Henry’s breath hissed between his teeth. He made an abrupt gesture of dismissal, which Ranulf was more than willing to obey. Ducking under the tent flap, he began to walk through the camp. The sky was overcast, the air uncomfortably humid; within a few steps, his tunic was damp with sweat and his hauberk felt as heavy as lead. Off to his right, a small group of men were conducting a brief funeral for one of the night’s victims, soldiers standing somberly around a shallow grave. The guttural murmurs of Flemish caught Ranulf’s ear as he passed and he paused for a moment, feeling a prickle of pity for any man who’d died so far from his own homeland. At least if he was struck down in this accursed war, he’d be dying on Welsh soil.
He had not expected his emotions to be so raw, his anger so close to the surface. He had thought that he could handle the pull of conflicting loyalties, as he had in the past. But this time it was different. He was betraying the Welsh by fighting with the English, betraying the English by hoping the Welsh would win, and betraying himself with each stifled breath he drew. And the end was not yet in sight.
Ranulf was seated upon a fallen log, gazing out upon the forest fastness of Ceiriog, when Henry finally found him. “I’ve been scouring the entire damned camp for you, Uncle, began to think you’d ridden off on your own.”
“I thought about it,” Ranulf said tonelessly, and Henry grimaced, then sat down beside him upon the log.
“I know you do not want to be here,” he said after a long silence. “If truth be told, neither do I, Ranulf. I’ve never hungered for Welsh conquest; what man in his senses would? Look around you,” he said, gesturing toward the encroaching wall of trees and brambles. “This whole wretched country is a fortress. And we have not even gotten into the mountains yet. This campaign has not gone at all as I planned-and I do not always take it with good grace when my plans go awry.”
“Do tell,” Ranulf murmured, but there was a softening beneath the sarcasm, for that was as close to an apology as Henry could get and they both knew it. “So now what, Harry? Do I lie the next time you ask me how I think your war is going?”
“You know better. There are precious few people I can trust to tell me the truth, but you are one of them.”
“The truth, then. I think you will be making a great mistake to continue on with this campaign. The Welsh will keep on harassing us with their contrary tactics, bleeding away your army’s strength with quick raids and retreats, fading back into the woods ere you can retaliate. War by attrition, the wearing down of the enemy. In your words, it may indeed not be honorable. But it works, Harry. It works.”
“I know,” Henry admitted. “But I am not about to give up, Ranulf. I cannot do that, for a king who lets one rebellion go unpunished will soon see others springing up all over his domains. Think of weeds in a garden, if you will. Stop pulling them up and the garden is lost.”
“What will you do, then? Just press ahead by day, keep losing men by night?”
“No,” Henry said, “that would be a fool’s play. The rules of this game are too heavily slanted in Owain Gwynedd’s favor. So-I mean to change the rules.”
From their vantage point upon the heights of the Berwyn Mountains, they looked out upon the vast, green expanse of the Ceiriog Valley. They had come to see for themselves if their scouts’ reports were accurate, and they stared down in silence now at the devastation being wrought below them. The woods echoed with the sounds of axes and hatchets, the cursing of men, the snorting of horses as they struggled to uproot saplings and lightning-scarred hollow trunks. Henry’s bowmen fanned out in defense of the axe wielders, yelling hoarse warnings when trees began to topple. It was a slow, laborious process, but the English army was cutting a swath through the thick underbrush on each side of the road, hacking away at the trees, brambles, and scrub providing cover for Welsh bowmen or Welsh ambushers. The Ceiriog Valley would be scarred for years to come by the passage of the English army.
Hywel was not easily shocked, but this purposeful and far-reaching destruction did shock him, both by the scope of the damage done and by the arrogance of the English king. A man who thought he could impose his will even upon nature was as dangerous as he was mad. He saw his foreboding reflected upon the faces of the other Welsh princes; even his half-brother Davydd seemed daunted by what they were watching, an attack upon the very land of Wales itself.
Rhys ap Gruffydd swore, then leaned over and spat. “There is nothing worse than an enemy with imagination.”
“I wonder that he did not just order the woods to part, like Moses at the Red Sea,” Hywel said bleakly. To his surprise, his bitter jest seemed to amuse his father, for Owain’s mouth was curving in a slight smile. Hywel’s own humor rarely failed him, but to save his soul, he could not wring a single drop of amusement from their present plight. How could they hope to defeat in the field an army so much larger than theirs? “It looks as if we shall have to revise our battle plans. We were so sure they’d not get across the Berwyns, so sure…”
“I still am,” Owain said, and they all turned in their saddles to stare at him.
“Why?” Blunt as ever, Rhys was regarding his uncle with an odd mixture of dubious hope. “Why should a mountain range halt a man willing to chop down an entire forest?”
“Have you so forgotten your Scriptures, Rhys? I suggest you think upon Proverbs.”
That was less than illuminating to Rhys and Davydd. Much to Davydd’s vexation, it was his brother, with a poet’s love of the written word, who solved the puzzle. “ ‘Pride goeth before destruction,’ ” Hywel quoted, “ ‘and a haughty spirit before a fall.’ ”
“Exactly,” Owain said, so approvingly that Davydd’s jealousy rose in his throat like bile. “What could be more prideful than this? Only Our Lord God is omnipotent, not the King of England. That is a lesson this Henry Fitz Empress needs to learn, and I do believe it is one he will be taught, for such prideful presumption is surely displeasing to the Almighty.”
The others did not doubt that the English king was not in God’s Favor, for soon after crossing into Wales, his soldiers had plundered and burned several churches. But they did not have Owain’s apparent faith in divine retribution, not with the English army soon to be within striking distance of the Welsh heartland. Owain saw their skepticism and laughed softly.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” he said mockingly. “You want proof of the Almighty’s Intent, do you?” Wetting his forefinger, he held it up. “The wind has shifted-from the northwest to the northeast. Need I tell you what that means?”
He did not, for these were men who, of necessity, had long ago learned to read the skies and cloud patterns as a monk might study the Holy Word. That wind change signaled a coming storm.
For days, the sky had been heavy with clouds, the air muggy and uncomfortably close. Passing birds were flying much lower to the ground than usual. The last visible sunset had turned the sky a dull red. There were Englishmen as adept as the Welsh in interpreting nature’s portents, and so Henry’s army had fair warning that unsettled weather was on the way.
They were not men to be disheartened by a few summer showers, though. Rain was an occupational hazard of the soldier, particularly in a land as wet as Wales. As long as they no longer had to shy at shadows and fear that there was a Welsh bowman lurking behind every tree, they were willing to slog through a little mud. That seemed a fair trade for being able to sleep again at night. Morale had soared with each felled tree, each trampled bush. It was slow going, but what of it? Once they got to the Berwyns, they’d make better time, for its slopes were not as deeply wooded as the valley. Their Welsh guides would lead them across the barren heaths and bogs and over the mountain pass toward a reckoning with the Welsh army at Corwen. After that, they could go home, for few doubted that they would prevail once the two forces met on the battlefield.