Stephen Lawhead - Hood

– you are Welsh, yes? A Briton?"

Bruised, bloodied, and bound at the wrists by a rope that looped around his neck, Bran was dragged roughly forward and forced to his knees before a man standing in the wavering pool of light from a handheld torch. Dressed in a long tunic of yellow linen with a short blue cloak and boots of soft brown leather, he carried neither sword nor spear, and the others deferred to him. Bran took him to be their lord.

"Are you a Briton?" He spoke English with the curious flattened nasal tone of the Ffreinc. "Answer me!" He nodded to one of the soldiers, who gave Bran a quick kick in the ribs.

The pain of the blow roused Bran. He lifted his head to gaze with loathing at his inquisitor.

"I think you are Welsh, yes?" the Ffreinc noble said.

Unwilling to dignify the word, Bran merely nodded.

"What were you doing on the road?" asked the man.

"Travelling," mumbled Bran. His voice sounded strange and loud in his ears; his head throbbed from the knocks he had taken.

"At night?"

"My friends and I-we had business in Lundein. We were on our way home." He raised accusing eyes to his Ffreinc interrogator. "The man your soldiers killed was a priest, you bloody-" Bran lunged forward, but the soldier holding the rope yanked him back. He was forced down on his knees once more. "You will all rot in hell"

"Perhaps," admitted the man. "We think he was a spy."

"He was a man of God, you murdering bastard!"

"And the other one?"

"What about the other one?" asked Bran. "Did you kill him, too?"

"He has eluded capture."

That was something at least. "Let me go," Bran said. "You have no right to hold me. I've done nothing."

"It is for my lord to hold or release you as he sees fit," said the Ffreinc nobleman. "I am his seneschal."

"Who is your lord? I demand to speak to him."

"Speak to him you shall, Welshman," replied the seneschal. "You are coming with us." Turning to the marchogi holding the torches, he said, "Liez-le."

Bran spent the rest of the night tied to a tree, nursing a battered skull and a consuming hatred of the Ffreinc. His friend, Brother Ffreol, cut down like a dog in the road and himself taken captive… This, added to the gross injustice of Cardinal Ranulf's demands, overthrew the balance of Bran's mind-a balance already made precarious by the loss of his father and the warband.

He passed in and out of consciousness, his dreams merging with reality until he could no longer tell one from the other. In his mind he walked a dark forest pathway, longbow in hand and a quiver of arrows on his hip. Over and over again, he heard the sound of hoofbeats, and a Ffreinc knight would thunder out of the darkness, brandishing a sword. As the knight closed on him, blade held high, Bran would slowly raise the bow and send an arrow into his attacker's heart. The shock of the impact lifted the rider from the saddle and pinned him to a tree. The horse would gallop past, and Bran would walk on. This same event repeated itself throughout the long night as Bran moved through his dream, leaving an endless string of corpses dangling in the forest.

Sometime before morning, the moon set, and Bran heard an owl cry in the treetop above him. He came awake then and found himself bound fast to a stout elm tree, but uncertain how he had come to be there. Groggily, like a man emerging from a drunken stupor, he looked around. There were Ffreinc soldiers sleeping on the ground nearby. He saw their inert bodies, and his first thought was that he had killed them.

But no, they breathed still. They were alive, and he was a captive. His head beat with a steady throb; his ribs burned where he had been kicked. There was a nasty metallic taste in his mouth, as if he had been sucking on rusty iron. His shirt was wet where he had sweat through it, and the night air was cold where the cloth clung to his skin. He ached from head to heel.

When the owl called again, memory came flooding back in a confused rush of images: an enemy soldier writhing and moaning, his face a battered, bloody pulp; mailed soldiers swarming out of the shadows; the body of his friend Ffreol crumpled in the road, grasping at words as life fled through a slit in his throat; a blade glinting swift and sharp in the moonlight; Iwan, horse rearing, sword sweeping a wide, lethal arc as he galloped away; a Ffreinc helmet, greasy with blood, lifted high against a pale summer moon…

So it was true. Not all of it was a dream. He could still tell the difference. That was some small comfort at least. He told himself he had to keep his wits about him if he was to survive, and on that thought, he dosed his eyes and called upon Saint Michael to help him in his time of need.

The Ffreinc marchogi broke camp abruptly. Bran was tied to his own horse as the troops made directly for Caer Cadarn. The invaders moved slowly, burdened as they were with ox-drawn wagons full of weapons, tools, and provisions. Alongside the men-at-arms were others-smiths and builders. A few of the invaders had women and children with them. They were not raiders, Bran concluded, but armed settlers. They were coming to Elfael, and they meant to stay.

Once free of the forest, the long, slow cavalcade passed through an apparently empty land. No one worked the fields; no one was seen on the road or even around the few farms and settlements scattered amongst the distant hillsides. Bran took this to mean that the monks had been able to raise the alarm and spread the word; the people had fled to the monastery at Llanelli.

At their approach to the caer, the Ffreinc seneschal rode ahead to inform his lord of their arrival. By the time they started up the ramp, the gates were open. Everything in the caer appeared to be in good order-nothing out of place, no signs of destruction or pillage. It appeared as though the new residents had simply replaced the old, continuing the steady march of life in the caer without missing a step.

The marchogi threw Bran, still bound, into the tiny root cellar beneath the kitchen, and there he languished through the rest of the day. The cool, damp dark complemented his misery, and he embraced it, mourning his losses and cursing the infinite cruelty of fate. He cursed the Ffreinc, and cursed his father, too.

Why, oh why, had Rhi Brychan held out so long? If he had sworn fealty to Red William when peace was first offered-as Cadwgan, in the neighbouring cantref of Eiwas, and other British kings had long since done-then at least the throne of Elfael would still be free, and his father, the warband, and Brother Ffreol would still be alive. True, Elfael would be subject to the Ffreinc and much the poorer for it, but they would still have their land and their lives.

Why had Rhi Brychan refused the Conqueror's repeated offers of peace?

Stubbornness, Bran decided. Pure, mean, pigheaded stubbornness and spite.

Bran's mother had always been able to moderate her husband's harsher views, even as she lightened his darker moods. Queen Rhian had provided the levity and love that Bran remembered in his early years. With her death, that necessary balance and influence ceased, never to be replaced by another. At first, young Bran had done what he could to imitate his mother's engaging ways-to be the one to brighten the king's dour disposition. He learned riddles and songs and made up amusing stories to tell, but of course it was not the same. Without his queen, the king had grown increasingly severe. Always a demanding man, Brychan had become a bitter, exacting, dissatisfied tyrant, finding fault with everyone and everything. Nothing was ever good enough. Certainly, nothing Bran ever did was good enough. Young Bran, striving to please and yearning for the approving touch of a father's hand, only ever saw that hand raised in anger.