The Wild Hunt

CHAPTER 5

Judith blearily opened her eyes in response to the persistent thrust of a small , cold nose pressing against her cheek and a thunderous vibration in her ear. Melyn uttered a purr of greeting, striped orange tail waving jauntily. Judith groaned and buried her face in the pillow. There was an ache behind her eyes that spoke of an excess of wine and an insufficiency of sleep. The room was lit by weak grey light penetrating the membrane screen across the arrowslit. Given the time of year, it must be well beyond the hour of first mass which meant that there was no time left to turn over and go back to sleep.

Judith pushed Melyn aside, gathered her hair and sat up. The cat stalked across the pillow to the turned back of the other occupant, sniffed the rumpled black hair and patted a playful sheathed paw on the man's face.

'Rhosyn,' Guyon murmured, opened his eyes and received a cold, wet kiss that dispelled all dreaming illusions. 'God's blood!' He jerked upright, seeking his non-existent sword - a man did not come thus armed to his marriage bed.

The cat, having achieved her purpose, leaped nimbly to the floor and commenced an inquisitive investigation of Guyon's baggage. Glowering at Melyn's graceful form, he dug his fingers through his hair. Judith decided he was suffering from her own malaise and best left in peace to gather his wits ... except that this morning there was no time.

She sought her bedrobe and put it on. Guyon pressed his face into his hands. Tactfully, Judith left the bed, scooped up Melyn and went to the arrowslit. 'It is not snowing now, my lord,' she remarked. 'And the clouds are high. The hunt can be held. It will provide fresh meat and it will prevent quarrels from developing. There was a terrible fight last Christmas when Mama's niece got married. The groom's cousin lost three fingers and an ear and the hall was completely wrecked.'

'God forbid,' he said.

'You should watch Walter de Lacey today,' she warned. 'I suppose you know that he offered for me before Papa died and he is one of Uncle Robert's friends.'

'I did not think your uncle Robert had any friends.'

Glancing round, she saw that he had begun to assemble his clothing. His eyes, although bleary were fully open now.

'Do not worry, I know well he is one of the Cwmni Annwn. I will be on my guard.'

'The what?'

'Hounds of hell ,' he translated, tugging on his shirt. 'The Wild Hunt. Damned souls who hunt in perpetuity and never come to rest. Appropriate, would you not say?'

His flippant tone was a barrier. His father would have recognised it immediately and cut straight beneath it. Judith stood blocked, unsure what to do. She watched him dress, setting aside his wedding finery for a warm, fur-trimmed tunic of green plaid wool, thick hose and tough, calf-hide boots.

Abandoning Judith, Melyn leaped on to the bed and began to wash. Judith's eyes followed the cat and then settled on the linen undersheet. White as the snow that had fall en in the night. Pristine.

Unstained. She gave a gasp of panic. Any moment now they were likely to be disturbed by their guests and the first task of the morning would be to display that sheet to all , stained with the sanguine proof of her virginity ... or lack of it.

Startled, Guyon left off buckling his belt. 'What's the matter?'

'The bed ... the sheet. They will think that I am impure, or else that you were unable.'

He gaped at her.

'There is no blood!' she almost shrieked at him.

Enlightenment tardily dawned and with it a glint of amusement. 'Ah.' He rubbed the back of his neck. 'I don't make a habit of deflowering virgins.'

He shot her a sour grin. 'I wonder which choice they would settle upon.' Pushing Melyn gently to one side, he drew his short eating knife from the sheath at his belt and, forcing up his left sleeve, made a shallow cut upon the inside of his forearm. As the blood welled in a thin, bright line, he smeared it over the centre of the sheet.

'Self-inflicted,' he remarked with wry humour as he stanched the bleeding on his shirt sleeve. 'I beg a cup of valerian to mend my disordered wits, and a pot of honey to smear this slit in my hide.'

Judith handed him the jar of nettle salve. 'This will serve just as well for the nonce.'

His tone was self-mocking. 'And have all the women condemn me for a clumsy oaf and risk your mother's censure? I have a reputation to keep up, you know.'

Judith blushed, for she had not thought of how others would misconstrue the finger marks in the ointment.

'It's a scratch, don't concern yourself.' He rolled down his sleeve and grinned at her. 'I dare say it is not the last wound I'll take defending a lady's honour.'

Before Judith could decide how to reply, Cadi began to bark outside the entrance curtain and a woman cried out in anxiety. On the bed Melyn became a stiff horseshoe of growling orange fur.

Guyon tugged a strand of Judith's hair, gave her an encouraging wink and went to draw aside the curtain and wish good morning to his mother-by-marriage, the small entourage of female wedding guests in her wake and the plump maid bearing a ewer of warm, scented water and a towel.

Cadi greeted her master boisterously. He commanded her down, but although she obeyed him, her forepaws danced on the floor and her whole body quivered with precariously subdued enthusiasm. Alicia returned Guyon's courtesy with a tepid nod and entered the room. At her side an older woman, a second cousin or some such as he remembered, fastidiously brushed white dog hairs from her dark blue gown.

Alicia's gaze went from the bloodied sheet to Judith who was clutching the salve pot in her hand. Judith flashed a dismayed glance at Guyon, caught her under-lip in her teeth and quickly put the salve down, but the damage was already done. Alicia's mouth tightened.

Frightened by the crowd and the dog, Melyn leaped off the bed to make her escape and was immediately spotted by Cadi. Barking excitedly, the hound took a flying lunge at the cat. As Cadi flung past Agnes, the ewer flew out of the maid's hands and a warm deluge christened the two women immediately in front of her. Screams and squawks rent the air, intermingled with a cat's snarls and the hysterical barking of the dog.

Melyn streaked for the door and with Cadi hot on her heels, scorched up the thick curtain to cling yowling at the top, claws fiercely dug in.

Guyon seized Cadi's collar, drew breath to speak, saw from the basilisk glares turned his way that it would be a waste of time and beat a hasty retreat with the bitch to the haven of male company breaking their fast in the hall .

Judith, tears of laughter brimming in her eyes, went to coax Melyn down from her precarious refuge.

The breaking of fast was an uncomfortable affair, fortunately not prolonged because the men were eager to be out on the trail of the boar that Ravenstow's chief huntsman assured them lurked in the forests on the western edge.

The bride put in a tardy appearance as the men were preparing to leave, her manner much subdued, the glances she cast at her husband swift and furtive. When the bloodied bridal sheet was displayed by the women, she almost lost control. Her narrow shoulders heaved and she covered her face briefly with her veil while she mastered herself. Alicia's arm went protectively around her daughter's shoulders and she threw Guyon a look boiling with murder.

'Why was Judith weeping, were you clumsy with her?' Miles demanded of his son as they slowed their mounts to enter a patch of bramble-tangled woodland. Ahead of them the dogs could be heard barking as they trailed the rank scent of boar.

Guyon drew himself up. 'Credit me with a little more experience than that. The blasted wench was laughing. I ought to drown that cat of hers!'

Miles raised his brows, justifiably baffled and more than a little worried, remembering Alicia's fear of the previous evening, his own reassurances and then the look on her face this morning. If looks could kill , his son would have been a dead man and himself frozen to stone.

Guyon regaled him with the details of the morning's disaster and Miles's eyebrows disappeared into his hair.

'So there we were,' Guyon said ruefully, 'Judith with the pot of salve in her hand, not daring to look at me lest she laugh, and the sheet all bloody and my mother-in-law itching to geld me ...' He paused on a breath and turned in the saddle as the constable de Bec rode up to join them on his sturdy dun.

His manner was tangibly cool, his mouth tight within its neat grey bracket of beard. He too had witnessed Judith's struggle for composure in the hall and had been filled with a protective anger, at first so hot that he had almost enquired of Lady Alicia whether she desired to be rid of her new son-by-marriage. Almost, but not quite, for as he had been gulping down his bread and wine and preparing to leave, he could have sworn Judith had smiled at him, a sparkle of mischief in her eyes. Girls distraught to the point of tears did not do such things. Besides, he had reasoned, if Guyon died, the King would only select another man to fill the position, probably of far worse moral fibre and, when he thought about it rationally, the new lord had only had his right and seemed in public gently disposed towards the child.

'Judith tell s me that you have been teaching her to hone a blade and use it,' Guyon remarked pleasantly to the constable.

De Bec rubbed his fist over his beard. 'She asked me so I showed her, my lord. Nothing wrong in knowing a bit about weapons, especially here in the marches.'

'No,' Guyon agreed, hiding a smile at de Bec's stony expression and his father's sudden wide stare. 'Did her parents share your opinion?'

'Lord Maurice never knew. Lady Alicia wasn't keen, but she knew when to give a little and when to rein in.'

'So you have been a nursemaid as well as constable,' Guyon needled gently. 'Devotion to duty indeed.'

De Bec glinted him a look. 'Mistress Judith is the daughter I never had the opportunity to settle down and sire. Don't be deceived by what you saw yesterday. She is one of a kind.' He cleared his throat. 'Have a care, my lord, or you may wake up one morning to find yourself gelded.'

'She is maiden still ,' Guyon replied. 'I have no taste for rape. The blood on the sheets is my own and freely given.'

De Bec cleared his throat. 'It is your right,' he muttered gruffly into his chest.

'Indeed so,' Guyon answered, 'but one I exercise at my peril. I hazard that if I harmed so much as one hair of her head, I'd not wake up at all the next morning.'

Their eyes locked and held for a moment before the older man dropped his gaze to the smooth muscle of his mount's shoulder, knowing he had gone as far as he dared with a man he did not know. Guyon turned his head. Distantly the hounds gave tongue in a new key, a sustained tocsin, belling deep.

'Boar's up and running,' Miles said, jerking his courser around.

Guyon swung his own horse.

De Bec spoke abruptly. 'Keep your eyes open, my lord. You have as many enemies among your guests as you have allies and when I see men huddling in corners and glimpse the exchange of silver in the darkness, I know that no good will come of it.'

Guyon smiled thinly. By disclosing his suspicions when he could have held silent, de Bec had accepted his new master, even if the man had yet to realise the fact. 'I was not blind myself last night, but I thank you for the warning.

The sooner this mockery of a celebration is over, the better.' He set his heels to his courser's flanks and urged him in pursuit of the dogs. De Bec wrenched the dun around and followed.

Guyon bent low over his mount's neck to avoid the tangled branches that whipped at him.

Shallow snow flurried beneath the chestnut's hooves. The frozen air burned Guyon's lungs as he breathed. His eyes filled and he blinked hard to clear them, and braced himself as the horse leaped a fall en tree in their path. Ahead he could hear the loud halloos and whistlings urging the dogs on and the excited belling of the dogs themselves.

The hunters pressed further into the depths of the forest. Thorns snagged their cloaks.

Hoofbeats thudded eerily in the echo chambers created by the vaulted span of huge beeches, the daylight showing luminous grey through the fretwork of empty black branches. They galloped across a clearing, the snow fetlock deep, splashed through a swift-flowing stream, picked their way delicately round a tumble of boulders and plunged back into the tangled darkness of the winter woods. A branch snapped off and snarled in Guyon's bridle. He plucked it loose, eased the chestnut for an instant, then guided him hard right down a narrow avenue of trunks pied silver and black, following the frenzied yelping of the dogs and the excited shouts of men.

The boar at bay was a sow, a matron of prime years, weighing almost two hundredweight. She had met and tussled with man before. A Welsh poacher had lost his life to her tushes when he came hunting piglets for his pot. The huntsmen had found his bleaching bones last spring when they came to mark the game. The sow bore her own scar from the encounter in a thick ridge of hide along her left flank where the boar spear had scored sideways and turned along the bone.

She stood her ground now, backed against an overgrown jut of rock, raking clods of beech mast from the forest floor. Her huge head tossed left and right, the vicious tushes threatening to disembowel any dog or human foolish enough to come within their reach.

Guyon drew rein and dismounted. The senior huntsman tossed him a boar spear which he caught in mid-air. It was a stout weapon, broad of blade, with a crossbar set beneath to prevent the boar from running up the shaft and tearing the hunter to pieces. A dog ran in to snap at the sow's powerful black shoulder, was not swift enough to disengage and was flung howling across the path of the other dogs, a red slash opening in its side. Cadi barked and darted. She was a gazehound, bred to course hare, not boar, but her narrow-loined lightness made her too swift to be caught.

The men began cautiously to close upon the sow, their spears braced, knives loose in their belts, every muscle taut to leap, for until the moment she charged no man knew if he was her intended victim. It was exhilarating, the tension unbearable. She raked the leaves with her trotters, rolled her small black eyes and tushed the ground, smearing her bloody incisors with soil.

'Come on girl, get on with it,' muttered Hugh of Chester licking his lips. Another man whistled loudly, trying to attract her attention and waved his spear over his head. Ralph de Serigny wiped his mouth, a pulse beating hard in his neck. Walter de Lacey remained immobile, his only movement a darting glance of challenge at Guyon. Guyon returned the look with glittering eyes and crouched, the spear braced.

The sow paused, quivering; the massive head went down; the damp leaves churned. A squealing snort erupted through her nostrils and she made a sudden powerful lunge from her hams, straight at Guyon. Driven by her charging weight, the levelled spear reamed her chest.

Guyon braced the butt against the forest soil, the muscles locking in his forearms and shoulders as he strove to hold her. The barbed tip lodged in bone and the shaft shuddered. Guyon heard the wood creak, felt it begin to give as the sow pressed forward, and knew that there was nothing he could do. The spear snapped. Razored tushes slashed open his chausses and drew a bloody line down his thigh. The sow, red foam frothing her jaws and screaming mad with pain, plunged and spun to gore him, the broken stump of the spear protruding from her breast. Guyon rammed the other half of the boar spear down her throat. A fierce pain burned his arm. Miles's hunting knife found the sow's jugular at the same time that de Bec's spear found her heart.

Silence fell , broken only by the eager yelping of the dogs and the whimpers of the injured one.

Blood soaked the trampled soil and snow. The chief huntsman whipped the hounds from the dead pig, his face grey. He darted a look once at de Lacey and Pembroke behind, and then away.

They ignored him.

'Are you all right?' Anxiously Hugh of Chester laid hold of Guyon's ripped sleeve to examine the pulsing gash.

Guyon nodded and smiled for the benefit of those who would have been only too pleased to see him seriously injured or killed and wadded his cloak against the wound to stanch the blood.

De Bec crouched beside the broken spear shaft and examined it. Then he rose and stalked to the senior huntsman and thrust the stump beneath his nose. The man shook his head, his complexion pasty. De Bec began to shout. Arnulf of Pembroke moved between the two men.

Guyon shouldered him aside.

'Let it go,' he commanded. 'There was a weakness in the wood. It could have happened to any one of us.'

'A weakness in the w--?' de Bec began indignantly, but caught the look in Guyon's eye and realised that the young lord was totally aware of the situation. 'Faugh!' de Bec spat, threw down the shaft and stalked to his horse, muttering under his breath.

'My lord, I did not know, I swear I did not!'

stuttered the huntsman, his throat jerking as if a noose was already tightening there.

'Oh stop gibbering, man, and see to the pig!'

Guyon snapped and turned away. There was time enough later to grill him for details, and the wilds of these border woods was no place to hold an impromptu court with tempers running high and blood lust rife.

Miles picked up the shaft, saw how it had broken, and narrowed his eyes.

Guyon whistled Cadi to heel, stepped over a rivulet of pig blood and went to mount up.

Judith sat in the solar, distaff in hand, longing to set about her companions with it. They had offered her all manner of advice, both well meaning and malicious and had asked her some very intimate questions that made her realise how innocent she really was. All she could do was blush, her embarrassment scarcely feigned. The women's curiosity was bottomless and avid and at least one of them with connections at court knew things about the groom that were better left unsaid. It did not prevent her from relating the information with grisly relish. Alicia parried frostily. Judith retreated behind downcast lids and wished the gaggle of them out of the keep.

Steps scuffed the stairs outside the chamber and the curtain was thrust aside. The women rose, flustered and twittering at the sight of the bridegroom whose reputation they had just been so salaciously maligning. Guyon regarded them without favour. 'Ladies,' he acknowledged, and looked beyond them to Judith. She hastened to his side. There were thorns and burrs in his cloak and a narrow graze down one cheek. There was also, she noticed, a tear in his chausses.

'My lord?'

He reached his right hand to take hers, an odd move since his left was the nearer. 'I need you to look at a scratch for me.'

'Your leg?' Her eyes dropped to his chausses.

'My arm. I fear you may need your mouldy bread.' He spoke softly, his words not carrying beyond the air that breathed them. All the women saw was his hand possessively on hers, the movement of his lips close to her ear and the sudden dismayed widening of her eyes.

'Go to the bedchamber,' said Judith. 'I will bring whatever is necessary. I take it that you do not want them to know.'

'No.'

Her lips twitched. 'You are begetting a foul reputation, my lord.'

'Not half as foul as their minds.' He cast a jaundiced glance at the women.

'Is there a difficulty, my lord?' Alicia enquired, coming forward, prepared to do battle. She was furious. It was bad enough that he should have used Judith roughly last night as attested by the bridal sheet and her daughter's trembling fight with tears, but that he should stride in here, dishevelled from the hunt and demand her body again, using her like a whore to ease his blood lust, was disgusting.

'I should be grateful for a word if you can free yourself from your duties.'

Alicia stared at him. 'Now, my lord?'

'Come above with Judith, I will explain.'

Her eyes flickered with bewilderment as the ground of expectation was swept from beneath her feet. Guyon bowed formally to her, saluted the others with mockery and left the room, drawing Judith after him. Alicia collected her reeling wits, made her excuses and left them to think what they would.

Judith snipped away the blood-soaked sleeve from his left arm. Guyon clenched his fist on his thigh and winced.

'Boar?' Judith peered at the jagged tear. It was not deep to the bone, but neither was it superficial enough to just bandage and leave. 'It will have to be stitched.'

He gave a resigned shrug. 'At least I am testing your abilities to the full .' He managed a weak grin as she soaked a linen pad in a strong-smelling liquid decocted from pine needles.

'Just pray that they do not fail. It's a nasty wound. What happened?'

Guyon almost hit the rafters as she pressed the pad to his arm and began to clean away the dirt slashed into the wound by the boar's tush.

Alicia walked into the room to hear her daughter breathlessly apologising, a quiver in her voice.

'Get on with it!' Guyon gasped through clenched teeth. 'If you stop every time I flinch, we'll be here all day, and that really will set the fat into the fire!'

Judith bit her lip. Alicia looked down at the raw, still seeping wound. 'You will need the mouldy bread,' she said neutrally.

'I have it, mama.'

Alicia eyed Guyon thoughtfully. 'I have just heard from one of the beaters. He says the boar spear snapped and that you were lucky to escape with your life, let alone a few small scratches.'

'This is more than a small scratch, Mama!'

Judith protested, staring round.

'I can see that. I am only repeating what the beater said, and he had it from your uncle's squire.'

'They were both right,' said Guyon.

The women stared at him. After her first startled declaration, Judith's wits quickened. Plainly Guyon was not disclaiming this tear as a mere scratch just to be manly. He wanted the wound kept a secret, or at least reduced to nothing.

'Boar spears do not just snap,' she said. 'My father was always very strict about the state of the hunting equipment, particularly when it came to boar. He had the spears checked regularly.'

'By your senior huntsman?'

Alicia reached for a roll of bandage while Judith threaded a needle. 'Maurice never made any complaints against Rannulf's efficiency,' she said carefully. 'I cannot say that I know him well myself.

He came to us from Belleme on Robert's recommendation.'

'Would he be willing to commit murder for the right amount of silver?'

'Truly I do not know, my lord. Anything is possible if my brother-in-law has his hand in the pie.'

'Has someone then offered Rannulf silver to give you a weakened spear?' Judith asked to the point.

'Probably. De Lacey was talking to him most earnestly in the hall last night and he's not the kind to mingle with servants unless it be for a specific purpose. I will know more when I have had an opportunity to question Rannulf and ... ouch!'

'Hold still , my lord, and it will not hurt as much.'

'I think you are enjoying this,' he grumbled.

Judith wrinkled her nose at him. 'Tush, my lord.

So much complaint for such a "little scratch".'

'Insolent wench,' he growled, eyes laughing.

Baffled, Alicia watched the two of them as she prepared the poultice of mouldy bread. Here was no frightened child flickering nervous glances at the world through a haze of tears and, despite Guyon's obvious pain and preoccupation, he was handling Judith with the ease of a man accustomed to women, not one who would deflower her savagely in a fit of unbridled lust.

Guyon clenched his teeth and endured in stoical silence until Judith and Alicia had finished with him. Judith wiped her hands and brought him a cup. He sniffed the contents suspiciously.

'Valerian, yarrow and poppy in wine,' she told him. Guyon tasted, grimaced, put down the cup and began to ease his sleeve over the bandage.

'It will relieve the pain.'

'And dull my wits,' he retorted.

Judith sighed and went to find him a fresh pair of chausses and some salve for his grazed cheek and thigh.

'It seems that I have misjudged you,' Alicia said to him softly.

Guyon finished arranging his sleeve. 'I hope I have enough common sense to realise that rape is not the best way to begin a marriage. I haven't touched her and I won't until she's ready ...' He stopped and looked round as his father swept aside the curtain and strode into the room.

'Your huntsman's bolted,' he announced starkly.

'Snatched de Lacey's courser from a groom and was out over the drawbridge before anyone could stop him.'

Guyon's eyes darkened. 'God's teeth!'

'That is not the worst of it. De Lacey's gone after him and with every right to kill . Pembroke's with him and de Serigny. Chester's taken de Bec and some of the garrison and ridden after them.'

Guyon swore again and reached for his swordbelt.

'I'll meet you in the bailey,' Miles said.

Guyon struggled to tighten the belt with his injured left arm. Judith hastened to help him.

'Have a care, my lord,' she said anxiously. 'I fear that Rannulf may not be the only quarry.'

He looked down at her upturned face and with a humourless smile, tugged her braid. 'Forewarned is forearmed, so they say,' he replied. 'I promise you I'll do my best to stay alive.'

Riding hard they caught up with de Bec and Chester a little beyond the village and de Lacey upon the track that led eventually across the border into Wales.

'I thought I had him!' de Lacey growled, 'but the bastard's doubled back on me. Bones of Christ, when I catch him I'll string him up by the ball s. Do you know how much that stall ion is worth?'

'Nevertheless, I will have him alive,' Guyon said curtly.

'God knows why,' Arnulf de Montgomery snorted. 'First that "weak spear" and now Walter's best courser. The man's guilty, no doubt about it.'

'Yes,' Guyon said, 'and I want to talk to him about why.'

Pembroke flushed. Ralph de Serigny looked puzzled. De Lacey drew his sword and turned his horse, momentarily blocking the road.

Guyon and his father exchanged glances. Without a word Miles dismounted and disappeared into the woods bordering the road.

He had spent his boyhood among the Welsh hill s and, saving the supernatural, could track anything that trod the earth, including a rat that smelled so bad the stench of it was all pervading.

'Put up your sword,' Guyon said to de Lacey, 'Rannulf will meet his end in justice, not hot blood, when the time comes.'

De Lacey returned his stare for a long moment before breaking the contact. The sword flashed again as he shrugged and began sheathing it.

'This is justice,' he said.

Unease prickled down Guyon's spine. He began reining the chestnut about. Simultaneously there was a warning shout and the whirr of an arrow's flight. He flung himself flat on the courser's neck and the arrow sang over his spine and lodged in a beech sapling on the other side of the road.

De Lacey drew his sword again and spurred his stall ion into the forest. De Bec bellowed and kicked the dun after him while Hugh of Chester rammed his own mount into Montgomery's horse, preventing him from pursuit. Among the trees, someone screamed. Guyon hauled on his rein and urged the chestnut in pursuit of de Lacey and de Bec.

He was too late. The huntsman Rannulf sprawled in sightless regard of the bare winter branches. Walter de Lacey, his tunic splashed with blood, stood over him, his eyes blazing and his whole body trembling with the aftermath of violently expended effort and continuing rage.

Miles was leaning against a tree, face screwed up with pain and arms clutching his torso.

Ignoring his injured arm, Guyon flung himself down from the courser and hastened to him.

'I'm all right,' Miles said huskily. 'Just winded. I'm not as fast as I was ... more's the pity.' He flashed a dark look at de Lacey and pushed himself upright.

Guyon glanced him over and, reassured, swung to the other man. 'I said I wanted him alive!' he snapped.

De Lacey bared his teeth. 'Should I have let him knife your father and escape?'

'If you were close enough to kill him, you were close enough to stop him by other means, but then dead men don't talk, do they?'

De Lacey's sword twitched level and the red edge glinted at Guyon, who reached to draw from his own scabbard. Hugh of Chester, moving swiftly for a man so bulky, placed himself between the men, his back to Guyon, his formidable blue glare for de Lacey. 'My lord, you forget yourself,' he said coldly.

'I forget nothing!' de Lacey spat, but lowered his blade to wipe it on the corpse before ramming it back in his scabbard. He turned on his heel to examine the stolen horse, running his hands down its legs to check for signs of lameness.

Guyon compressed his lips and struggled to contain his fury.

De Lacey mounted the black, looped his other mount's reins at the cantle and after a contemptuous look at Guyon, rode over to where Montgomery waited.

Guyon watched de Lacey with narrowed eyes and with conscious effort, slowly unclenched his fingers from the hilt of his sword.

Chester bent down beside the dead man and picked up the bow. 'You were drawn here to be killed, you realise that, lad?'

Guyon grimaced. 'I suspected it back at the keep and knew for certain the moment we caught up with them. A man so anxious to retrieve his horse would hardly lag to wait for us. Did you see the way he blocked my path to make me a sitting target for this poor greedy wretch?'

'It was all arranged last night,' de Bec said, leading over Guyon's courser and Miles's grey.

'I'm sure of it now. If you search his pouch, you'll probably find the cost of his betrayal.'

Chester reached to the purse threaded upon the huntsman's belt, unlatched the buckle and delved. The small silver coins, minted with the head of the Conqueror, gleamed on his broad, fleshy palm in mute evidence of treachery. He trickled them from hand to hand, eyes following their flow and then looked up at Guyon. 'Will you take it further?'

Guyon gingerly remounted. 'How can I? Oh, I know that's proof in your hands, but it's not damning. It could easily be claimed that Rannulf won it at dice. Besides, with this arm I'd be mad to risk challenging de Lacey or Montgomery to a trial by combat which would be the sure outcome of a public accusation. No, let it be. Each of us--'

He broke off and looked around as his father, who had reached for his mount's bridle, uttered an involuntary hiss of pain. 'Sir?'

Miles made a face. 'I think I must have a couple of cracked ribs - and my pride is sore wounded.

In the old days I'd have taken Rannulf like a wraith from behind and him none the wiser until my dagger was at his throat. The flesh grows old and the mind forgets.' He shook his head regretfully.

'De Lacey has come out of this coil with a halo of glory, hasn't he?'

'Shining with corruption,' Guyon agreed. 'But at least I know where his intentions are nailed.'