loose-limbed grace growing clumsy, the cultured accent slurring, the eyes becoming slack-lidded and glazed. He had half expected it to happen. On more than one occasion at court, FitzMiles had roistered away the night with Prince Henry, drinking himself beneath the table, a woman on each arm. The lack of moral fibre was of no consequence to the Earl; it was the lack of self-discipline that gave him cause for scorn.
The bleating of sheep roused him from contemplation of a ripe future to the more immediate contemplation of the road before his eyes which was blocked by an enormous cloud of baaing, smelly sheep.
His horse lashed out as de Lacey's mount, brought up short, collided with its rump. De Lacey swore and wrenched on his bridle.
'God's eyes!' snarled de Belleme. 'Get these stinking, tick-ridden beasts out of my way!'
His words were smothered in a chorus of mournful bleating as the sheep advanced and closed around the troop. His destrier began to plunge in earnest. The pack ponies kicked.
Cursing, his men attempted to control them and their own mounts and draw their weapons at the same time.
Walter de Lacey swung his sword at a sheep, but stopped in mid-motion, his wrist arrested in response to the nocked arrow aimed at his breast. A range of ten yards made death a certainty.
There were men among the sheep, rising to their feet, their tunics wrong side out affording them a sheepskin camouflage, unseen until it was too late. Welshmen, dark and slender, with short swords at their hips and the deadly longbows in their hands.
'
'You'll die for this,' he said thickly.
Without reply, the Welshman gestured him and his over-lord down from their horses.
Robert de Belleme was not afraid. It was an emotion he seldom experienced even in the teeth of death, but his fury at being trapped and helpless to extract himself, surrounded as he was by bumping, bleating sheep, raged so hot that he was incandescent. His hands were lashed behind was incandescent. His hands were lashed behind his back. A black hood was forced down over his head and tied there, clogging his sight. Barbarian Welsh jostled his muffled ears. De Lacey's invective was cut off by the sound of a dull blow and then retching. Someone laughed. Rage stuck in de Belleme's gull et and almost choked him.
Small coarse hairs from the cloth hood clung to his lips and tongue. He writhed and struggled and felt the bonds saw into his wrists.
Guyon lowered the bow, his eyes sparkling with laughter. His throat quivered as he controlled the impulse to shout his triumph aloud. Commands flickered in Welsh. Fresh pack ponies were brought and the loads transferred. Sheep, destriers and the now unladen ponies began their escorted journey deep into the wilds of Powys where, except by Welshmen, they would not soon be found.
Guyon murmured something to one of his companions, his voice warm with triumph as he studied the two men, bound like caterpillars in a web. In a single swift motion, he straddled the mount that Eric had brought him.
The words were lost upon his victims, but not the rich delight with which they were spoken and, had de Belleme not seen with his own eyes Guyon FitzMiles sliding beneath the trestle, overcome with drink and had not his assailant been so obviously Welsh, he would have known immediately at whose feet to lay the blame.
As it was, he lay in the road, struggling within his cocoon, hearing the curses of men similarly encapsulated fighting to win free. Horses circled and plunged around him. The Welsh tossed banter cheerfully hither and yon in dips and swoops of singsong language, haranguing each other and their victims alike and then, like autumn swallows, they were gone. A hoof caught de Belleme's side as the last horse departed and involuntarily he arched at the sudden buffet of pain.
Silence descended and it began to rain.
CHAPTER 9
Rhosyn listened to the rain as an eddy of wind drove it against the hafod shutters. One of several spring squall s. In between, the stars would peek through the scudding clouds in pinprick points of diamond light.
The fire, banked for the night, gave off a low, comforting glow, glints of red jewel warmth winking beneath the aromatic logs of the diseased pear tree that Twm had cut down last year.
Rhys and Eluned were newly abed. She could hear their conspiratorial whispers behind the curtains. Her son had turned eleven last week and thought himself very grown up. At fourteen, in Wales, he could claim his manhood. She would be thirty then, Eluned ten and this new babe, if it survived the early months, would be rising from helpless infancy into sturdy childhood.
She picked up her sewing, took a few half-hearted stitches and, with an irritated cluck, put it down again. The rush-light was too poor for this kind of delicate work and her mind was restless tonight, fluttering purposelessly like a moth at a candle flame. The baby turned in her womb, busily flexing new, delicate limbs. She felt the thrust and flicker with a protective hand. With almost four months of carrying left before the birth, she had not yet burgeoned into ungainly discomfort. Her ripening body was still a pleasure and she was lost in the wonder of it.
The old dog sitting with its moist nose at her knee suddenly growled deep in its chest and stiffened. Rhosyn stood up to face the cottage door, one hand reaching for the rake that Twm had earlier been using on the floor rushes.
It was Twm's voice she heard outside now, gruff and questioning. A horse snorted. A man replied with amusement, the tone deeper than her servant's and edged with a foreign inflection to the Welsh she would have known anywhere. She bade the dog lie and, dropping the rake, flew to the door and unbarred it to the night.
'Guyon!' she cried and flung herself into his arms. Twm arched a knowing resigned brow and, completely ignored, dismissed himself to his bed.
Rhosyn withdrew from the hard clasp of Guyon's arms and tugged him inside the hafod. Gelert whined and thumped his brindle tail on the rushes. She reset the bar and came once more into the circle of his arms.
'You smell of sheep,' she said against his mouth.
He nuzzled her cheek with a stubbly jaw. 'What kind of greeting is that for a man who has ridden hard for your sake?'
'Not for your own?' Rhosyn queried pertly, her eyes laughing, as green and gold as moss agates. 'You are overblown with vanity indeed.'
Her dark hair spilled down over his hands in a fine, cool cloak. Her breasts were ripe and warm against his chest. Within her belly the child kicked.
'How goes it with you?' he asked, his face suddenly all tenderness and concern.
Rhosyn gave a little shrug. 'I'm not sick any more, indeed, I've an appetite like a bacon pig.
When I start to waddle like one, I will curse you and a certain hot, harvest night ... Have you come alo--' She stopped. Guyon lifted his head from contemplation of her glowing skin and brilliant eyes just in time to be almost bowled over by the two children.
They were like puppies, gambolling and clamouring; Rhys's new-found manhood had flown out of the window to leave only the excited child. Guyon bore with it very well , riding out the first storm with wry, rueful humour, curbed behind a half-turned head as their mother calmed them with dire threats and a voice suddenly grown as sharp as the flick of a lash.
Subdued, but not defeated, Eluned went to fetch Guyon something to drink and Rhys sat down before the banked fire, hugging his knees, a dark scowl on his face.
'How long will you stay?' he demanded, slanting Guyon a hard glance.
'Rhys!' his mother reprimanded more sharply than she had intended. It was a question she herself wanted to ask but dared not.
Guyon waved aside her anger with a grin. 'I am accustomed to it by now. If he was not so obviously a boy, I
