We rode on. Soon the road dwindled to little more than a footpath, obliging us to walk our horses cautiously in single file. To our left the hillside rose very steeply, a bare slope of loose scree and shale. It climbed at least a hundred feet to a ridge whose jagged outline reminded me of a cock’s comb. On our right the ground fell away equally steeply, dropping into a dried-up river bed. Here, the slope was dotted with boulders of every size and shape. They had broken away from the crest and rolled down the hill. Some had come to rest part of the way down, but most had tumbled all the way into the ravine below.
My companion was the more accomplished horseman, and as the path grew even narrower, he offered to take the lead. My own horse, a chestnut mare, had a nervous disposition and was reluctant to proceed.
After some twenty minutes of slow progress she lost her nerve entirely. She came to a halt, shivering and sweating, and would go no further. I kicked her hard in the ribs and shouted at her. She put back her ears, stiffened her legs and refused to budge. I kicked again and shouted even louder. My shout came back to me as an echo from the steep slopes all around. As the sound faded I heard a gentle clatter. Looking up and to my left, I saw that a small section of hillside close to the path had come loose and was sliding downhill in a thin trickle of gravel. The flow halted, there was a final rattle of the last few pebbles, and a brief silence. Then a sharp, much louder crack sounded. I shifted my gaze higher up to the cock’s comb of the ridge above me just in time to see a moderate-sized boulder break free and slip downward a fraction. It was about the size a man could encircle with his arms. It hung motionless and time seemed to stand still. In a heartbeat it began to roll, tumbling end over end. It gathered speed, first making small leaps, and then as it struck a rocky ledge it was thrown outward, bounced, and flew with even greater force, hurtling downward in a series of destructive arcs.
I shouted a warning to my companion, less than ten paces ahead. He had already seen the danger and put heels to his horse’s flanks. The animal jumped forward, and this action saved them. The boulder went spinning past them and crashed on down the hill.
‘Are you all right?’ I called out. I was struggling to control my mare. The animal had been terrified into action and was scrabbling with its hooves, lunging from side to side. I feared we would slip off the loose surface of the path and plunge to our destruction.
‘A near miss,’ came back the call, and the trooper gave a confident wave to reassure me. ‘We’ll be on safer ground soon.’
Underneath me the mare was still shaking with fright so I nearly missed the same ominous warning, a sharp crack and then the first thud as another rock, slightly smaller than the first, broke away from the ridge line and began its lethal descent towards us.
‘Look out!’ I yelled.
Again the boulder was careering a deadly path down the slope.
By then I knew it was no accident. Someone on the crest was trying to kill us.
For a second time the boulder missed. It leaped through the gap between us, bounding down the slope with a great crashing. Shards of rock flew up whenever it struck another boulder.
I bellowed at the trooper to come back. He flung himself sideways from his saddle, landing on the slope above him. He had the reins in hand, hauling on them, trying by brute force to make his horse turn on the narrow path. The animal gave a whinny of protest and spun on its haunches, turning so that its front hooves were clawing on the loose gravel of the upper slope as it tried to find a purchase. At that moment the trooper himself lost his footing and, arms flailing, slid down under the belly of the horse.
The tangle proved fatal. A third rock came tumbling down. It was larger than the others, and halfway towards us it struck an outcrop of rock and split into two. The smaller part, no larger than a blacksmith’s anvil, bounced higher and higher until it struck the trooper squarely and with tremendous force. I felt the thud of the impact, and then the scream of the horse as in the same instant the collision smashed the beast over the edge of the path. The trooper, his hand still twisted in the reins, was dragged away with his mount. Beast and man went slithering down the slope in a sickening whirl of hooves, arms and legs, bouncing off the rocks as they followed the fatal boulder that had outstripped its victims. Finally they came to a rest in the bottom of the ravine. Neither could have survived that terrible fall.
Now the hidden enemy turned his attention on me. I was the only target remaining. I kicked my feet out of the stirrups and swung myself down from the saddle, stumbling as I landed on the broken ground. I made no attempt to make the mare turn but pushed past her flank, leaving her where she was as I ran for my life back the way we had come. The loose ground crunched and shifted beneath my boots, though thankfully not loudly enough to drown out the warning thud and clatter of the next boulder as it was launched down the slope. I looked up and judged its path. Then I dived to one side, flattening myself against the hillside, feeling the ground shudder beneath me as the rock careered off the rocks. It missed me by a yard or more, and then I was up and running, away down the path and around the next corner in terror.
I had gone perhaps twenty paces when, to my horror, I heard someone chasing down the track behind me. I dared not look over my shoulder and expected a lance point in my back at any moment. Then, to my relief, my panic-struck mare came slamming and barging past me, almost knocking me off the trail. The creature had managed to turn herself around unaided, and was bolting. I reached out, grabbed a stirrup with both hands as she pushed past me and clung on. I was bounced and dragged beside her down the path, and I feared she would run off the track and fall, taking us both down to our deaths. But somehow she managed to carry me, half running, half dragged, for more than a mile before she slowed enough for me to heave myself back into the saddle and gather up the reins.
By then we were well away from the ridge, and I rode on shakily until I caught up with the trooper walking his lame horse. By a stroke of luck we came across Hroudland very soon afterwards. He was out with a score of cavalrymen, checking on his patrols.
As soon as the count heard what had happened, he went galloping off at full tilt, hoping to catch the hidden attackers before they left the scene.
But it was too late. He returned some hours later, riding up to our camp at the head of his men, faces covered in dust, their horses lathered and weary. His first words were, ‘Patch, you were lucky. We found marks up on the ridge where a lever was used to dislodge the rocks. But the enemy was gone.’
‘What about the trooper who was knocked off the track?’ I asked.
‘A mangled corpse. One of my men clambered down to take a look. All blood and broken bones.’ He swung himself down from the saddle and walked over to the campfire, his face serious. ‘Tomorrow I’ll call the men together and warn them to be more on their guard.’
‘Any sign of a village where the attackers could have come from?’ asked Berenger, who had been scouting out on our left flank.
The count shook his head.
‘If there had been, I’d have got the truth out of them.’
Then I noticed something odd. One of Hroudland’s riders had come back with an extra brunia tied to his saddle which, I presumed, he had salvaged from the corpse of the dead man. A brunia was a costly piece of equipment and most of the mailed jackets worn by the men were on loan from the royal armoury; it seemed strange that the mysterious assailants had not stayed long enough to plunder their victim.