Brother Cadfael 09: Dead Man's Ransom

engrossed in what had to be done to drive the Welsh of Powys back into Caus and beyond. Perhaps because he considered this other matter to be very much Cadfael's business, and was willing to wait for enlightenment until it was offered, as at the right time it would be.
    Cadfael braced his aching back against the bole of an oak just forming its tight leafbuds, eased his chafed feet in his boots, and felt his sixty, one years. He felt all the older because all these troubled creatures pulled here and there through this tangle of love and guilt and anguish were so young and vulnerable. All but the victim, Gilbert Prestcote, dead in his helpless weakness, for whom Hugh would, because he must, take vengeance. There could be no clemency, there was no room for it. Hugh's lord had been done to death, and Hugh would exact payment. In iron duty, he had no choice.
    'Up!' said Hugh, standing over him, smiling the abstracted but affectionate smile that flashed like a reflection from the surface of his mind when his entire concern was elsewhere. 'Get your eyes open! We're off again.' And he reached a hand to grip Cadfael's wrist and hoist him to his feet, so smoothly and carefully that Cadfael was minded to take offence. He was not so old as all that, nor so stiff! But he forgot his mild grievance when Hugh said: 'A shepherd from Pontesbury brought word. They're up from their night camp and making ready to move.'
    Cadfael was wide awake instantly. 'What will you do?'
    'Hit the road between them and Shrewsbury and turn them back. Alan will be up and alert, we may meet him along the way.'
    'Dare they attempt the town?' wondered Cadfael, astonished.
    'Who knows? They're blown up with success, and I'm thought to be far off. And our man says they've avoided Minsterley but brought men round it by night. It seems they may mean a foray into the suburbs, at least, even if they draw off after. Town pickings would please them. But we'll be faster, we'll make for Hanwood or thereabouts and be between.'
    Hugh made a gentle joke of hoisting Cadfael into the saddle, but for all that, Cadfael set the pace for the next mile, ruffled at being humoured and considered like an old man. Sixty, one was not old, only perhaps a little past a man's prime. He had, after all, done a great deal of hard riding these last few days, he had a right to be stiff and sore.
    They came over a hillock into view of the Shrewsbury road, and beheld, thin and languid in the air above the distant trees beyond, a faint column of smoke rising. 'From their douted fires,' said Hugh, reining in to gaze. 'And I smell older burning than that. Somewhere near the rim of the forest, someone's barns have gone up in flames.'
    'More than a day old and the smoke gone,' said Cadfael, sniffing the air. 'Better make straight for them, while we know where they are, for there's no telling which way they'll strike next.'
    Hugh led his party down to the road and across it, where they could deploy in the fringes of woodland, going fast but quietly in thick turf. For a while they kept within view of the road, but saw no sign of the Welsh raiders. It began to seem that their present thrust was not aimed at the town after all, or even the suburbs, and Hugh led his force deeper into the woodland, striking straight at the deserted night camp. Beyond that trampled spot there were traces enough for eyes accustomed to reading the bushes and grass. A considerable number of men had passed through here on foot, and not so long ago, with a few ponies among them to leave droppings and brush off budding twigs from the tender branches. The ashen, blackened ruin of a cottage and its clustering sheds showed where their last victim had lost home, living and all, if not his life, and there was blood dried into the soil where a pig had been slaughtered. They spurred fast along the trail the Welsh had left, sure now where they were bound, for the way led deeper into the northern uplands of the Long Forest, and it could not be two miles now to the cell at Godric's Ford.
    That ignominious rout at the hands of Sister Magdalen and her rustic army had indeed rankled. The men of Caus were not averse to driving off a few cattle and burning a farm or two by the way, but what they wanted above all, what they had come out to get, was revenge.
    Hugh set spurs to his horse and began to thread the open woodland at a gallop, and after him his company spurred in haste. They had gone perhaps a mile more when they heard before them,