"Your spirit does you credit, my lady. But don't hang your hopes on how easily the previous garrison here was overwhelmed. To call them 'foolish sots' would be an insult to both fools and sots. Earl Corotocus is of a different mettle; a monster yes, but a soldier through and through. His mesnie has been hardened by battle over many years. In addition, they're nearly all English-born. From birth, they've been raised to view the Welsh as the foe over the mountain, as an enemy existing purely to be crushed."
"Foe over the mountain?" Like many who obsess that they are oppressed, Gwendolyn found it difficult to grasp the concept that her oppressors might feel they acted from a just cause. "What have my people ever done to you? You are the aggressors! You always have been!"
"When I was a child, miss, I lived on the shore of the River Wye." Ranulf mused. "I grew up hearing stories of how Prince Gruffud burned Hereford, the capital city of that region, and slew its entire population."
"That was nearly two-hundred years ago."
"King Edward has learned from the mistakes his forebears made. He won't tolerate hostile states on his borders."
"We're not hostile to you."
"Even neutral states must be viewed as hostile. Better to have a wasteland at your door than a tribe of barbarians whose loyalty your enemies can buy for a few cattle." He shrugged. "At least, that's the king's view."
"By the sound of it, it's a view you share."
"I understand the reasoning, even if I disapprove of the methods."
"Well in that you've set me a good example." She smiled coldly. "When my kinsmen get hold of you, forgive me if I understand their anger and merely disapprove when they tear you apart between their horses."
There was a sudden echo of voices from the passage. Ranulf withdrew from the cell, closing the door and locking it. At the next corner, he met Navarre carrying a flaming torch, and one of Garbofasse's mercenaries.
"Where did you put the Welsh slut?" Navarre asked.
"Who needs to know?" Ranulf said.
"Murlock needs to know, if he's to look after her."
Ranulf looked at the mercenary properly. Murlock was a brutal, bearded hulk, several inches taller than most men, his massive, ape-like frame crammed inside a steel-studded leather hauberk. When he grinned, fang-like teeth showed through a mass of dirty, crumb-filled whiskers.
"You're no longer the official jailer here, FitzOsbern," Navarre explained. "I thought you'd be pleased — one less onerous duty for you."
"And this whoreson is taking over?"
"The earl asked Captain Garbofasse for a man whose special skills fitted the task. Garbofasse nominated Murlock."
In the Welsh villages Corotocus had attacked en route from the Ogryn Valley, Garbofasse's mercenaries had taken a lead role in terrorising the populace; setting fire to cottage roofs, slaughtering animals in their pens and raping women and girls. Murlock, for one, had barely been able to keep his breeches laced. But he hadn't just raped them, he'd sodomised them, he'd beaten and kicked them, and made them watch as he'd personally tied the halters around the necks of their husbands, brothers, fathers and sons, and hoisted them up until they swung and kicked in the smoke-filled air.
Ranulf fixed Navarre with a disbelieving stare. "Are you out of your mind?"
"Are you out of yours, FitzOsbern? I wouldn't like to report that you've objected to yet another of the earl's orders."
"This boor… this animal, will hurt her."
Navarre shook his head soberly. "No. He's under orders to be gentle."
Murlock gave a snorting, pig-like chuckle, and Ranulf launched himself forward, grabbing the fellow by the Adam's apple and slamming him back against the wall.
In the same second, the tip of Navarre's dagger was at Ranulf's throat.
"Yield now!" Navarre snarled. "Right now, or I'll slice you open like a pear."
Ranulf didn't yield; not at first. He leaned on Murlock harder, mailed hands clenched on his windpipe, squeezing. Murlock's breath was caught in his throat. He couldn't breathe, yet he was grinning. His teeth showed like rotten pegs; his piggy eyes had narrowed to murderous little slits.
"You think I won't?" Navarre said. "I warn you, FitzOsbern… you know the earl likes nothing better than to make an example of one of his own. Nothing has made him more feared."
Ranulf finally stepped back, glistening with sweat, breathing hard. Gasping, Murlock sank to his haunches.
"You're swimming against a tide that will overwhelm you, boy," Navarre said, withdrawing his blade.
Ranulf turned and stalked down the fire-lit passage.
"FitzOsbern!" Navarre called after him.
Ranulf was ten yards away when he glanced back.
"The key, FitzOsbern! A cell door is no use without its key."
Ranulf took a long, heavy key from his pouch and dangled it from his fingers. "Come and get it."
Murlock lurched along the passage. He reached for the key and Ranulf dropped it into his palm, but then grabbed his wrist, yanked him forward and met him on the point of the chin with a club-like fist. Murlock was hurled sideways, caromed from the wall and collapsed to the floor, where Ranulf kicked him in the guts, dropped onto him with his knees and pounded his head and face, knocking out his teeth and smashing his nose like an over-ripe plum.
"That was nothing personal," Ranulf hissed into Murlock's ear. "Just a lesson I learned at the abbey school in Leominster. Prior Barnabus taught it us each morning with a willow switch — in case we transgressed during the day and he wasn't around to witness it. So be warned, you harm a single hair on that girl's head and this isn't even a hint of what awaits you."
Ranulf straightened up, kicked the fallen mercenary once more, for good measure, and glanced around. Navarre was watching intently, his mouth frozen in a half-snarl.
"Don't look so outraged, Navarre. I gave him the key, didn't I?"
CHAPTER EIGHT
Earl Corotocus's military might was the envy of his fellow magnates.
As controller of a troubled corner of the kingdom, he already had rights to maintain armed forces that went far beyond his normal feudal obligations. In addition to this, as one of the foremost barons of the realm, descended in direct line from Roland la Hors, one of the original Norman warlords who'd descended on England like a pack of rapacious wolves in 1066, he had greater influence than most and even greater wealth. His estate comprised innumerable fiefs, castles, honours and titles, every one of which could be used to generate additional soldiery and military funding. Very quickly and perfectly legally, he could put a private army into the field that was almost of a size to challenge the king himself. The warriors he had at Grogen were only its spear-tip.
He was also a student of the most modern methods. Where Earl Corotocus was concerned, battle could no longer be left to the wild chance of heroic charge over level field, nor a single combat between picked champions. Though both the Church and the knightly code frowned on him for it, he had an avowed belief in the usefulness of irregular forces, in hit and run raids, in assassinations and ambushes. His personal household was supplemented with warriors drawn from far beyond his demesnes. Not trusting exclusively to such fanciful, out of date devices as homage and fealty, the earl would willingly take scutage from those less able of his vassals, and use it to obtain quality swords and lances from much further a-field. Hence the presence in his mesnie of paid war-dogs like Navarre, originally from the Aquitaine, and the employment of free-companies like Garbofasse's band who came from all parts of the country and were largely felons and cutthroats.
Yet the most feared section of the earl's military power was provided neither by knights nor mercenaries, but by machines. He'd long studied Greek, Roman and Saracen documents brought back from the East. He'd read detailed books written by the master siege-breaker Geoffrey Plantagenet, and now regarded machines not just as the key to destroying enemy citadels and strongholds, but as the ideal means to inflict vast casualties on enemy forces. Even before his campaign in Gascony, where the fighting was so bitter that all rules of gallantry were dispensed with, Corotocus had been collecting these monstrous contraptions — sling-throwers, ballistae, arbalests — either capturing them, purchasing them or having them custom-built. He now possessed three mangonels that any king or emperor would have been pleased to have in his arsenal, and which he'd christened War Wolf, God's Maul and Giant's Fist. These were gigantic counterweight catapults, which could hurl immense grenades fashioned from rock, lead or iron over huge distances. He'd also acquired a scoop-thrower, similarly designed to the mangonels, but with a broad bucket for discharging masses of smaller projectiles such as fire-pots or heaps of chain and rubble.