Chapter 2

Sniffy woke me before dawn to let me know there was a small herd of deer nearby. Rather than hunt, I was mounted and moving as soon as it was light enough to see the trail. I rode, eating cheese and dried meat, and sipping at the ale in my skin bag. My mind wandered, even as I rode at near top speed. By taking the extra horses with them, the bandits had left a wide trail for me to follow. I thought again of my father, saddened that he would never see his grandchildren. I thought about Margaret and the pending birth of our first child, wondering if I’d be back before the baby was born. I wondered if I’d even make it back at all, and if my child would ever get to know me. The tears made it harder to follow the trail, which had originally led south but now led southeast.

I knew they would have to turn northeast eventually, and when I crossed a road, I gambled and turned due east along the road. The group I was following was making no effort to hide their trail. I didn’t know if they were just that confident or if they planned to set up another ambush along the way. By late afternoon, I had found where they re-crossed the road on their way north and could tell that they weren’t far ahead of me now.

The length of the strides the horses were taking showed they weren’t moving as quickly as before. By dark, I was close enough that I started walking. I smelled the smoke of their fire long before I ever saw them. When the rain started, I said a short prayer of thanks and tied my horse up, then changed into my winter hunting gear, pulling it over my chain mail shirt. With the cool weather and the rain, it was going to be a cold miserable night. This was just the kind of weather for which my mother had made my fur-lined clothing. I doubted that the bandits were going to be nearly as comfortable and hoped to find them hunkered down for the night, trying to stay reasonably dry and warm.

Sometime later, the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle and the wind had started to pick up when Sniffy grabbed my pant leg. I froze, as that was his warning that something was very close. Sniffy was looking up into one of the trees directly in front of me, and I finally saw the dark shape up in the leafless tree where there shouldn’t have been one. I carefully scanned each of the other trees in the area making sure there were no other guards. Finding none, I selected a war arrow in case the guard was wearing chain mail of his own. I snickered quietly when the arrow pinned his body against the trunk, still up in the tree.

“One down,” I thought as I crept slowly around the campsite scanning every tree. They’d had three guards in the trees. Now they had three bodies.

“Three down,” I thought quietly as I finally crept towards the camp.

The fire was mostly out, just a few orange embers glowing on the underside of the charred, rain-soaked wood. The bandits had hastily thrown up lean-tos using tarps and branches cut from nearby trees and had gone to bed, trying to escape the rain, wind, and cold as they each slept in their individual cocoons.

I counted eight such cocoons, including Jake’s. As badly as I wanted him to die first, I also wanted to question him. Hiding behind a tree a dozen feet from the first cocoon, I took a dry bowstring from inside my hat and restrung my bow. The last thing I needed was for my wet bowstring to break if one of them woke up and alerted everyone.

The quiet sound of my short archer’s sword slitting yet another throat in a cocoon was covered up by the gentle percussion of rain on the lean-to and the ground outside as well as the gentle whistle of the wind through the branches.

“Eight down,” I thought a while later as I crept toward the next cocoon. I still wanted information and felt that I could manage three of the bandits. This cocoon made a quiet grunt when I clobbered the side of the head with a rock. I waited a several moments to make sure he was actually unconscious, and that the remaining two bandits hadn’t woken up. Satisfied, I gagged him and tied his hands and feet securely behind him, and then searched him and the immediate area for weapons. He started to come around, and tried to call out so I thumped him again.

Jake was next. I probably hit him harder than I needed to, but it sure felt good. I was actually disappointed when he didn’t come to so I could whack him again.

Once the man in the last cocoon was secured, I dragged all three men to one side of the clearing and tied them, spread-eagle, to three different trees, wrapping their heads securely so they couldn’t hear or see. Each ankle was tied with a rope secured to the base of a neighboring tree. Their wrists were tied to branches above their heads. Another rope around the tree secured their waist, and one last rope around their neck was to prevent them from moving around very much. Finally, I cut away their clothing, leaving them standing and shivering in the cold, wind, and rain.

Next, I secured two of the dead men similarly, hoping to convince my three prisoners that I had already tortured and killed two of the men. I fired several arrows into the fleshy areas of the lifeless bodies and one into the rather sensitive area at the apex of their legs before disemboweling them. Satisfied, I removed the blindfolds from my three prisoners and left them to look around while I went back to retrieve my horse.

The rain subsided just before I got to my horse, but all three of my prisoners were shivering violently when I finally returned. I had found a deadfall that was mostly sheltered from the rain and used the nearly dry wood to restart the bandits’ small fire. It built steadily while I dragged the other bodies out where my prisoners could see them, including the sentries who had been pinned up in the trees. I wanted these three men to understand that they were alone, and no help would be forthcoming.

I chose the biggest of the three men to start with, removed his gag, and uncovered his ears. While he spewed vitriolic threats, I backed off about twenty feet then fired an arrow into his thigh. It disturbed me a little that I enjoyed the resulting scream so much.

“Would you like to curse at me again?” I asked sadistically as I nocked another arrow.

“N ... n ... no,” he answered, his body trembling from pain, fear, and cold.

“Good, then we can get down to business. I want answers. Every time you refuse to answer a question or if I think your answer is a lie, I cause you more pain. If you truthfully tell me everything you know, your death will be quick and painless, unlike your two friends over there,” I said motioning over my shoulder at the two lifeless bodies I’d tied to trees. “And your answers had better match what they told me,” I warned.

I knew he’d checked them out while I was getting my horse since he barely glanced at them. I ignored him for a few moments and drew a firebrand out of the rapidly growing fire. “Tell me who you are, where you are from, and why you attacked the Earl and his entourage,” I said menacingly as I walked closer to him with the burning stick.

“I’m Will from York. I’m a farmer but joined a group of bandits four years ago.”

The relief on his face was obvious when I stopped moving towards him. “Go on,” I urged.

He looked quickly back and forth from the firebrand to my face. “We rode to towns that were having a fair to waylay a merchant or two on their way to the fair. Two years ago, a man approached me and told me the Duke knew what we were doing. I thought I would be arrested and executed, but he said the Duke would look the other way if we only conducted our business at least two days’ ride from York and if we would do an occasional favor for the Duke. Usually, he wanted us to kidnap someone to bring to him, or just beat someone for whatever reason the Duke had. This time he wanted us to kill someone. We had no idea who it was this time until it was too late to back out.”

He stopped, looking at me expectantly. “How many are in your group?”

“Usually, there are ten of us, all from York. This time we had two of the Duke’s archers with us and the Earl’s archer that was our inside man joined us. He’s tied to the tree on my right. The Duke’s two men left as soon as they were satisfied that the Earl and his men were all dead. This campsite is one we use when raiding in the south. They are supposed to be back here tomorrow morning with our money. They don’t know about the thousand Pounds and the jewelry the Earl had hidden in the carriage.”

“How much money are they bringing back?” I asked.

“£400; £100 for killing the Earl and £300 for the horses, saddles, and weapons,” he replied.

“Where’s the money you stole from the Earl?” I asked. He hesitated and I moved the brigand so the flames ignited the hair on his genitals.

“Douse the flames, I’ll talk,” he screamed, panicked.

I looked around nonchalantly. “Sorry, I don’t see any water,” I said as he continued to writhe and scream until he passed out.

Using one of their blankets, I soaked up some of the muddy water near the fire and wrung it out on his face to wake him. “Where’s the money?” I asked again once he’d had a chance to regain his senses.

“In the cave ... in the cave,” he yelled, panicked.

“Where’s the cave?”

“On the side of the hill to your right, the money is in the saddlebags at the bottom of the pile of tack.”

I knew he wasn’t going to survive long. He was shivering uncontrollably and had turned almost white in color. I’d seen it happen a few times when someone was hurt badly in an accident. “Why did they want the Earl dead?” I asked, getting no reply. His eyes were open, and he was breathing, but his mind was gone. I couldn’t see wasting another arrow, so I cut his throat and retrieved my arrow from his leg.

Jake’s eyes got huge when I turned to him and unbound his ears and took the gag from his mouth. “They forced me to do it,” he cried as soon as his mouth was clear.

Halfway to the fire I turned and loosed an arrow into his thigh. “That’s for lying to me. I think you saw the punishment for the next lie,” I said coldly, picking out a new firebrand and aiming it his direction.

“Tell me everything,” I ordered. When he hesitated, I started walking towards him, firebrand first.

“I did it for the money,” he blubbered quickly. “When I started, I thought it was just something all nobles did to keep track of each other. By the time it got to this, I was too involved to back out. At first, I thought the Earl would join with the Barons of Yorkshire when two of his Barons agreed. Unfortunately, the rest weren’t as disposed to join and the situation quickly deteriorated to this,” he sobbed.

“I guess your greed finally caught up with you. If you’d just honored your pledge to the Earl, you wouldn’t be in this situation right now. What did you do with the money you earned by dishonoring yourself?”

“I didn’t dare spend it or I’d have to tell my wife where I got it. I hid it under a big rock about twenty feet away from the dead oak tree near the mill. I figured one day I’d be able to come up with a good enough excuse to get it and we’d go somewhere else.”

“It’s not going to do you or your family much good now, will it?”

As much as it could, which wasn’t much, his head shot up and I saw real terror in his eyes. “My family had nothing to do with this,” he hissed vehemently.

“My father had nothing to do with this, but I noticed one of your arrows was among the four in his body. Your involvement has tainted and condemned your entire family.”

“You know my daughter, Gemma, you grew up with her. How can you think she was involved?” he pleaded.

“I thought I knew you, too, yet here we are.”

“Please...” he sobbed, “please promise not to do anything to my wife and daughter.”

“That decision isn’t mine, it’s up to the King,” I reminded him.

“Please...” he sobbed.

“Tell me something I don’t know that I should know, and I’ll try to talk to the King about it,” I offered. I did know his daughter and was sick thinking about the possibility of her being executed, especially since she and Margaret were absolute best friends.

“Jeffrey is spying for Baron Wingsham,” he said dejectedly.

“Anyone else?” I asked acerbically.

“Not among the Earl’s troops, but Baron Winston has a pikeman named Phillip who’s a spy,” he said thoughtfully.

“I’ll do what I can,” I promised before raising my bow and releasing the arrow.

The last man was also very talkative. Knowing that his fate was a foregone conclusion, and after witnessing the results of what I had done to the other two men, he had no desire to suffer any more than necessary. He gave me the names of each of the deceased bandits as well as his own, then named the men most involved in the plot among each of the Barons’ soldiers and the two Barons in Lancashire who had agreed to join their cause. Evidently, only a few ringleaders in each barony were forcing the involvement of everyone else by threatening them and their families. Using a sharpened twig and blood, I hastily scrawled the names he gave me in every blank space on both sides of the Earl’s letter to the King, being careful not to obliterate the original message. When I finally finished him off, I found the cave and made my own cocoon for the night. Sleep was a long time in coming.

In the grey, chill, pre-dawn, I surveyed the soggy campsite. Then, I set up my ambush while praying that no more than two or three men came back. I borrowed a page from their book, choosing a tree that put me high enough that the sun would cause them problems when they tried to locate me. Whether they came from the north or the south, they’d have to look into the sun to find me, although my position would be better for an attack against a foe coming from the north, the direction I expected them from.

When Sniffy started getting antsy well after sunrise, I figured they were coming; I was ready. I had two quivers of arrows securely tied to a branch with six arrows stabbed lightly into a branch to my right where I could grab them without having to look or waste precious time fiddling with the quiver. Four more quivers awaited me at the base of the tree. A rope tied off above me would allow me to climb down quickly in case I needed to escape or face a foe on the ground. My horse was saddled and ready to flee, hidden in a small copse of trees about fifty feet away.

I was a little nervous when four riders emerged from the trees along the game trail. Fortunately, the trail was narrow, and they had to ride single-file. I waited as they approached; timing my first shot so I was at their maximum effective range, but they were close enough that an attempt to escape wouldn’t put them out of my range.

The three front riders heard the first arrow go by and assumed it had missed. The back rider didn’t get to make the same assumption. In the time it took the other three riders to realize there was a threat and look towards the camp, only two remained.

They were definitely professional soldiers, though. The remaining two soldiers were quickly on the ground behind their horses, having pulled the horses down to the ground. I was high enough that the horses didn’t block my line of sight. Seeing his last comrade skewered by one of my arrows even though he was hiding behind the horse, the lone survivor scampered behind a tree, popping out momentarily trying to locate me.

He reminded me of a squirrel I’d found once as he popped his head out of his hole several times for a quick look, checking on and trying to locate the threat. The remaining soldier was making the same mistake the squirrel had; his pop-ups were regular enough to time. “Pop” low on the right. “Pop” high on the left. “Pop” high on the right. “Pop” low on the left. The pattern gave me an opening and I took it. The next time he popped out high on his left, my arrow met him. My timing was off just the tiniest bit and I only managed to wound him. The good news was that the wound was an arrow deep in his left shoulder, greatly reducing his ability to use his bow.

With my bow over my shoulder, I slid down the rope and hurried to the bottom of the slope. As I had with my first wolf kill, I circled his position slowly, far enough away that I felt safe. This time, when he popped up, he released an arrow of his own at the same time I released mine. Mine went through his throat and I dodged, trying to avoid his weakly released arrow. Fortunately, with a bad shoulder, he didn’t have much on it. It still hit me in the hip, penetrating far enough to bury the small, diamond-shaped tip. He used those tips for the same reason I did--they penetrated chain mail and my adversaries had all been wearing chain mail.

The tips were designed to come off if the shaft of the arrow was pulled out. I was grateful it was shallow enough that I could dig it out with my knife without doing further damage. Next I pressed a piece of clean cloth into the wound to try and stop the bleeding, and dug some of the willow bark Margaret sent with me out of my pack and chewed on it to help with the pain.

Knowing how badly the Duke wanted the arms and horses, I limped around and removed the chain mail and weapons from the four dead soldiers. Their horses were well trained and stayed nearby making them easy to round up. After depositing everything worthwhile in the cave, I took the four horses and loaded the saddlebags filled with the Earl’s money, the money the Duke sent to pay the bandits, and the food the four men had with them.

Sniffy and I took our leave of the camp, stopping to tie the rest of the horses into strings of ten, each stringer tied to a single horse behind me. I started slowly, not used to leading so many horses, and worked my way up to a quick trot.

Having raided the supplies of the bandits, I had an adequate supply of food and drink for the rest of the trip and ate as I rode when I got hungry. I reached the next town around midday, found the blacksmith, and paid him to care for thirty-five of the horses for a month. Trading horses to let mine rest, I turned my new horse and the five now carrying the money southeast. Sniffy bounded along beside me happily, occasionally running into the woods only to re-emerge a brief time later with his tongue lolling happily out of the side of his mouth.

At the second town I reached, I found the herbalist and paid her to treat my wound with a poultice. She was impressed when I knew which herbs to use. I got more poultice, willow bark, and strips of cloth to use as bandages for the rest of the journey. I also made sure I was still headed for London.

Late into the night, it started raining again, but I pressed on until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. I led the horses up a small creek to help hide the spot where we left the road and stopped about a mile from the road in a copse of trees that kept most of the rain out. Taking the saddlebags with me, Sniffy and I crawled under an evergreen whose branches dragged the ground. After changing the dressing on my wound, I was out for the night.

The horses nickering quietly woke me in the morning and after changing the dressing again, I saddled and loaded the horses and left. It was foggy and cold, but at least the rain had stopped. I was quickly back on the road, headed for London.

Sniffy and I both sensed it at the same time. With the air still a little hazy, and still before lunch, I pulled up, talking to Sniffy. “Are you as hungry as I am, Sniffy? We should have eaten breakfast before we left this morning.”

While I gathered the driest twigs I could find, Sniffy remained on guard, lying down and staring up the road, hackles still raised. My fire was just getting noticeable when two men wandered nonchalantly out of the woods about two hundred yards away, each leading a horse with bags strapped on its back over the saddle. The way the horses were moving, I could tell the bags were extremely light, probably pine needles or moss intended to make the men appear to be merchants.

The man closest to me was on this side of his horse. The second man was between the horses, using the closest horse as a shield trying unsuccessfully to hide the loaded crossbow he was carrying. The closer they got to me, the farther back he dropped until he was even with the rear horse’s flank. “Good morning, gentlemen,” I called out cheerily, getting a mumbled reply in response.

When the man with the crossbow was about ten feet beyond me, he stepped out from behind the horse, spinning and turning the crossbow to where I’d been sitting, releasing the bolt before he realized I wasn’t there anymore. The shocked look on his face when my arrow went through his chest was probably what he was expecting to have seen on my face a moment earlier.

His partner had his sword half drawn before he saw my second arrow aimed at him. The sword was gently put back into the scabbard. “Drop the sword, coat, and any other weapons, then turn around and walk away,” I ordered. When he opened his mouth to protest, I drew back even more on the bow; His mouth closed quickly. Sword, coat, and three knives hit the ground before he began backing away slowly, one slow, tentative step after another. The farther away he got, the quicker the steps became until he suddenly turned and bolted. He was barely a hundred yards away, still an easy shot, but I let him go. I’d already done too much killing on this trip.

I dragged his friend off the road, dumped the bags of pine needles, doused my fire, and headed for London again. Oh yes, I also had a crossbow now although I couldn’t understand how it could begin to compare with my longbow. There were also several coins in the dead man’s belongings. As the day progressed, the number of people on the road increased and farms were more frequent. Near sundown, I asked a small group of people traveling away from London how much farther it was and was told it was a two-day walk.

I stopped for a while at a small stream to let the horses graze and water while I changed the dressing on my wound. The bleeding had finally stopped completely even though it still hurt like hell. Before darkness fell, I resumed my pilgrimage, intent on reaching London before first light.

I awoke to snickers when my horse stopped. Sometime during the night, I fell asleep in the saddle. My horse had continued on the road, reaching the gates outside of London before dawn. At least a hundred other people were also waiting for the gates to open at sunrise.