They saw no one, which was good. The small number of people who had legitimate business in the forest – woodcutters, charcoal burners, iron smelters – would not be working today, and it would be unusual to see an aristocratic hunting party on a Sunday. Anyone they met was likely to be an outlaw. But the chances were slim. It was a big forest, stretching for many miles. Merthin had never travelled far enough to see the end of it.
They came to a wide clearing and Merthin said: “This will do.”
There was an oak tree with a broad trunk on the far edge, about fifty feet away. Merthin stood side-on to the target, as he had seen the men do. He took out one of his three arrows and fitted the notched end to the bowstring. The arrows had been as difficult to make as the bow. The wood was ash, and they had goose-feather flights. He had not been able to get iron for the points, so he had simply sharpened the ends then scorched the wood to harden it. He sighted on the tree, then pulled back on the bowstring. It took a great effort. He released the arrow.
It fell to the ground well short of the target. Hop the dog scampered across the clearing to fetch it.
Merthin was taken aback. He had expected the arrow to go winging through the air and embed its point in the tree. He realized that he had not bent the bow sufficiently.
He tried the bow in his right hand and the arrow in his left. He was unusual in this respect, that he was neither right-handed nor left-handed, but a mixture. With the second arrow, he pulled on the bowstring and pushed the bow with all his might, and succeeded in bending them farther than before. This time, the arrow almost reached the tree.
For his third shot he aimed the bow upwards, hoping the arrow would fly through the air in an arc and come down into the trunk. But he overcompensated, and the arrow went into the branches, and fell to the ground amid a flurry of dry brown leaves.
Merthin was embarrassed. Archery was more difficult than he had imagined. The bow was probably all right, he guessed: the problem was his own proficiency, or lack of it.
Once again, Caris seemed not to notice his discomfiture. “Let me have a go,” she said.
“Girls can’t shoot,” Ralph said, and he snatched the bow from Merthin. Standing sideways-on to the target, as Merthin had, he did not shoot straight away, but flexed the bow several times, getting the feel of it. Like Merthin, he found it harder than he had at first expected, but after a few moments he seemed to get the hang of it.
Hop had dropped all three arrows at Gwenda’s feet, and now the little girl picked them up and handed them to Ralph.
He took aim without drawing the bow, sighting the arrow at the tree trunk, while there was no pressure on his arms. Merthin realized he should have done the same. Why did these things come so naturally to Ralph, who could never answer a riddle? Ralph drew the bow, not effortlessly but with a fluid motion, seeming to take the strain with his thighs. He released the arrow and it hit the trunk of the oak tree, sinking an inch or more into the soft outer wood. Ralph laughed triumphantly.
Hop scampered after the arrow. When he reached the tree he stopped, baffled.
Ralph was drawing the bow again. Merthin realized what he was intending to do. “Don’t-” he said, but he was a moment too late. Ralph shot at the dog. The arrow hit the back of its neck and sunk in. Hop fell forward and lay twitching.
Gwenda screamed. Caris said: “Oh, no!” The two girls ran to the dog.
Ralph was grinning. “What about that?” he said proudly.
“You shot her dog!” Merthin said angrily.
“Doesn’t matter – it only had three legs.”
“The little girl was fond of it, you idiot. Look at her crying.”
“You’re just jealous because you can’t shoot.” Something caught Ralph’s eye. With a smooth movement he notched another arrow, swept the bow round in an arc and fired while it was still moving. Merthin did not see what he was shooting at until the arrow met its target, and a fat hare jumped into the air with the shaft sticking deep into its hindquarters.
Merthin could not hide his admiration. Even with practice, not everyone could hit a running hare. Ralph had a natural gift. Merthin was jealous, although he would never admit it. He longed to be a knight, bold and strong, and fight for the king as his father did; and it dismayed him when he turned out to be hopeless at things such as archery.
Ralph found a stone and crushed the hare’s skull, putting it out of its misery.
Merthin knelt beside the two girls and Hop. The dog was not breathing. Caris gently drew the arrow out of its neck and handed it to Merthin. There was no gush of blood: Hop was dead.
For a moment no one spoke. In the silence, they heard a man shout.
Merthin sprang to his feet, heart thudding. He heard another shout, a different voice: there was more than one person. Both sounded aggressive and angry. Some kind of fight was going on. He was terrified, and so were the others. As they stood frozen, listening, they heard another sound, the noise made by a man running headlong through woodland, snapping fallen branches, flattening saplings, trampling dead leaves.
He was coming their way.
Caris spoke first. “The bush,” she said, pointing to a big cluster of evergreen shrubs – probably the home of the hare Ralph had shot, Merthin thought. A moment later she was flat on her belly, crawling into the thicket. Gwenda followed, cradling the body of Hop. Ralph picked up the dead hare and joined them. Merthin was on his knees when he realized that they had left a tell-tale arrow sticking out of the tree trunk. He dashed across the clearing, pulled it out, ran back and dived under the bush.
They heard the man breathing before they saw him. He was panting hard as he ran, drawing in ragged lungfuls of air in a way that suggested he was almost done in. The shouts were coming from his pursuers, calling to each other: “This way – over here!” Merthin recalled that Caris had said they were not far from the road. Was the fleeing man a traveller who had been set upon by thieves?
A moment later he burst into the clearing.
He was a knight in his early twenties, with both a sword and a long dagger attached to his belt. He was well dressed, in a leather travelling tunic and high boots with turned-over tops. He stumbled and fell, rolled over, got up, then stood with his back to the oak tree, gasping for breath, and drew his weapons.
Merthin glanced at his playmates. Caris was white with fear, biting her lip. Gwenda was hugging the corpse of her dog as if that made her feel safer. Ralph looked scared, too, but he was not too frightened to pull the arrow out of the hare’s rump and stuff the dead animal down the front of his tunic.
For a moment the knight seemed to stare at the bush, and Merthin felt, with terror, that he must have seen the hiding children. Or perhaps he had noticed broken branches and crushed leaves where they had pushed through the foliage. Out of the corner of his eye, Merthin saw Ralph notch an arrow to the bow.
Then the pursuers arrived. They were two men-at-arms, strongly built and thuggish-looking, carrying drawn swords. They wore distinctive two-coloured tunics, the left side yellow and the right green. One had a surcoat of cheap brown wool, the other a grubby black cloak. All three men paused, catching their breath. Merthin was sure he was about to see the knight hacked to death, and he suffered a shameful impulse to burst into tears. Then, suddenly, the knight reversed his sword and offered it, hilt first, in a gesture of surrender.
The older man-at-arms, in the black cloak, stepped forward and reached out with his left hand. Warily, he took the proffered sword, handed it to his partner, then accepted the knight’s dagger. Then he said: “It’s not your weapons I want, Thomas Langley.”
“You know me, but I don’t know you,” said Thomas. If he was feeling any fear, he had it well under control. “By your coats, you must be the queen’s men.”