‘There’re a lot of men up there, you can see them moving about. I can’t see any lookouts posted, the useless scum,’ growled Guy Ferrars. ‘But it’s all open ground between us here in the trees and those heaps of stones that they’re using to shelter their camp.’
John and Ralph Morin moved cautiously to the edge of the wood to look up the slope of Easdon Tor. It was a double hill, with a higher, rugged silhouette on the left and a lower, smoother mound on the right. The ruined huts were much lower down on a small, flatter part of the hill.
‘They can’t escape uphill, it’s too steep. We must attack them in a broad arc, to stop them running down into the trees,’ advised Ralph Morin. The other leaders agreed and the soldiers were spread out in a single line three hundred paces long, each behind a tree until the signal was given.
‘If they see all of us they’ll scatter and run for it, so let’s entice them down here first,’ advised de Wolfe. ‘Keep the men-at-arms out of sight for the moment.’
With Gwyn and several of the roughly dressed men from Lustleigh, the coroner stepped boldly out of the trees and began walking up towards the little plateau that carried the tumbled stones, partly covered with grass.
‘Slowly does it, Gwyn,’ muttered John.’We don’t want to be too far away from the men behind when they catch sight of us.’
As if the outlaws had heard him, there were some distant yells from above and a dozen heads appeared to stare down the slope at them. Then, with yells of derision and anger, a crowd of men surged from between the stones and began running down at them, waving swords, staves and maces. At least a score of ruffians came storming down the hillside, and the men from Lustleigh faltered at the prospect of being massacred.
But just at the right moment, thanks to the timing of old campaigner Guy Ferrars, the whole force of mailed soldiers burst out of the trees and began running in an unbroken line towards the outlaws, the ends of the line curving around in a constricting arc.
At the sudden appearance of three times their number of mailed soldiers, the men from the camp skidded to a halt and desperately looked for a way of escape. Some who had just come out of the old ruins turned around and vanished uphill, but the men lower down had nowhere to go except into the arms of the rapidly closing troops.
It was almost a repeat of the earlier blood-bath, as the men-at-arms had been told to give no quarter and the outlaws knew that the only alternative to escape was death. The ragtag crowd, with not a single piece of armour between them, fought furiously but were no match for the mailed and helmeted troops. The four archers stood slightly to the rear, and whenever a clear target presented itself they shot with deadly accuracy.
Within ten minutes it was all over. Four of the outlaws managed to evade both the soldiers and their arrows and, being fleet of foot, fled across the scrub-covered ground and vanished into the trees. The rest lay dead among the scrubby vegetation of Easdon Down. Gwyn had dispatched two himself, crushing one man’s head with his mace and hacking the neck of another. De Wolfe, at the spearhead of the attackers, also accounted for two, running one through the chest with his sword and stabbing another in the throat with his dagger, after the man had wrapped the chain of his mace around John’s sword-hilt.
He looked around at the scene of mayhem, with twenty-seven corpses lying on the ground. In the battles in the Holy Land, especially at Acre, and to a lesser extent in Ireland and France, he had seen ten times that number of dead in one engagement. Still, this was Devon, and he had a momentary twinge of conscience until he again recognised that any survivors would have been either beheaded or hanged.
The only casualty among the attackers turned out to be Hugh Ferrars, who had received a hacking blow on his left arm. The sleeve of his hauberk had saved him, but he had a large bruise spreading from elbow to wrist. He seemed mightily pleased with it, as a token of his first wound in combat. Although well trained by his father and his squires, Hugh had been short of a war in which to fight, and now had something to boast about to his drinking friends.
Gabriel was prowling with his sword amongst the defeated men, giving the coup-de grâce to one or two who still twitched, until all was still.
Morin called back the soldiers to rest on the grass, then came over to where the Ferrars and de Courcy were talking to John de Wolfe.
‘Are there any more left?’ he demanded. ‘I suspect that any who stayed up in those ruins made a quick getaway across the shoulder of the tor. They’ll be a mile away by now.’
Guy Ferrars, his rugged face redder than usual with the exertion and excitement, leaned on his long sword. ‘We’ll take a walk up there in a moment to see. What about this lot? Did we get the leaders?’
They scanned the crumpled bodies lying among the ferns and long grass.
‘Gwyn is the only one who can recognise them now,’ said de Wolfe. True to his promise, he had let Stephen Cruch loose back in the tree line and the horse-dealer had vanished like a puff of smoke.
Gwyn ambled among the dead, turning some face up with his foot. After a while, he gave a shout. ‘This one’s Martin Angot, the fellow I saw with Cruch in the alehouse,’ he called. He looked at all the rest, then shook his head.
‘Robert Winter’s not among them. We’ve missed the leader, but now he has no one to lead.’
Ralph Morin stared around at the corpses strewn around.
‘What are we to do with these? They’ll be stinking by tomorrow!’
The guide and two of his fellows from Lustleigh deferentially tugged at their floppy caps, before making a suggestion.
‘We can get a bounty for each of these, sir. If we undertake to bury them all back in the wood there, can we take the heads and claim the bounty?’
Ralph and John roared with laughter, even at such a macabre suggestion. The thought of Richard de Revelle’s face, when an ox-cart trundled up to Exeter Castle filled with amputated heads, was too good to deny.
‘You do that, good man! And add those from the last camp to your collection for the sheriff. If he refuses to pay you, let me know.’
As the local men went enthusiastically about their business, the coroner decided that he would like to see what was in the camp up above.
The leaders of the expedition, together with Gabriel and two of the bowmen, began to walk up the slope towards the grassy platform where the ruined foundations lay. As they neared the edge, they became cautious, in case any surviving outlaws were laying in wait. The archers tensed their bow-strings and the others gripped their weapons, but all was quiet as they stepped between the mossy piles of stones, barely recognisable as the bases of old round huts.
In the centre of the jumble of rocks was a fire, a radiating ring of logs still smouldering. Some cooking pots and pottery mugs lay round about and the half-eaten carcass of a deer was spread on a large flat stone.
A few of the hut remnants had been partially and crudely rebuilt and roofed over with branches to make a couple of shelters, high enough for men to crawl inside.
‘What a way to live!’ said Reginald de Courcy in disgust. ‘Even animals fare better than this.’
‘Do you think we’ve wiped most of them out?’ asked Morin. ‘We’ve missed this man Winter — maybe he’s with another nest of the serpents somewhere?’
‘There can be very few of his gang left,’ replied de Wolfe. ‘Together with the ones we killed on the way, this accounts for most of those who the villagers allege were plaguing the countryside.’
‘We had better call at that camp Gwyn saw, down towards Ashburton,’ advised the constable. ‘I’ll take a dozen men and go that way back to Exeter.’
‘You’d best go with him, Gwyn,’ said the coroner. ‘You know exactly how to find it.’
But the Cornishman failed to respond. He had walked a little way from the group and was standing with his head cocked on one side, listening intently. Then tucking the handle of his mace into his belt, he slid out his sword and quietly advanced on one of the brush-covered shelters.