and pulled him down. Grasping the soldier’s helmet, Bran yanked it off and began pummelling the startled soldier with it. In his mind, it was not a nameless Ffreinc soldier he bludgeoned senseless, but ruthless King William himself.
In the frenzy of the fight, Bran felt the handle of the soldier’s knife, drew it, and raised his arm to plunge the point into the knight’s throat. As the blade slashed down, however, the marchogi fell on him, pulling him away, cheating him of the kill. Screaming and writhing in their grasp, kicking and clawing like an animal caught in a net, Bran tried to fight free. Then one of the knights raised the butt of a spear, and the night exploded in a shower of stars and pain as blow after blow rained down upon him.
CHAPTER 10
You are Welsh, yes? A Briton?”
Bruised, bloodied, and bound at the wrists by a rope that looped around his neck, Bran was dragged roughly forward and forced to his knees before a man standing in the wavering pool of light from a handheld torch. Dressed in a long tunic of yellow linen with a short blue cloak and boots of soft brown leather, he carried neither sword nor spear, and the others deferred to him. Bran took him to be their lord.
“Are you a Briton?” He spoke English with the curious flattened nasal tone of the Ffreinc. “Answer me!” He nodded to one of the soldiers, who gave Bran a quick kick in the ribs.
The pain of the blow roused Bran. He lifted his head to gaze with loathing at his inquisitor.
“I think you are Welsh, yes?” the Ffreinc noble said.
Unwilling to dignify the word, Bran merely nodded.
“What were you doing on the road?” asked the man.
“Travelling,” mumbled Bran. His voice sounded strange and loud in his ears; his head throbbed from the knocks he had taken.
“At night?”
“My friends and I—we had business in Lundein.We were on our way home.” He raised accusing eyes to his Ffreinc interrogator. “The man your soldiers killed was a priest, you bloody—” Bran lunged forward, but the soldier holding the rope yanked him back. He was forced down on his knees once more. “You will all rot in hell.”
“Perhaps,” admitted the man. “We think he was a spy.”
“He was a man of God, you murdering bastard!”
“And the other one?”
“What about the other one?” asked Bran. “Did you kill him, too?”
“He has eluded capture.”
That was something at least. “Let me go,” Bran said. “You have no right to hold me. I’ve done nothing.”
“It is for my lord to hold or release you as he sees fit,” said the Ffreinc nobleman. “I am his seneschal.”
“Who is your lord? I demand to speak to him.”
“Speak to him you shall,Welshman,” replied the seneschal.
“You are coming with us.” Turning to the marchogi holding the torches, he said, “Liez-le.”
Bran spent the rest of the night tied to a tree, nursing a battered skull and a consuming hatred of the Ffreinc. His friend, Brother Ffreol, cut down like a dog in the road and himself taken captive . . . This, added to the gross injustice of Cardinal Ranulf ’s demands, overthrew the balance of Bran’s mind—a balance already made precarious by the loss of his father and the warband.
He passed in and out of consciousness, his dreams merging with reality until he could no longer tell one from the other. In his mind he walked a dark forest pathway, longbow in hand and a quiver of arrows on his hip. Over and over again, he heard the sound of hoofbeats, and a Ffreinc knight would thunder out of the darkness, brandishing a sword. As the knight closed on him, blade held high, Bran would slowly raise the bow and send an arrow into his attacker’s heart. The shock of the impact lifted the rider from the saddle and pinned him to a tree. The horse would gallop past, and Bran would walk on. This same event repeated itself throughout the long night as Bran moved through his dream, leaving an endless string of corpses dangling in the forest.
Sometime before morning, the moon set, and Bran heard an owl cry in the treetop above him. He came awake then and found himself bound fast to a stout elm tree, but uncertain how he had come to be there. Groggily, like a man emerging from a drunken stupor, he looked around. There were Ffreinc soldiers sleeping on the ground nearby. He saw their inert bodies, and his