I had always thought my own hearing was good, but Turold’s was better still; if he thought he had heard something, more often than not he was right. At a mere eighteen years old he wasn’t much more than a boy, but though he had few battles behind him he was nonetheless a skilled fighter, and what he lacked in experience he certainly made up for in ambition.
I stood still, my hand upon my horse’s flank, scarcely even breathing. At first there was nothing but silence. The air was still and for once this day the birds were quiet, and I was about to give the order to start moving again, when there it was: a voice, or perhaps more than one, and laughter too, faint but unmistakable. How far off, and in what direction, was difficult to tell. The trees had a strange way of masking the sound. Try as I might, I could see nothing through the undergrowth, although I guessed it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred paces away.
‘Do you hear?’ asked Turold, his voice low.
I felt my heart pound in my chest. Of course I had no idea if these were indeed the men that we had been pursuing, but it was the first sign of other people we’d had in a good many hours. Again the voices came, a little way to the north, I thought, upon the hill.
‘Stay here with the rest until I give the signal,’ I said to ?dda.
He nodded but did not speak. Making sure that my sword-belt was firmly fastened, I waved for my knights to follow and left the path in the direction of the voices. Already I could feel myself tensing as I ducked to avoid the low branches and made my way through the bracken, but at the same time I knew we could not make any noise, and so I had to keep reminding myself to slow down, to be careful not to step on fallen branches and other things which might give us away.
We pressed on up the slope. Gradually the voices grew more distinct. Their speech was not one that I was familiar with: not French nor Breton nor Latin. Nor did it sound like English either, from what I’d learnt of that tongue, unless it was a dialect I hadn’t heard before.
At last I saw movement. Some twenty or so paces further ahead the trees parted to form a clearing, in the middle of which, gathered around a gently smoking campfire, sat a band of men. I stopped where a tree had fallen across our path, crouching behind it and waving to the others to get down. I laid a hand upon its ridged, flaking bark, the other upon my sword-hilt. The smell of moist earth filled my nose.
‘What now?’ Serlo whispered.
There were more of them than I had thought: a dozen at least, and I didn’t doubt there were others that I couldn’t yet see from this vantage. Most of the men had thick moustaches in the style of the majority of the folk who lived in this island, although their chins were clean-shaven and their hair was cut short around their ears. All wore trews in the loose-fitting style that the Welsh favoured. One who was standing had an axe slung across his back, while I could see round shields propped up against the trees on the edge of the clearing. They were warriors, then. But through the branches and with the sun glaring in my eyes, it was difficult to make out much more.
‘We need to get closer,’ I said.
‘Closer?’ Pons echoed, forgetting to keep his voice down, and he must have realised that he had spoken too loudly for immediately he looked sheepish.
I glared at him and put my finger to my lips. Without another word I rose and began to skirt around the clearing, picking my way little by little towards the edge of the trees. On the far side I could see the Welshmen’s tents pitched in a rough circle, with their horses grazing quietly not far off, and in the middle were seven women. They sat upon the ground, their heads bowed, wrists bound with rope behind their backs.
We had found them. It had taken the whole day – it seemed we had chased them halfway across this island – but we had done it.
We couldn’t celebrate yet though, for the hardest part was still to come. And my heart sank, for as I cast my gaze about the clearing I counted no fewer than sixteen Welshmen. Too many to risk facing in open battle, especially when only a handful of us knew how to wield a weapon properly. And so the only way we were going to overcome them was if we could surprise them.
I glanced back the way we had come, but the rest of our party was now out of sight. I turned to Turold. ‘Go,’ I told him. ‘Tell ?dda to bring the others.’