Chapter 47: The Signal on the Hill

Osric had been home two days when it came.

The first of those he had spent making his report, twice, once to the Baron alone and once in front of the council, and the second time had gone badly in a manner he had expected and could do nothing about. Rothgar wanted to know what the duel had cost. Lambert wanted to know whether Wilhelm had spoken of his daughter as a father or as a creditor. Waldric said very little and let Osric carry it, which was correct and which Osric had not enjoyed.

Heinric had heard all of it out and had asked one question at the end.

"The rider. North off the hill."

"Aye, my lord."

"Sir Waldric believes it was a signal."

"He does. So do I."

The Baron had looked at the table for a while.

"Then somebody has been waiting on an answer about this barony for a fortnight," he said, "and got it four days ago, and we shall find out what they decided in their own time and not in ours. I dislike that more than I can put into a sentence."

The second day he had spent on the ordinary work, which had piled up in a month the way ordinary work does, and had been glad of it. The reinforcement list. The beacon chain, which had not been walked since he left, and which he walked in the afternoon on a bad leg and found sound at three of four points and unsound at the Vale, where the fourth fire had still not been built because Rothgar had paid for it and nobody had gone up.

He had come back at dusk furious in a low steady way and had said so to Aldric, who had agreed with him, and neither of them had said what both of them were thinking, which was that a fortnight is a long time and the ground was going hard.

Theo was at the smithy by then.

That had taken about four hours to arrange and had not involved Osric at any point. Anna had done it. She had walked her brother down to old Warin's shop on the first morning and had stood in the doorway while the two of them looked at each other, and Warin, who was sixty-two and had a chest that whistled in

the cold and had been refusing to take an apprentice for six years on the grounds that none of them were any good, had asked Theo three questions and then handed him a hammer and pointed at the anvil.

Theo had made a hook. It took him about two minutes.

Warin had looked at it for rather longer than that and had then said something short, and Theo had started work that afternoon and had slept in the loft above the shop that night, and the whole village knew by supper.

Osric had gone past the shop once on the second evening and had not gone in.

The third morning was cold and clear and the drills ran in the yard with a hard frost still in the shadowed corners.

Osric took them himself because he wanted to see where a month of Aldric had got the younger men, and the answer was: further than a month of Osric would have, which he was pleased about and did not mention.

Argilac was working a line of six through footwork on the beaten earth. Doran had four more at the pells. Alden sat on the mounting block with his forearm out of its sling for the first time and was giving advice that nobody had asked for.

Voss was in the armoury doorway on his stick, marking a tally board, and had been at it since before light.

Osric had come across to him at about the tenth hour.

"How many sound?"

"Of the bows? Two." Voss did not look up. "Two, out of six. And one of the two has a prod I'd not put in front of a man I liked, so call it two if you're writing it and one if you're planning with it."

"Right."

"There's four hundred bolts and about ninety of them are worth loosing. The rest have been in a damp store since the spring and the flights have gone." He made another mark. "I've set two of the lads to stripping them. It's tedious and it's exact and it'll do them good."

"And you?"

Voss stopped and flexed his right hand, opened and closed, opened and closed.

"Gerfried says the turn of the year." He said it evenly. "It's better than it was. I can hold a cup and I can hold a knife and I got about a third of the draw on that light one yesterday before it went."

"That's sooner than he said."

"That's me being a fool in an armoury with nobody watching, and I'd thank you not to write it down."

Stolen from NovelPhoenix, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Osric almost smiled and went back to the yard.

He was standing at the edge of it at about the eleventh hour, watching Argilac correct a boy's grip for the third time and thinking that his son had got a good deal better at that than he had been in the summer, when the horn went on the wall.

Not the change of the watch.

The other one.

Every man in that yard stopped moving at the same moment, and then all of them turned toward the gate at once.

The horse came up the track at a gallop that was killing it and came through the gate and got about twenty feet into the outer courtyard and went down.

It went down on its knees first and then over, and the man on it did not so much dismount as get thrown clear, and lay there.

Osric was moving before it hit the ground.

He got there in the first four and the leg screamed at him the entire way, and Doran got there before him and had the man's head up out of the mud.

It was one of Throderic's six. A young one. Hoyt, out of the near village, twenty years old, who had gone north with the captain eighteen days ago.

He had been riding for a long time. There was frozen mud to his waist and his hands had gone the colour of the sky and would not open, and there was blood down all of his left side that had dried and cracked and been ridden through.

His eyes went round the ring of faces and found Osric.

"Serjeant."

"I'm here. Get him something hot. NOW."

"Serjeant." Hoyt's teeth were going like a mill. "West road. The alder fork. Past it. The four mile stretch where the wood comes in."

The yard had gone entirely silent.

"How long ago?"

"Yesterday. Yesterday, mid morning, we were" He stopped and got it back. "They came out of the wood on both sides. Both sides at once, at the narrow, and there was no"

"How many?"

"I don't know. Sixty. A hundred. They were in the trees on both sides and they had bows and they took the horses first."

"Is he alive?"

Hoyt's face did something terrible.

"He was when I went. He was on his feet and he was shouting and there was a wall of them and he sent me. He sent me and I did not want to go and he made me go, Serjeant, he had me by the collar and he put me on a horse."

"How many were still up when you left?"

"Fifteen. Sixteen." His hands closed on Osric's forearm and could not grip. "There's a spoil bank. Old workings on the north side of the road with a bank round it, and he was getting them onto it when I went, and Tertius had the banner up and they were going for the bank."

Osric felt something go very cold and very still in the middle of him.

A bank. He's got a bank and a score of men and a day and a night.

And a day and a night is a long while.

"Yesterday mid morning," he said. "And it's the third hour now."

"I rode all of it. I did not stop. The horse"

"You did right." Osric said it flatly and made sure the boy heard it. "You did exactly right and I'll say so to anybody, and you'll say it to the Baron in about ten minutes and then you'll be put to bed. Doran, get him inside."

He stood up.

The yard was already moving before he opened his mouth, which is the difference between a garrison and a crowd.

"Aldric."

"Serjeant."

"You hold this castle. Not one man of the wall comes off it and not one man goes out of that gate but with me. If they've hit the west road they may hit here, and I'll not have this place stripped because I went riding."

"You'll want more than you can take."

"I'll want three hundred men and a fresh horse under every one of them and I've neither." Osric was already walking. "Get me every mount that can go the distance in the yard in ten minutes. Not the good ones. The sound ones."

He went to the Baron.

Heinric heard it standing, in about ninety seconds, and did not sit down at any point.

"Take who you can mount," he said. "Go now, not in an hour. I will have the column behind you before dark and I will bring it myself."

"My lord"

"Do not." The Baron's face had gone somewhere Osric had seen exactly twice in twenty years. "He has been my captain for nineteen years and I have sat in this castle for eleven of them while other men rode out of it, and I am not doing it today. I will bring the column and I will bring the levy off the near farms and I will be four hours behind you. Go."

Osric went.

They assembled in the outer courtyard inside the ten minutes and it was a poor sight and every man in it knew it.

Alden was up first, with his forearm strapped and his axe across the saddlebow and no argument in him at all.

Argilac had two horses ready before anybody asked, his own and his father's, and had checked the girths on both, and had gone somewhere behind his own face where Osric could not follow him.

Doran came back from the hall at a run and was on and ready inside a minute.

And Voss came out of the armoury on his stick.

"No," said Osric.

"I've a bow."

"You've an ankle that won't take you and a hand that won't span."

"I've the light prod and I've got a third of the draw and at forty yards a third of the draw is enough to put a bolt in a man's face." Voss had already got the crossbow slung and was hauling himself at the nearest horse. "I'll not sit in a yard, Osric. Not for this one. Not for him."

"Voss."

"He came and sat with me. Every day for eleven days while you were in that city, and he'd nothing to say and he sat there anyway with his bad leg out and complained about the roof." Voss got his boot in the stirrup and got up on the third attempt and did not make a sound doing it. "So I'm coming, and you may tie me to a post or you may put me on a road, and one of those is more use to you."

Osric looked at him for about two seconds.

"Rear. Behind Doran. And you do not get off that horse for anything."

"Aye."

Erryk came out of the physician's door.

He got about fifteen feet across the yard with his stick and his mail half on, and he was grey before he had covered ten of it, and Gerfried came out of the door behind him at a speed nobody had ever seen the man move at.

"No."

"Get out of my road."

"You have a leg that has been closed eleven days and you cannot mount a horse without help and if you go up onto one you will open it, and you will open it four miles out, and then you will be a man lying in a cart in the middle of a fight that everybody else has to defend." Gerfried did not raise his voice and did not need to. "That is not courage. That is a sum, and you may hate me for it in the spring."

Erryk stood in the middle of the yard with his fists closed and his chest going.

"He is my captain."

"He is everybody's captain," said Osric, from the saddle. "And you'd not make the second hour, and you know it, and you'd have said it yourself to any other man standing where you are."

Erryk looked up at him.

For a moment it could have gone either way, and then something went out of the big man's shoulders, and he turned round and put his hand flat against the wall of the physician's house and stood there with his back to all of them.

"Go on," he said. "Get out."

Baldewin Rocque came through the gate at a trot as they were forming up.