when they’ve bedded down for the night we’ll come back and find you. Fasten? Oh, there you are. Come on, let’s find them, then.” He jerked his horse’s head around and rode off, Fasten behind. As the rest watched, the two men split up, Black riding to the left of the trail, Fasten to the right, and cantered easily down from the copse, then up the other side.
Sighing, Simon said, “Come on, then. Let’s get on.”
It was long after dark when they found a place to rest, a slight bowl in the top of a hill, just out of the wind and away from the direction the trail bastons were taking. There was no wood, not even twigs, to burn this high up, and the men had to huddle in the rough shelter and shiver in the chill of the evening.
Tanner came over as soon as Simon and Hugh had settled after seeing to their horses, and joined them as they crouched under bushes. They shared some meat and bread and drank a little water, all remaining silent in their tension, the action of the following morning lying heavy on their minds.
“Urn, Stephen,” said Simon after they had all finished their meal. “You’ve been involved in fights before, how, er… how do you think it’ll go tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” said Tanner reflectively. “I’ve been in some fights where we’ve won easily when we shouldn’t’ve, and others where we lost when we should’ve won. It depends on them, really. The posse is big enough, we should have two men to each one of theirs. But if they’re trained in war, they can still win. I don’t know.”
Simon glanced at the men all around, peering at them as he tried to remember which of them had been in a battle before. To his knowledge at least eight had seen action. Only eight? Out of all the men they only had eight who had seen a battle before? He bit his lip in sudden nervousness. “Did you see how many were there in the band?”
“I didn’t really see, no. I counted seven, but there may have been others already over the brow of the hill,” said Tanner, as if thinking out loud, but when he caught the expression on Simon’s face, he grinned and slapped the bailiff’s leg. “Don’t worry, bailiff! These men may be used to lulling farmers like Brewer, or monks, but I’ll wager we’ll be a surprise to them! Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough when Black comes back.”
As he said that, there came the sound of a horse neighing from nearby, and as they scrambled to their feet, drawing their swords, they heard the imperturbable voice of the hunter.
“Fine thing, isn’t it, to go and do a job and then be spitted by your own friends when you get back home again! Where’s Tanner?”
“Over here, John. I’m with the bailiff,” called Tanner, somewhat shamefacedly as he quickly shoved his sword back in its scabbard, looking embarrassed and annoyed with himself that he could have been so easily alarmed. They all sat down again and waited while the hunter saw to his horse before ambling over to them.
“Right, we followed them to their camp. It’s a big dip in the top of a hill, about two miles from here, and it looks like they’re settled down for the night.” He paused as Fasten came up to join them. “I was just telling them about the camp. Anyway, it’s in a big dip, and it’s almost surrounded by rocks and a rampart. They’ve lit fires and they’re all sitting round and drinking. It looks like they’ve got beer from somewhere, probably the merchants, I suppose, so I don’t think they’ll be up early tomorrow. We went around their camp, anyway, walked all round, and they don’t seem to have put guards out, so I think we shouldn’t have any problems.”
“How many are there, John?” asked Tanner.
“We counted nine,” said Black. He hesitated, then turned and looked steadily at Simon. “And one looks like a knight, all dressed in mail.”
It was still as black as midnight when Simon felt the kick at his ankles, and he grunted and swore as he sat up, blearily rubbing at his eyes, trying to clear them as if the darkness was inside his head. It took him some time to wake fully, even when at home. Now, with the chill deep in his marrow from sleeping outside too often in the cold and damp, he felt miserable, as if he would never be able to get warm again. Once more, with a rueful grin, he thought of his bed at Sandford, which would still be warm and comfortable with Margaret lying in it, like a sanctuary from the wind and rain of the world. Shaking his head muzzily, he looked up with irritation as the memory of warmth and his wife fled, and looked around the camp, taking stock. Tanner and Black were walking around, kicking into life the huddled figures of still sleeping men. Those already up were seeing to their weapons, cleaning sword blades and sharpening daggers, swinging hammers and clubs in an effort to free up the muscles that had seized overnight or stayed too tense.
It was a weird sight, almost eery, he thought to himself, all these men in the gloom and darkness, half- obscured by the deeper blackness of the rocks behind them as they swung their arms and weapons in strange patterns, the metal of the axe heads sometimes showing as a lighter grey shimmer against the background. It was as if they were in a different world. The men were quiet, hardly saying a word to each other; there was only the occasional hint of activity in the sound of a knife being rubbed against a stone, the whispy gleam of a hammer being whirled, it felt as if he was watching an army of ghosts, and with that thought he gave an involuntary shiver – how many of these men would be ghosts later in the day?
Putting the thought out of his mind, he stood quickly and went to help with the horses. As he walked past, a few of the men looked up; some grunted, grinning, but most simply nodded at him. By the time he had found and saddled his own horse most of the men were up and moving. Black and Tanner appeared, talking quietly, coming towards him from out of the gloom, and they stopped when they came close.
“John here thinks we can ride straight into the camp,” said Tanner. “It’s enough of a natural stockade to keep them in when we enter, and hopefully, if we be quick, we can get in and catch them before they know what’s happening.”
“Yes, we should be able to. There only seems to be the one entrance, like a gate it is, in the south side.”
“So we’ll have to ride round their camp?” asked Simon. “Won’t they hear us?”
“No,” said Black. “The ground is soft all over there, if we go slowly we should be safe.”
Simon looked from one to the other. “Should we ride in? Why not leave the horses outside and rush in on foot? There may not be space to ride inside their camp, they may be able to pull us off the horses. Wouldn’t it be safer to rush them on foot?”
They looked at each other, then Tanner nodded. “Yes. Alright, but I think we ought to keep some of our men on horses outside, so that they can ride in if things go badly for us.” Simon agreed, finished tightening his saddle, and swung up onto the horse.
When Black and Tanner were also mounted they rode to the middle of the camp and Tanner explained what he wanted the men to do. He had brought five men with him, the remains of the original posse hunting the abbot’s killer, and Simon and Black had brought seventeen, so all told they were twenty-one now, after losing three at the scene of the travellers’ murder and another one to take back the young girl’s body.
As they all grouped, Tanner explained his plan. He wanted sixteen men to enter the camp and the remaining five to stay with the horses – if the fight went against them, these men could come in on horseback as a reserve and work as cavalry, knocking the trail bastons to the ground so that they could be bound. They wanted to catch as many as possible, he said. No matter what the posse thought of them, they deserved a trial. His voice was stern and hard as he spoke, as if he too did not care too much for their lives, as if he wanted to be able to kill them all, but he stuck to the plan they had agreed. He allocated the men to their places while they were all mounted and led them south to the trail. Here Fasten moved up to join him and they led the way along the trail together.
Even in the pitch darkness, Simon could see that the ground was open here. Now and then he could just make out the stunted shape of a tortured tree standing on the skyline, looking like the fossilised skeleton of an ancient creature as it stood on the wind-swept moor, but for the most part there was nothing to see, nothing but the continual sweep of the plains as they rose softly to the hills.
The two men in the lead rode at some distance apart, with the main group following in a bunch. There was no talking now, all the men were wound taut, their nerves on edge as they listened for the slightest sound over the creaking of leather and the metallic tinkle of harness. Occasionally there was a louder noise as someone knocked a weapon against another, swiftly followed by a curse, but apart from this they made no noise as they passed.
They moved down the side of the hill where they had made camp, then followed a brook that wound gently between the hills, the riders keeping their mounts from the water to prevent any noise, making sure their horses kept to the soft earth at the banks. It was ghostly here, with a vague grey glow just beginning to light the horizon to the east. There was no sound to distract the men, no screech of an owl or yap of a fox, just the muted gurgle of the stream and the squeak and jingle of the harnesses.
