one hand, a kite-shaped shield in the other, and a sharp scramsax tucked into his belt. But he didn't get a chance to use any of these. Navarre, who had quietly dismounted, stepped up from behind him and stuck a dagger into the side of his neck. The giant sank to his knees, eyes goggling. He clutched at the jutting hilt, blood bubbling through his fingers. Gwendolyn screamed in horror. Countess Madalyn didn't at first see this. She was distracted by a wild shouting, and now stood in her stirrups to peer down the valley.
Why were feathered shafts whistling back and forth through the frigid air? Why were Welshmen dropping where they stood?
Then she saw the English archers. Having donned leather over their mail as camouflage, they emerged in packs from the trees on either side. The graceful curve of their longbows, as they were strung and drawn with professional speed and precision, was as distinctive as it was terrifying.
'Earl Corotocus!' she cried. 'What is this?'
'War cannot just be extinguished, my lady, like a candle you snuff, or an ember you put your foot upon.' Corotocus mused. 'Though putting one's foot down is an apt phrase at this moment.'
The Welshmen in the valley ran in all directions, but arrows flew with unerring accuracy. Like fleeting streaks of light, their steel heads buried themselves in flesh, muscle and bone. Very soon, the valley bottom was dotted with the wounded and dying. Some of those still standing attempted to forge to the valley sides, where they could grapple with their tormentors. But the crossfire was so thick that they were riddled with shafts and dropped like human pincushions, or, if they managed to make it, received a knife in the ribs or the crushing blow of a war- hammer to the top of their skull.
Countess Madalyn watched through tear-blurred eyes.
'You traitorous pig!' she wept. 'You gave us your word.'
'One does not give one's word to country oafs and expect to be taken seriously, countess. These men are outlaws. They lived as such, and will die as such.'
Some Welshmen struggled back towards the valley head, as though to retrieve their weapons. But Navarre and others of the earl's personal mesnie greeted them with laughter and double-handed sword strokes, lopping their legs from under them, sundering their necks at the shoulder. More knights, these mounted, appeared at the lowest end of the valley, where the open, tussocky sward made it safe for their horses. Most wore the earl's red and black livery, but there were others, tenant knights from his wider demesnes, who sported personal devices on their surcoats and shields. It made for a colourful scene as they cantered back and forth, lowering their lances to skewer the Welsh as they ran, or hacking them down with longswords and mattocks. Some fell to their knees and begged for mercy — but were simply ridden over, their bodies torn and trampled by smashing, iron-shod hooves. One stout fellow attempted to grab the lance of a knight decked with blue and white chevrons. The knight released his weapon, but circled around, drew his battle-axe and clove the fellow's cranium.
Even those lying injured were not spared; hunting spears were flung at them as riders galloped past. One older Welshman, his jaw hanging shattered and left eye dangling from a crushed socket, crawled to the river's edge, only to have his face pressed under by a hoof until he drowned. Owen Anwyl, the disinherited Welsh noble who had first seized Grogen Castle, was spared the butchering blade, but buffeted again and again by horses and struck with the hafts of axes and the pommels of swords, his visage streaked with gore from his lacerated scalp. Eventually a halter was looped around his neck and tightened, and he was hauled around the valley on his back.
Countess Madalyn shrieked as rude hands were now laid on her.
It was Navarre, his lopsided face written with goblin glee. He dragged her from the saddle and threw her to the ground. She struggled, but could not stop him plucking the pearls from her throat or the rings from her fingers. When she spat and clawed at him, he punched her — not hard enough to knock her unconscious, though his fist was like a bone mallet inside its rawhide glove. She was left stunned by the blow, only vaguely aware that her daughter was also pulled screaming from the saddle and divested of her jewels.
After that, the two women were violated.
Countess Madalyn's fustian gown and the fine silk under-tunic were torn wide open, and her breasts exposed. She winced as Navarre kneaded them like two lumps of dough, sobbed aloud as he feasted on them, suckling, biting, chewing until her blood flowed.
Earl Corotocus and Hugh du Guesculin sat through it all, unmoved. As Corotocus surveyed his triumph, he summoned his page and accepted a chicken drumstick and a goblet of mulled wine.
In time, the carnage drew to a close. Spiked maces, caked with brains and bone fragments, still crashed onto heads and shoulders. Flailing hands were still severed at the wrist, but few Welshmen were left on their feet. Tiring of the sport, Corotocus's knights took those few surviving and hanged them from the surrounding trees. One by one, their gibbering pleas were lost in gargled chokes.
At the sight of this, Countess Madalyn wailed like a baby, but she was struck dumb when she saw her daughter, every scrap of clothing now stripped from her body, trussed with rope and thrown over the front of her horse like a deer. Holding her rent garments together with one hand, the countess tried to intervene, only to be knocked to the ground by Navarre. Laughing, he jumped up behind the captive girl and slapped her naked buttocks.
'Your daughter will be held as surety for your good behaviour,' Earl Corotocus said. 'At some point in the future, if this land remains at peace, it may please me to marry her to a henchman of my choice — someone I can rely on to treat her in the manner to which she will soon become accustomed.'
'You whoreson!' the countess hissed, kneeling upright, her emerald eyes burning with outrage. 'You goat's whelp!'
'Insult me all you wish, my lady, but understand one thing. There is more at stake here than the pride of your piffling people. I am lord of the Clun March, but I am more than just a name. In France, I was charged with defending the king's Gascon possessions. We were overwhelmed by sheer numbers, but the king heard about the destruction I wrought on his foes, how my men and I slew hundreds, thousands. He was grateful, and I was rewarded with lifelong investment not just in this — the most difficult corner of his realm — but with lordships all across Wales. Be under no illusion, I intend to hold my possessions and, in due course, to expand them. But these constant revolts are becoming tiresome. I cannot have the king suspecting that his trust was misplaced. Du Guesculin!'
'My lord?' the banneret said.
'Du Guesculin, by my reckoning, there are twenty villages between here and Grogen Castle. Lay waste to them. Torch the houses, scatter the women and children, hang the men and boys. And make a good show of that, du Guesculin — I want gibbets on every hill and every crossroads, each one laden to breaking point.'
'Of course, my lord.'
'Earl Corotocus, you will pay for this!' the countess snarled.
'Countess Madalyn, we all pay in the end.'
Before he left, he made a special example of Owen Anwyl, having his hands bound behind his back, his legs broken with a pollaxe, and then suspending him by the feet from a tree-limb at the highest point of the valley.
CHAPTER TWO
The castles that King Edward built in Wales after his first war of conquest, some twenty years earlier, had formed a stone collar intended to choke the spirit of native resistance. Designed by the master military architect, James of St. George, they were each one a towering, impregnable bastion, a glowering fastness that came to dominate and oppress the land for miles in every direction. Their very names had now become a byword for invincibility: Conway, Ruddlin, Flint, Harlech.
Grogen Castle was no exception.
It stood on the north shore of the River Tefeidiad, right on the water's edge, and was approachable only from the west due to hilly moorland and thickly wooded terrain in the north and east. It consisted of an outer curtain- wall, some fifty feet high, a fortified Gatehouse, a Barbican, a Constable's Tower, and an Inner Fort, the walls of which stood eighty feet. Inside the Inner Fort were the main buildings — the halls, kitchen, barrack-house and the final defensive structure, the Keep. When Corotocus's men first came in sight of Grogen, there were mutters of awe — due as much to its appearance as to its size. In England it had become the fashion for wealthy nobles who
