mood for hunting lessons.
“Only this, my lord: that unless these rebels are truly spirits, they cannot be in two places at once. Sending a single large force into the wood is no use—as we have seen. So, send three, four, five or more smaller ones. Come at them from every direction.”
“He’s right,” affirmed Lord Rhuddlan. “They cannot defend all sides at once. We can cut them down before they can escape again.”
“We never know where they are,” complained another lord. “How can we muster troops on the flanks and rear if we cannot tell where they will attack?”
“We must create a lure to draw them into battle,” suggested Earl Hugh, “and when the bastards take the bait, we’re ready to sally in from the rear and flanks and slice them up a treat.”
There was more discussion then, about how this might be best accomplished, but the plan was generally accepted and agreed: the king’s army would adopt a new tactic. They would abandon their normal course of moving into the forest in a single large force, and would instead advance in smaller groups towards a single destination using a body on horseback as a lure to draw the rebels into a fight, whereupon the individual parties would rally to the fight and, sweeping in from the flanks, quickly surround them, cutting off any escape.
The king, satisfied that this plan offered a better way forward, gave his blessing to the scheme and ordered all to be made ready for it to be implemented the following morning. Then, in a far better mood than he had enjoyed since his arrival in Elfael, he ordered a good supper for himself and Earl Hugh and a few others, to celebrate their impending victory.
At dawn the next day, six separate hunting parties rode out with a seventh, larger body of knights and men-at-arms to serve as the lure to draw the rebels into the trap. Upon reaching the forest’s edge, they dismounted and proceeded on foot; the six smaller bodies fanned out around the main group and proceeded with all stealth.
It was slow and arduous work, hacking through the vines and branches, searching out pathways and game trails through the dense woodland. But just after midday, their determination was rewarded when the main body of knights encountered the Welsh rebels.
They had been stalking through a rock-lined rill, following the stream, when suddenly the canopy of branches seemed to open and begin raining arrows down upon them. The soldiers took shelter where they could, pressing themselves against the rocks and stones, all the while sounding blast after blast on the trumpets some of them were carrying. The attack continued much as previous assaults, but faltered when there arose a great shout and a second body of Ffreinc knights entered the battle from behind the rebel position. This was quickly followed by the appearance of a third body of knights that drew in from the left flank and mounted a fierce resistance to the killing shafts.
The battle lasted only moments and ended as abruptly as it had begun. There was a rustling in the branches overhead—as if a flock of nesting rooks had just taken flight—and the arrows stopped.
As the king’s men reassembled to gather up their wounded and reckon their losses, they found a longbow lying among the rocks in the streambed—one of the rebels’ weapons. What is more, it had blood on it. And there was no Ffreinc body in sight.
After the ruinous ventures of the previous encounters, this was deemed a triumph. It shrank in significance, however, when the victorious troops returned to their camp in the Vale of Elfael to learn that the other three search parties had become lost in the forest and unable to join the battle as planned. In their confusion, they had stumbled upon a hidden settlement—a cluster of crude huts and hovels made of sticks and skin around a great oak tree and a stone-lined well, together with a few storehouses and a pitiful field. Caught unawares, the inhabitants scattered. But the knights did manage to kill one of them as they fled—an old woman who seemed to be in some way guarding the place with only a wooden staff.
CHAPTER 37
Tuck half carried, half dragged the wounded Tomas through the wood, pausing now and then to rest and listen for sounds of pursuit. He heard only the nattering of squirrels and birds, and the rapid beating of his own heart. The spear, so far as he could tell,