The Splintered Kingdom c-2

by James Aitcheson

  ‘There were tracks leading away downriver,’ he said. ‘I can only guess that they received word that the Wolf was afield to the north and marched to head them off. Why else would they have left so suddenly?’

  Which either meant that they did not consider us a significant threat, or else that they still knew nothing of our presence, which seemed more likely, given that only a fool would choose to leave an enemy in his rear. Either way, we had a chance to catch them by surprise. I only hoped that Earl Hugues was ready for them, for if he was not, we would all be riding to our deaths.

  Ithel called to his brother, who had come out from his tent to join us, and the two exchanged some words in Welsh. Maredudd’s eyes were bleary, as if he had not slept well, and as he spoke his expression quickly turned from gladness to anger.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked as he rounded on me. ‘Mathrafal lies all but undefended and yet I am told you would have us march past it without so much as a glance in its direction.’

  ‘To attack would be folly,’ I said. ‘Only by seizing this opportunity and pursuing the enemy can we hope to rout them.’

  If we abandoned the two-pronged strategy then we would have divided our forces for nothing, and the Wolf would be left to face the enemy alone. How could these two not see this?

  ‘Your lord Fitz Osbern promised us a kingdom,’ he said. ‘Mathrafal is the heart of that kingdom. There will be no better chance than this to take it.’

  ‘You will have your chance once the enemy are defeated,’ I said, trying as best I could to keep frustration from entering my voice.

  ‘We have brought you this far, across hills and moors,’ Ithel put in. ‘We have fought for you, and without us you would all have been dead long ago. Now there is silver for the taking and you would deny it us.’

  So that was it. In the end all they really desired was what every man wished for: coin enough to fill their purses, chests of gold to furnish their halls, circlets inlaid with precious stones with which to crown themselves.

  ‘And you think that the enemy will not have taken any of it with them?’ I asked, and I was unable to contain my laughter. ‘You think they would be so dim-witted as to leave it all in the care of just fifty spearmen?’

  They had no answer to that, nor did I expect them to. Of course they needed silver, as any lord did, not just for themselves but also for their retainers, to reward them for their service. Nevertheless, they were fools if they thought they would find it in Mathrafal, which to judge by everything I had heard was hardly a palace befitting of kings but rather a fortified dwelling not much larger than my own hall at Earnford.

  ‘We will not suffer to be mocked,’ Maredudd said. ‘We were promised a kingdom. It is our birthright as the sons of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn!’

  ‘And you will have it,’ I said. ‘In time you will have Mathrafal and all of Wales too, just as Fitz Osbern promised, but not yet.’

  In truth I cared little for their supposed birthright, or who their father was, or whether their claims were just or legitimate or fair. They were enemies of our enemy and that was the only thing that mattered: the fact that they would lend their support in fighting those who threatened to destroy us. The number of spears and shields they could bring to our aid was all I was interested in.

  Neither of the brothers had anything more to say, which was just as well, since I could not trust myself to hold my temper much longer. With everything that had happened these last few days, I wanted nothing more than to be away from here, to be back in Scrobbesburh or, better still, the comfort of my own manor at Earnford, where Leofrun was waiting for my return.

  ‘Wake your men,’ I said to Ithel and Maredudd. ‘We march as soon as we can.’

  ‘Now?’ Eudo asked. ‘We’ve been in the saddle since dawn. We’ve ridden probably more than thirty miles. You can’t expect us to start out on the road without resting first.’

  ‘We have to if we’re to have any hope of catching the enemy. You said they’d already been gone several hours by the time you reached Mathrafal. By now they could be as much as a day’s march ahead of us, on their way to do battle with the Wolf.’

  Grudgingly Maredudd and Ithel made for their half of the camp, shouting to rouse their troops. Torches were lit as the message was passed from tent to tent, and one by one bleary-eyed faces began to emerge, angry at having been woken so early. I didn’t doubt that the brothers would blame me for that, but what else could I do? Earl Hugues had been relying on us to fulfil our part of the strategy, but since our raiding had failed to tempt the Welsh kings out, somehow we had to make sure that we could bring our small force to bear when the two sides clashed. For all that any of us knew, our five hundred men could make the difference between failure and triumph.

  I turned to Eudo, who was fixing me with a stare as cold as I had ever seen from him. Only too well did I understand his exasperation, and feel for his tiredness. Didn’t he see, though, that the longer we delayed, the less chance we had of catching up with the enemy?

  ‘What more do you want from me?’ I asked.

  His lips were set firm in disapproval, or disgust; I could not tell which. ‘This is unwise, Tancred,’ he said, keeping his voice low as he glanced towards the Welsh brothers, although they were far enough away by then that I doubted they would hear. ‘With every day we’re venturing further into unknown country. More and more we depend on what they tell us, and yet I trust them less and less.’

  ‘Fitz Osbern trusts them,’ I said, though I knew it wasn’t much of an answer.

  Eudo knew it too, for he gave me a sardonic look. ‘They have as many spears under their banner on this expedition as we do. If they turn on us-’

  ‘They won’t.’ I tried to sound confident, as much to convince myself as him, for I was only too aware of how vulnerable we all were, and how much we needed the Welshmen. As, I hoped, they needed us too.

  ‘You can’t know that,’ he said. ‘They have something in mind, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘If they’d wanted to lead us into a trap, they could have done so long ago,’ I replied. ‘Why wait until now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘And the not knowing is what I like least about it.’

  Eudo was not the kind of man usually prone to such suspicions, and the fact that he would express his sentiments so openly suggested to me that I ought to take him seriously. Yet the time to voice those kinds of doubts had long passed. Whether we liked it or not, we had to trust Maredudd and Ithel. Not only that, but somehow I would have to repair the damage that had been wrought this night, to make sure that they would trust me in turn.

  ‘What else can we do but follow them?’ I asked. ‘If they’re leading us to our deaths, then we’ll know it soon enough. But if we start sowing mistrust between us and them, they’ll only turn on us all the sooner.’

  It was scant consolation, and Eudo did not look satisfied by it, but I could offer him nothing better. If our years of friendship counted for anything then he would accept my judgement on this, as he had on countless occasions before.

  Shaking his head, he said, ‘Fitz Osbern might have placed you in charge, but that doesn’t mean you have all the answers, Tancred. Remember that.’

  ‘Eudo-’

  He didn’t give me the chance to reply as he swung up into the saddle and rode off.

  A group of foot-warriors had stopped to see what was going on. ‘What are you looking at?’ I snapped at them. ‘Fetch your belongings and ready your horses. We ride as soon as we can.’

  I made my way to the other side of the hill fort where the French tents stood. Already my thoughts were turning to other things: to the battle that lay ahead; to Rhiwallon and Bleddyn, whose men had raided my lands so many times this past year; and to Eadric and all the Englishmen who had joined them. To the conquest of the Marches, of the Welsh kingdoms, and to glory.

  Fourteen

  We came upon Mathrafal around mid-morning, skirting the fields to its west, keeping our distance in case Eudo a
nd his patrol had been mistaken and there were more of them lying in wait than they had been able to see. The place was just as he and Haerarddur had described: a cluster of halls and storehouses within a square enclosure around one hundred paces on each side, with stout ramparts and a moat surrounding it, and a scattering of houses beyond that.

  Hearth-smoke rose from the buildings; from our vantage on the hillside I spied flashes of movement within the fort as men rushed back and forth, climbing the ladders on to the catwalk behind the palisade. They had seen us, though they needn’t have feared, for I had no intention of approaching them. Their spearpoints and shield-bosses gleamed dully under overcast skies: I counted three dozen men at least, and those were just the ones I could see. Enough, probably, to hold the walls for hours, especially if they also had bows with arrows, and javelins that they could throw down at us. Even though we’d overwhelm them eventually, it would cost the lives of more men than we could spare.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ithel and Maredudd exchange a look, though they knew better than to try to challenge me again. My mind was set and they would not change it.

  Leading away from that camp, following the river valley to the north, were several cart-tracks. Riding hard, we followed them, stopping only to give our horses drink, keeping well away from any sign of settlement where we could. I did not want the men to become distracted with ideas of plunder.

  That didn’t stop the folk who lived in those places running like rabbits at the very sight of us, driving their animals and carrying those children who were too small to run towards the safety of the trees or the hills on the other side of the river. Once, I sent Serlo out with a handful of men to cut off a few of the stragglers. He returned having captured a family of five, all of them curly-haired and with a thin, wasted look about them. They told us of a great army that had marched through only the previous evening, whose vanguard had borne the banner of a scarlet lion with an azure tongue, upon a straw-coloured field.

  ‘The banner of the house of Cynfyn. Of Rhiwallon and Bleddyn,’ said Ithel, who was again translating for me. As the day had gone on his mood had lightened somewhat, though his brother still kept his distance, and regarded with me hostility whenever I happened to glance his way.

  ‘How many passed this way?’ I asked.

  The question was put to the father of the family, a man of more than forty years with iron-grey hair. Gazing at his feet, shivering with fear, he mumbled something so quietly as to be incomprehensible.

  ‘Pa niuer ynt wy?’ Ithel barked. The man hesitated before speaking, and I saw the lump in his throat as he swallowed. Eventually he answered, more loudly this time, though still he could not muster the courage to look up from the ground.

  ‘Hundreds upon hundreds,’ Ithel said. ‘Two thousand, or possibly more.’

  I swore under my breath. Were that true, they outnumbered Earl Hugues’s force by some margin, which made it all the more crucial that we found some way to add our men to his in the battle to come, either by reaching him beforehand or, failing that, by trailing the enemy until the fighting started, at which point we might catch them in the rear.

  ‘He doesn’t know for certain,’ Ithel said. ‘He begs that you have mercy upon him and his family.’

  I glanced at the wretched man standing with his family gathered close around him. His two young daughters clutched at the skirts and the sleeves of their mother, who was doing her best to comfort them. I met her eyes, grey-blue like Leofrun’s. With all that had happened recently, I had thought little about her or my unborn child, who very soon would be making his way into this world. Guilt filled me, but it was a guilt tinged with anger. Anger at the Welsh and their English allies for having torn me away from them and from Earnford. At myself, too, for having abandoned them, for having allowed my foolish desire for respect and renown to get the better of me, to bring me to this point.

  I tore my gaze from those eyes, unable to look at them any longer.

  ‘Send them away,’ I said. ‘We ride on.’

  The skies grew darker as heavy cloud swept in from across the mountains. Rain followed, hammering at us in furious bursts, driven by a piercing wind that buffeted our flanks. Soon we were soaked to the skin, our tunics and packs heavy with water. By then we must have been marching for some twelve hours. With every mile our pace was slackening, although it was the animals that were tiring more than the men. They had toiled hard for several days, and I was starting to worry whether they would be fresh enough for the battle to come.

  A little after noon the river was joined by a smaller stream that we had to ford. Here another set of tracks joined those we had been following, although whether the two bands had met here, or whether one had passed through before the other, was impossible to tell. Both sets looked newly laid, with ox dung that stank as if it were fresh.

  ‘How recently do you think they were here?’ I asked Serlo, who crouched beside me as we took a closer look at the tracks.

  ‘Not more than half a day ago, if you’re asking me.’

  Neither of us were especially knowledgeable about such things, but that was roughly what I had been thinking too. We were gaining ground on them, quicker than I would have expected, though I supposed they would be slowed down by the carts carrying their baggage and supplies.

  Again I had sent scouts ahead of the main party to find out where the enemy were and, if possible, to seek out the Wolf and carry word to him of where we were, for he had to be close now also. If he had any sense he would be waiting for them to come to him, presumably standing his ground where the country afforded good protection: perhaps within the ringworks of some hill fort, like the one we had found the previous night. Somewhere obvious, at any rate, where the sight of his banners flying would be sure to incite the enemy and draw them into attacking him. I asked the princes if there was any such place close by.

  ‘None that I can think of in Mechain,’ Maredudd replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

  I frowned, not recognising the name. ‘Mechain?’

  ‘That’s what they call this part of Powys,’ his brother explained. ‘There is good grazing here but it has never been especially prosperous, and there is little that is worth defending.’

  I sincerely hoped that the Wolf knew what he was doing, and that he was ready for the enemy advance. In the meantime we marched on, waiting for our scouts to return. After another hour, one did. He had seen forty horsemen taking shelter from the rain in the ruins of an old mill at a river bend not two miles ahead of us along the valley.

  ‘They had eight carts with them, each led by two oxen,’ said Giro, for that was his name. ‘Probably a dozen barrels in each cart.’

  Supplies for the main host, I guessed; perhaps part of the baggage train that was lagging behind the rest. ‘How are they armed?’

  ‘Four appeared to have swords; those ones wore mail shirts, but no coifs or chausses. The rest had only knives; a handful had helmets.’

  ‘Not a war-band, then,’ I said. ‘If they were, they’d be better armed than that.’

  Giro shrugged. ‘I don’t know, lord.’

  Easy prey, I thought. And if we could capture a few, we might find out how the rest of their army was disposed.

  ‘Time for the hunt to begin,’ I said.

  The rain had eased a little by the time we caught sight of them an hour later, though they seemed in no hurry to move off. Their oxen had been unhitched from the carts and were grazing contentedly, while the horses were tethered to stakes not far from the mill. The building had been abandoned some time ago, to judge by the state of the timbers and the clumps of brambles and nettles growing around it. The roof had mostly collapsed, and I wondered that they should have chosen this place to shelter, especially when there were woods nearby. Running parallel to the river about a hundred paces from its banks was a low stone wall, although it looked in poor repair, with several gaps.

  ‘What’s your plan, lord?’ Giro asked. He had shown me to the crest from where he
had first spotted the horsemen, where a copse concealed us from view.

  I’d hoped to weaken them with a volley from Maredudd’s archers, but the ruins gave them enough protection that it would be a waste of arrows. At the same time if we charged upon them, they would easily see us coming in time to get away. But as I gazed down the valley, suddenly a strategy presented itself.

  ‘Do you see the thicket on that rise?’ I asked Giro, pointing to a spot about a mile and a half to the north. There the valley’s slopes fell away sharply towards the river, forming a natural gap of flat ground less than a hundred paces wide through which we might drive the enemy, as if through the neck of a bottle. ‘Take word back to the princes Ithel and Maredudd. Tell them to take a hundred of their spearmen and all their archers along the ridge and to wait at that spot. We will drive the enemy towards them.’

  A continuous line of trees ran along the top of the ridge to that rise, which would help provide cover for the Welshmen as they moved into position, and would with any luck prevent them being spotted from the mill.

  ‘And the others, lord?’ Giro asked.

  ‘They’re to join us here. We will trap the enemy with the river at their backs.’

  There was no bridge close by, and the waters looked too deep and fast-running to be fordable. We would drive the horsemen into a corner, or else further up the valley, into the ranks of the Welsh shield-wall. Either way they would be forced to surrender.

  That, at least, was the plan. No sooner had the rest of our host assembled in that copse than Berengar was barging through the ranks towards me, his face a picture of fury.

  ‘Out of my way,’ he said as he shouldered his way past Pons and Turold.

  ‘Quiet,’ I hissed. ‘What do you want now?’

  ‘What kind of a fool are you, sending the Welshmen on ahead? How do you expect to be able keep an eye on them now?’

  I bridled, but somehow managed to keep my calm. ‘Keep an eye on them?’

  ‘Don’t you realise what will happen? Or are you blind as well as stupid?’