It was midday as the party followed Aelward and Broq onto the cart path. The sun shone bright, and the soft trill of birdsong cheered the air, which remained tinged with the acrid smell of smoke. Despite the apparent peace of the woods, they kept a watchful silence, letting their ponies tramp the miles in an even, monotonous gait.
Broq stopped abruptly, holding up his arm to bid them hold. "Up ahead. Just over the rise. Something's wrong." The sound of voices drifted on the breeze.
"This way," Aelward said, leaping from his pony. "Get off the road into cover. Quickly now!"
Twenty-Five
The men hurried behind Aelward, each leading his pony by the bridle into the dense stand of trees to the left of the road. Creeping through the undergrowth, they kept well away from the road.
"I'd swear that was a woman's scream," whispered Devved.
Aelward raised a hand, his finger extended in warning. He turned his head to look back over a shoulder at his companions.
"Let's see what's happening, but watch your step," he said. "Very slowly, now. Be careful."
They angled their way back towards the road. The forest cover thinned as the ground gently rose, and the men emerged onto a sloped clearing, still out of sight of the road. Aelward gestured for them to quickly hobble their ponies and follow him. Again, a woman's cry rose to them on the breeze, and with it now another noise, what sounded to Kal like the gabbling of geese. Now it grew clear—the voices of children clamouring in distress. Kal pressed behind Aelward, as the company waded forward through waist-high grasses until they crested the rise and so regained a view of the thoroughfare that curved through a long swale and was lined on the far side by great overspreading trees.
Kal stared down the grade to the road, not forty yards away, to where a horse and cart were stopped. On the road beside the cart were a man, lying doubled over on his side in the dust, holding his head, and a woman clad in highland homespun, two or three children clutching at her skirts. The woman and children shrank back from a small company of armed men that hemmed them in at pike-point. Another child, evidently the eldest, a stout lad of nine or ten, was being pulled, kicking and scratching, from the wagon. Set to the ground, he caught one of the soldiers in the shin, sending him hopping, and dashed to where his father lay. There he stood his ground, jaw set and fists clenched. This seemed to amuse the soldiers standing by, for they shuffled a little, and the sound of coarse laughter now underlay the continued wailing of the frightened children.
"Gawmage's lowland dogs!" Devved spat the words through clenched teeth. Indeed, Kal could clearly make out the snarling mastiff's-head device on the front and back of the dun-coloured military tunics that the men wore.
A new commotion of voices drifted to the ears of the hidden onlookers. One of the armed men, tall and heavy framed, had climbed up onto the bed of the wagon and was bent over, rooting through it. As he stood up again, he threw a wooden crate onto the road. It burst open, and chickens scattered wildly in all directions. Laughing raucously, a couple of the soldiers kicked at the escaping birds, which disappeared into the trees and long grass on either side of the cart track. With a wide malicious grin, the man on the wagon bed lifted and emptied a large basket of eggs onto the road. They splattered amid angry curses as the soldiers were forced to leap back. The man on the wagon laughed uproariously and bent over again. When he rose, in his arms was a small cask, hoisted high and held above him like a prize. He lowered it to pry out the bung with his dagger; then, having managed to free the plug, he raised the cask aloft again and tilted his head back, his maw open wide. The amber liquid overflowed his mouth and slopped onto his unshaven face. Jeering, his mates demanded their share. The man pulled the cask away and grimaced, then, coughing and sputtering uncontrollably, tossed the cask down, letting its contents shower from the open bunghole. One of the men made to break its fall and cursed when it slipped through his hands and fell onto his foot. The others jostled and fought one another for a handhold on the swiftly draining cask. Recovered from his bout of coughing, the man aboard the cart rose again with laden arms and flung down a side of meat. At this, the carter pushed himself off the ground and lunged forward to retrieve the meat from the dirt of the road. The soldiers quickly lost interest in the empty cask and stopped the man. They circled him and taunted and shoved him, driving him staggering from one tormentor to the next.
"Filthy bullies. Time to teach them a lesson they'll not soon forget!" Devved said, his face florid. Head thrust forward, he drew his sword and took a step. Aelward reached out his arm to restrain the blacksmith.
"No, not yet."
Devved bristled. "What do you mean?" he snapped at Aelward. "They're highlanders, and in need of our help. Are you blind, man?"
"I see." Aelward's grizzled features tightened, and he rounded on Devved. "I see that we have a mission to accomplish," he hissed, "a dire mission. By guile and stealth, if we may. By main force, if we must, and only if we must."
"Aelward's right, Devved. Stay yourself," Kal said, fixing the blacksmith with a level stare.
Devved flexed his jaw, his cheeks undulating as he held himself back and lowered himself once more to a crouch in the long grass. All eyes returned to the scene unfolding below them on the road, where the man knelt on a single knee, dishevelled, beset by his tormentors, blood running freely over half his face. Still his eldest son stood by him, glowering over his father at the soldiers.
The boy struck fast, like an arrow let loose, rushing the nearest pikeman, but the soldier was faster still and spun his pike staff around, catching the boy in the side of the head. A sickening thud reached Kal's ears as the boy came sprawling to a rest on the packed dirt. There he lay, unmoving.
The carter rose to his feet and charged forward. Caught off balance, the soldier who had cracked the boy's head stumbled backwards and fell on his back, the carter atop him, to the clear amusement of his companions. The carter was seized and dragged from the pikeman. When the soldier regained his feet, he threw down his pike staff and unsheathed his sword. He drew his arm back and stepped to where the highlander was held, arms and legs fixed by the soldier's mates as surely as a fly in a spider's web.
"No! No! No! No . . ." The woman screamed and sobbed. Devved glanced fiercely at Aelward, who inclined his head.
"Make ready your bows," the grey man whispered.
"No . . . Wait," Kal said. "He's sheathing his sword."
On the road, something had happened. At a word from his fellows, the soldier had allowed himself be pulled back from his intended victim and had returned his weapon to its scabbard. The woman's eyes darted around the ring of soldiers, then up at the wagon bed. She screamed again. One of the men laid the back of his hand hard across the woman's mouth, and she was silent. The children were in a fit of howling by now, still clinging to the woman, as her husband was jostled back roughly against a cart wheel, arms flailing, by three of the pikemen.
"There's why he's housed his blade," said Aelward, nodding towards the soldier who had been so busily ransacking the cart. "Not from any sudden outpouring of mercy."
The man on the cart stood with a coil of thick hempen rope that he had found amidst all the other booty. He yelled out and threw it down. One of his comrades caught it and walked towards a great-limbed oak by the far side of the road. The rest of the armed men had closed on the solitary highlander, blocking off his escape, cornering him and wrestling him to the ground. In a swarm, they bound his hands behind his back and dragged him to the tree. One end of the rope had been quickly fashioned into a noose and hung over a branch several feet above his head. The men slipped the loop around the highlander's neck, and one stout soldier began to pull on the free end of the rope, drawing its slack taut.
"No . . . No . . . Th-they're going to hang him," said Galli. "Aelward, for mercy's sake, we must act now!"
Below them on the road, the woman's pleading grew more frantic and anguished, rising in tone to an hysterical pitch.
Still Aelward waited,
his hand raised and finger poised, holding them back. His jaw was set, and his eyes glinted with a fierce light. "Ready your bows . . . ," he breathed to the men beside him without looking away from the road. "Ready your bows . . . All of you . . ."
Devved remained motionless beside Kal. Eyes narrowed and blazing, he clenched the grip of his sword in a white-knuckled fist.
Now the carter was being hoisted up, in small jerks, from the road, his neck straining against the tension of the rope, his back arched and toes pointed in an attempt to stay supported by the ground. The woman's screams filled the air as she struggled to free herself of her captors' hold.
Without warning, Devved broke from the tall grass and charged down the field towards the trackway, sword raised high, roaring the highland battle cry.
"The fool!" Aelward growled. "Now are we committed to the path of blood!"
"Gwyn," Kal cried, his own bow at full bend. "The hangman!"
The young red-haired Holdsman raised himself to a knee and let loose. Not a split second behind Gwyn's shaft, a flight of arrows sped across the gap. The soldier hauling on the rope collapsed, an arrow fixed in the middle of his back and another in his side. The carter fell to his knees, gasping and coughing, struggling to remove the rope from his neck. Three other soldiers fell, each grabbing at the shaft of a highland arrow where he had been pierced.
Galli led the company headlong down the slope behind Devved. For a stunned moment, the lowland soldiers had sought cover from the rain of arrows. Three of their own lay dead. One had been wounded and lay writhing in a spreading pool of muddy blood on the roadway. Now, they emerged to meet the onslaught, chivvied forward by their leader, who remained standing in the cart.
"Have at 'em, boys," he howled. "You two there, get up! Pike and sword. Steady yourselves. Their arrows are spent, and there's more of us than them." He leapt down from the wagon, drawing his own sword ringing from its scabbard. "They're but highland whelps, and we'll bring them to heel!"
Devved charged him, and the two men clashed like a crushing wave breaking against stone. In a fit of rage, the blacksmith parried the soldier's first overhand blow, then regained himself and spun around to cut the man down, cleaving his chest nearly in two with the powerful stroke of his blade. Only the man's leather cuirass dampened the might of the blow.
On either side of Devved, Kal and Galli had joined the milling fray. With ease, Kal dispatched his adversary, who proved himself a clumsy swordsman. A second lowlander fared no better, for, no sooner had he stepped in front of Kal in the wake of his fallen comrade, than the Holdsman ran him through and drew back a bloodstained sword. The hours he had spent in practice with Alcesidas were bringing their reward.
Catching a breath, he flexed his sword wrist, savouring the coiled readiness of Rhodangalas in his hand. From the corner of his eye, Kal saw a flicker of movement. By the edge of the cart, a soldier skulked, sidling away from Kal towards Galli. He was going to blindside the Holdsman. Kal felt a cold rush of alarm. Galli had engaged a young lowlander, whose movements seemed clumsy and inexpert—another poor swordsman. That one should be easy for Galli to dispatch, Kal thought. Rhodangalas lifted, he dashed to take care of the third man, who turned with a start. The man had a pale, cadaverous face, heavily stubbled and lined with scars, and an arrow-torn ear. The soldier checked himself and raised his sword, inviting Kal to combat, helmet askew, his pallid face beaded with sweat.
Kal smiled grimly and darted his sword forward, feinting to the head then thrusting towards the midsection. With an unexpected swiftness and strength, the man parried the blow, knocking Rhodangalas flying from Kal's hand. Kal reeled back in shock. The man stepped forward nimbly.
"You've a way with the blade," he said, grinning. "And a pretty one it was, too." The man pressed forward, feinting jabs. He had the light feet of a swordsman—a good swordsman. "Time to pay the tallyman," he said, his forced smile dissolving into a scowl as he swung his blade roundly to hack through Kal's gut. Kal backstepped desperately and flinched as the sword tip caught the weave of his tunic. While he struggled to regain his balance, the soldier followed through with a quick powerful thrust to the throat. In that instant, Galli whirled round, as lithe as a cat, and slashed down on the man's arm, severing it from his body, sending the sword with a dull thud to the ground, its hilt in the grip of lifeless fingers. Galli dispatched the stricken soldier, who stared with a look of unbelief at his bleeding stump, as Kal scrambled to retrieve Rhodangalas.
Rising with his sword in hand again, Kal realized that the sounds of fighting had subsided and given way to the moans of wounded men and the frightened sobbing of children.
"Routed, every last one of them! Paid back in kind," said Devved, his face sweat-stained and grimy from exertion. He stood close by and wiped his gory blade clean on a patch of cloth he had torn from the cloak of a fallen lowland soldier.
"Aye, all dead . . . or dying, though I take no pleasure in carnage," said Aelward as he bent over a man still clinging to life and moistened his mouth and lips with water.
"And Gwyn?" asked Kal.
"None the worse for wear, as you can see. Nor are any of the rest of us," said Broq, busily untying the cords that had bound the hands of the carter. The woman and her children rushed to embrace him. "Nor this fellow, although it was a close-run thing, I'd say, with him more than just starting to feel the bite of the rope around his throat."
"He wasn't the only one who came near to paying the tallyman," Galli said, casting an eye towards Kal.
"Tallyman?" Aelward asked. Devved, Gwyn and Broq, too, looked up.
"Aye, the tallyman," Kal said, grinning ruefully. "I came too close to being tallied among the dead. But for Galli—"
"It was overconfidence on your part. Overconfidence, plain and simple, else you'd have taken him without any help from me."
"Aye, too much sparring with Alcesidas. Not enough hard practice to make me battle wary. Ah, well, a lesson learned—"
"At what cost, Kal? We nearly lost you. And we can't afford to lose you."
"Galli is right, Kalaquinn," Aelward said slowly, glancing up again at the Hordanu from where he stooped over the dying man. "We cannot afford to lose you." The quietness of his voice gave weight to his words.
Kal looked from one man to the other, then chuckled. "Peace," he said, and lifted a hand, as if to dismiss their concern. "I am unharmed. Do not fret."
"You would do well," Aelward said softly, fixing his grey eyes on Kal, "to avoid battle in the future. If at all possible, avoid any danger to your person." The grey man rose to his feet and stoppered his water flask. He glanced to the lowlander he had been tending, now still and lifeless, then turned to the carter, who hugged the woman and children close. "And now, introductions are in order. What is your name? Tell us your story."
"Aye, how did you come to be attacked by this lot?" Devved said.
"And do you think there are more of them about?" Galli asked.
"Hold. Hold with the questions." Aelward lifted a hand, palm out. "Give the man leave to speak."
"Thank you for saving him," blurted the woman. Two girls and a small boy still pressed about her legs.
"Aye, br-briacoil," the man by her side said hoarsely and inclined his head, a hand at his neck. "I-I owe you a debt of th-thanks that can never be paid. You . . . you have saved me—saved us, for they would . . . they would surely have killed us all." The man placed a hand on the shoulder of his eldest. The stout lad, standing once again by his father's side, sported a large, purpling goose egg on the left side of his brow. The man straightened. "I am Latryk. I am—" He coughed; then, after swallowing hard, said, "I am a charcoal burner in these parts. We were on our way home from Melgrun with supplies, having sold a load and visited my sister and her new bairn. We were beset by these men. They came from the other direction, from deeper in the forest."
"They must have been just ahead of us on the road," Broq said, looking in the direction the charcoal burner pointed. "They had a rough look
about them."
"They all do," Latryk continued, his words coming more easily, though he still rubbed at the livid welt around his throat, where the rope had bit him. "They said they needed to search our cart for weapons. Said they were going to put an end to the troubles they'd had with the folk hereabout. And troubles they've had, for sure. I can attest to the truth of that. Mostly from the burners hereabout. It's not with open arms that we've welcomed the lowland rabble to these parts. No, but it's been with arms borne!" The man plucked up an arrow from the ground, smiled and squinched one side of his face in a wink. "Aye, and they were in an angry frame of mind, too, since our folk had made themselves scarce."
"Indeed, there's no finding a charcoal burner in the Asgarth Forest, if he doesn't want to be found," Broq said.
The man looked at Broq sideways, scrutinizing his face with a narrowed eye, and lifted the arrow to point at him. "You've a browmark like that young fellow there, but you're a marshman, aren't you? Aye, I've seen you before."
"No doubt, you have. I am Broq, and this is Aelward." The bard held out an open hand to the grey man.
"Well, there's a thing! Saved by Broq. And by Aelward himself!" The man grinned lopsidedly and looked to his wife. "Aye, there's a thing."
"And so they ransacked your cart and aimed to hang you simply to indulge their malice?" Kal said.
"Aye, that, and to make an example of me. So they claimed."
"There are more of them about?" Galli asked.
"Aye, there's always more of them. It was just poor luck that we came on them. Thought we'd miss them on the road today," the charcoal burner said and looked again at Broq and Aelward.
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