by Grace Ingram
‘We’re near the ford,’ Sir Gerard said.
‘We’ll hunt them into Hell before we let them escape,’ answered his lord.
Almost on his last word a hound bayed, and the others joined in chorus. The men raised a hunting-yell, and above it pealed a woman’s scream. They spurred their horses. A moment later they swung round the last bend and saw their quarry before them. Edric loosed the dogs.
The ford was a couple of hundred yards away, and Oswin and Agnes were running for it, weariness overmastered by terror. One white glint of faces, and then they were racing down the last few yards to the water’s edge, the woman with her skirts hitched almost to her knees. She stumbled once, and Oswin turned back, caught her by the hand and hauled her after him. He carried a long staff hacked from some wayside tree.
The river swirled and eddied in riffles of yellow foam over the ford’s approaches, paved with stone slabs, and whirled leaves and sticks and broken branches on its brown waters. Drawn by the hunt’s clamour, men and women came running down from the hamlet of Summerford on the opposite bank. Oswin and Agnes plunged in without hesitation, still hand in hand. The stream took them by the knees and then to the thighs, and they staggered at its force. The next step had them waist-deep. Oswin braced himself with the staff, feeling for safe purchase, and now his arm was about Agnes, hers clinging to his shoulders. The freed hounds reached the edge, and one launched himself. The river rolled him under, and with one distressed yowl he was gone. The other three stayed baying at the edge.
The riders checked beyond them, and Guy stared across the twenty yards of fierce water, his hands clenched so that his nails dug painfully into his palms. Oswin and Agnes were past half-way, fighting for foothold, their combined weights barely enough to brace themselves upon the pole and withstand the river’s force. On the opposite bank the peasants yelled encouragement to them, execration at the hunters. A stone hurled past Guy’s head, but he hardly heeded it; he was praying with all his heart that the fugitives would win across.
A man came with a coil of rope, knotting it as he ran. Reaching the edge, he swung and threw. Oswin loosed his hold on Agnes and grabbed, missing by a bare hand’s breadth; it thwacked into the water and was whisked away. The fellow hauled in and coiled it for another throw, and Oswin managed another two steps. More stones were flying. A dog howled as one struck.
‘Your bow! Kill!’ shrieked Lord Reynald.
Edric already had his bow uncased, the string out of his wallet. He strung the bow, nocked an arrow, drew and aimed as Oswin seized the rope at the second cast. Guy yelled protest and lunged his horse at him. Across the river three men had tailed on to the rope and were hauling in the lovers like hooked fish, while men and women hurled stones and clods and curses at the hunters. The bowstring twanged dully, wet and lifeless, but at that range deadly. The shaft sank feather-deep between Oswin’s shoulders. His hands unclosed from the rope and the river took him, rolling him face-up and then over. The girl clung fast. Guy had one glimpse of her white gulping face, and then they were gone.
‘Butchers! Bloody murderers!’ a woman screamed across the ford. Lord Reynald made to plunge at them, but while his mount jibbed at the yellow-brown water a stone thumped against his body, another on the horse’s neck. It reared, squealing. Two men had produced bows, and missiles hailed at them. The horse would not face the combined menaces, but kicked and backed, scattering the dogs. Lord Reynald, winded and gasping, shook his fist at the peasants and called off his force.
‘We’ll be back!’ he promised. ‘We’ll see who crows then!’ He turned from the peasants screeching insults, and his troop followed into the dripping forest.
Guy was the last to go. He stared down-river as though sight could pierce the muddy water that carried Agnes and Oswin, locked in their last embrace, until they should strand on some sandbank or shingle-bar for strangers to wonder at and bury. He crossed himself. ‘Lord Christ, have mercy on their souls,’ he said aloud. The lost dog crept whimpering from the thickets, its head hanging and its tail clipped between its legs, and fled before him. It was not until an arrow grazed his side that he roused to peril and turned away, leaving it to his horse to choose the path because his eyes were blind with tears.
Chapter 13
The Slut was fit to be released from the stable; that was the day’s one consolation. Guy crouched beside her in the straw, his face buried in her ruff and his arms tight about her body. She licked his face and whined her happiness in rejoining him, her sympathy in his trouble, and at last he climbed heavily to his feet and moved to the laundry for a hot bath, the bitch pressing close.
At supper he ate scarcely a morsel. Food stuck in his gullet. He let it congeal on his trencher and then passed it to the Slut, while he morosely gulped cup after cup of wine. It did not help. His head floated from his shoulders, his limbs drifted beyond his command, and hall, table and faces blurred and doubled, while the talk was a meaningless buzz. Always before his inward sight Agnes and Oswin rolled and sank together in the brown flood. Because of him they had fled, through his cowardice and ineptitude they had died. He would blame himself for their deaths as long as he lived.
The women were supping in the bower. Lady Mabel, after denouncing husband and household for murderous monsters, had swept her tearful attendants from the hall, and her look of grief and anger had stabbed Guy to his soul. Only Rohese remained at the high table, and she would have done better to go. Her presence was an offence against womanhood.
The servants scuttled about their duties in silence. Their patent aversion had dealt another hurt to Guy; they believed the vengeance had been his. The page Philip refilled his cup, tilting the jug awkwardly as he tried to avoid contact. Guy flinched. He fumbled for the cup, and then pushed it away. Another mouthful, and he would vomit. Only his body was drunk, his mind undimmed.
All at once the other men were on their feet. The meal was early over, no lingering over wine. Guy sat on. Someone spoke to him. ‘Oh, bring him along,’ Lord Reynald said. ‘Time the whelp was blooded.’ Conan and Sir James, with wary eyes on the Slut, heaved him from the stool by either arm and supported his wavering legs from the hall and down the stairs. In the guardroom they hauled his hauberk over his head, buckled on his sword and slung his shield from his shoulder. He mumbled vague protests, and then had to rouse himself to restrain the Slut. They jeered at him, half-drunk themselves.
In the bailey the horses were ready, and they heaved Guy into his saddle. He was by now horseman enough to remain in it whatever his state, and indeed the high pommel and crupper made it difficult to fall out of it. The rain had blown over, and the day had a couple of hours of grey light left. The cold air cleared some of the fumes from his brain. As Conan mounted alongside he asked, ‘Where are we going?’
‘Summerford, to teach churls courtesy.’
‘Summerford? But—’ Words clotted on his tongue, and he could only shake his head.
‘And as it’s within the Forest and royal property, a prudent man might wonder what the King will say to it,’ Conan commented. Guy mumbled some answer that made no sense to himself, and Lucifer’s malicious grin flashed between helmet and mail coif. ‘Shall I take your reins and lead you?’ he mocked. ‘You’ll be sorry-sober enough by the time we get there.’
Lord Reynald came up, astride a fretting bay. ‘Leave that bitch behind. We’ll have no hound giving tongue to betray us!’
‘She goesh,’ Guy answered thickly, while the Slut bristled. ‘Not bark.’
‘Then I’ll hold you to that. You’re responsible for her.’ He gave her a look of loathing and moved to the head of the line, with half the garrison behind him. Guy followed in the rear with Conan and his troop, the wine buzzing in his head and boiling in his belly.
Lucifer was an accurate prophet. By sunset Guy’s head was pounding in time with his mount’s hooves, his entrails churning, his eyes afire and his mouth foul. He realized that they had taken the Collingford road, and they passed the first ford under red
-edged clouds, the water almost lipping the horses’ girths. The last light was fading when they reached the second ford, which was lower, and turned into a vile track leading south.
‘I’ve never fancied night attacks,’ Conan commented, breaking a surly silence. ‘Some half-wit always forgets his orders and the whole affair’s a tangle in the dark. Never you mount one unless you’ve scouted your ground well by daylight.’
‘A night attack?’ Guy asked stupidly.
‘This one’s ranker folly than most. Mark me, we’ll lose men we can’t afford to waste, and for what? No loot worth carrying away, some sport with the foresters and their women and a quarrel with the King. You stay by me and use what sense you haven’t drowned.’
Only then did Guy realize what they were about, a night attack on a sleeping village, murder and rape to avenge Summerford’s daring to intervene between Lord Reynald and his prey. A kind of panic assailed him, and his fogged wits struggled to find some way of preventing it. The forest was too dense to let him break away from the troop. If he tried it, among the black trees with no moon to guide him, he would speedily be lost. He could not thrust past the whole force in that narrow way without revealing his intent and being halted. Gold sweat started over his flesh as understanding of his helplessness came to him.
Miles passed. He tried to overtake the column and Conan, ahead of him, cursed him back. If he tried again it would be obvious what he meant to do. Fully sober now, his thoughts scurrying like rats when the ferret enters their runs, he kept his place in the line that advanced on Summerford.
A taint of woodsmoke drifted to his nostrils. A low-voiced order hissed along the column, which straggled and bumped to a halt amid muttered oaths in the dark. ‘Not even a moon!’ Conan growled beside Guy. But the woods were thinning here; even with the regulations of Forest Law to protect vert and venison, folk seeking fuel and swine rooting for mast destroyed undergrowth and young saplings. Peering ahead, Guy discerned a glimmer of yellow light.
Lord Reynald was marshalling his attack, sending his men right and left to cut off escape and pin the villagers against the river. Some sort of plan sprang into Guy’s head. He pulled his mount too eagerly into the darkness under the trees; blundered into a bramble-patch that tore an outraged squeal from his stallion, and then, hidden from sight of his companions, threw back his head and screamed with all the force in his lungs, pitching his cry as shrill as he could make it that it might be taken for a woman’s. A dog began to bark, the Slut thundered answer, more screams lifted, and the hamlet erupted.
After curfew folk would have been surprised abed, but they were an hour early. Doors opened on firelight, dark figures scuttled, and someone yelled, ‘The Devil o’ Warby! Out!’ The attackers shouted and spurred forward, but what should have been a taut crescent with both ends secured on the river was a loose straggle with many gaps, and the furthest riders never closed on the river at all but drove straight for the houses. Guy heard the crash of two falls before he reached the ploughland and dared gallop.
Others were before him, and he plunged among them. The Slut ran with him, baying to set the horses kicking and squealing. In a kind of drunken inspiration he blundered and bumbled, thwarting attacks and impeding blows as fugitives dodged among the houses. Curses hailed at him. Once through the hamlet, less than a dozen cottages, some horsemen chased fleeing figures across the narrow ploughland while others turned back. Many were out of their saddles, shouldering into huts for loot or prey, kicking fire across rush-strewn floors, and already one fool was running and hooting with a blazing brand to thrust under thatch-eaves. Smoke billowed across the clearing.
Guy slid down, staggering as his feet touched earth, and looked about him. Someone had loosed the beasts. Swine bolted shrieking through the turmoil, slashing at impeding legs; an ox bellowed terror in his ear and almost shouldered him from his feet, and hens were flapping and squawking everywhere. Steadying his legs, still unruly from the wine, he stumbled through the smoke. A woman plunged under flaring thatch into a hovel, and he threw up his shield to protect his face from the sparks and followed her. Above a cradle she turned on him with claws and teeth; he fended her off, snatched up the squalling baby and tucked it into his shield-arm, grabbed the woman by the hair and hauled her through the blazing doorway. A spear skidded on the shield; a mailed trooper yelled apology and encouragement before pushing past him into the hut, and Guy dragged his struggling captive clear of the burning cottages, shoved the baby into her arms and thrust her towards the woods.
‘Two safe,’ he muttered and turned again into the tumult, his unstained sword swinging in his hand. Black smoke shot with sparks swirled everywhere, thick and choking, for the outer layers of thatch were sodden after long rain, and demon shapes capered in and out of it. Several huts were well alight now, the flames flaring over a semblance of Hell itself.
A hand gripped his arm, and Conan’s voice barked in his ear. ‘Give me a hand!’ The mercenary ducked under blazing thatch, and stumbled over a pair of legs sprawled within the doorway. Coughing, he stooped to seize and heave. Guy bent with him in choking murk, finding a mailed arm. A truss of flaming straw fell between them and across the body, scorching their faces. Shields up, they gripped and staggered back, dragging it between them, and dropped it on the muddy earth. Guy straightened. Conan, on his knees, rolled his man over and beat at the fiery remnants, strangling on his coughs.
A huge bulk came at them through the smother, no ox but the village bull wild with rage and terror. It hooked at Conan, caught him up and hurled him aside, plunged after him to gore and trample. Somehow Guy was between them, battering his shield into the beast’s face to turn it. Immense force slammed at him; steaming breath, hot hide, bellowing fury; a horn-tip scored his side. The Slut leaped at the bull’s muzzle, and he blared his anguish, flinging up his head to expose his throat to her fangs. Somehow Guy’s sword was up and lunging. It jarred on bone, twisted and drove on. The bellow rose to a roar, the sword was wrenched almost from his grip, and the bull plunged away, dragging Guy several paces before he could tug his blade free, the Slut tearing at his throat until he tottered to a halt, snorting blood and foam.
Behind the bull ran a man with a pitchfork. Conan was struggling to his knees; the twin tines flashed red in the firelight as they drove at him. He got his shield up, but the blow sent him sprawling and the points swung again. Driven by the Saints knew what compulsion of comradeship, Guy leaped, got a leg across his body and beat aside the pitchfork. For a heart’s beat he stared into a bearded face convulsed with rage; then the points lunged at his belly. He turned them on his shield and heaved the man off. He stumbled, reeled into a blazing hut, recoiled and went down under the onslaught of several mailed men. Guy stared stupidly at the struggle and wished he had struck home. The Slut left the bull, which was down on his knees; as he looked he uttered a last groan and rolled over. Conan was squirming between his feet. He stepped clear to let him up, and realized that the fighting was over, every hut ablaze, Warby men gathering from the darkness.
Conan’s first concern was for his man, hauled from the burning cottage. A cursory inspection sufficed; the scorched body had never stirred since they laid hold of it. ‘Choked with smoke, the fool, for loot not worth the seeking,’ he muttered, and climbed joint by joint to his feet like an old man. He felt at his side, wincing, and scowled at Guy. ‘Wipe your sword!’ he snapped. ‘What kind of lout leaves his blade foul?’
The only object in sight that would serve that purpose was the dead routier, so Guy, suppressing loathing, stooped and wiped off the blood on the man’s tunic. He straightened to find Lord Reynald before him, grinning approval.
‘So you’re blooded, boy!’
Guy sheathed the blade, fumbling over it, and mumbled something about bull’s blood, not man’s, that went unheeded.
‘How did he serve?’ Lord Reynald was asking Conan.
‘But for him I’d be dead twice over,’ the mercenary said sourly.
‘Th
en the time’s come. Kneel, boy.’
In a thick daze Guy sank to his knees on the trampled earth. Conan moved to stand before him. ‘With your leave, my lord, it’s more fitting that another than his father should dub him,’ he observed to Lord Reynald, and swung his sword. Guy felt its light tap on his shoulder, hands urging him to his feet, the ritual buffet that was the last blow any man’s hand might deal him unavenged. Words sounded in his ears but made no sense. He was a knight. Shame, humiliation, disappointment scorched his soul. It was no honour, no achievement, to be knighted for an onslaught on surprised peasants armed with pitchforks.
Pitchforks were not entirely despicable weapons; Sir Gerard was limping heavily with a pierced thigh, a spearman bleeding from gashed ribs. Two men had been trapped in a burning hut and the survivor was badly injured; an archer lay among trampled cabbages with his skull smashed in, and a man-at-arms was found on the edge of the ploughland with an arrow through his lungs. Half the company had suffered minor burns and hurts, and Guy understood Conan’s dislike for night attacks.
The assault had gained them a few poor household goods, a dead pig and three prisoners, two men and a young woman. Guy looked on them sickly as they were shoved and beaten into their midst, and started forward. Conan’s hand jerked him back. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he muttered in Guy’s ear. ‘They are nothing to you. My lord won’t forgo his sport for anything you can say.’
There was some delay while injuries were bound up and they waited for the wounded man-at-arms to finish strangling in his own blood. Then the troop moved out, the dead slung across saddles, the woman tied on a horse, the two men made fast by the wrists to saddlehorns. All the huts were bright ruins out of which thrust skeletal timbers, and as they rode out from among them arrows followed.