The Bristling Wood Read online

  “You might as well know the truth. First of all, my name’s Caudyr, and I was at the court in Dun Deverry. I mixed up a few potions and suchlike for some highborn ladies to rid them of … ah, well … a spot of … er, well … trouble now and again. The word’s gotten out about it in rather a nasty way.”

  Caradoc and Aethan exchanged a puzzled glance.

  “He means abortions,” Maddyn said with a grin. “Naught that should vex us, truly.”

  “Might even come in handy, with this pack of dogs I’ve got,” Caradoc said. “Well and good, then, Caudyr. Once you’ve shown me that you can physic a man, you’ll get a full share of our earnings, just like a rider. I’ve discovered that a lord’s chirurgeon tends his lord’s men first and the mercenaries when he has a mind to and not before. I’ve had men bleed to death who would have lived if they’d gotten the proper attention.”

  Idly Maddyn happened to glance Aethan’s way to find him staring at Caudyr in grim suspicion.

  “Up in Dun Deverry, were you?” Aethan’s voice was a dry, hard whisper. “Was one of your highborn ladies Merodda of the Boar?”

  In a confession stronger than words, Caudyr winced, then blushed. Aethan got to his feet, hesitated, then took off running into the darkness.

  “What, by the hells?” Caradoc snapped.

  Without bothering to explain, Maddyn got up and followed, chasing Aethan through the startled camp, pounding blindly after him through the moon-shot night down to the riverbank. Finally Aethan stopped and let him catch up. They stood together for a long time, panting for breath and watching the silver-touched river flow by.

  “With a bitch like that,” Maddyn said finally. “How would you even know that the babe was yours?”

  “I kept my eye on her like a hawk all winter long. If she’d looked at another man, I’d have killed him, and she knew it.”

  With a sigh Maddyn sat down, and after a moment, Aethan joined him.

  “Having a chirurgeon of our own will be a cursed good thing,” Maddyn said. “Can you put up with Caudyr?”

  “Who’s blaming him for one single thing? I wish I could kill her. I dream about it sometimes, getting my hands on her pretty white throat and strangling her.”

  Abruptly Aethan turned and threw himself into Maddyn’s arms. Maddyn held him tightly and let him cry, the choking ugly sob of a man who feels shamed by tears.

  Two days later the troop crossed the border into Eldidd. At that time, the northern part of the province was nearly a wilderness, forests and wild grasslands broken only by the occasional dun of a minor lord or a village of free farmers. Plenty of the lords would have liked to hire the troop, because they were in constant danger of raids coming either from the kingdom of Pyrdon to the north or from Deverry to the east. None, however, could pay Caradoc what he considered the troop was worth. With thirty-seven men, their own smith, chirurgeon, and bard, the troop was bigger than the warbands of most of the lords in northern Eldidd. Just when Caradoc was beginning to curse his decision to ride that way, the troop reached the new town of Camynwaen, on the banks of an oddly named river, the El, just as the spot where the even more strangely named Aver Cantariel flows in from the northwest.

  Although there had been a farming village on the site for centuries, only twenty years before had the gwerbret in Elrydd decided that the kingdom needed a proper town at the joining of the rivers. Since the war with Pyrdon could flare up at any time, he wanted a staging ground for troops and a properly defensible set of walls around it. Finding colonists was no problem, because there were plenty of younger sons of noble lords willing to risk a move to gain land of their own, and plenty of bondsmen willing to go with them since they became free men once they left their bound land. When Caradoc’s troop rode into Camynwaen, they found a decent town of a thousand round houses behind high stone walls, turreted with watchtowers.

  About a mile away was the stone dun of Tieryn Maenoic, and there Caradoc found the kind of hire he’d been looking for. Although Maenoic received maintenance from the gwerbret to the south, there was a shortage of fighting men in his vast demesne, and he had a private war on his hands. Since the authority of his clan was fairly new, he was always plagued with rebellions. For years now the chief troublemaker had been a certain Lord Pagwyl.

  “And he’s gathered together a lot of bastards like himself,” Maenoic said. “And they claim they’ll ask the gwerbret to give them a tieryn of their own and not submit to me. I can’t stand for it.”

  He couldn’t, truly, because standing for it would not only take half his land away but also make him the laughingstock of every man in Eldidd. A stout hard-muscled man, with a thick streak of gray in his raven-dark hair, Maenoic was steaming with fury as he strode back and forth, looking over the troop, who were sitting on their horses outside the gates to Maenoic’s dun. Caradoc and Maddyn followed a respectful distance behind while the lord judged the troop’s horses and gear with a shrewd eye.

  “Very well, Captain. A silver piece per week per man, your maintenance, and of course I’ll replace any horses that you lose.”

  “Most generous, my lord,” Caradoc said. “For peacetime.” Maenoic turned to scowl at him.

  “Another silver piece per man for every battle we fight,” Caradoc went on. “And that’s paid for every man who dies, too.”

  “Far too much.”

  “As it pleases your lordship. Me and my men can just ride on.”

  And over to your enemies, perhaps—the thought hung unspoken between them for a long moment. Finally Maenoic swore under his breath.

  “Done, then. A second silver piece per man for every scrap.”

  With an open and innocent smile, Caradoc bowed to him.

  Maenoic’s new-built dun was large enough to have two sets of barracks and stables built into the walls—a blessing, because the mercenaries could be well separated from Maenoic’s contemptuous warband. At meals, though, they shared the same set of tables, and the warband made barely tolerable comments about men who fought for money and quite intolerable comments about the parentage and character of such who did so. Between them Caradoc and Maenoic broke up seven different fistfights in two days before the army was at last ready to ride out.

  After he called in all his loyal allies, Maenoic had over two hundred and fifty men to lead west against his rebels. In the line of march, Caradoc’s troop came at the very end, behind even the supply wagons, and ate dust all day long. At night they made camp by themselves a little way off from the warbands of the noble-born. Caradoc, however, was summoned when the lords held a council of war. He came back to the troop with solid news and gathered them around him to hear it.

  “Tomorrow we’ll see the first scrap. Here’s how things stand, lads. We’re coming to a river, and there’s a bridge there. Maenoic claims the taxes on it, but Pagwyl’s holding out. The scouts say Pagwyl’s going to make a stand to prevent the tieryn from crossing, because once he crosses against Pagwyl’s will, it’s his bridge again in everybody’s eyes. We’ll be leading the charge—of course.”

  Everyone nodded, acknowledging that they were, after all, the disposable mercenaries. Maddyn found himself troubled by a strange feeling, a coldness, a heaviness. It took him a long time to admit it, but then he realized that he was quite simply afraid. That night he dreamt of his last charge up in Cantrae and woke soaked with cold sweat. You coward, he told himself; you ugly little coward! The reproach burned in his very soul, but the truth was that he had almost died in that last charge, and now he knew what it felt like to be dying. The fear choked him as palpably as if he’d swallowed a clot of sheep’s wool. What was worst of all was knowing that here was one thing he could never share with Aethan.

  All night, all the next morning, the fear festered so badly that by the time the army reached the bridge, Maddyn was hysterically happy that the battle was at hand and soon to be over. He was singing under his breath and whistling in turn when the army crested a low rise and saw, just as they’d expected, Lord Pagwyl and
his allies drawn up by the riverbank to meet them. There was a surprise, however, in the men who waited for them: a bare hundred mounted swordsmen, eked out by two big squares of common-born spearmen, placed so that they blocked any possible approach to the bridge itself.

  “Oh, here,” said Maddyn, forcing a laugh. “Pagwyl was a fool to rebel if that’s all the riders he could scrape together.”

  “Horseshit!” Caradoc snapped. “His lordship knows what he’s doing. I’ve seen fighting like this before, spearmen guarding a fixed position. We’re in for a little gallop through the third hell, lad.”

  As Maenoic’s army milled around in confusion, Caradoc led his men calmly up to the front of the line. The enemy had picked a perfect place to stand, a long green meadow in front of the bridge, bordered by the river on one side of their formation and on the other, the broken, crumbling earthwork of some long-gone farmer’s cattle corral. Three rows deep, the spearmen stood shield to shield, the spearheads glittering around the chalk-whitened oval shields. To one side of the shield wall, the mounted men sat on restless horses, ready to charge in from the side and pin Maenoic’s men between them and the river.

  “Horseshit and a pile of it,” Caradoc muttered. “We can’t wheel round the bastards without falling into the blasted river.”

  Maddyn merely nodded, too choked for breath to answer. He was remembering the feel of metal biting deep into his side. Under him, his horse tossed its head and stamped as if it, too, were remembering their last charge. When Caradoc trotted off to confer with Maenoic, Aethan pulled up beside Maddyn; he’d already settled his shield over his left arm and drawn a javelin. While he followed the example, Maddyn had to work so hard to keep his horse steady that he suddenly realized that the poor beast did remember that last charge. He had a battle-shy horse under him and no time to change him.

  The spearmen began calling out jeers and taunting the enemy for scum on horseback, screaming into the sunlight and the wind that blew the taunts into jagged, incomprehensible pieces of words. Some of Maenoic’s men shouted back, but Caradoc’s troop merely sat on their horses and waited until at last their captain left the lord’s side and jogged back, easy in his saddle, a javelin in his hand.

  “All right, lads. We’re riding.”

  There was a gust of laughter in the troop as they jogged forward to join him. Maenoic’s own men pulled in behind, but the rest of the army wheeled off, ready to charge the enemy riders positioned off to the side. With an odd jingling shuffle, like a load of metal wares jouncing in a cart, the army formed up. Caradoc turned in his saddle, saw Maddyn right next to him, and yelled at him over the noise.

  “Get back! I want to hear our bard sing tonight. Get back in the last rank!”

  Maddyn had never wanted to follow an order more in his life, but he fought with himself only a moment before he shouted back his answer.

  “I can’t. If I don’t ride this charge, then I’ll never have the guts to ride another.”

  Caradoc cocked his head to one side and considered him.

  “Well and good, then, lad. We might all be doing our listening and singing in the Otherlands, anyway.”

  Caradoc turned his horse, raised his javelin, then broke into a gallop straight for the enemy lines. With a howl of war cries, the troop burst after him, a ragged race of shrieking men across the meadow. Maddyn saw the waiting infantry shudder in a wave-ripple of fear, but they held.

  “Follow my lead!” Aethan screamed. “Throw that javelin and wheel!”

  Closer—a cloud of dust, kicked-up bits and clods of grass—the infantry shoving together behind the line of lime-white shields—then there was a shower of metal as Caradoc and his men hurled javelins into the spearmen. Shields flashed up, caught some of the darts, but there was cursing and screaming as the riders kept coming, throwing, wheeling, peeling off in a long, loose circle. Maddyn heard battle yells break out behind as the reserve troops charged into Pagwyl’s cavalry. Snorting, sweating, Maddyn’s horse fought for the bit and nearly carried them both into the river. Maddyn drew his sword, slapped the horse with the flat, and jerked its head around to spur it back to the troop.

  The first rank of Maenoic’s men were milling blindly, waving swords and shouting, in front of the shield wall. Caradoc galloped among his troop, yelling out orders to re-form and try a charge from the flank. Maddyn could see that Maenoic’s allies had pushed Pagwyl’s cavalry back to expose the shield wall’s weakest spot. In a cloud and flurry of rearing horses, the troop pulled around and threw itself forward again. Maddyn lost track of Aethan, who was shoved off to the flank when Maenoic’s men, blindly pulling back to charge again, got themselves mixed up with the charging mercenaries. One or two horses went down, their riders thrown and trampled, before Caradoc sorted out the mess into some rough order. Maddyn found himself in Maenoic’s warband. For one brief moment he could see Caradoc, plunging at the flank of the shield wall with a mob behind him. Then his own unit rode forward for the charge.

  On and on—the shield wall was trembling, turning toward its beleaguered flank, but it held tight directly ahead of Maddyn. From the men behind him javelins flew. Maddyn’s horse bucked and grabbed for the bit; he smacked it down and kicked it forward. A split-second battle—of nerve, not steel—Maddyn saw the slack-jawed face of a young lad, his hands shaking on his braced spear, his eyes suddenly meeting Maddyn’s as he galloped straight for him. With a shriek the lad dropped his spear and flung himself sideways. As the man next to him fell, cursing and flailing, Maddyn was in. Dimly he saw another horseman to his right. The shield wall was breaking. Swinging, howling with an unearthly laughter, Maddyn shoved his horse among the panicked spearmen. Ducking and bobbing in the saddle like a water bird, he slashed out and down, hardly seeing or caring whom or what he was hitting. A spearhead flashed his way. He caught it barely in time and heard his shield crack, then shoved it away as he twisted in the saddle to meet another flash of metal from the right. Always he laughed, the cold bubble of a berserker’s hysteria that he could never control in battle.

  His horse suddenly reared, screaming in agony. As they came down, the horse staggered, its knees buckling, but it couldn’t fall. All around was a press—panicked infantry, trapped cavalry, horses neighing and men shouting as they shoved blindly at one another. Desperately Maddyn swung out, cutting a spearman across the face as his dying horse staggered a few steps forward. All at once the line broke, a mob panicked scuffle of men, throwing spears down, screaming, pushing their fellows aside as they tried to get away from the slashing horsemen. Maddyn’s mount went down. He had barely time to free his feet from the stirrups before they hit the ground hard, a tangle of man and horse. Maddyn’s shield fell over his face; he could neither see nor breathe, only scramble desperately to get up before a retreating spearman stuck him like a pig. On his knees at last, he flung up his shield barely in time to parry a random thrust. The force of the blow cracked the shield through and sent him reeling backward to his heels. He saw the spearman laugh as he raised the spear again, both hands tight on the shaft to drive it home for the kill; then a javelin flew into the press and caught the man full in the back. With a scream, he pitched forward, and the men around him ran.

  Staggering, choking on dust and his own eerie laughter, Maddyn got to his feet. Around him the field was clearing as the horsemen charged the fleeing infantry and rode them down, slashing in blind rage at men who could no longer defend themselves. Maddyn heard someone yell his name and turned to see Aethan, riding for him at a jog.

  “Did you throw that dart?” Maddyn called out.

  “Who else? I’ve heard you laugh before, and I knew that cat’s squalling meant you were in trouble. Get up behind me. We’ve won this scrap.”

  All at once, Maddyn’s battle fever deserted him. He felt pain, bad pain, cracked ribs burning like fire. Gasping for breath, he grabbed at Aethan’s stirrup to steady himself, but the movement made the pain stab him into crying out. With a foul oath, Aethan dismounted and caught him rou
nd the shoulders, a well-meant gesture that made Maddyn yelp again.

  “Hard fall,” Maddyn gasped.

  With Aethan shoving him from behind, Maddyn managed to scrabble his way onto the horse. He kept telling himself that riding was better than walking, but he hung on to the saddle peak with both hands to brace himself against the motion as Aethan led the horse out of the death-strewn welter of the battlefield. As they went by, he saw some of Caradoc’s men looting the dead, friend and enemy alike.

  Up the riverbank the chirurgeons and their apprentices were waiting for the wounded. Aethan took Maddyn over to Caudyr, then went back to the field to pull more wounded men out of the dead and dying. When he tried to walk to the chirurgeon’s wagon, Maddyn fell, then lay on the ground for an hour while Caudyr frantically worked on the men who were far worse off. At times Maddyn drowsed, only to wake with an oath for his burning ribs; the sun was hot, and he sweated copiously inside the mail he couldn’t remove by himself. All he could think about was water, but no one had time to bring him any until Aethan returned. He fetched him a drink, unlaced the mail and helped him slide it off, then sat down beside him.

  “We’ve won good and proper for all the good it does us. Maenoic’s got Pagwyl’s body at his feet, and his allies are all suing for peace right now.”

  “Is Caradoc alive?”

  “He is, but not a lot of the godforsaken rest of us are. Maddo, we’re down to twelve men.”

  “Ah. Can I have some more water?”

  Aethan held the wáterskin so he could drink again. Only then did he truly understand his friend’s words.

  “Oh ye gods! Only twelve?”

  “Just that.”

  After another hour Caudyr came, his shirt blood-soaked down the front and up to his elbows. All he could do for Maddyn’s ribs was to bind them with a wet linen band. As it dried in the sun, it would tighten enough to let him sit up. Maddyn’s left shoulder was also a mass of bleeding, ring-shaped bruises: the mark of his own mail, pressed right down through his clothes when he’d fallen. Caudyr washed them down with a slop of mead from a wooden cup. Maddyn shrieked once, then bit his lower lip to keep from doing it again. Caudyr handed him the cup.