Bernard Knight - Fear in the Forest

‘What about this Robert Winter himself? Does the same apply to him?’

De Wolfe considered this as they trudged diagonally across the steepening slope. ‘He will die, one way or the other. But as the leader he might have information that could be useful, perhaps about the people behind this conspiracy.’

There was a soft call from ahead as one of the scouts turned back to warn them that the trees were thinning out ahead. They came to halt just inside the edge of the woods and saw that bare moor, with patches of bracken and bramble, rose up ahead to a jumble of rocks high above. To the right, the tree line curved around into the distance.

‘That’s Easdon Tor above — and the down runs right around its foot,’ explained the guide.

The posse stopped for rest, while Morin and the coroner conferred.

‘We don’t know where this camp is supposed to be. The other party has got Cruch with them to pinpoint it.’

‘And we don’t know where they are at the moment,’ growled Gwyn.

‘They had a shorter distance to march than we, so they should be in position somewhere near by.’

‘Surely the outlaws wouldn’t make camp out in the open up there,’ muttered Morin. ‘They’d stick to the trees.’

‘The place I saw was out of the trees, but they had a little nook in some rocks,’ Gwyn told them.

De Wolfe turned to the guide. ‘Is there anywhere like that up towards the tor?’

‘Not really, sir. There are some ancient old hut ruins around the other side of the tor, but I wouldn’t call that Easdon Down.’

‘That damned Cruch was pretty vague about where the camps were, though he only had a lump of chalk and slate to work with. It could be that way, I suppose.’

They decided to send their scouts in both directions, working along inside the tree line to see whether they could find Guy Ferrars and his men. The whole area in question was no more than a quarter-mile across so they had to be somewhere near. Settling back against a tree trunk, Morin signalled the perspiring men to rest, and they sank to the ground to take the weight of their hauberks from their shoulders.

Ten minutes later, a pair of archers came silently back from their left side, with news of the rest of the squadron.

‘Lord Ferrars and his men are concealed about five hundred paces to the west, Crowner. They were waiting for us, as they have sighted a large group of outlaws further up the hill, camped in some old ruins.’

‘Those are the tumbled huts I told of,’ said the guide. ‘They were built by the ancient men of the moor, God knows how long ago.’

In no mood to consider history now, John waved all the men to their feet and, demanding complete silence from now on, led the way with Ralph along the edge of the forest towards the other half of the posse.

Within a few minutes they were reunited and the leaders quietly discussed tactics.

‘There’re a lot of men up there, you can see them moving about. I can’t see any lookouts posted, the useless scum,’ growled Guy Ferrars. ‘But it’s all open ground between us here in the trees and those heaps of stones that they’re using to shelter their camp.’

John and Ralph Morin moved cautiously to the edge of the wood to look up the slope of Easdon Tor. It was a double hill, with a higher, rugged silhouette on the left and a lower, smoother mound on the right. The ruined huts were much lower down on a small, flatter part of the hill.

‘They can’t escape uphill, it’s too steep. We must attack them in a broad arc, to stop them running down into the trees,’ advised Ralph Morin. The other leaders agreed and the soldiers were spread out in a single line three hundred paces long, each behind a tree until the signal was given.

‘If they see all of us they’ll scatter and run for it, so let’s entice them down here first,’ advised de Wolfe. ‘Keep the men-at-arms out of sight for the moment.’

With Gwyn and several of the roughly dressed men from Lustleigh, the coroner stepped boldly out of the trees and began walking up towards the little plateau that carried the tumbled stones, partly covered with grass.

‘Slowly does it, Gwyn,’ muttered John.’We don’t want to be too far away from the men behind when they catch sight of us.’

As if the outlaws had heard him, there were some distant yells from above and a dozen heads appeared to stare down the slope at them. Then, with yells of derision and anger, a crowd of men surged from between the stones and began running down at them, waving swords, staves and maces. At least a score of ruffians came storming down the hillside, and the men from Lustleigh faltered at the prospect of being massacred.

But just at the right moment, thanks to the timing of old campaigner Guy Ferrars, the whole force of mailed soldiers burst out of the trees and began running in an unbroken line towards the outlaws, the ends of the line curving around in a constricting arc.

At the sudden appearance of three times their number of mailed soldiers, the men from the camp skidded to a halt and desperately looked for a way of escape. Some who had just come out of the old ruins turned around and vanished uphill, but the men lower down had nowhere to go except into the arms of the rapidly closing troops.

It was almost a repeat of the earlier blood-bath, as the men-at-arms had been told to give no quarter and the outlaws knew that the only alternative to escape was death. The ragtag crowd, with not a single piece of armour between them, fought furiously but were no match for the mailed and helmeted troops. The four archers stood slightly to the rear, and whenever a clear target presented itself they shot with deadly accuracy.

Within ten minutes it was all over. Four of the outlaws managed to evade both the soldiers and their arrows and, being fleet of foot, fled across the scrub-covered ground and vanished into the trees. The rest lay dead among the scrubby vegetation of Easdon Down. Gwyn had dispatched two himself, crushing one man’s head with his mace and hacking the neck of another. De Wolfe, at the spearhead of the attackers, also accounted for two, running one through the chest with his sword and stabbing another in the throat with his dagger, after the man had wrapped the chain of his mace around John’s sword-hilt.

He looked around at the scene of mayhem, with twenty-seven corpses lying on the ground. In the battles in the Holy Land, especially at Acre, and to a lesser extent in Ireland and France, he had seen ten times that number of dead in one engagement. Still, this was Devon, and he had a momentary twinge of conscience until he again recognised that any survivors would have been either beheaded or hanged.

The only casualty among the attackers turned out to be Hugh Ferrars, who had received a hacking blow on his left arm. The sleeve of his hauberk had saved him, but he had a large bruise spreading from elbow to wrist. He seemed mightily pleased with it, as a token of his first wound in combat. Although well trained by his father and his squires, Hugh had been short of a war in which to fight, and now had something to boast about to his drinking friends.

Gabriel was prowling with his sword amongst the defeated men, giving the coup-de grâce to one or two who still twitched, until all was still.

Morin called back the soldiers to rest on the grass, then came over to where the Ferrars and de Courcy were talking to John de Wolfe.

‘Are there any more left?’ he demanded. ‘I suspect that any who stayed up in those ruins made a quick getaway across the shoulder of the tor. They’ll be a mile away by now.’

Guy Ferrars, his rugged face redder than usual with the exertion and excitement, leaned on his long sword. ‘We’ll take a walk up there in a moment to see. What about this lot? Did we get the leaders?’