His land. His demesne. He had waited long for this.
Thomas pulled ahead, turning the armed knights to the west, then back again to the north, following upstream the track of another beck from where it intersected with the river. The trail grew more rugged, and narrowed as it passed between tall pines and ash trees and rambled near steep cliffs, forcing the knights to follow in a single line behind the steward.
"An extensive forest," Alain said, when he could draw up beside Thomas.
The steward nodded.
"The hunting is good?"
"Aye, lord. And adequate timber. None of the forest is being cleared, for the demesne is not in need of more pasture land. And little of it is suitable for the plow. We go there, now."
"I do not want to be afield too long," he reminded the man.
"Nay, lord. We shall return before sext. There is much to see, but the rest must wait, for the holding is large."
"Very well. We shall take it a piece at a time."
Thomas nodded pleasantly, not at all the way a man would who intrigued against his lord. Alain had seen enough conspiracy at court to know even the slyest of schemers gave away their intentions in their demeanor, if watched long enough. He had learned, when turning away at the end of an encounter, to suddenly turn back again as if something had been forgotten. One could see the oddest changes in a man's face, then.
In Thomas, he saw none of those things. Neither keenly narrowed eyes nor trained emptiness. Yet he knew the man held secrets. Of all those in the castle, Thomas would be most likely to know the fate of the missing Melisande. And he, of all those there, would know how Fyren died, and whether plots still lingered in the hall's mysterious, aloof atmosphere.
Slowed by the steepness of the slope and rocks dislodged by the hooves of the forward animals, the knights rode on. The horses, whuffing their great gasps of air, climbed, following in single file around the slope, now up, now down, sometimes nearly level. The sparsely scattered trees became a thick mat of deepest green spread before them.
Alain's charger seemed to sense its master's excitement at the magnificent land and renewed its labors. Alain pulled ahead of the knights to reach the narrow pass between the steep fells and gaze down at the sea of dark green, flowing like waves over the hills. Chrétien spurred his horse and rode up to Alain's side in the narrow gap at the pass.
A whine, a thunk. Chrétien howled with pain.
Chrétien clutched at an arrow's shaft protruding from his neck. His horse reared. Alain goaded his horse against Chrétien's big grey, lunged and steadied him. He snatched the grey's reins, pulled the beast up short.
"Steady, Chrétien. I have it." Alain grasped the shaft, groped for the point. Not deep, stopped by Chrétien's sturdy mail. He jerked the arrow free.
"On the ridge! There!" shouted the Norseman, Thorkel.
Above them. High up, on the lobbed off peak where Thorkel pointed.
"Thomas, see to this." Alain yelled, motioning to Chrétien's wound.
"There's no trail up there!" shouted Hugh, springing down from his saddle. "The climb's too steep for the horses."
"Take three men, Thorkel. Hugh, you go. See if you can catch him."
The same flurry of brown skirted the knob of rock at the fell's peak, then again vanished. Hugh dashed up the slope after Thorkel.
"Go, Alain," said Chrétien.
Alain glanced at his friend. The bleeding was light. Thomas crammed a cloth between wound and hauberk, his silvery eyebrows furrowing as he bent to the task.
Alain flung himself down from his saddle and climbed, clawing at rock and bracken until he reached the ridge just below the rounded knob.
The four men stood on the ridge, breathing hard, staring at the wild tangle of rock, soil, bracken and pine that covered the far side of the fell. Swords drawn, ready. At nothing.
"Naught?"
"Nay, lord," said Hugh. "Not even a grouse disturbed."
Alain trained his eyes on the knob where he had seen that flash of brown, climbed to it, and knelt to the ground from where he guessed the shot had come. White streaks on the dark stone suggested the scrape of metal. The thin soil showed the imprint of a knee among a tangle of shallow, pointed footprints. Downslope past the knob, two widely spaced prints showed the direction the man had fled. Nothing stirred beyond. The stony ground revealed no more prints.
"One man only, I think," he said, more to himself than to his men. "Reason enough to flee after only one shot. And he could not have hoped to create much harm from such a distance."
"He aimed for your face," said Hugh. "Chrétien merely rode between and caught the shaft in his neck."
"An archer of some talent, then."
"And one who would see the new lord dead. You must be wary of these folk."
"Mayhap." Certain the archer was gone, Alain gave a sharp sideways jerk of his head for a command and worked his way back down the slope to the pass.
"Chrétien?" he asked as he reached his friend again.
"Well enough."
"Only one link of the mail was severed, lord." Thomas daubed at the gash beneath the mail coif. "It should heal without trouble."
"And you, Thomas?"
"I, lord?"
"What think you of this ambush? Mayhap you can tell us who conspires against us."
"Aye, I can. There are those who have not pledged themselves. Those who fear losing their fiefs to Norman knights."
"And well they might. But you, Thomas?"
"By the Lady Melisande's wish, I have given mine, as you know."
"And as you have led us into an ambush, shall I still give you my trust?"
The man's wide mouth drew tight and thin, and his face set hard. "It is for you to say, lord."
Their eyes locked gaze in fierce combat. Thomas stood his ground.
"How would this man have known our direction?"
"I know not, lord, but it would not have been hard to guess."
"How so?"
"The new lord would want to see his holding immediately. And it is well known the Normans are fond of their forests."
"True enough," said Chrétien. "That is how you would have planned it."
It was. And Thomas did not quail from his lord's hard gaze. "I shall reserve my judgment for another time. Chrétien, do you ride?"
"Aye, Alain. It is but a minor hurt."
"Then, Thomas, do we return the way we came, or have we more surprises ahead of us?"
"As you wish, lord. The way before us returns us sooner. But if you fear ambush, more chances lie in the wood ahead."
"Ahead, then."
Alain signaled for his knights to mount. He regretted that his awed gaze of his new land had distracted him from his usual caution. But he would not make the same mistake again.
Thomas led the twenty iron-mailed knights down the steep slope, through the shaded canopy of evergreens and ash. More alert now and less enthralled by the land's beauty, the Normans scanned the underbrush for movement or odd color. They chuckled when despite their caution a hart leapt up within feet of the lead riders, startling the horses.
They rode on, reaching lower slopes where the ash trees now showed their first color of the year, and continued farther down to the treeless moors of bracken and heather.
In the valley, they slowed and followed another rushing beck. Alain reined in his bay to watch in astonishment as the stream tumbled into a jagged hole of grey stone and vanished beneath the rock.
"What manner of stream is this?" Alain asked, for he had never seen a stream disappear.
"It is a common thing here, lord," Thomas replied. "This is a land of many caverns, and sometimes the becks fall into them."
"Then what happens to them?"
"There are becks coming out of caves, too. Mayhap they are the same."
"You do not know?"
"The caves are enchanted. One dares not go in, save for the proper reason."
"And what would be the proper reason?"
The blocky, silver-haired man shrugged his shoulders. "It would be what the hob wants. It is said of one in the Deep Dale, the hob will cure the ills of those who enter, but those who have no ills will never come out again. Some others, no one knows what the hob desires, as none have ever come back out."
Alain frowned. Hobs. Another strange word. "Then some also go in, yet come out alive, is it not so?"
"Aye, it is so. But I do not want to be the man who does not. I'd see my enemy, face to face."
"I cannot quarrel with that." Alain signaled to the man to continue onward, and the big horses resumed their trot.
Farther down the dale, the harsh fells gentled into the broad, green valley that was more familiar. Scattered cottages marked small homesteads, a pattern that seemed to be more common to the area than villages. They would be harder to defend. Yet, they also might present more of a problem for a scavenging army.
Ahead lay the castle on its craggy grey knoll, its limestone curtain wall seeming to blend and grow from the native stone. The hall's yellow sandstone walls gleamed like sunshine itself in the bright daylight. Beside the hall rose the jagged top of the new tower's construction, already almost as tall as the old hall. Riding up, Alain could see the castle's weaknesses. It was wrongly sited. The curtain wall along its back could never be built high enough to protect it from the higher slopes beyond, and he would have to reinforce that side with high towers and clear the ground for a ways uphill.
Why would Fyren make such a mistake? Just to make use of existing buildings? Had he meant to increase the castle's size later on, extending it even farther up the hill? But why not start with the most impregnable site?
Alain glanced sidelong at his injured friend as they rode. He could see the pallor collecting on Chrétien's face, although the man would never admit to weakness. Alain spurred his tired charger to a gallop for the journey's last leg.
The cross-braced wooden gate was already creaking open, for their raised pennon had been spotted, and Alain urged his stallion across the wooden bridge. His feet lit on the bailey's hard-packed ground even before the squires rushed up to help their knights.
"Come now, Chrétien, into the hall, and let's have a good look at it."
"'Tis no more than a scratch. My squire can tend it."
"I agree, it is probably naught to speak of. But I will see for myself. Inside." Alain slapped the charger's reins into his squire's hand and clamped his hand onto his knight's unimpaired shoulder to signal the seriousness of his intent.
Two women waited beside the hall. Edyt's bright blue eyes met his, large and wide in horror, contradicting an otherwise passive face. Fear? Danger? Astonishment? Nay, he had not brought her a mass of mutilated men to stain her hall with their blood. Merely one with but a passably small wound, who would balk at the simplest treatment.
The girl regained her composure as if it had never been lost and stepped aside as the knights passed through the door into the hall. "Nelda, bring the salve. Fresh water, and some rags."
The older woman shuffled away.
Alain jerked off the purple cloak, tossed it aside, and pulled off his coif and hauberk. Two squires helped Chrétien remove his mail, working it carefully past his wound while Edyt set a torch of rushes into the bracket on the stone wall near the trestle table. She ignored Chrétien's grumbling and with a simple wave of her hand commanded the knight to sit on the bench placed beside it.