It was late in the day when they saw the fruits of their pursuit for the first time.
They had just crested another hill, in among a small copse that stood around some old stones like guards around a king, when Black held up his hand again, and Simon heard the breath hiss between his teeth. The bailiff moved up but the hunter ignored him, his eyes fixed intently on the far hill.
Following his gaze, Simon could make out the thin line of the trail as a black smudge against the green of the hill, almost like a crack in the greyish green, and he searched along it, letting the trail pull his eyes upwards, towards the horizon. Then his eyes widened as he saw the small group of men and horses straggling up to the top. Ahead of them there was no trail – they must be the ones!
He turned and looked at Black, who shot him the faintest of grins before whirling and cantering back to the rest of the men.
“We’ve got them! They’re just ahead now, maybe a mile or two away. They just went over the top of the next hill.”
There was a sensation of suppressed excitement, a flush to the faces of all of the men in the posse as his words sank in, then a confused muttering.
“Shut up” said Tanner, and waited for silence. “John? What do you want us to do?”
“We’ll keep tracking them for now. They don’t seem to be taking any care. I’ll go on ahead with another tracker and we’ll keep as close as we can. You all come on behind.” He looked up at the sky with a slight wrinkling of his brow, then looked at the sun over to the west. Simon saw that it was low in the sky and looked swollen and red; Damn! It would soon be dark! Black seemed to consider for a moment, then glanced at Simon and Tanner. “It’s getting late. They’ll be bound to camp soon. I think we’d better follow them until they do, then attack them when they’ve relaxed and started to eat, as soon as…”
Tanner held up his hand. “It’d be better if we held off until dawn. Have you ever tried to attack a group of armed men at night? I have. It’s too easy to have everything go wrong, it’ll be better to get our sleep and attack when we’re all fresh.”
“What if they leave in the night? We could lose them and…” said Simon, dismayed at the thought of leaving them to their own devices.
“They’ll not move overnight, not after leaving these tracks all over the moors. They’re obviously not worried about being followed. No, we’ll be better off if we get some sleep tonight and attack them with the dawn tomorrow.”
Simon looked at Black, perplexed. The hunter’s eyes dropped for a moment while he considered, but when they came up again, he nodded. “Yes, he’s right. You all follow on slowly, me and Fasten’ll go after them now, and when they’ve bedded down for the night we’ll come back and find you. Fasten? Oh, there you are. Come on, let’s find them, then.” He jerked his horse’s head around and rode off, Fasten behind. As the rest watched, the two men split up, Black riding to the left of the trail, Fasten to the right, and cantered easily down from the copse, then up the other side.
Sighing, Simon said, “Come on, then. Let’s get on.”
It was long after dark when they found a place to rest, a slight bowl in the top of a hill, just out of the wind and away from the direction the trail bastons were taking. There was no wood, not even twigs, to burn this high up, and the men had to huddle in the rough shelter and shiver in the chill of the evening.
Tanner came over as soon as Simon and Hugh had settled after seeing to their horses, and joined them as they crouched under bushes. They shared some meat and bread and drank a little water, all remaining silent in their tension, the action of the following morning lying heavy on their minds.
“Urn, Stephen,” said Simon after they had all finished their meal. “You’ve been involved in fights before, how, er… how do you think it’ll go tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” said Tanner reflectively. “I’ve been in some fights where we’ve won easily when we shouldn’t’ve, and others where we lost when we should’ve won. It depends on them, really. The posse is big enough, we should have two men to each one of theirs. But if they’re trained in war, they can still win. I don’t know.”
Simon glanced at the men all around, peering at them as he tried to remember which of them had been in a battle before. To his knowledge at least eight had seen action. Only eight? Out of all the men they only had eight who had seen a battle before? He bit his lip in sudden nervousness. “Did you see how many were there in the band?”
“I didn’t really see, no. I counted seven, but there may have been others already over the brow of the hill,” said Tanner, as if thinking out loud, but when he caught the expression on Simon’s face, he grinned and slapped the bailiff’s leg. “Don’t worry, bailiff! These men may be used to lulling farmers like Brewer, or monks, but I’ll wager we’ll be a surprise to them! Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough when Black comes back.”
As he said that, there came the sound of a horse neighing from nearby, and as they scrambled to their feet, drawing their swords, they heard the imperturbable voice of the hunter.
“Fine thing, isn’t it, to go and do a job and then be spitted by your own friends when you get back home again! Where’s Tanner?”
“Over here, John. I’m with the bailiff,” called Tanner, somewhat shamefacedly as he quickly shoved his sword back in its scabbard, looking embarrassed and annoyed with himself that he could have been so easily alarmed. They all sat down again and waited while the hunter saw to his horse before ambling over to them.
“Right, we followed them to their camp. It’s a big dip in the top of a hill, about two miles from here, and it looks like they’re settled down for the night.” He paused as Fasten came up to join them. “I was just telling them about the camp. Anyway, it’s in a big dip, and it’s almost surrounded by rocks and a rampart. They’ve lit fires and they’re all sitting round and drinking. It looks like they’ve got beer from somewhere, probably the merchants, I suppose, so I don’t think they’ll be up early tomorrow. We went around their camp, anyway, walked all round, and they don’t seem to have put guards out, so I think we shouldn’t have any problems.”
“How many are there, John?” asked Tanner.
“We counted nine,” said Black. He hesitated, then turned and looked steadily at Simon. “And one looks like a knight, all dressed in mail.”
It was still as black as midnight when Simon felt the kick at his ankles, and he grunted and swore as he sat up, blearily rubbing at his eyes, trying to clear them as if the darkness was inside his head. It took him some time to wake fully, even when at home. Now, with the chill deep in his marrow from sleeping outside too often in the cold and damp, he felt miserable, as if he would never be able to get warm again. Once more, with a rueful grin, he thought of his bed at Sandford, which would still be warm and comfortable with Margaret lying in it, like a sanctuary from the wind and rain of the world. Shaking his head muzzily, he looked up with irritation as the memory of warmth and his wife fled, and looked around the camp, taking stock. Tanner and Black were walking around, kicking into life the huddled figures of still sleeping men. Those already up were seeing to their weapons, cleaning sword blades and sharpening daggers, swinging hammers and clubs in an effort to free up the muscles that had seized overnight or stayed too tense.
It was a weird sight, almost eery, he thought to himself, all these men in the gloom and darkness, half-obscured by the deeper blackness of the rocks behind them as they swung their arms and weapons in strange patterns, the metal of the axe heads sometimes showing as a lighter grey shimmer against the background. It was as if they were in a different world. The men were quiet, hardly saying a word to each other; there was only the occasional hint of activity in the sound of a knife being rubbed against a stone, the whispy gleam of a hammer being whirled, it felt as if he was watching an army of ghosts, and with that thought he gave an involuntary shiver – how many of these men would be ghosts later in the day?