"Ride!" shouted Iwan, darting to his horse. "Hie!"
The cry died in his throat, for even as the three prepared to flee, five more marchogi stepped from the surrounding wood. Their blades glimmered dimly in the dusky light. Even so, Iwan, wounded as he was, would have challenged them and taken his chances, but Ffreol prevented him. "Iwan! No! They'll kill you."
"They mean to kill us anyway," replied the warrior carelessly. "We must fight."
"No!" Ffreol put out a restraining hand and pulled him back. "Let me talk to them."
Before Iwan could protest, the monk stepped forward. Stretching out empty hands, he walked a few paces to meet the advancing knights. "Pax vobiscum!" he called. Continuing in Latin, he said, "Peace to you this night. Please, put up your swords. You have nothing to fear from us."
One of the Ffreinc made a reply that neither Bran nor Iwan understood. The priest repeated himself, speaking more slowly; he stepped closer, holding out his hands to show that he had no weapons. The knight who had spoken moved to intercept him. The point of his sword flicked the air. Ffreol took another step, then stopped and looked down.
"Ffreol?" called Bran.
The monk made no answer but half turned as he glanced back toward Bran and Iwan. Even in the failing light, Bran could see that blood covered the front of the monk's robe.
Ffreol himself appeared confused by this. He looked down again, and then his hands found the gaping rent in his throat. He clutched at the wound, and blood spilled over his fingers. "Pax vobiscum," he spluttered, then crashed to his knees in the road.
"You filthy scum!" screamed Bran. Leaping to the saddle, he drew his sword and spurred his horse forward to put himself between the wounded priest and the Ffreinc attackers. He was instantly surrounded. Bran made but one sweeping slash with his blade before he was hauled kicking from the saddle.
Fighting free of the hands that gripped him, he struggled to where Brother Ffreol lay on his side. The monk reached out a hand and brought Bran's face close to his lips. "God keep you," he whispered, his voice a fading whisper.
"Ffreol!" cried Bran. "No!"
The priest gave out a little sigh and laid his head upon the road. Bran fell upon the body. Clutching the priest's face between his hands, he shouted, "Ffreol! Ffreol!" But his friend and confessor was dead. Then Bran felt the hands of his captors on him; they hauled him to his feet and dragged him away.
Jerking his head around, he saw Iwan thrashing wildly with his sword as the marchogi swarmed around him. "Here!" Bran shouted. "To me! To me!"
That was all he could get out before he was flung to the ground and pinned there with a boot on his neck, his face shoved into the dirt. He tried to wrestle free but received a sharp kick in the ribs, and then the air was driven from his lungs by a knee in his back.
With a last desperate effort, he twisted on the ground, seized the leg of the marchogi, and pulled him down. Grasping the soldier's helmet, Bran yanked it off and began pummelling the startled soldier with it. In his mind, it was not a nameless Ffreinc soldier he bludgeoned senseless, but ruthless King William himself.
In the frenzy of the fight, Bran felt the handle of the soldier's knife, drew it, and raised his arm to plunge the point into the knight's throat. As the blade slashed down, however, the marchogi fell on him, pulling him away, cheating him of the kill. Screaming and writhing in their grasp, kicking and clawing like an animal caught in a net, Bran tried to fight free. Then one of the knights raised the butt of a spear, and the night exploded in a shower of stars and pain as blow after blow rained down upon him.
CHAPTER
IO
– you are Welsh, yes? A Briton?"
Bruised, bloodied, and bound at the wrists by a rope that looped around his neck, Bran was dragged roughly forward and forced to his knees before a man standing in the wavering pool of light from a handheld torch. Dressed in a long tunic of yellow linen with a short blue cloak and boots of soft brown leather, he carried neither sword nor spear, and the others deferred to him. Bran took him to be their lord.
"Are you a Briton?" He spoke English with the curious flattened nasal tone of the Ffreinc. "Answer me!" He nodded to one of the soldiers, who gave Bran a quick kick in the ribs.
The pain of the blow roused Bran. He lifted his head to gaze with loathing at his inquisitor.
"I think you are Welsh, yes?" the Ffreinc noble said.
Unwilling to dignify the word, Bran merely nodded.
"What were you doing on the road?" asked the man.
"Travelling," mumbled Bran. His voice sounded strange and loud in his ears; his head throbbed from the knocks he had taken.
"At night?"
"My friends and I-we had business in Lundein. We were on our way home." He raised accusing eyes to his Ffreinc interrogator. "The man your soldiers killed was a priest, you bloody-" Bran lunged forward, but the soldier holding the rope yanked him back. He was forced down on his knees once more. "You will all rot in hell"
"Perhaps," admitted the man. "We think he was a spy."
"He was a man of God, you murdering bastard!"
"And the other one?"
"What about the other one?" asked Bran. "Did you kill him, too?"
"He has eluded capture."
That was something at least. "Let me go," Bran said. "You have no right to hold me. I've done nothing."
"It is for my lord to hold or release you as he sees fit," said the Ffreinc nobleman. "I am his seneschal."
"Who is your lord? I demand to speak to him."
"Speak to him you shall, Welshman," replied the seneschal. "You are coming with us." Turning to the marchogi holding the torches, he said, "Liez-le."
Bran spent the rest of the night tied to a tree, nursing a battered skull and a consuming hatred of the Ffreinc. His friend, Brother Ffreol, cut down like a dog in the road and himself taken captive… This, added to the gross injustice of Cardinal Ranulf's demands, overthrew the balance of Bran's mind-a balance already made precarious by the loss of his father and the warband.
He passed in and out of consciousness, his dreams merging with reality until he could no longer tell one from the other. In his mind he walked a dark forest pathway, longbow in hand and a quiver of arrows on his hip. Over and over again, he heard the sound of hoofbeats, and a Ffreinc knight would thunder out of the darkness, brandishing a sword. As the knight closed on him, blade held high, Bran would slowly raise the bow and send an arrow into his attacker's heart. The shock of the impact lifted the rider from the saddle and pinned him to a tree. The horse would gallop past, and Bran would walk on. This same event repeated itself throughout the long night as Bran moved through his dream, leaving an endless string of corpses dangling in the forest.
Sometime before morning, the moon set, and Bran heard an owl cry in the treetop above him. He came awake then and found himself bound fast to a stout elm tree, but uncertain how he had come to be there. Groggily, like a man emerging from a drunken stupor, he looked around. There were Ffreinc soldiers sleeping on the ground nearby. He saw their inert bodies, and his first thought was that he had killed them.
But no, they breathed still. They were alive, and he was a captive. His head beat with a steady throb; his ribs burned where he had been kicked. There was a nasty metallic taste in his mouth, as if he had been sucking on rusty iron. His shirt was wet where he had sweat through it, and the night air was cold where the cloth clung to his skin. He ached from head to heel.