Crossroads in Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  Dafydd curved back to the road, by now only ten yards from the ford, and swung Cadfarch around to face north. Half a dozen of his men had come with him, but an equal number had been unhorsed and the road in front of them was strewn with the dead and dying. Lili had seen a battle when they’d taken Painscastle, but hadn’t known what it was like from the back of a horse. She’d never felt the fear of holding onto the man she loved while he fought, praying that he wouldn’t be struck down with her arms around him.

  “It should never have come to this!” Dafydd’s words carried above the sound of the river behind them. He urged Cadfarch back towards the center of the road, driving towards an English solder who held a Welsh man-at-arms on the ground and was about to thrust a sword through his belly. Dafydd swung his sword and decapitated the man.

  In the half a heartbeat it took for the man to die, a spray of blood coated Dafydd, the horse, and Lili. Even as it arced in the air towards her, Lili shrieked and tried to cover her eyes.

  “Sorry.”

  That one word from Dafydd left Lili gasping. It was so matter-of-fact and yet told her that he wished she hadn’t seen that; he wished he hadn’t had to kill the man right in front of her.

  Lili didn’t say, “it’s okay,” though the words were on the tip of her tongue. They would be a lie, however, and she was done lying to Dafydd, even about this. Instead, she clutched her arms more tightly about his waist and pressed her forehead into his back. The rough wool of his cloak, over the hard metal of his mail armor, scraped at her skin. It felt good to feel something besides her inward horror.

  Dafydd cleared his throat. “It’s over.”

  Lili still didn’t want to look. Dafydd changed direction and trotted Cadfarch to the edge of the road, to where Math knelt, holding the hand of a fallen soldier. It was Owain, Dafydd’s captain, wounded to death. Lili tasted ash and she swallowed hard for the hundredth time, trying not to completely fall apart in a storm of tears.

  “Let me down, Dafydd,” Lili said.

  He gave her his elbow to hold onto. He held still, solid as a rock, as she slid off Cadfarch, and then Dafydd dismounted too. He crouched beside Owain and took his hand.

  “My lord.” A trickle of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. “I failed—”

  “Shh,” Dafydd said. “All is well. You did not fail—neither me nor yourself.”

  “The English—”

  “Are defeated,” Dafydd said.

  Owain closed his eyes. His chest rose and fell once, and then not again.

  Dafydd gazed down at Owain for a count of ten and then got to his feet. He turned to Math. “Where’s William?”

  Math pointed with his chin towards the river. “I left him in a tree near the water.”

  “I’ll see to him,” Lili said, glad for something—anything—to do other than look at the dead men on the ground.

  Only a few hours earlier, she’d forded the Wye River by herself and walked north along this very road. A lifetime ago. Lili brushed back the tears that had formed in her eyes at Owain’s death. She hadn’t even known the man, but that death should come to any of them … Lili spun on one heel, wanting to run away, wanting to be anywhere but where she was.

  Instead, she ran to the tree Math had indicated. William, however, wasn’t in it. He leaned against the trunk on the far side, looking away from the battle towards Buellt, though the trees along both banks screened him from the castle’s towers. His face was very white, and he stared straight ahead, unseeing. A dead man lay on the ground at his feet.

  Lili halted beside him. He was an inch taller than she, and about the same weight. Just a twelve year old boy—with a bloody sword in his hand. Lili reached out and pried his fingers from the hilt. “This is your doing?”

  “Yes.” William’s voice held neither anguish nor pride. It was cold and matter-of-fact. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Where did you get the sword?”

  “My father gave it to me before we came to Wales. He said if I was to be any kind of squire to the Prince of Wales, I’d better act the part.”

  Lili thought he was awfully young for a sword, and to be in a battle, but she’d heard the same about herself three years ago (more because she was a girl, of course, than because she was only fifteen).

  “I stayed in the tree for most of it, but then one of the English riders left the field, fleeing towards me. I-I-I dropped out of the tree right onto him. He hit the ground and …” William gestured at the body. “I killed him.”

  “He would have warned the garrison at Buellt of what had happened,” Lili said. “You did Prince Dafydd a great service.”

  Dafydd came up behind Lili. She felt him hover behind her, hesitating, and then both hands dropped onto her shoulders. He squeezed once and then moved towards William, who was bent at the waist, staring at the ground.

  “Let it out, if it’s going to come out,” Dafydd said. “There’s a first time for everyone.”

  William didn’t vomit, though, but breathed in deeply through his nose. He straightened and leaned back against the tree. “I don’t need to be sick. I’m fine.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Dafydd’s lips actually quirked. “See if you can make yourself useful among the wounded. We’re not done. We must take Buellt Castle back from the traitors who hold it.”

  William nodded. He held out his hand for his sword, and when Lili gave it to him, he walked stiff-legged back towards the road and the rest of the men. Lili turned to watch him go, and then found Dafydd’s arms slipping around her waist.

  Lili couldn’t make herself protest aloud or even pull away. She wanted to hold herself stiff. She tried to, but she found herself, leaning into him. She was so tired all of a sudden, it was an effort to keep her knees from sagging and making him bear all her weight. She hadn’t done anything but ride pillion behind Dafydd. That any of these men remained upright—or could speak in a level tone without crying—was incredible to Lili.

  Yet she forced herself to copy them, to not give in to her grief either. They had more work to do today. Behind her, Dafydd sighed. She felt his lips brush her hair, and then he released her. “We must move.”

  Lili fell into step beside him and they headed to where Math had gathered the surviving men.

  “What are you going to do now?” Lili said.

  “They came at us with thirty men,” Math said. “Mortimer’s men, though a few may have been from Buellt’s garrison.”

  “Edmund Mortimer wants Buellt back,” Lili said.

  “Obviously,” Dafydd said. And then touched her hand—just with one finger—but it eased the sting of his sarcasm, telling Lili that it wasn’t directed at her. “Mortimer has taken the field in earnest.”

  “Here, he has, certainly,” Lili said. “But what of Bigod, Kirby, or Vere?”

  Dafydd shook his head. “I wouldn’t have expected those three to league with Mortimer. They’re not natural conspirators.”

  “Why not?” Lili stopped beside William, who was carefully cleaning the blood from his sword with the edge of a dead Englishman’s cloak.

  “Because the use of a sword has never come naturally to Edmund Mortimer,” Dafydd said. “As a second son, he was meant for the Church and was advancing through the ranks. He’s an Oxford scholar. Unlike his older and younger brothers, he’s had to fight for the respect of the other barons, more than he’s had to fight actual battles.”

  “King Edward, before he died, had delayed confirming him in his holdings because of it,” William said. And then blinked. “I apologize, my lord, for interrupting.”

  “Apology accepted,” Dafydd said, “though it is unnecessary. You are correct in your assessment.” Dafydd dropped a hand onto William’s shoulder. “Your father has taught you well. He would be proud of you.”

  Chapter 5

  25 August 1288

  North of Buellt

  Math

  “What do we do with the dead?” Math toed the body of the closest Englishman and then glanced at
his brother-in-law, who stared down at another body, his hands on his hips.

  “Strip the bodies of the dead Englishmen and move them off the road,” Dafydd said. “Put the armor, weapons, and other gear in a pile so we can sort through it. Send others to gather the horses, all that we can find.”

  “And our dead?” Lili said.

  Dafydd sighed and ran his hand through his hair. He’d tossed his helmet near where he’d picketed Cadfarch; like Math, he wore it only when he had to. “We’ll bury them as best we can. It’s the wounded that concern me most.”

  “We’ve been doing our best, Gruffydd and I.” Lili stood and stretched, and then waved a hand to indicate a man on the other side of the road, a member of Dafydd’s guard whom the Jewish doctor, Aaron, had trained. William still knelt next to the man Lili had been treating, holding his hand. She’d bandaged the soldier’s leg from ankle to knee.

  Math observed her out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t help but notice that after they’d pushed through their initial hesitancy, she and Dafydd had stopped circling around each other. He didn’t know if they’d come to a true accord during their ride, or an unspoken one. He hoped that the days of silence might finally be over. It had been a hard two months for Dafydd—and almost as hard on those he loved, who’d had to put up with his moods and his startlingly grim sense of humor.

  When Math and Anna had been courting, Anna had never sent him away like Lili had Dafydd, but she’d held him at arm’s length for a long while. It had taken months of patient work on his part to get Anna to talk to him about anything important. Fortunately, it had taken far less long for her to admit that she loved him.

  “Now that the English numbers are reduced,” Math said, “do we have a plan for taking the castle?”

  “I never liked the place,” Lili said. “No matter how long I stay there, it could never be home. We could let them keep it.”

  Dafydd smirked. “Uh … I don’t think my father would take kindly to that notion. No.” He shook his head. “We have to go in and get it.”

  “What about gathering reinforcements first?” Lili said. “Our numbers are reduced.”

  Math took in a breath and let it out. When the fight began, they’d outnumbered their English attackers. Subsequently, they’d lost fewer than a dozen men; fewer than they might have if Dafydd had been less wary. Math told himself to remember this day the next time he felt a sick pit in his stomach for no clear reason. He’d gone along with Dafydd’s orders willingly enough, since he’d grown to trust his brother-in-law, but Dafydd’s fears had been premonition only. Without Dafydd’s prescience, this could have been much worse.

  “We continue to have the advantage.” Dafydd gestured with one hand to the dead in the road. “Even if it might not seem like it.”

  “In numbers, surely,” Math said. “If Lili’s estimation is correct, the English used up most of their strength in this ambush. But we will be riding into a second trap if we go into Buellt.”

  “A trap of our making, not theirs,” Dafydd said.

  “How so?” Math said, and then his breath caught because he knew what Dafydd was thinking and it shook him. He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “You mean to deceive the garrison? You mean to ride into Buellt Castle as Englishmen?”

  “Victorious Englishmen at that.” Dafydd’s blue eyes lit with an unexpected amusement. “All’s fair in love and war.”

  Math pursed his lips. “I’ve not heard that phrase before.”

  Dafydd shrugged. “Some English guy said it, a couple of hundred years from now. I don’t know that I always agree with his sentiment, especially about the love part. But war—”

  Math found himself nodding. “War is something different. We Welsh, for all our disloyalty and fighting among ourselves, haven’t been as ruthless as we’ve needed to be. We haven’t fought the Normans with every tool at our disposal or we would have done better against them sooner.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re proposing,” Lili said.

  Dafydd looked down at her. “We ride into Buellt dressed as the English who attacked us, except for me.”

  “Why except for you?” Lili said.

  “Because the English should look victorious,” Dafydd said.

  And then the rest of Dafydd’s plan dawned on Math. “You will ride to the castle as yourself, with your hands tied in front of you, or seemingly so? While our counterparts on the battlements congratulate themselves on their total victory, we enter the bailey and catch them by surprise.”

  Dafydd canted his head. “As you say.”

  “What you’re suggesting is a Norman trick,” Lili said.

  “It is indeed,” Dafydd said.

  “Your father might not approve,” Math said.

  “He is not here,” Dafydd said. “And I see no reason why it shouldn’t become a Welsh trick. Do you know what they say where I was born when someone reneges on a bet or a deal?”

  Math’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t think he wanted to know.

  “You welshed on me!” Dafydd said. “I never thought about the origin of the phrase until I came here. These Normans—and their Saxon subjects—have been belittling us for centuries. If my father had died at Cilmeri, we would have no recourse but to take it. I don’t mind fulfilling Norman expectations if it means victory.”

  Math nodded, a quick jerk of his head, and turned to make disposition of the men. They had eight men dead and four seriously wounded, leaving him thirty-six soldiers (plus himself, Lili, Dafydd, and William) who could still fight. Each man wore an identical grim set to his jaw. In turn, they’d killed half of the English fighters, wounded or captured the rest, leaving only a handful left in the garrison at Buellt.

  This was still on the condition that Lili had been right about the initial English numbers, and assuming the Welsh defenders hadn’t all betrayed their country and joined the English side. Thirty-six versus half a dozen sounded like good odds to him. Maybe Dafydd wasn’t so reckless after all.

  “We must avenge Owain,” Evan, one of Dafydd’s men-at-arms, said.

  “But with cool heads,” Math said.

  Evan glared at him, and then took in a deep breath and let it out. “Yes, my lord.”

  “When we rode from Dinas Bran, our minds were intent on what faced us in the south,” Math said. “None of this did we plan or think would happen—”

  “And that is my fault.” Dafydd had come up silently behind Math. “I led you into an ambush. Even if we took steps to prepare for it, Owain’s death is on me, not you.”

  “That isn’t true, my lord,” Math said. “We were the ones sent to scout the road. Why we didn’t find them, I don’t know …” he shook his head.

  “The English are often clever,” Dafydd said. “Remember that.”

  Heads nodded all around.

  Dafydd rested a hand on Evan’s shoulder. “Which is why we are going to be cleverer than they are this time.” Dafydd took in the gaze of each of his men. “Some of you will not like what comes next, for there is no honor in it.”

  Several men grumbled, but one spoke up: “No honor in dying on an English sword.”

  “Are we going to wear the Mortimer tunics, my lord?” Evan said. “It would allow us to trick the English guards into letting us in the castle.”

  Math fastened his attention on Evan. He hadn’t taken much note of him before. He was a newcomer to Dafydd’s teulu, in his late twenties and thus middle-aged for a soldier, though that meant he was the same age as Math himself. He had come from Ceredigion, the son of one of Math’s many uncles on his father’s side.

  “That is exactly what we’re going to do,” Dafydd said.

  “Good,” Evan said. “But you should not dress as we do. To better deceive the garrison, you should ride as our captive.”

  Dafydd eyed him carefully.

  Misreading Dafydd’s look, Evan hastily backtracked. “No dishonor meant to you, my lord.”

  “None taken,” Dafydd said. “That was exactly
my plan.”

  Evan rocked back and forth on the balls of his toes, a look of satisfaction on his face. He bowed his head. “It could work, my lord, but it will be dangerous.”

  “Every day we stand in defiance of England is a dangerous day,” Dafydd said.

  “See that you are properly fitted out,” Math said to Evan, effectively anointing him as a leader. “Too bad we don’t have time to grow beards.”

  When the men had turned to their respective tasks, Dafydd gripped Math’s arm. “Come with me. One of the Welsh traitors is in good enough condition for us to talk to.”

  Math turned to see where Dafydd pointed. A former member of Buellt’s garrison sat with his back against a tree, ten feet off the road, bleeding from a long gash to the inner thigh. It looked serious enough that he might not live. And he might not live anyway, if Dafydd decides that he has enough captive English in Wales already, and chooses to leave no witnesses to this battle. Math put that thought aside. His brother-in-law would do what he had to do. Princes sometimes didn’t have the luxury of mercy.

  Her hands on her hips, Lili stood in front of the man, with William again beside her. Math’s lips quirked to see her small figure confronting the much larger traitor, for all that he lay grievously wounded on the ground.

  “Why would you do this?” Lili’s voice carried across the whole of the battlefield.

  The man visibly shrugged. “Coin.”