The Running Vixen

Chapter 7

‘Snow,’ grumbled Sweyn, twitching his powerful shoulders and glowering at the massing banks of greyish-yellow cloud piling in from the direction of the Welsh mountain ranges.

Adam’s troop had emerged from the forest and on to the drovers track that would lead them in a few miles to the Thornford crossroads. Behind them the trees swayed like dancers striving to shake off the last vestments of parchment-dry leaves. The grass at the edge of the road was pale and limp, the road itself a ploughed morass of hoofprints and deeply gouged cartwheel tracks. Come full winter, it would qualify for the title of bog.

Vaillantif snorted and dipped his head to explore the unappetising fare at his hooves. Adam let the reins slide and turned in the saddle to look at Renard. ‘Do you still want to come with us?’

Renard contemplated the threatening clouds with wind-stung eyes. He was wearing a thick tunic, topped by a heavily padded gambeson and mail hauberk, all overlaid by a fur-lined cloak, and was thus, despite the wind, warm enough. The stallion beneath him was a pure joy to ride after the shortcomings of poor Starlight.

‘I’d far rather be snowed in with you than Warrin de Mortimer.’ He smiled and, shaking the bridle, urged the dun on to the road.

‘It’s only November. It won’t come to that.’

The smile became a mocking grin. ‘Why take that chance? I notice you didn’t linger.’

‘If you’re coming, shut up,’ Adam snapped.

Renard shrugged, but let the grin fade as he rode forwards.

‘He’s still a boy,’ murmured Jerold, joining his lord as they headed into the sharp wind.

‘For which I’m making allowances.’

‘I’d noticed,’ Jerold said, ‘but then he’s like his sister, isn’t he? Likes to season a stew just for the mischief of seeing others grimace when they taste it. I know how you were, and still are over the Lady Heulwen. And it’s no use looking like that. It’s the truth and you know it. I was there at her wedding, remember? Who do you think fetched Lady Judith when you sank all that wine? Who do you think sat by your pallet while you recovered your wits, or what was left of them? And now she’s free to wed and she’s done it again. How far will you go when it’s Warrin de Mortimer who takes her to bed?’

Adam’s fingers jerked on the reins. ‘Jerold, let me be, you’re worse than the boy,’ he growled, while beneath him Vaillantif danced and tossed his head, rolling his eyes to show their whites.

‘Sweyn and I were only saying to each other last night that you need to take a wife. There are bound to be barons at court this Christmastide with daughters for sale, and it’s time you thought about settling to the yoke and breeding up heirs instead of living on dreams.’

Adam’s temper snapped. He rounded on the knight to snarl his displeasure but got no further than, ‘When I want your opinion I’ll—’ And then his breath locked in his throat and his eyes widened in horrified astonishment as an arrow sang through the narrow triangle of space between his hand on Vaillantif’s reins and Vaillantif ’s neck, burying itself in the horsehair pad of Jerold’s saddle flap. The heavy sky began to precipitate not snow, but death-tipped arrows. Welshmen, either afoot and armed with bows or astride their small, tough mountain ponies, were pounding in the wake of their missiles, mouths agape to yell their war cries.

‘God’s bleeding eyes!’ Jerold blasphemed and, trying to control his plunging stallion, groped for his sword.

Adam wrestled his shield on to his left arm. ‘Close formation!’ he bellowed. ‘And don’t give them a chance to hamstring the horses! Sweyn, get to Renard and guard him with your life!’ It was all he had time to say, for the battle closed its gaping jaws and swallowed them whole.

The first Renard knew of the rapid Welsh assault was the arrow that ripped a hole in his cloak and slammed into his stallion’s belly. The animal screamed and reared, forehooves tearing at the clouds, then came down stiff-legged and bucked. The high saddle and Renard’s own swift reflexes kept him astride, but that was all that could be said. Of controlling a gut-shot horse there was not a hope in hell. If the dun went down, he would be crushed to death; and if it threw him in its frenzy he faced being trampled or killed by the force of the fall.

There was no time to think, only to act on instinct. He released the reins, kicked his feet free of the stirrups, and as the dun came down on all fours between twisting bucks, he used the high pommel to vault down from its back. He stumbled and felt his ankle wrench, but was able to duck away from the destrier’s pain-filled madness and draw his sword. His shield still hung from the saddle and there was not the remotest possibility of reaching it without being brained by the plunging shod hooves.

Battle clashed around him. A burly, black-eyed Welshman who looked as though he ate horseshoes for breakfast came at him with an iron-studded oak mace. Renard dodged the first vicious swing of the weapon. His enemy was laughing. Battle took some men that way, and obviously this one saw his opponent as a mockery of opposition. ‘Cenau! ’ he said contemptuously. A whelp indeed Renard might be, but of a warrior breed, trained from the cradle to fight. As the Welshman swung his mace for the kill, Renard ran under the blow and slashed at his enemy’s bare thighs. Blood sprayed, spattering Renard’s face as the honed edge sliced muscle, tendon and artery. The mace caught him glancingly on the shoulder, but it was the off-balanced blow of a mortally wounded man going down.

‘Yr cenau gan dant! ’ Renard gasped, breathing hard as he finished it. ‘A puppy with teeth!’

‘Renard, ware behind!’ roared Sweyn.

He spun quickly, but was not fast enough to avoid the thrust of a spear. Frantically he twisted as he felt his hauberk rings give and splay, and a vicious iron point tear his gambeson and score his ribs. He was caught like a fish on a spit and in a moment he was going to die, the last thing he saw the snow-bound sky and the frightened, triumphant young face of his killer.

The thrust home was never executed because Sweyn reached him, and cursing, rose in his stirrups to bring the full weight of his axe down upon the young Welshman’s skull, which was only protected by a cap of stiffened leather and thus split open like a carelessly dropped egg. Violently jerking, the body fell, tearing the lance head free as it went.

‘You bloody young fool, where’s your shield?’ Sweyn howled.

‘On my saddle,’ Renard said hoarsely.

The Englishman glared round and saw the foundered, threshing dun with Renard’s shield now rolled to splintered remains beneath him. ‘Here, take Morel,’ he said gruffly and swung down from the saddle.

‘I couldn’t. ’

‘Hell’s death, boy, do as you’re told. We’re not in a damned tilt yard today! You’re a liability on foot, one we can’t afford!’

Colour flared across Renard’s cheekbones. He opened his mouth to retort, thought better of it and instead seized the black’s bridle and leaped astride. The pain in his side burned like fire, but he set his jaw and refused to think about it; indeed, within the space of ten heartbeats he did not even have the time to pay it any attention as the fighting redoubled in fierceness, and all that stood between himself and certain death were the lessons learned by rote in the safety of a courtyard, and the grimly determined Sweyn wielding a great axe at his stirrup.

It was over. Adam slid down from Vaillantif ’s back, wiped his sword on the cloven corpse at his feet and stared into the spectral November silence that the retreating Welsh had left in their stead. The road was strewn with bodies, most of them Welsh, but among them were two of his own men, and another who had taken an arrow in the belly and would not last the night. Bare sword in his hand, he studied the corpses and brushed at a persistent thread of blood running from a bone-deep nick in his jaw.

‘This one’s still alive. Shall I kill him, lord?’ One of his Angevins was kneeling over an unconscious Welshman, hand grasping the cropped black curls to jerk back the head.

Adam walked over. It was a young man whose life hung in the balance, barely twenty years old, to look at him. His tunic was of undyed wool, and his short leggings were bound with crude strips of leather, but his boots were of embossed leather and his swordbelt was set with carnelians. ‘How badly is he wounded, Thierry?’

‘Bad enough. This lump on his head’s bigger than a gull’s egg, and he’s taken a deep slash to the thigh.’

Adam dabbed again at his bloody jaw and made a swift assessment of the youth’s chances. ‘Bring him with us. He may be of some value if he doesn’t die of wound fever.’ He looked round. ‘Sweyn, where’s Renard?’

The English knight jerked his head towards the side of the road. ‘Sick,’ he said. ‘First taste of hard battle, but he came through well in the thick of it. Are you all right, my lord?’

‘I’ll do.’ Adam glanced up and blinked as a snowflake landed on his lashes. He sheathed his sword. The Welsh youth was draped unceremoniously over the back of a hill pony someone had captured. Adam took Vaillantif ’s bridle and walked him over to Renard. The lad was wiping his reddened dagger upon the bleached grass, but when he saw Adam approaching he stood up, and with trembling hands sheathed the weapon. His face was tear-streaked and ghastly white, his teeth chattering uncontrollably, and not because it was cold. Death had breathed on him — his own and other men’s, and even after the Welsh retreat he had been forced to kill again.

‘I’m sorry, Adam.’ He swallowed. ‘Your dun. He was gut-shot, I had to do it.’

Adam followed Renard’s gaze to the dun. A Welsh arrow protruded from its flank and the blood ran in rivulets from its slit throat. A faithful, sturdy companion, the stallion had carried him in safety to the German court and back. ‘Nothing else you could have done,’ he said steadily. ‘Just thank Christ it was his gut and not yours.’ He glanced briefly over his shoulder to where Jerold and another knight were gently lifting the dying man on to his horse. Mercifully, he was unconscious.

Renard wiped his hands together. There was blood on them, darkly crusted beneath his fingernails. ‘I’ve never killed a man before,’ he said, throat working. ‘In a tilt yard it doesn’t matter. The swords are blunt, and if they are not, then your opponent is made of straw. He doesn’t cry out and bleed and die at your feet with his eyes on you. ’ His voice shook.

Adam set one arm compassionately across Renard’s shoulders. ‘I felt like that the first time too, and the second, and the third. Everyone does, but it is a lesson you have to learn for yourself. No one can tell you.’

Renard’s dark grey eyes went blank. ‘It gets easier then?’ he said through stiff lips.

‘No, but you learn to shut it out; you have to. If you had not killed him, he would have killed you.’ Adam tightened his grip and shook Renard slightly, imparting reassurance. Renard winced and drew a hiss of pain through his teeth, his hand clutching his side. Adam released him, eyes sharpening. ‘You idiot, why didn’t you say you were hurt?’

‘It’s not serious — well at least I don’t think so. Sweyn killed the man before he could put any weight behind his thrust.’ Renard closed his eyes and fought the urge to retch as he saw again the axe cleaving down and the head splicing apart beneath it.

‘Are you fit to climb into a saddle?’ Adam indicated Vaillantif. ‘You’ll have to sit pillion like a wench, but the way this snow’s starting to come down I’d rather reach Thornford before dusk, and the Welsh may well have reinforcements close by. We couldn’t withstand another brawl like this one.’ He mounted up and extended his hand. Renard grimaced through clenched teeth, but hauled himself competently astride, and only when secure did he hang his head and let out his breath in a gasp of pain.

One of the men-at-arms stripped the dun stallion of its harness and loaded it on to the horse bearing the two dead men. The Welsh bodies they left where they had fallen and where they would presently be taken up and borne away by their own people. The snow floated down, covering the land in a white healing blanket, curtaining the horsemen as they rode away, muffling the beat of hooves to silence so that the only sound was the keening of the wind.