Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

“Fflur is right,” he answered, and sat still. He had an intuition that, though Fflur was right, some other force or set of forces, whether human or superhuman made small difference just then, was gone awry. He ached for action, yet did not dare to show impatience lest the men-at-arms should take that cue to extort a ransom after all. He was trying, with all his self-control, to open his mind and let the gods pour information in, ignoring semblances and listening for the inner voice that seldom failed him. But the only thought that seemed to bubble and repeat itself behind his brain was Skell! Skell!

  Caswallon took the reins.

  “Are we agreed? Then ride!” he shouted, and they were off once more, down a long lane between sheep pastures where the deer browsed at the forest’s edge and awkward fawns loped out of sight behind their dams, to turn and stare when they were gone.

  There was no more hesitancy and no speech. Caswallon was in action now, each move fore-calculated, every fraction of the horses’ strength considered and expended with the goal in mind.

  They thundered downhill, leaping fallen tree-trunks, so that the chariots were like the slings of catapults and Tros had to cling to the wickerwork side with both hands, taking short cuts that would have scared a squirrel, one wheel over a pit’s edge, and nothing but the speed and the weight of a horse’s shoulder on the pole to keep the lot from overturning; leaping a ditch without so much as checking, crashing through the farmer’s fence beyond it, around three ricks and through the oaken paling on the far side, knocking it down with the bronze-headed chariot pole. They left a swath behind them like the path of a winter’s hurricane.

  And so to the river by Rhyd-y-Cadgerbydan.

  “Where, if Caesar ever gets this far, I will give him and his legions battle,” said Caswallon, pausing to let the horses breathe again before they plunged breast-deep into the river.

  CHAPTER 55. “The Fool! Lord Zeus, What shall I do with him?”

  Justice? Let a captain see he have it. Let him remember that a fellow feeling is the juice of justice. Let him wring out the juice. Let him smite with what is left when the juice is wrung forth and bestowed. Justice that hath no humor and no mercy is the cloak of fear that hypocrites employ to hide the greed and meanness of their lying hearts. Aye, let a captain well weigh justice.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  FROM the ford to the road the runaways were taking was only a few miles, and the going easy. Caswallon drove full speed.

  “To wind the horses well, lest they should neigh and betray us when we set an ambush,” he explained.

  He had the lay of all the country in his mind and chose a place where two lanes met in a hollow, half-filled with elms and brambles. Water and the traffic of the years had cut the lanes so deep that banks on either side of them rose twenty feet high. In the center of the hollow, near the intersection of the lanes, was a pool of limpid water, brook-fed, with fleecy clouds and branches of the overhanging elms reflected in it, a sure temptation to leg-weary runaways to rest themselves and wait for stragglers.

  “For whom they will certainly wait,” Caswallon argued. “They will not dare to leave lame men along the road, any more than a hunted fox leaves more scent than he can help, but crosses brooks and the bare rock where his scent won’t lie. There will be a rearguard, urging on the laggards with sharpened sticks.”

  The setting of the ambush was a simple matter. On the theory that perhaps the fugitives had stolen a few horses on their way that might neigh and so give the alarm, Caswallon ordered the chariot teams unyoked and led away to a considerable distance. Then he posted all his men, well hidden, around the rim of the hollow, with orders not to loose one arrow in any event unless he should give them leave by signal.

  One bugle blast would mean that they should show themselves; two, that they should be on guard against a rush by the fugitives; three, that they might shoot one flight of arrows to prevent any desperate detachment from breaking through the cordon.

  “But you may not shoot to kill,” Caswallon ordered. “Hit them in the arms and legs.”

  Three blasts repeated was to mean that a fight was on in earnest, but that signal would not be given unless it should prove that the runaways had somehow managed to steal weapons and could not be captured without bloodshed.

  It looked like a plan that could hardly fail, but Tros was nervous. For a while he lay still beside Orwic with Glendwyr beside him, admiring the silence that the ambushed Britons kept. So still they were that rabbits came and nibbled the sweet spring grass almost within arm’s reach. But a red fox, scouting for a meal, sniffed once, turned swiftly in his tracks and vanished. Birds, busy with their nesting in tree and thicket, sang as if nothing in the world were wrong, but five fallow does with fawns at foot, on their way to the pool in the hollow to drink, sniffed two or three times at the tainted air, listened and then fled as if a pack of hounds were after them.

  It was intuition that made Tros restless. The day was one to make the blood race in the veins — all fair spring weather with the leaves a- budding, blue sky overhead, and underfoot the violets and yellow primroses; scent of wet, brown earth, and bird-song in the air. But Tros’ skin tingled while his blood ran sluggish, and the constant picture in his mind — he could not blot it out — was of his ship without a crew.

  “I go to look,” he whispered, and left Orwic lying prone between two elm trees at one end of the horseshoe ambush. Glendwyr followed him.

  He walked a hundred yards and chose a high tree, climbed it with seaman’s skill and from the fork of the highest branches watched the countryside for half-an-hour. At the end of that time, in the middle distance, he could see his stream of fugitives with half-a-dozen stolen horses, densely packed together between the hedgerows of the winding lane that threaded its long way toward the hollow where the ambush waited.

  So far, good. He could hardly count them, but it looked as if the whole lot were in one herd, heading straight for the net. They were coming with the desperate, determined, silent haste of tired men who have but one hope and no line of retreat. But why so close together? Why no stragglers for the rearguard to prick forward? No scouts in advance or on the flanks? They might have used the horses for the obviously necessary scout work, but instead, they had put four men on each horse and to the eye, at that distance, there was hardly a square yard visible between their serried ranks from end to end of the procession.

  It was Glendwyr, a branch below Tros, who saw the reason for the dense formation and the grim haste.

  “Horsemen!” he said suddenly, and pointed.

  Headlong down the hill, beyond the ford, there came a stream of mounted men in hot pursuit, riding like centaurs, scattered, racing to be first to overtake the fugitives — a prize worth spurring for — a third of each slave’s value for the captor, and a dozen an easy bag for one armed, mounted man!

  “Pluto!”

  Tros came down the tree like a bear shot from below, two branches snapping under him as he took all chances. Glendwyr dropped to earth beside him. Tros took him by the throat.

  “You were their leader! Go to them! Say you have fled from me and are again their leader! Show them a hiding place! Lead them to where the ambush waits, and keep them there at all costs!”

  “They will kill me,” said Glendwyr. “They won’t believe—”

  Tros choked and shook him.

  “Do you know what to obey means? Any man can die! That’s nothing!”

  He let go and Glendwyr ran. Tros, hardly daring to hope that Glendwyr could succeed, or that he would even try to succeed, turned and ran at top speed in the opposite direction, flinging himself breathless on the grass beside Orwic.

  “Horses!” he panted. “To horse!”

  Orwic wanted explanations. Tros, recovering his breath, stood, leaning against a tree and shouted across the hollow to where Caswallon lay beside Fflur.

  “Your Lundeners are coming! Get between them and the runaways, or—”

  Caswallon’s answering shout clipped off
the news mid-word. There was a stir among the brambles, word passed mouth-to-mouth, and then a long cry, ululating from the ambushed bowmen who lay nearest to where the horses had been hidden. Ten breaths more and the horses were on the way, ridden and led full-gallop by the charioteers. Sooner than Tros could breathe again evenly, the teams were yoked, and eight-and-twenty chariots wheeled clear of the lane toward rising ground, behind which they could make a circuit and arrive unseen behind the rear of the oncoming fugitives.

  “They will scatter! I fear they will scatter! How close is the pursuit?” Caswallon asked, leaning forward, fanning the stallions’ necks with loose reins.

  “On the far side of the Rhyd-y-Cadgerbydan.”

  “How close to it? Can we reach the ford first?”

  “You can try!” Tros answered grimly, and Caswallon laughed.

  “A hundred men can hold that ford against a thousand! If we get there first, I’ll spare you half my men to hunt your runaways!”

  They ran all risks of being seen and heard, their heads appearing constantly above the shoulder of the rise as Caswallon led the way, forcing his tired stallions to the last strained limit of their strength; Fflur’s chariot, lighter than his, but with only two mares, close behind him — and keeping pace. It was likely that she could do more than Caswallon could to check the men of Lunden at the ford without having to draw bow against them.

  Dense alders, and a heron-haunted swamp between them and the lane, served as a luck-given screen exactly at the moment when they passed the fugitives. Tros, standing in the chariot, heard high-pitched voices that sent the herons winging toward their nests in the nearby elms. It was likely enough that Glendwyr had already reached the fugitives and was in speech with them.

  “No need! Never mind the ford!” Tros clutched Caswallon by the shoulder. “Turn around the swamp and come up from behind them. Herd them all into that hollow and surround them until pursuit comes up!”

  “Not I!” Caswallon laughed. “I’ll try the ford. I want to see how many men can hold it against Caesar, if he ever comes!”

  He shook the reins again and cried out to the stallions, but Tros still clutched his shoulder, shouting in his ear.

  “Then give me one chariot. I’ll turn back.”

  Caswallon spared him one swift glance and drew rein, recognizing resolution. “Jump!” he commanded. Then, glancing over-shoulder as the other chariots wheeled right and left to avoid collision, “Orwic, give Tros the last chariot!”

  He was away again almost before Tros’s feet were on the ground, Fflur hard at his heels and all the other teams but Orwic’s in mid-stride on the instant.

  “So!” laughed Orwic, beckoning to Tros to mount beside him. “Mine is the last chariot! Am I then not obedient? You who are to be my captain aboard ship! At the ford down yonder, if Caswallon gets there first, there will only be a fish-wife argument. I would rather be in at the kill. Let me see you manhandle that runaway mob. I believe you can do it alone. And by the way, Tros” — Orwic’s almost unvaryingly bantering voice changed to a more serious note— “Caswallon rides hard, but he’s only a king, and unless — mind you, unless he can reach that ford in time you’ll have your work cut out. The pursuers will scatter around him and come howling for the loot like wolves after a flock of sheep!”

  There was a din of voices from the lane where it seemed that Glendwyr or, at any rate, some one or something had halted the fugitives. The din grew to an angry roar and died, then rose again into a tumult as the march resumed; and a minute or two later the herons flew back to the swamp to hunt frogs.

  “Follow them?” asked Orwic.

  “No. Make the circuit again and be there by the pool when they come.”

  The handsome face of Orwic beamed. He foresaw drama, lives of men at stake, his own included; no resource but quick wit and effrontery. He wheeled the team on its haunches, laughed at Tros and then at the charioteer beside him.

  Away then, full gallop, toward the tree-surrounded hollow, Tros’s eyes studying the approach to it, observing that though men in pursuit of the fugitives might make a wide circuit to outflank Caswallon and win past him, they would nevertheless be obliged to turn into the lane before reaching the hollow in order not to lose time negotiating swamps and thickly wooded, rough ground. There was a neck, where the lane led into the hollow between high banks, through which, inevitably, the pursuit must come.

  And, better still, the place looked like a perfect trap from that direction. Bottle-necked, comparatively inaccessible from either flank, it was exactly the sort of spot where hunted fugitives would be likely to offer a forlorn resistance. Men in pursuit, possessed of any martial or hunting skill, would hardly dream of entering that gap between the banks without a pause to reconnoiter. Time would be all in Tros’s favor.

  He checked Orwic when they reached the narrow entrance; stepped down from the chariot.

  “Ride you forward,” he commanded with a gesture of such confident authority that Orwic grinned. “Ride straight on through the hollow, up the lane on the far side and conceal yourself. There wait. Give me that bugle of yours. So. If I should blow a blast on it, then make as much noise in the bushes as if there were five-and-twenty of you. Shout commands, as if to other chariots, keep out of sight most of the time, but keep moving, showing yourself for a moment at a time, first here, then there.

  “It might be well to shoot one arrow, or possibly two or three, provided you hit nobody. Remember, they are weary men, easier to herd than cattle provided they are not terrified beyond reason. When you have thrashed about sufficiently among the bushes, if they should look like making a concerted rush, then show yourself and shout to them they are surrounded but in safety of their lives if they stay still. Make haste now. Hear them. They come running!”

  Orwic vanished at full gallop, leaving deep wheel-ruts on soft earth that already had been criss-crossed by the wheels of five-and-twenty chariots. Tros climbed the bank and hid himself among the trees. The leading fugitives had seen the narrow opening that led to a position they might possibly defend a while, and now the whole two hundred of them poured along the lane at something better than a jogtrot, breathless.

  “I am ashamed!” Tros muttered.

  He had seldom seen more miserable looking men, not even in the labor gangs of Egypt. White skins heightened incongruity. Fed healthiness increased the horror of despair. They were armed with sharpened sticks, scythes stolen from the farms they passed, a few tools such as hammers stolen from the shipyard, and here and there a knife thong-fastened to a pole. They were footsore; nine out of ten of them limped; and because Tros had clothed them all alike in smocks and leather jackets, and none had had hair or beard trimmed since the building of the ship began, they appeared to belong to one drab brotherhood of wild-eyed fear.

  “How shall a man make men of them?” Tros wondered. Yet, because they had been well fed and had worked hard, they were stronger than the ordinary run of men. There was no lack there of stature or of muscle.

  Glendwyr was in their midst, not bound or hurt, but evidently captive. Four or five inches taller than the men who crowded in on him, alone of them all clothed in a free man’s breeches and fur-trimmed coat, he had what they lacked — freedom from within. Obviously he had not succeeded in convincing them that he had left earned freedom to throw in his lot once more with hunted rebels; there were sharp sticks pointed at his back; a scythe swayed too suggestively within an arm’s length of his face.

  As plain to see as if words told it, they had threatened him with death if his tale should turn out to be false. But he looked like a man in danger, not a hunted slave. His eyes glanced right and left for a sight of Tros, but Tros did not leave his hiding place among the trees until the last man limped into the hollow and he could hear the splashing as they bathed their lame feet in the pool.

  “Zeus! But they are beaten men!” he muttered.

  They had posted no scouts to give warning of pursuit. Instead of setting men in ambush at the narrow ent
rance, they were arguing, holding a crows’ congress by the pool, perhaps condemning Glendwyr. There was angry shouting, but Tros could not catch the words. He began to wonder how to rescue Glendwyr, being minded not to lose a promising lieutenant, but he could think of no way at the moment without adding to Glendwyr’s danger and risking a rush by the slaves for the open.

  At last he heard Glendwyr’s voice in masterful appeal, bold, loud and with a note of mockery:

  “What do I care whether I am killed or not! You idiots! Set a guard there at the entrance! If I were the Lord Tros, and caught you maa-ing like sheep that smell wolves, I would hang you for crow meat! You have one hope! Hold this place until the Lord Tros rescues you! Punish you for running? Yes, of course he will, and soundly, or I don’t know him! But if I were he, I would whip the slave to death who let himself be caught and ransomed rather than make the best of failure and restore himself to his master without expense! Kill me if you like, you fools! I will die free, which is more than any of you will do! I warn you, the Lord Tros loves a man who loses handsomely. Set a guard there by the entrance and defend yourselves until the Lord Tros comes!”

  The answer to that was a babel of long argument, of which Tros could not distinguish anything. The upshot of it was, that presently a company of thirty men with knives and sharpened sticks came trudging out of the hollow and sat down in two rows straight across the narrowest neck of the lane, their lines extending up the bank of either side of it. The man in the center of the front rank had a bow and half-a-dozen arrows; being better armed, he seemed to have assumed the leadership.

  Tros, bugle in his left hand, leaving his right arm free to use his long sword, but not drawing it, retreated from the shelter of the trees and made a circuit, reaching the lane where a bulge in the bank projected just sufficiently to hide him. Very cautiously he peered around the edge of that and watched until the thirty men became engaged in argument, their eyes on one another. Then, in three strides, he was in the middle of the lane, fists on his hips, feet spread apart, his lion’s eyes a-laugh and strong teeth showing in a grin that knew fear too well to yield to it at any time. They saw him suddenly, and nine-and-twenty of them froze with fear.