Fear in the Forest

PROLOGUE

June 1195

The hamlet dozed in the afternoon sun. The dappled shadows of a few fleecy clouds glided slowly across the green woods that rose on either side of the small valley. Most of the two score men and boys of Sigford were working in the strip-fields that lined the track through the village: a few more were scything hay in an enclosed part of the meadow land beyond the fields. The ragged idiot boy was hiding from the sun under a hawthorn bush, keeping an eye on a dozen goats cropping the summer grass along the verge of the dusty road that led to Owlacombe and distant Ashburton.

The smithy was silent, as the blacksmith was squatting outside the wall of the alehouse a hundred paces away, restoring his sweating body with a quart of Widow Mody’s indifferent brew. At least it was cool and wet, he thought — though he regretted the death of the widow’s sister from the yellow plague last year. By God, she used to brew a good ale!

The smith drank slowly, spinning out the time before he must go back to his forge, where the flames from the furnace and the labour of his hammering convinced him that Hell itself would be a relief from working in this summer heat. The only sound was the distant smack of mattocks as the labourers hacked at weeds in the furrows between the rows of beans, turnips and oats. This quilted patchwork of crops was all that stood between the people of Sigford and starvation next winter.

Much nearer, he heard the buzzing of a couple of bluebottles as they hovered over his boots, attracted by the dried blood of a chicken he had killed that morning. He felt himself nodding off and pulled himself together with a jerk. Sigford was too small to have either a church or a manor house and it belonged to the manor of Ilsington, a mile away. Their lord, William de Pagnell, had a nasty habit of sending his servants on unexpected visits to check on the village. Though the smith was a freeman, it would not be politic to be found in mid-afternoon dozing against the alehouse wall with a jar in his hand. He struggled to shake off his lethargy and stared out over the green hills in front, the outriders of Dartmoor, the grim plateau that lay high beyond the dells and coombes west of Sigford.

As he gathered the will to finish his ale and get back to work, a new sound began to insinuate itself into his consciousness. Faintly at first, then more clearly, the sound of hoofs reached his ears. Well used to horses from his trade as a farrier, he could tell that the rider was in a hurry. In case it was de Pagnell’s steward or manor-reeve, he gulped the rest of his ale, put the pot on the ground and hurriedly rose to get back to his smithy. But before he went five paces, his keen ears told him something else — this horse was running wild, without a rider.

A bend in the track hid the approaching animal until the hammering of its hoofs was all too clear. As a cloud of reddish dust swirled around the bend, he was aware of the men in the fields shouting in alarm.

Abruptly, Morcar, the village reeve, and a couple of good-wives appeared from their cottages opposite, as a tall brown mare materialised through the dust, its eyes rolling wildly as it charged down the track between the dwellings. Wary not to get trampled, both the smith and the reeve ran into the roadway, waving their arms and yelling. At the last minute, just as they were about to throw themselves out of its path, the mare shied, pranced and finally skidded to a stop, trembling and frothing, a foam of sweat mixing with the grime on its flanks.

Only then, as the dust settled, did they see what was being dragged from the left-side stirrup. With a foot trapped in the iron hoop, the rider was face down, and when in desperate haste the two villagers lifted him up, they looked in horror at his ravaged features, dragged an unknown distance on the flinty surface of the unforgiving road. His clothing was ripped to shreds, but two things were all too obvious to Morcar and the smith.

On his breast was an embroidered badge depicting an axe — and from the centre of his back protruded the broken shaft of an arrow.