The Splintered Kingdom (20 page)

By dusk we found ourselves leading our horses across high heathlands, bright with purple flowers that matched the colour of the sky. Valley after valley stretched out before us: creases and folds in the fabric of the earth, endlessly rising and falling all the way to the distant horizon. Rocky outcrops rose like islands out of the sea of heather, and as the light faded we set up camp in the lee of one of those tors, not because it was especially sheltered, but for want of anywhere better, and because at least there was forage enough for our horses. We had some way to go before reaching the plains on the other side of this mountain, and I thought it better not to risk our mounts’ necks descending the slopes in the dark. At the very least I hoped that there we would have some protection from the wind, which swept across the land in fierce gusts from the west: a sure sign of worse weather to come.

If truth be told it was far from the best sleep I’d ever had; the ground was hard and littered with jagged stones, making it hard to settle. Nor did the tor offer as much respite from the elements as I had hoped; some of the men lost their tents entirely and were forced to share, sleeping four or five together, which did nothing to improve their moods the next day.

No sooner had we left Scrobbesburh behind us, in fact, than quarrels began to break out between the Welsh and the French parts of our host, who resented being made to march together, and while few of those came to blows, the further we travelled, the more frequent they grew. Thankfully Maredudd and Ithel were as eager as I was to foster a closer spirit between the two camps, and to set an example we made sure to ride together in the vanguard when we set out that second day: myself with my conroi, which included my knights as well as those that Robert had placed under my charge; and they with their
teulu
, which was almost the same thing, being the name they gave to their hearth-troops, their household warriors, their ablest and staunchest fighters; men who would give everything short of their lives in the service of their lords. It did not stop each side hurling insults at the other, but at the very least there was no more fighting after that, and that was enough to satisfy me. I only hoped the peace would last.

‘Once they sniff enemy blood, they will be much happier,’ said Maredudd confidently. ‘There will be less trouble then, I think.’

I cast him a sceptical look but said nothing. In my experience once men discovered the bloodlust within themselves it was a hard thing to shake. I had seen with my own eyes many occasions when as many men had died fighting between themselves over the spoils of victory as had been slain in their pursuit.

Within a few hours of breaking camp we had left the mountain behind us, eventually crossing the dyke shortly before midday. The deeper we marched into Powys, the more familiar the princes grew with the country, and the more swiftly we were able to travel. They knew not only which landmarks we ought to watch out for but also the best places to ford each river, whether to skirt around or else to cut through the woods that clung to the sharply rising slopes. We foraged as we went, filling our wineskins at springs and streams, sending small bands of men out to hunt deer or to steal cattle and sheep from the villages and farms we passed, all the while taking care to conceal our true numbers. News would quickly spread that a Norman raiding-party was afield, and that was all part of Fitz Osbern’s intention, but our exact strength I wanted to remain a secret, since that way the enemy would be kept guessing.

Not that we saw much sign of them; not, that was, until late on the second day. The brothers and I had sent out our fastest riders to scout out the land ahead and to our flanks to determine what our next move should be, and one of those returned that afternoon saying that he had spied a band of Welshmen one hundred strong mustering inside some ramparts not an hour’s ride upriver.

‘Caerswys,’ Ithel said as he wiped some of the sweat from his brow, and his brother nodded sagely.

‘You know of it?’ I asked them.

‘Know of it?’ Maredudd echoed. ‘We fought there once against the English many years ago, and won ourselves a great victory, short-lived though it was.’

Ithel nodded solemnly, and in his eyes I saw sadness. ‘Not a month after that our father lay dead, our once-proud army was shattered and our kingdom was stolen from us.’

Much as I felt for their plight, this was not the time for reminiscences. What mattered was those hundred Welshmen, and what we planned to do about them. ‘What about the place itself?’

‘It’s one of the forts left behind by the Romans,’ Ithel replied. ‘When we were there we erected a stockade on top of the ramparts and set sharpened stakes in the ditches, but even if those are no longer standing, it is a hard place to capture.’

Of that I had no doubt, but then I had little intention of trying to take it. The likelihood was that the enemy did not mean to garrison the fort in any case: if the scout’s estimate of their numbers was reliable, they had too few men for that, and besides there seemed little reason to defend this spot when it lay so many miles from the borderlands. Instead I guessed they were merely stopping there, and that tomorrow they would march northwards to join the rest of Bleddyn and Rhiwallon’s host.

Any lingering hopes I might have held of storming that stronghold faded when first I glimpsed it. Night was fast approaching by then and it was hard to discern much in the gloom and the mist settling over the flood plain, but they had made campfires inside the stronghold and their faint glow was enough for my eyes to make out a series of earthen banks and ditches arranged in a rough rectangle, with the remains of what looked like a stone gatehouse at the eastern end. A timber palisade did indeed run along the top of the earthworks, although from such a distance it was impossible to tell its condition: whether it had been repaired in the years since Ithel and Maredudd had made their stand there, or whether it was already rotten, in which case all that would be needed were a few swift axe blows before it fell.

‘There’s a breach on its northern side,’ said Eudo, whose sight was better than mine. ‘Too narrow to make an attack, though.’

Not that any of the other approaches looked more promising, for Caerswys stood at the meeting-point of two fast-flowing rivers, meaning that it was protected by water to south and west, and while the Welsh brothers assured me that both were fordable I knew it would be all too easy for the enemy to see us coming and hold us at those crossings. The only other choice we had, then, was
to try to assault the gatehouse, but that would be well defended and would surely mean the loss of many lives, which we could ill afford, especially when we had other choices at hand.

‘What do you suggest?’ asked Wace.

‘We wait until morning,’ I said. ‘They’ll leave sooner or later, and when they do, we’ll be ready for them.’

After posting sentries to keep a lookout for any signs of movement, I returned to where the rest of our host were waiting. From there we marched along the ridge that rose to the north of the fort, travelling in groups of no more than twenty at a time so that we would be less easily seen. Shadows shrouded the hills and cloud obscured the skies, and so it seemed doubtful that the enemy would spot us, but even so, one could never be too careful.

Several cart-tracks led out from the fort, heading in all directions along the two river valleys as well as into the hills, but only one led north. Suspecting that was the one that the enemy would take, I left Maredudd around half a mile from the fort with a contingent of spearmen and the forty or so archers we possessed. The gorse was thick enough there that they could easily lie hidden within arrow-shot of the road. At the same time his brother Ithel and I took the rest of our host – some three hundred men, most of them mounted – over to a clump of trees that stood a further quarter-mile away on the other side of the track, on the highest part of the ridge, where we might see the enemy but they would find it difficult to see us.

And there, with our trap set, we waited. By the time our whole host was in place, though, I reckoned it could only be a few hours until first light. My eyes stabbed with tiredness but I knew that I would not be able to sleep even if I tried; already I could feel my heart beginning to pound, my sword-arm tensing, though the prospect of battle lay some while off still. My feelings were shared by Eudo and Wace, as well as my own knights, and so in order to keep them busy I sent them all to keep watch whilst I did the rounds of the men, conferring with the other barons and making sure that they all knew what they were supposed to do. We held the advantage not just in numbers but also in position, and so it
ought to be a simple victory, but all the same I knew better than to get complacent. When it came to war I was only too aware that things were never quite as easy as one imagined.

‘Your plan had better work,’ Berengar said when my path brought me to him to his companions. ‘Otherwise I’ll see that you pay for each one of my men who loses his life fighting in your cause.’

I shrugged. ‘If it doesn’t work, we’ll all be dead men.’

He scowled, but evidently could think of nothing else to say, and I moved on. Yet even as I walked away I could feel the weight of his gaze pressing upon my back, and I shivered in spite of myself, sensing that if I were not careful his knife might be in there before too long. Straightaway I castigated myself for the thought. Whatever grievance he harboured, surely it was not so serious that he would wish me dead because of it?

Still, as I sat sharpening my sword that night I made sure to keep a close watch over him, at the same time promising myself that if he or his men ever came for me, I would be ready. And if any at point it came down to a choice between my life and his, I knew where my decision lay.

Twelve

THE ENEMY WERE
later leaving Caerswys than I had expected; it had already been light for some while when we first received word that they had been spotted filing out from the fort’s gatehouse. The skies were grey and a steady drizzle had been falling since before daybreak, dampening the men’s spirits with every hour that passed and also, I imagined, frustrating Maredudd’s archers, who needed to keep their bowstrings dry or else the sinews would stretch and be useless. I could only hope that, huddled low amidst the gorse bushes and the heather, they had found some shelter from the damp.

In any case it was too late now to do anything about that, as through the trees and the bracken I glimpsed the first few Welshmen, albeit still several hundred paces off. Their spearpoints bobbed as they climbed the track that led up the hill towards us, and though they had no way of knowing it, towards their deaths. I’d been right insofar as they were heading north, although already it seemed to me that they numbered more than the one hundred our scouts had told me yesterday. Indeed I would have said they had half that many again, though any exact count was impossible; they did not ride or march in ordered lines but rather in groups of as few as five men or as many as twenty. Not all of them were warriors either, for among them I spied more than a few women: soldiers’ wives and other camp-followers; gatherers of wood, tenders of stew-pots, stitchers of wounds and menders of cloth.

‘Remember who’s beside you in the charge,’ I said to my conroi and the rest of the knights around me. ‘Stay close and watch your flanks; don’t break from the line.’

Of course they knew all of this already, but battle does strange things to one’s mind. Many times I had seen men whom I usually considered clear-headed become blinded by rage, by the bloodlust, by dreams of glory. Forgetting themselves and where they were, they would ride gladly to their deaths, only realising their folly when it was already too late. I had no wish to see any of my men succumb to that fate – friends and sword-brothers whom I had grown to know so well – and so I gave them this reminder, regardless of whether or not they thought they needed it.

Already the enemy vanguard was approaching the place where Maredudd lay waiting. My grip upon the reins tightened as I waited for him to give the signal to his archers to let their arrows fly. Surely it would not be long now. It didn’t help that the enemy were not all in one column, as I had been hoping, but rather strung out along the track, since that made them harder targets. Nihtfeax pawed restlessly at the ground and I patted his neck to keep him calm. Like men, horses grow anxious before a fight; whether they can feel the apprehension in the air or sense when danger is near, I have never been able to tell, but at the very least they know when they are about to be called upon, and so it was then.

He wasn’t the only one who was anxious. I was too, partly because this would be the first time I had led so many men in the charge and partly because somewhere lost amidst the darkness of the woods to my rear was Berengar. I would have preferred to have him where I could see him, but I didn’t trust him enough to put him and his comrades in my conroi or even in the first line, and so he lurked in the ranks, no doubt stirring up sentiment against me, for he seemed to me the kind of man who would do that, even in these moments before the charge. My blood rose as I pictured his hard-eyed scowl: about the only expression I had seen him show in the short while I had known him. Still, I couldn’t let my anger get the better of me; all I could do was trust that he and his comrades would do their part, as he had promised. Until victory was assured I couldn’t afford to waste time on petty distractions such as him, no matter how much he tried my patience.

I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply, letting the moist smell of the
earth and the leaves fill my nose, imagining what I would do when we met the Welsh lines, rehearsing in my mind each swing of my sword. Behind me Pons swore, too loudly for my liking, and I shot him a glance over my shoulder as he wiped glistening white droppings from his mailed arm. Above our heads, a colony of jackdaws cawed as they squabbled; the last thing I wanted to do was startle them and cause them to fly up, since there could be no clearer sign to the enemy that something was wrong, and our plans, so carefully set in place, would be scattered to the winds.