Bernard Knight - Fear in the Forest

Both groups were accompanied by the few mounted knights and their esquires who had brought the troop from Portsmouth.

All set off at a marching pace, the riders walking their mounts behind the foot soldiers. At that speed it took until early afternoon to get into position, and after eating the rations they carried, the two arms of Morin’s pincer movement moved towards each other, their target being Easdon Down.

De Wolfe and Gwyn rode alongside the constable, feeling an exhilaration born of memories of many a campaign in years gone by. Even Odin, who was too young to have been in combat before, snorted his excitement as he stepped out along the track, and John had to keep him reined in so as not to pull away from the column of men walking behind.

It was six miles between Bovey and Moreton, with Lustleigh just off the track about halfway between them. Before they reached Lustleigh, Ralph Morin called a halt, and when the thirty men-at-arms had all caught up, he gave orders for them to put on their armour.

The hauberks had been carried in two ox-carts at the back of the column, as it was impractical for the men to march the fifteen miles from Exeter in hot summer weather wearing knee-length chain mail. The hauberks each had a pole thrust through their sleeves and were hung on two rails fixed in the carts. Each man helped a comrade to get the cumbersome garment over his head, then adjust the mailed aventail which hung from their basin-shaped helmets down to their shoulders. Morin and de Wolfe did the same, as although they had great horses to carry the weight, neither wanted to sit in a hauberk for four hours in the July heat. Gwyn always refused to wear mail, relying on an extra-thick jerkin of boiled leather, which he now put on, but he did condescend to jam a round helmet on his wild red hair, the long nasal guard having been bent up a little to accommodate his bulbous nose.

When all was ready, the ox-carts were left on the track in the care of their civilian drivers and the posse turned off into the woods, heading for the narrow valley of the Bovey to the north-west. Four archers, not wearing armour, were sent on ahead as scouts. When all reached the river, they crossed and carried on steadily up the right bank, where the trees were less of an impediment to the mounted men than on the valley slopes. For an hour they saw nothing but greenery and the shimmer of the small river. There was an occasional glimpse of a startled deer and the distant crash of a boar as it hurried out of their path.

They passed through an area which a local Lustleigh guide said was called Water Cleave and then curved below Manaton, though it was invisible, being high up to their left and a mile away. The guide advised the constable that to aim for Easdon Tor they should begin to bear west, as the ground flattened out a little from the thickly wooded valley. Soon after they had moved away from the river, two of the archers came running back.

‘More than a dozen men, camped in a clearing, five hundred paces ahead,’ panted one.

Quickly, Morin divided his force into two and took half up the slope to the left, leaving de Wolfe to take the rest along the flatter ground to the right. Silently, his score of soldiers padded between the trees, one of the archers out ahead. A few moments later the scout held up his hand and the men slunk forward carefully. Another archer stood immobile, near the body of a young outlaw with an arrow sticking out of his chest, obviously a sentinel who had paid with his life for his inattention. The bowman pointed forward and John saw thin smoke rising from above some bushes where the sunlight was brighter in a gap in the trees. He gestured to the men-at-arms to spread out and then waved them on as he advanced, Gwyn at his side.

John was uncertain when to attack, as he did not know whether Ralph’s force was in position yet on the other side, but his dilemma was soon solved as there was a sudden yelling and crashing from ahead.

‘Come on, men!’ he screamed, his pulse suddenly racing with the prospect of battle. The line of soldiers dashed forward towards the clearing, straight into the remnants of the panic-stricken outlaw band, who were fleeing from Morin’s assault from the other side.

The action lasted no more than a couple of minutes and was more of a massacre than a combat. The two archers dropped the first pair of fugitives, then the rest careered blindly into the line of soldiers, to be cut down with sword and hand-axe. Every man was killed on the spot, which solved one problem for de Wolfe, as he was in no position to waste men on guarding prisoners.

A hoarse shouting from the clearing was a warning from Morin and his force that they were not to be mistaken for more adversaries, and seconds later the big constable lumbered up to John, still swinging a ball-mace threateningly.

‘Any of yours left?’ he demanded, looking at the still corpses scattered between the trees.

‘All dead. None of them lifted so much as a finger against us,’ grunted Gwyn, in disgust. As a fight it was a non-event as far as he was concerned.

‘Like butchering sheep in the shambles,’ confirmed de Wolfe. ‘I don’t think many of them even had time to pick up a sword before they fled.’

Ralph Morin stood counting the bodies. ‘We put down eight — one ran away and it’s not worth wasting time chasing him. So that makes fourteen exterminated so far.’

He called the scattered men-at-arms together and they began their march again, after a cursory look at the outlaw camp. There was little there, apart from some rude shelters made of boughs and canvas and some food and utensils around the fire.

‘No sign of either Robert Winter or his lieutenant, this Martin Angot?’

De Wolfe addressed this to Gwyn, as he was the only one who knew them by sight. The Cornishman shook his head. ‘Never seen any of this bunch before. They weren’t in that camp down towards Buckland.’

‘I wonder if there are still some ruffians down there,’ mused Morin.

‘It’s a long way south of here, but if we don’t find the ringleaders at this Easdon Tor place, then I suppose we’ll have to go back there,’ answered John.

They set off northwards again, wary of any further surprise contacts, leaving the bodies scattered where they had fallen. The four archers went on ahead as before, and gradually the ground flattened off, though it was still densely wooded. Where a fallen tree or a small clearing gave a glimpse to the north-west, now and then they could see the bare outline of the higher moor, with misshapen rocks sometimes crowning the skyline. The man Ferrars had given them as a guide from his manor at Lustleigh dropped back and touched his floppy woollen cap to the coroner.

‘Sir, if we are going to Easdon Down, then soon we have either to cut left across country past Langstone or go on up the river to the clapper bridge, then take the track westwards.’

‘Which is quickest?’

‘Past Langstone, Crowner. No more than a mile, I’d say.’

They decided on the direct route and started climbing rising ground, still thick with trees. The few houses and fields of Langstone were off somewhere to their right as they crossed the lower slopes of Easdon Tor.

‘What do we do if some of these bloody thieves throw up their hands without a fight?’ asked Morin.

John was wondering that himself and hoped the matter would not arise. Perhaps they had been lucky back in the valley, where all the outlaws had blundered on to swords and axes.

‘By definition, they are outside the law and don’t exist in any legal sense,’ he answered. ‘Anyone can kill them at will — and get a bounty for it!’

‘So we kill them all, even if they have their hands up in the air in surrender?’ queried Morin.

‘It sounds difficult, I know,’ replied John. ‘But if we take them back to Exeter they will be hanged without trial, as judgement has already been passed on them in declaring them outlaw. So it seems pointless to delay their deaths. They know this and may well try to flee as their only hope, in which case we can kill them with an easier conscience.’