’s existence from passersby. She drew her saxe and began to hack at the tangle of leaves and branches, then stopped.
No point in cutting haphazardly, she realized. If she did that, she’d leave the entrance exposed. She worked more discreetly, cutting only enough of the bushes to allow her passage through. Then she forced her way between the thick vines and the unyielding rock and shoved herself out into the open air.
The Red Fox Clan Page 12