and superstitious minds. Yet here he was-strange and terrible and, God help us all, magnificent in his killing wrath.
The last thing Falkes de Braose saw was Sheriff de Glanville, eyes glazed, clutching the shaft of the arrow that had pierced his shoulder, passed through, and protruded out his back. The sheriff, staggering like a drunk, lurched forward, dagger in his hand, struggling to reach the phantom of the wood.
Count Falkes turned and started after the sheriff to drag him back away and out of danger. He took but two steps and called out to de Glanville. The word ended in a sudden, sickening gush as an arrow struck him squarely in the chest and threw him down on his back. He felt the cold wet mud against the back of his head and then… nothing.
CHAPTER 29
See now, Odo,' I tell my dull if dutiful scribe, 'we did not plan to attack the sheriff and his men-we were sorely out-manned, as you well know-but we came ready to lend muscle to Abbot Daffyd's demand to stop the hangings.'
'But you killed four men and wounded seven,' Odo points out. 'You must have known it would come to a fight.'
'Bran suspected the sheriff would betray himself, and he wanted to be there to prevent the executions if it came to that. As it happens, he was right. So, if you're looking for someone to blame for the Twelfth Night slaughter, you need look no further than Richard de Glanville's door.'
Odo accepts this without further question, and we resume our slow dance towards my own appointment with the hangman. Bran was angry. Furious. I'd never seen him so enraged-not even in the heat of battle. When fighting, an icy calm descended over him. With swift but studied motion, he bent the belly of the bow and sent shaft after shaft of winged death to bite deep into enemy flesh. He did not exult; neither did he rage. But this! This was something different-a black, impenetrable fury had swept him up, and he shook with it as he stalked around the fire ring in his hut, his face twisted into a rictus of ferocity. Like a terrible, monstrous beast, anger had consumed him completely.
Seeing him now, a body would not have known him as the same man from the night before. For as we stood in the town square on Twelfth Night and the realisation broke upon us that Sheriff Bloody de Glanville would hang those three men even after recovering the treasure, Bran simply turned to us as we gathered close about and said in a low voice, 'String your bows.'
Then he calmly set about the destruction of our enemies.
As I said to Odo, it was no great surprise that the vile sheriff would betray his own promise. Truth be told, we fairly expected it. That is why we had hurried from the abbey to the town ahead of Abbot Daffyd to ensure that the sheriff would release the captives once the stolen goods were returned. I reckon that each of us, in some corner of our hearts, knew it was all too likely de Glanville would show his true colours that grim night.
Now that it was over, however, Bran had stewed and fretted and worked himself into a towering rampage. 'The man is a craven butcher,' spat Bran, pacing around the hearth. Fleeing the town, we had ridden all night to reach Cel Craidd; none of us had slept, nor could we. Though exhaustion heaved heavy rollers upon us, we sat around the low-flickering fire and listened to our lord give voice to his anger.
In the time I had been among the Grellon, I had picked up hints and suggestions that our Lord Bran sometimes suffered from black, unreasoning rages. But I had never seen it for myself… until now.
'He must be stopped,' snarled Bran, smashing his fist against his thigh with each word. 'God as my witness, he will be stopped!'
'De Glanville had no intention of keeping his word,' Iwan pointed out. 'He meant to kill as many as he could from the start. I'd like to see him dance on the end of that leather rope.'
'It may be too late for that,' said Tuck quietly. As everyone turned toward him, he yawned hugely and said, 'He may be dead already. I saw him struck, did I not?'
'It's true,' I affirmed. 'I saw it, too.'
'He took an arrow maybe,' allowed our incensed lord. 'But I won't rest until I've seen his head on a pole.'
'For a certainty,' Tuck insisted, 'I saw him go down.'
'He might have been struck, but was he killed?' Bran glared around at us as if we were a troop of enemy soldiers sprung up to surround him. 'Was he killed?' Bran demanded, his voice aquiver with passion. 'Is he dead?'
There was no way for any of us to know that beyond a doubt; when the time came to flee, we had all cleared off like smoke. We had done what we could do, the few of us, and were in danger of overstaying our welcome. So with the confusion at its height, we used the chaos in the town square to cover our retreat.
'I was not counting bodies,' remarked Iwan; he glanced around, somewhat defiantly. 'Nor did I see anyone else with a tally stick.'
'De Glanville must have been killed,' said Merian. 'If he took an arrow, he must be dead by now. Bran, calm yourself. It is over and done. You saved those men, and the Ffreinc have been dealt a blow. Be satisfied with that.'
Bran regarded her with a look of cruel disdain, but he held his tongue. When he could trust himself to speak again, he said, 'Dead or alive, we must know beyond a doubt. One way or the other, we must find out.'
'We'll know soon enough,' pointed out Tuck. 'Word will spread.'
'Aye, but late in coming here,' suggested Siarles.
'Unless someone went to Llanelli to find out,' said Bran, using the Welsh name for the place. Like all true sons of Elfael, our Bran refused to dignify the Norman name of Saint Martin's by uttering it aloud.
'None of us can go,' Iwan said. 'They know us now. We'd be caught and strung up on sight.'
'Someone who has never been there, then,' said Tuck, thinking aloud.
'Or,' added Bran, glancing up quickly, 'someone who goes there all the time…' Turning to Siarles, he said, 'Fetch Gwion Bach. We have a chore for him.'
Well, before anyone could gainsay the plan, the boy was found and brought to sit with the council. A quick, intelligent lad, he is, as I say, a mute and such a furtive little sneak that he easily flits from place to place with no one the wiser, and so quiet folk don't often know he's around. The townsfolk had long since grown used to seeing him here and there, and it is a fair bet that no one thought anything of it when he appeared the evening following what the alarmed citizens of Saint Martin's are now calling the Twelfth Night Massacre.
Iwan and I walked him to the edge of the forest and beyond as far as we dared go, then left him to hurry on his way into town. It was long past dark by the time we returned. Gwion stayed in town overnight, God knows where, and returned to Cel Craidd late the next day. The winter sun was almost down when he appeared, red- cheeked from his run through the frosty air. Bran had food and drink ready and waiting for him, but the boy would not sit down, less yet touch a bite, until he had delivered his charge. He fairly danced with excitement at being included in the plans of his elders.
'Good lad, good,' said Bran, kneeling down in front of him. 'Did you learn what we want to know?'
Gwion nodded so hard, I thought his head might fall off.
'Is the sheriff alive?' asked Iwan, unable to restrain himself.
Bran gave the big man a perturbed glance, and said, 'Is he alive, Gwion? Is the sheriff still alive?'
The boy nodded again with undimmed enthusiasm.
'And the count?' asked Tuck. 'He was hit, too? Did the count survive?'
The boy turned wide eyes towards the friar and lifted his shoulder in an elegant shrug. 'You don't know?' asked Merian.
The boy shook his head. He did not know how the count fared, but the sheriff, it seemed, had indeed survived.
Bran thanked the boy with a hug, and dismissed him to his supper with a pat on the head and chuck under the chin. 'So now!' he said, when Gwion had gone. 'It seems the sheriff lives. I think we must invite him to Cel Craidd and arrange a suitable welcome for him when he arrives.'
The anger, which I had allowed myself to imagine had burned itself out between times, leapt up-renewed,
