There was a shout behind him, and he felt his heart lurch.
‘Are you sure you hit the bugger, Drogo?’
‘’Course I am! I saw the arrow strike.’
‘Where is he then, eh?’
There came another cry from further up, a thrilled call like a huntsman’s. ‘Blood! Gouts of it! You bled him well enough, like a stuck pig!’
‘How do you kill them?’ the man called Adam asked. ‘Sanguisugae are dead already, aren’t they? How’d you kill someone who’s dead?’
‘You cut out his heart and burn it. That’s what I’ve heard. If not, he’ll keep coming back, keep attacking our little ones.’
‘Cut out his heart? Ugh!’ The voice came from dangerously close to Athelhard. He recognised it as the youthful tones of Vincent Yunghe, a hanger-on of Drogo’s. Instinctively he tensed, but the lad was walking away, going to join the other three. ‘I’m not doing that!’
‘I’ll do it, Vin. I’m not scared, and I want revenge after what he did to my little Denise, the devil!’ The angry, bitter voice of Peter atte Moor choked off and there was silence for a while.
Athelhard gritted his jaw and set off again, his leg dragging. The tingling meant he couldn’t stand on it for any time, nor could he bolt; all he could do was make for the uncertain sanctuary of his cottage. On he went, sticking to the line of low bushes he had planted to keep dogs from his hens, until he came to a gap.
The blundering of many feet was nearer now. Hell’s fires, there must be half the vill up here, he thought to himself. They sounded as though they were congregating at the point where he’d pulled out the arrow, and he bit his lip when he heard someone shout. They were on his trail.
Ahead of him the window was a rough, square hole in the wall of his cottage. A matter of four feet from the ground, and ten yards from him, it looked almost impossible to reach without being seen and hit, but he had to try: inside was safety. He could string his bow, nock an arrow to it, and hold them off, at least until he learned why his neighbours had decided to kill him.
When he heard the command to follow the marks in the mud, he knew he must move fast or be killed like a beast at bay. Summoning up all his courage, he stood. There was a bellow, then a roared instruction, and he could have sworn he heard an arrow, but by then he was hurtling inelegantly forward, hobbling weakly on one leg, forcefully shoving himself on with the other.
One pace, two, and he was waiting for the arrow to pierce his unprotected back. Three paces, four, and his breath was wheezing in terror at being in the open. Five paces, six, and the window was so close he could almost reach it. Seven, and his hand caught the rough cob wall.
He crouched on his good leg, both hands on the ledge, then roared with pain and anger as he tried to leap upwards, wrenching with both arms, using all the muscles of his powerful shoulders. He was already halfway through when the second arrow struck him with a terrible, hollow, wet sound, like a stick striking a damped woollen cloak.
Not a sound broke from him as he thudded heavily to the ground, although the shaft struck the floor and wrenched the broad barbs of the arrowhead deeper into his back. It had found its mark. As he reached around tentatively and felt it, he knew that it would kill him: it had lodged in his liver. The pain was excruciating. Outside, the cries of glee showed that the success of the shot had been seen.
But he wasn’t dead yet. He could sting back, he promised himself. Climbing slowly up the wall, he pulled the shutter over the window and tied it in place. Then he could hop along the wall to his stool. Once he was sitting on that, he could snap the arrow-shaft in his back with both hands. It was less painful than the one in his leg, perhaps because he was already growing weak and he simply couldn’t cope with more pain; his frame had registered all it could. He didn’t care. Now all that mattered to him was killing as many of them as he could. His neighbours, his friends, he sneered to himself.
The bow hung from a beam, away from the damp. He could just touch it with his fingers at full reach, and that was enough to knock it down, falling across his head and then down his back, where it snagged on the broken arrow. A scream broke from his lips. Standing, he grabbed the bow and with slow determination he rested one end on the ground and leaned forward, pushing the bow and bending it, shoving the gut string up and over the curve until it could fit into the two slots at either side.
It was done. His back was soaked, and he knew he was losing a lot of blood, but he carried on. The small quiver with his arrows was near the door, and he plucked one and nocked it on the string before dropping back with a grunt to his stool to wait.
But now the rats were closer. He had husbanded all the energy he could, and he rose, shuffled to the doorway and peeped out from behind the leather curtain. He hoped that the men would not notice him there but if they did, the leather might serve as some protection.
Outside, the light was swiftly fading, and he could scarcely make out anything, save the great trees which towered all around. He could see none of his attackers in the gloom, but he could hear them moving about. He couldn’t be sure of hitting them, not aiming by sound alone.
When the man called to him, the sound of his voice was so unexpected that Athelhard caught his breath.
‘Athelhard, surrender to us.’
He made no answer. The voice was coming from the right of the beech tree, and he squinted, but he couldn’t be sure of a target in the gloom.
‘Come out and we’ll send you to Exeter to be tried by the justice of Gaol Delivery. Otherwise we will kill you. We have to.’ It almost sounded as though the man was pleading. ‘We’ve found her. We know what you did to her. We’ve heard of your… your meal!’
A shot of pain lanced his back, and the breath hissed through his teeth. He had no idea what the Reeve was talking about, didn’t care especially. A moment later he caught sight of the man, a tall, powerfully built figure standing a little distance from the beech tree, roughly where Athelhard had pulled the arrow from his thigh.
He could feel his strength ebbing, but he was determined, and lifted his bow. Every week he had practised with his bow since his youth, and now he had a clear picture of his enemy. Raising the bow until the point of his arrow was on the man’s face, Athelhard drew back the string.
Normally he could pull it back smoothly, the arrow resting on his knuckle while his hooked fingers drew the string back to reach his face, softly touching his nose, lips and chin, while he stared along the arrow itself, waiting for the moment to release it. Not today. He couldn’t hold it steady, even when the string was only halfway drawn. Hauling back on it, he kept his eye on the man, gasping with the effort, but before the arrow’s nock was six inches from his chin, his arm began vibrating madly. The bow wavered impossibly; his hands couldn’t control it. The pull was too strong for him in his weakened state. Blood flooded from his wound, slick on his skin, glueing his shirt to his back. He couldn’t aim, couldn’t even be sure he’d get the thing to fire through the doorway – it would be more likely to strike the wall at this rate. Slowly, he permitted the string to inch forward without firing, then sagged, silently weeping, his chin falling to his breast after the expenditure of so much effort. There was nothing left. He was done.
That was when he noticed the light playing about the doorway, saw the torches. Instinctively he glanced up at the thatching of his roof.
There was an odd noise, like a pheasant in flight, and he wondered for a moment what it might be. He realised when he heard it thud against his roof that it was a torch. After so much rain, it had little immediate effect, producing a loud spitting and fizzing, but then he heard another thump above him, and a third. Soon he could hear a loud hissing and crackling as the thatch began to ignite.