The Firedrake (12 page)

They were on the earthwork. Laeghaire remembered the reports—”high as a man, broad on the top, wood spikes”—it hardly mattered; he was going over. He lowered the shield and leaned over the stallion’s withers. The stallion jumped, clawing with his hind legs. The spikes rose up, one to either side, like walls. Laeghaire shouted. He felt the stallion lurch up onto the top. Men were running toward him. He dared not look around. He heard the cursing of his men. He heard a horse scream.

The villagers were swarming around him. He flung the lance, underhand, and saw it break through a man’s chest. Two shouting men with axes leaped for him. One caught his bridle. He dropped the reins. The axes chopped for him. He took one on his shield and parried the other on the hilt of his half-drawn sword. The stallion reared, fighting the hand on his bridle, and Laeghaire swung his shield in a flat arc. The edge caught the man to his left on the chin. The stallion leaped forward and was off the earthwork. Laeghaire wrenched his sword out and cleaved open a man’s head. The stallion leaped from his hocks and reared. The crowd of defenders mobbed them. Laeghaire bashed at them. His men were coming over the earthwork. The crowd was running back. There were torches flittering in the town.

“Lodovic!” Laeghaire shouted. He charged. The horn blasted all around him. The men of the village had turned; they were fleeing. He led the charge against their backs. The bell was tolling almost over his head. For a moment he was alone, galloping over the screaming stragglers, wrestling the stallion around so that he could use his sword. Suddenly his knights were on either side of him. The horses collided with one another, bouncing shoulder to shoulder, and there was no using a sword.

The torches were dead-ahead. The villagers were massed before them. A dim wall of men stood on the far side. A horse neighed. Laeghaire reined up, lifting his sword arm. His men stopped. They completed the ring around the villagers. Laeghaire breathed heavily in their midst. The torches grew in number. Now even his side of the ring was brightly lit. The faces of the villagers were turned blindly into the torchlight. He panted, staring back at them.

“Josse,” he said.

Josse waved his arm silently.

Laeghaire breathed deeply, slackening down into his saddle. He looked around. He waved his arm, and his men moved obediently to close up the ring. Josse’s men backed their horses around and left quietly. Laeghaire signaled to Lodovic; Lodovic gave orders to the three men beside him, and they all dismounted and collected the weapons of the villagers.

Laeghaire took off his helmet. A baby was crying. A woman bent over it, trying to quiet it. The baby kept crying. After a moment half a dozen others began to cry too. They wailed in their thin voices. The Flemings sat their horses in a ring. Laeghaire held his helmet in his hands. He listened to the edged dreary wailing.

Josse returned. He nodded to Laeghaire. Laeghaire said, “Two men in each hut. Search it before you do any sleeping. Two men, no more, no less.”

They disbanded quietly. Laeghaire sat the motionless horse in the square until every man and every villager was gone. Karl came finally to him, with Josse and Lodovic, and they looked around.

“My lord,” Karl said, “you are wounded.”

Laeghaire looked down at his body. Blood was dribbling down from a cut on his thigh. It began to hurt while he looked at it. It was a deep scratch. He put his hand on it.

“How many did we lose?” he said to Josse.

“One dead,” Josse said, “Nineteen wounded. The wounded are all being bound up. All but four of them can ride.”

“Who?”

Josse recited names.

“And the dead man?”

“Martin.”

“Is there a priest in this village?”

“In the hut in the churchyard.”

“Have you found places to stay?”

“Yes.”

“Take Karl with you. Karl, have you brought up the horses?”

“In the pen over there, my lord.”

“You must be tired,” Josse said. “Is that wound all right?”

“It’s nothing,” Laeghaire said. He lifted, his hand. The blood was clotting.

“You must be tired.”

“No.”

“You look tired.”

“No.”

“When will we leave?”

“Tomorrow after the Mass.”

They left him, slowly. He watched them go. He rode down to the pen and dismounted. His leg felt all right. He unsaddled the brown stallion and caught the black horse. He saddled him and rode to the churchyard. In the hut a torch was burning. He dismounted and hung his shield on the pommel of the saddle. With the reins over his arm he stepped through the door. The priest was sitting on the edge of a bed that stood against the far wall. In die bed a man lay. The man breathed roughly. The priest was muttering.

Laeghaire waited. The priest lifted the man’s hand and felt the beating there. He let the hand fall back. He drew up the blanket to the man’s chin. He turned slightly, not rising, and saw Laeghaire in the doorway with the horse behind him. He did not look surprised.

“What do you want?”

“You sing two Masses tomorrow. I want a Requiem.”

“You bury your dead quickly, Norman.”

Laeghaire said nothing.

“A Requiem then. Dawn.”

Laeghaire nodded. “The man will be in the church.”

“Come with me.”

Laeghaire stood aside to let him pass. He followed, leaving the black horse tethered. The priest said, “That man there, he knew you were coming. He warned us. He said he had seen strange horsemen in the fields. But they wouldn’t believe him. They said he had seen couriers of the Count of the Vexin. They said you wouldn’t come this far.”

“Why tell me that?”

“I don’t know. It seemed appropriate. I may be singing a Requiem for him too, soon.”

“Man who is born of woman,” Laeghaire said, “is of few days and full of trouble.”

“He didn’t deserve to die so young. He is eighteen years old.”

“If he’s a good man, he’s better off dead.”

The corpse was lying on the floor in the front of the church, by the altar. The hands were folded on his breast. The priest looked down at him and shrugged.

“Will you have him buried in that helmet?”

“Yes.”

The priest left. Laeghaire looked carelessly at the altar. The priest came back with a shroud. “Lift him for me,” Laeghaire hoisted the man—stiffening already, his stomach bloating under the tight belt. The priest wrapped the shroud around him, first over his shoulders, and then around his feet while Laeghaire held them off the ground. They lifted him together and carried him to the bench before the altar. The priest straightened the shroud and sprinkled a little holy water over it.

“Nor good nor bad, nor young nor old,” Laeghaire said, looking at the corpse. “Maybe he deserved to die, but nobody gave him any warning.”

“You speak a good Latin, Norman.”

Laeghaire turned and looked at him. The priest cleared his throat and looked up at the Crucifix.

“Dawn, then,” the priest said.

“Dawn.”

They went out together, not speaking, and the priest went into the hut again. Laeghaire mounted. He rode out into the village. He rode back and forth along the streets. The horse’s hoofs made soft noises on the packed earth. He passed the huts, dark now. He rode along the earthwork. He kept the black horse to a slow pace. He could feel the long hips and shoulders reaching and the working of the horse’s back under him.

The moon rose very late. It gave no light. He rode through the middle of the town. He thought of his child, sleeping up in Ghent, or perhaps Bruges if the Count had moved his seat for the winter. He remembered the crying of the babies. His son. Certainly. By now. Or a daughter.

He dozed, while the horse walked in the long slow walk that drew all his body into a single flowing, his long neck stretched out and his head low, in a perfect even rhythm like the running of the waves of the sea. There was no noise in the long night. Once a man thrust his head suddenly from a window, saw him, and drew back.

All through the summer, while Laeghaire’s Flemings were fighting to take the last three villages on the plain, they heard about fighting near Le Mans. Laeghaire’s scouts came in once and said that they had seen fresh signs of Mayenne’s army no more than half a day’s ride away, headed south. A courier from the Duke came some four or five days later and said that the Duke was fighting that day in a forest near Le Mans. The courier was going to the Vexin. He paused only long enough to get water and tell this to Laeghaire.

Laeghaire took the last village a little before Assumption and garrisoned it. He now held ten villages, towns and forts with an army of less than seven hundred men spread through them. He went to Rougemont with two hundred of his men and celebrated Assumption there, with a feast like a great lord’s and little presents for his men from the booty they had taken. He wondered if he should send these two hundred out to strengthen the garrisons all around, or if he should keep them near him. He kept them in Rougemont, finally, but he sent his scouts out often to check all along the chain of garrisons. The people of the villages were mostly concerned with working their fields. The harvest would be fine, in spite of the fighting.

One day Thierry came back and said that the camp of the Count of the Vexin was just a half day’s ride away. Laeghaire said, “How do you know it’s his?”

“I saw the marks on their banner. He fights under the mark of St Andrew. Everybody knows that.”

“Are you tired?”

“No.”

“Let’s go.”

Laeghaire wanted to get out. He was glad of this. He went down and saddled the black horse. They rode off west.

“Do you know where William is?” Laeghaire said.

“Only a rumor. One of my men heard from a Mainard peasant that they’re off by the river.”

“How far?”

“Two, three days.”

“What about Mayenne? Was he with this Walter?”

“I didn’t see any sign of it. This was a small camp—maybe six hundred men.”

“That’s enough to wipe out Rougemont and all the villages around.”

It was late afternoon. After they left the plowed land, they rode over the wild hills. Once they saw cattle, with two herders. They saw no villages. Thierry led quickly, certain of the way. At sundown, Laeghaire said, “Do you want to keep going?”

“I can find it, my lord.”

It was very dark in the hills. They rode single file. The moon came up. It was only a half moon, and it did nothing for light. It was cold. The wind rose and rustled in the trees and died. Toward midnight Thierry led Laeghaire out onto the edge of a plain. Thierry swore.

“They’ve moved.”

Laeghaire rode out onto the plain. It was trampled all over and dead firebeds lay on it “We have to find them,” he said. “We can track them.”

Thierry jogged around. He found their trail and called. Laeghaire rode over to him. He saw the wide track of many horses and nodded. He dismounted. The edges of the tracks were hard. They were all moving away.

“They’ve got foot soldiers,” Thierry said. “They won’t move fast.”

They set off after the army. Thierry was quiet. The cold grew deeper. Laeghaire set a fast pace. Thierry dozed in the saddle.

Once when he had been in Germany but not in Thuringia, he had been caught in a snowstorm. He had found a windfall and sheltered under it with his horses. He did not remember being cold but he must have been. The snow fell so deep be could not move out for days. Hungry. He did not remember that either. But he had been. Almost hungry enough to eat one of his horses. He had had the brown stallion then, and that bay horse with the speckled face, the one that had been hamstrung his second fight in Thuringia. Snow like that, up to here. Over there a man can ride for days without seeing… That whole winter he had seen only two men. One of them had tried to kill him. The one with the black beard and the… the Mainards had maybe a full day’s head start on them. If I didn’t have anybody with me it would be easier. The plain had turned into hills again. Turning back around toward Rougemont to come down from the north, maybe take one of the …

“What is he trying to do?”

“Break the chain. We’re keeping him from the Vexin.”

The dawn came up and they rode in the pink-tinted air and saw no one. The land was flattening out. Once they jumped a deer from a thicket. The deer bounded off. Her movements were fleet and angular. Laeghaire sat watching her while Thierry looked into the thicket.

“Late fawn,” he said. “Come and look at it.”

“No. Come along.”

But he caught a glimpse of the fawn’s back, immobilely arched, under the moving branches of this thicket.

There was no sign of anyone, and this made Thierry anxious; he said, “There ought to be more people around.”

“Why? It’s not farming country. There’s a ridge. We can rest the horses a while and look.”

But from the ridge they saw nothing, only an expanse of flat plain, with a creek and trees beside it, and the lift of the next hill.

The horses were tired. Laeghaire did not like this. It was well into the morning. He was hungry. He set the pace faster. Thierry was sleeping again. He swayed to the motion of his horse.