adjusted the hood as I drew the laces tight. I did the same for him, and Iwan passed among us with bow staves, strings, and bags of arrows. I tucked the strings into the leather pouch at my belt and slung the bag upon my back. At Bran’s signal, we fell in behind Iwan and tried our best to keep up with his great, ground-covering stride; no easy chore in the best of times, it was made more difficult still by the snow.
After a while we came to a place beneath the great overhanging limbs of oak and ash and hornbeam where the path was wide and still mostly dry. I found myself walking beside Tomas. “Once in Hereford, a man told me a tale about Abbot Hugo losing his gold candlesticks to King Raven,” I said, opening a question that had been rumbling around in my skull for some time now. “Is it true at all?”
“Aye, ’tis true,” Tomas assured me. “Mostly.”
“Which part? Pardon my asking.”
“What did you hear?” he countered.
“There were twenty wagons full of gold and silver church treasure, they said—and all of it under guard of a hundred mounted knights and men-at-arms. They say King Raven swooped down, killed the soldiers with his fiery breath, and snatched away the gold candlesticks to use in unholy devil rites,” I told him. “That’s what I heard.”
“We did stop the wagons and help lighten the load,” replied the Welshman. “And there was some gold, yes, and the candlesticks—that’s true enough. But there were never a hundred knights.”
“Twenty, more like,” put in Siarles, who had overheard us talking.
“Aye, only twenty,” confirmed Iwan, joining in. “And there weren’t but three oxcarts. Still, we got more than seven hundred marks in that one raid, not counting the candlesticks.”
“And how much since then?” I asked, thinking I had come into a most gainful employment.
“A little here and there,” said Siarles. “Nothing much.”
“Only some pigs and a cow or two now and then,” put in Iwan.
“Aye, any that wander too close to the forest,” said Tomas. “Them’s ours.”
“But the way people talk you’d think the raids were ten-a-day.”
“You can’t help the way people talk,” Iwan said. “We might stop the odd wagon betimes to remind folk to respect King Raven’s wood, but there was only the one big raid.”
“What did you do with all the money?”
“We gave it away,” said Tomas, a note of pride in his voice. “Gave it to Bishop Asaph to build a new monastery.”
“All of it?”
“Most of it,” agreed Iwan placidly. “We still have a little kept by.”
“Thing is,” said Siarles, “silver coin isn’t all that useful in the forest.”
“We give out what is needful to the folk of Elfael to help keep body and soul together.”
I had heard this part of the tale, too, but imagined it merely wishful thinking on the part of those telling the story. It seemed, however, the generosity of Rhi Bran the Hud was true even if the greater extent of his notorious activities was not.
“Just the one big raid? Why so?”
“Two good reasons,” Iwan replied.
“It is flamin’ dangerous,” put in Siarles.
“To be sure,” said Iwan. “It does no one any good if we are caught or killed in a needless fight. Neither did we want the Ffreinc to become so wary they would make the escorts too large to easily defeat . . .”
“Or change the route the wagons followed,” Siarles said. The slight edge to his tone suggested that he did not altogether agree with the caution of his betters.
“As a result,” continued Iwan, “the Ffreinc have grown lax of late. Because they have passed through the forest without trouble these many months, they think they can come and go at will now. Today, we will remind them who allows them this right.”
Such prudence, I thought. They would not spend themselves except for great and certain gain, nor kill the goose that laid the silver eggs. Meanwhile, they watched and waited for those chances worthy of their interest.
“Am I to take it that today’s supply train is of sufficient value to make a raid worth the risk?”
“That is what we shall soon discover.” Iwan surged on ahead, and it was all we could do to keep up with him.
Finally, as the unseen sun stretched toward midday, we came in sight of the King’s Road. Here we stopped, and Bran addressed us and delivered his final instructions. My own part was neither demanding nor all that dangerous so long as things went according