Hywel had seen it too. “Is that the trap?”
“Hard to know until we enter it,” Goronwy said.
“I don’t know of whom Marged speaks,” I said. “But whoever this Owain Glendower was, he should have known better than to ride through Coedwig Gap without precautions.”
“We should divide the company,” Goronwy said.
“Do it,” I said. “Take Marged and half the men along the road and the rest of us will ride across the fields. That leaves both of us with twenty-five men—still a formidable force.”
I pulled my horse out of line. “Come!” Hywel and I led our men off the road, urging our horses across the fields that separated us from the unnamed village. The men were on high alert; those with bows strung them, the rest of us had unsheathed our swords, riding with the bare blade ready for use.
“I don’t like it,” Hywel said. “If it looks like a trap and smells like a trap, it’s probably a trap.”
We slowed our horses as we reached the summit of the last hill before the village. It lay before us, quiet in the sunshine. Nothing stirred except the three scouts I’d sent ahead. They worked their way from hut to hut, looking for survivors. It was a village of twenty thatched huts, all burning, with a small green. It was the green that drew our attention. The possessions of the villagers had been piled in its center, ten feet on a side and another fifteen feet high, and lit. The entire wealth of the village was going up in flames.
“Mother of Christ!” Hywel breathed. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Only goods, not bodies,” I said. I wheeled my horse around. “A trap, but not for us! To Coedwig Gap!”
The company flowed into formation behind us as Hywel and I hit the track heading west at speed, back to where our companions rode. We knew these roads, had ridden them many times before; a path ahead led to the back side of the hill that overlooked the road at Coedwig Gap. The view from above would give us the opportunity to assess the situation without falling into a trap ourselves.
“Goronwy would not have been surprised easily,” Hywel said, through teeth gritted in concentration.
“He shouldn’t have been surprised at all,” I said. “It’s the possible numbers he faces that worries me.”
Spying the path, Hywel signaled with his sword and the men followed us up the trail. It was steep on this side but our horses were bred for the Welsh mountains and didn’t falter. We came out of the trees on the crest of the hill and looked down onto the road below, a heavily treed hollow with hills that rose sharply on either side.
Hywel cursed beside me. “S'mae cwd!”
My twenty-five men were in brutal hand-to-hand combat with a company of men who hadn’t the honor to wear the colors of their lord. A few had managed to keep their seats, but Goronwy was unhorsed, feet planted, astride the body of another man. I didn’t see Marged.
I gave Hywel a quick assessing glance and raised my sword. “Am Cymry!”
The men cheered and spurred their horses. We surged down the hill in a massed cavalry charge, that even with two dozen men, implied overwhelming force. The enemy, whoever they were, were unprepared to be hit from behind.
As always in the face of battle, my insides turned cold and my hearing dulled, even as my vision sharpened. Slicing through the arm of one man, I caught the neck of another on the upswing. I registered the cries and calls of pain, but they didn’t disrupt my focus. I reached the edge of the road, having passed through the main body of the men and checked my horse in front of Goronwy. While a few survivors raced north from the battle, in less than two minutes, my men had driven through the intruders. Their bodies lay strewn across the road and hillside. It was a sight I’d seen many times, and always hoped never to see again.
Hywel breathed hard beside me. “We’ll get after them, my lord.”
He pointed his sword and a rush of men chased after the remainders. One of my men pursued and overtook a man on foot and cut him down from behind. I turned away.
The power drained from me, more quickly than when I was a younger man. I dismounted and rested my head against my horse’s neck. I closed my eyes and whispered my thanks and encouragement to her, before straightening and gazing at the carnage. Goronwy knelt next to the man whose life he’d guarded with his own. It was Geraint.
Not Geraint.
“He’s alive but perhaps not for long,” Goronwy said in an undertone as I crouched beside him.
“Damn those bastards to hell,” I said.
Goronwy ignored my profanity. “He has a head wound and a gash in his side that has bled heavily.”
“Where’s Marged?”
Goronwy pointed with his chin back down the road to the north. “In the trees. I should have left Geraint beside her, but he insisted on riding with us.”
“Fool,” I said, though my throat closed on the word, and I was angry at myself for not ordering my old friend to stay behind. Sweet Mother of God, he would have obeyed me.
Hywel planted himself stiffly in front of me. I read in his face the bad news he carried, and stood so as to give his report the honor it deserved.
“We’ve lost eight men and three more are grievously wounded,” he said. “Several others are less so. All of the men who rode from the village are alive, with few injuries. We caught them completely by surprise.”
“We did exactly as they should have expected, Boots,” I said. “Why weren’t they prepared?”
Hywel shrugged. “Perhaps they assumed we’d see the village but ride to it along the road. If our thoughts were fixed on the village, we would have been unprepared for an assault here, at the Gap.”
“Possible,” I said. “And they wouldn’t have known we had warning. The real question now, is who knew we would come this way this morning and had the wherewithal to set a trap?”
“Someone at Criccieth,” Hywel said.
I was grateful he didn’t give voice to what he thought—what every one of my advisors would think after half second contemplation: Dafydd. He’d not come with us, and we’d only taken this road with such urgency because of his news.
And then there was Marged.
“Haul these men off the road. I don’t want to leave them in the way,” I said, damping down my anger but knowing that my words had come out stiff and pointed. “For the rest, I want a survivor I can question.”
“Yes, my lord,” Hywel said. He bowed and strode away.
“We must send to that village for help,” Goronwy said. He eased Geraint’s helmet off his head and threw it across the road. It rolled away and came to rest in the ditch among the fallen leaves. “Geraint needs a healer.”
“The village is destroyed and her people absent,” I said. “Whether dead or missing I don’t know.”
Goronwy absorbed this news without speaking but tightened his grip on Geraint’s hand. “We have bandages in a pack on Marged’s horse.”
“I will find her,” I said.
Chapter Seven
Meg
Goronwy directed the men forward as we approached the gap. At this location, the road ran through a narrow crevasse, which Goronwy informed me led ultimately to the ford across the Eden. A young man remained beside me, not Rhodri, Bevyn this time, who wasn’t even old enough to shave. He focused his eyes ahead, however, and I could tell he resented the duty of riding with me if it was going to keep him from the forefront of a fight.
As the hills rose up on either side, Goronwy suddenly signaled a stop. He glanced back at me and Bevyn and tipped his head.
“We must stay here, my lady,” Bevyn said. “Get well back into the trees.”
He and I dismounted and led our horses away from the road, Anna still high in the saddle, clutching the pommel with both hands. I could hardly believe how well she’d done these long hours of riding, but she seemed unfazed.
Bevyn tethered my horse to a tree but kept the reins of his horse, prepared to launch out of the woods to save his companions if he had to. With Anna on my hip, she and I found a higher
spot from which to watch the road. The trees were bare of leaves, making hiding difficult but allowing me a better view of the road.
At first, our soldiers moved easily, though their shoulders were tense, waiting—for what, none of us know.
“This is the worst part,” Bevyn said. “Before it happens.”
“You’ve been in battle before?” I asked.
He turned to look at me before returning his gaze to the road below. “My father tells me this.”
Then, a roar broke the silence, coming from the trees on our side of the road, but further south. Bevyn shoved me to my knees and I put out a hand to stop myself from toppling with Anna to the ground. The road became the definition of chaos, arrows flying at Goronwy’s men and them struggling to return fire.
Goronwy’s horse reared and he cursed. He managed to stay on her, while at the same time swinging his shield around to block any further arrows. A dozen of Goronwy’s men turned towards the wood, urging their horses forward, but at the same instant, a host of men charged out of them, aided by the terrain which gave them the higher ground.
The two lines of horses crashed into each other and men on both sides went down. Beside me, Bevyn had mounted his horse, hardly able to contain himself. I pressed Anna’s face against my shoulder while she cried at the noise and at my fear.
“Awn! Awn!” I said. Go! Go!
He went, crashing through the bracken and spurring his horse out of the trees and onto the road. He raised his sword arm sliced through one attacker and then another, neither of whom even had time to turn. He cut down one man who pressed on Goronwy, who’d lost his horse and now stood astride the body of another man.
I watched only Bevyn, too frightened to look away, praying with everything in me that he stayed upright; that he lived through this. His sword developed a coating of blood and it flashed as he moved it up and down, killing every enemy within reach.
And then Llywelyn came.
I couldn’t see his face from this far away, but I could imagine his grimace, that teeth-bared look all the men had as he and Hywel galloped full-speed side-by-side down the opposite slope. Bevyn broke off from what he was doing and flowed into formation behind Llywelyn. The soldiers moved as a unit and I understood then that that was what Bevyn meant, more than the daily practice with wooden swords that I’d always imagined was standard for knights-in-training. It was the ability to work as a team, to trust that you didn’t have to block that enemy’s sword because the man beside you had already done it.
They moved fluidly through the opposition. I didn’t know how they avoided their own soldiers but they did. I barely had time to catch my breath before it was over. So many men were dead or injured. But I couldn’t see them, through the tears that poured down my cheeks.
I stared at the battlefield, unseeing, until I caught sight of Llywelyn pacing north along the road towards me. By the time, he glimpsed me among the trees, I could tell he was angry. His focus was such that I could practically see the blood thundering in his ears and that his vision had narrowed to a red haze.
Just like Trev.
He burst into the space in front of me, grabbed my arms, and pulled me to him. He brought his nose to within inches of mine.
“Tell me how you knew!”
“I . . I . .”
“Are you the traitor? Are you a spy for the English?”
“No! No!” I said.
“Who did you tell that we were coming this way?”
“Nobody! I didn’t tell anyone! I didn’t even know until just before we left!”
“You knew they’d attack us here!”
“I only knew that at one time someone had! Would I have told you about it if I planned to betray you?”
He stared down into my face while I gazed up at him, my face white and my eyes wide. He’d gripped my upper arms so tightly it was going to leave marks. Then my words finally penetrated and Llywelyn’s vision cleared. He relaxed his hands and set me on my feet. Anna had been asleep on a blanket but sat up, her eyes wide, looking at us. Llywelyn’s face fell and he put his forehead into mine.
“I didn’t mean to scare you or her.” He ran his hands up and down my arms. “Last night, I promised you I wouldn’t hurt you, and here I’ve already broken that promise. I can’t fix it. I’m sorry, Marged.”
“I didn’t betray you, Llywelyn,” I said.
“I know that now,” he said. “But there’s too much about you that is unfamiliar and unusual. I haven’t had time to hear your story, but you can’t evade my questions any longer. I will not abide another day in ignorance.”
“I know no more than you, Llywelyn,” I said. “I don’t know how I came to be here, or why, only that Anna and I are here.”
Llywelyn eased back from me further. “Perhaps you are a gift from God,” he said, in Welsh. “Perhaps he sent you so I wouldn’t die at Coedwig Gap today.”
“How many are dead?” I said, in French, not letting him know I understood him. His comment had been for himself alone.
“Too many.”
“I saw the battle. I saw men fall, but many, surely, survived.”
“And they need help,” Llywelyn said. He stepped around me to my horse. “We need the bandages you carry.”
“Is there someone who can stay with Anna? Perhaps I can assist. I took a first aid class last quarter.”
He glanced at me. “You know something of healing?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.
Okay, so by twentieth century standards I knew nothing about healing, but I figured if this really was the Middle Ages, the people here knew less than nothing and I might actually be useful.
In addition to that first aid class, which I should have known not to mention to Llywelyn since he couldn’t possibly know what ‘first aid’ was, I’d had a baby. I’d doctored Anna’s knees countless times. I’d even held Elisa together when as a child she’d run into a barbed wire fence without seeing it. Our parents hadn’t been home and in the first frantic minutes, I’d staunched the blood, cleaned her wounds, and plastered her with bandaids before calling my neighbor for help.
“We’ll need clean water and alcohol,” I said as Llywelyn tugged the saddlebag off the horse and lugged it toward the road. I grabbed Anna’s hand and hung back, not wanting her to see what was in front of us. I’d followed the battle as best I could from my hiding place. Men had died, many of them.
“Rhodri!” Llywelyn called to a young man hauling a man by his feet off the road. Helmetless but unhurt, he trotted over to Llywelyn.
“Yes, my lord,” he said, a little breathlessly. His face was whiter than the usual Celtic pallor.
“I want you to stay with the little girl, here,” Llywelyn said. “Marged has some healing skill that we need.”
“Yes, my lord,” Rhodri said. “I’ve six younger brothers and sisters. I know how to look after little ones.” He crouched in front of Anna. “Would you like to walk with me and look for bugs?”
I thought the chances of finding any bugs in the middle of a leafless, January woods in Wales slim to none, but he had the right idea. I bent to her and spoke in English. “Will you go with him? Mommy’s going to be right over there, helping some people who got hurt. Rhodri wants to know if you’d like to look for bugs with him?”
Anna nodded and transferred her hand from mine to Rhodri’s. They set off slowly toward the woods, away from the road, Rhodri modifying his gate to a loose-hipped walk to match her tiny steps.
“Okay,” I said, looking after them for another few seconds, and then turning the other way. I didn’t know if I was traumatizing Anna for life by all she’d seen and heard in the last twenty-four hours, but she’d been making friends among Llywelyn’s company during our ride, so I hoped she was okay with Rhodri—and more importantly, okay inside.
The scene in the gap hit me like a punch in the stomach. Dead men and horses lay strewn across the ground, although Llywelyn’s men were attempting to clear the road. I’d carelessly mentioned the p
ossibility of ambush, but the reality was far worse than I could have ever imagined. There was blood everywhere. The Middle Ages. Dear God, I’m in the Middle Ages. I walked faster, hustling to keep up with Llywelyn’s long legs.
When we reached Geraint, Goronwy shifted out of the way and I fell onto my knees beside the wounded man. Llywelyn crouched beside me, his hand resting gently on the small of my back.
“Oh, my Lord,” I breathed. “What’s to be done?” The sight of his bloody shirt lessened my hope that I could help him or anyone.
Llywelyn ripped open Geraint’s shirt so we could see the extent of the damage. “That’s the first time you’ve used my title,” he said. His voice was low so I wasn’t even sure I heard him correctly.
I glanced at him, confused, and then realized that he thought I meant him, not God. It made me want to laugh, that hysteria from this morning bubbling to the surface yet again, but one look at Geraint and I sobered. I lifted the cloth that Goronwy held to the old man’s side and revealed a three-inch hole. “He’s just bleeding out on the road,” I said.
“Can you help him?” Llywelyn said.
I thought back to my basic biology from high school. There weren’t very many organs on the left side of the body, but it was a huge hole and I couldn’t imagine that his intestines weren’t punctured. At least the site wasn’t full of dirt, as the sword had ripped through layers of mail and cloth to reach Geraint’s skin, but who knew where that sword had been.
“Do you have some strong alcohol?” I asked Goronwy, who’d been waiting nearby, in French. “Not to drink but to pour on the wound. It’s the best way to clean it right now.”
“I’ll find some.”
“Hurry,” Llywelyn said.
I sat back on my heels as Llywelyn pressed at the wound again, trying to staunch the flow of blood. During the minute it took for Goronwy to run to one of the horses and back, the bleeding gradually slowed. Llywelyn looked up and met my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I couldn’t take my eyes off Geraint’s face. I’d seen death before—of course I had—but never like this. I’d never held someone’s hand as his life left his body, both of you knowing that it’s over. In the last second, Geraint’s eyes had widened, as if he’d really seen me, and I met his gaze. There had been acceptance there, but something else that looked like despair. I ached for him and didn’t want to move or have anything to do with all the others who lay as he did, dead or injured in the road.
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