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The man swayed in the saddle as Thomas ran at the leading horseman, who was trying to draw his sword, but Keane was holding the man’s forearm while the horse circled frantically. The dogs were leaping at Keane and the horse, thinking it a game. Thomas swung the spear, and the wide blade sliced under the horseman’s ribs. The man yelled in pain, and Keane dragged him from the saddle and brought his right knee up to meet the man’s head and the rider dropped, stunned. The first man had managed to disentangle his foot from the stirrup, but he was dizzy. He attempted to stand, and Thomas kicked him in the throat and he too went down. The dazed rider was still in the saddle but he was just staring at nothing, his mouth opening and closing. ‘Get the horses,’ Thomas ordered Keane, then ran out of the trees, crossed the ditch and used his knife to cut the twine that held the bundles of chestnut stakes. ‘We’ll tie the bastards up,’ he told Keane, ‘and if you need a change of clothes, help yourself.’ He hauled the third man from his saddle and dazed him even more with a slam of his hand that drew blood from the man’s ear.
    ‘Is that velvet?’ Keane asked, fingering one of the young men’s jackets. ‘I always saw myself in velvet.’
    Thomas dragged the boots off all three men and found a pair that fitted him. One of the horses had saddlebags with a flask of wine, some bread, and a hunk of cheese, and he split them with Keane. ‘You can ride a horse?’
    ‘Jesus, I’m from Ireland! I was born on horseback.’
    ‘Tie them up. Strip them naked first.’ Thomas helped Keane truss the three men, then stripped off his damp clothes and found a pair of hose that fitted him, a shirt, and a fine leather jacket that was too tight around his archer’s muscles, but dry. He strapped a sword belt around his waist. ‘So you killed the beggar?’ he asked one of the three. The man said nothing so Thomas hit him hard around the face. ‘You’re lucky I’m not cutting your balls off,’ he said, ‘but the next time you ignore my question I’ll take one of them. Did you kill the beggar?’
    ‘He was dying,’ the young man said sullenly.
    ‘So it was an act of Christian charity,’ Thomas said. He stooped and held his knife between the man’s legs. He saw the terror on the sullen face. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘My name’s Pitou, my father’s a consul, he’ll pay for me!’ He was gabbling desperately.
    ‘Pitou’s a big man in town,’ Keane said, ‘a vintner who lives like a lord. Eats off gold plates, they say.’
    ‘I’m his only son,’ Pitou pleaded, ‘he’ll pay for me!’
    ‘Oh, he will,’ Thomas said, then cut the twine from Pitou’s ankles and wrists. ‘Get dressed,’ he said, kicking his own damp clothes towards the frightened youth. He tied Pitou’s wrists again when the boy was dressed, and he was little more than a boy, perhaps seventeen years old. ‘You’re coming with us,’ he said, ‘and if you hope to see Montpellier again you’d better pray that my servant and two men-at-arms are alive.’
    ‘They are!’ Pitou said eagerly.
    Thomas looked at the other two. ‘Tell Pitou’s father his son will be returned when my men reach Castillon d’Arbizon. And if they don’t have their own weapons, mail, horses and clothes then his son will be sent home without his eyes.’ Pitou stared at Thomas when he heard those words, then suddenly bent forward and vomited. Thomas smiled. ‘He’s also to send a grown man’s right glove filled with genoins, and I mean filled. Do you understand?’
    One of them nodded, and Thomas lengthened the stirrups of the largest horse, a grey stallion, and swung into the saddle. He had a sword, a spear, a horse, and hope.
    ‘The hounds will come with us,’ Keane announced as he climbed onto a brown gelding. He took the reins of the third horse on which Pitou was mounted.
    ‘They will?’
    ‘They like me, so they do. Where do we go now?’
    ‘I have men waiting close by, we go north.’
    They rode north.
     
    Roland de Verrec was unhappy. He should have been ecstatic, for the successful completion of his quest was in sight. He had captured Thomas of Hookton’s wife and child, and, though he had no doubt that they would be exchanged for the adulterous Countess Bertille de Labrouillade, Roland had still hesitated before making the capture. It went against the grain of his romantic ideals to use a woman and child, but the men-at-arms who supported him,