Chapter 10
Ten
DARCY
The problem with an hour was that it sounded like a decent amount of time.
It wasn’t. An hour was sixty orderly minutes if you had clocks, roads, radios, trained crews, and people who understood exactly where to go when you shouted at them, whereas we had a forest full of frightened villagers, several cooking fires, too many children, several old people who couldn’t move quickly, one wounded man who insisted he wasn’t wounded, and a goat that had appeared from nowhere during the night and was currently eating someone’s cloak.
“Everyone make ready,” Wulfric called out as his voice carried across the clearing without effort.
People started gathering sacks, men reached for weapons, women lifted children, and boys helped wherever they were needed.
He turned to me, holding my gaze for the space of a heartbeat. Talk about bad timing.
I pointed toward the north trail. “I need the children, the injured, and anyone who can’t move quickly shifted to the second camp now, not when the fighting starts.
Anya knows the route, and Godwin keeps the retreat path clear.
No carts unless they’re already loaded and moving, and if something breaks, we leave it. ”
By the look on his face, I knew he hated the last part. Three days ago, Wulfric might have argued over every sack of grain and iron pot, while a week ago he might have stood his people behind whatever wall happened to be nearest and called dying there honor, but now he only looked toward Godwin.
“You heard her.”
The old man gave one sharp nod, and then everything happened at once.
Wulfric took the fighters south and I took everyone else. It was, frankly, the worst division of labor in history, because his half involved swords while mine involved children, wounded people, livestock, and overlaid on top of everything else, fear.
“Head count!” I shouted.
Blank faces turned toward me.
“Count your people. Everyone who came with you, everyone sleeping beside you, everyone who was here this morning.”
Anya appeared from somewhere carrying a toddler on one hip and a sack over the opposite shoulder, her fair hair hidden beneath a linen veil that had already come half loose.
“How many came with the refugees last night?” I asked.
“Four and twenty.”
“Are they all here?”
Her expression changed.
“Find out now, and send every family north the moment you know no one is missing.”
I caught Wystan as he ran past with a bow nearly as tall as he was.
“No.”
He stopped so abruptly the boy behind him nearly crashed into his back. “My lord said every man who can fight?—”
“You’re thirteen.”
“I am nearly fourteen.” He clenched his jaw. “I can shoot.”
“I know, and you can also run, which makes you far more useful to me as a messenger.”
His eyes narrowed, because every thirteen-year-old boy in every century believed running messages was beneath them while being stabbed was the natural next step into manhood.
“Between me, Wulfric, Godwin, and the north path,” I said. “Nothing else, and you do not become a hero today.”
Something in my voice reached him, because the argument faded from his face as he nodded.
“Good. Tell Wulfric the first group is moving.”
Wystan vanished into the trees as the clearing began to empty in layers.
Children went first, followed by the old people and anyone too injured to move quickly, while the rest carried food, blankets, water skins, cooking pots, and whatever small pieces of their lives they could lift.
The refugees had arrived exhausted the night before and were now being moved again before they’d had time to recover, yet no one complained, and that frightened me more than the complaints would have.
Gilda passed carrying an iron pot beneath one arm.
“Put that down.”
“It is a good pot.”
“It weighs more than the child behind you.”
“The child complains more.”
The child, a thin boy of perhaps seven, looked deeply offended.
We stared at one another until I shrugged.
“Fine. Stay near the north trail.”
“I know how to survive a battle.”
“I’m beginning to suspect you’ve survived several through pure stubbornness.”
“Aye.”
She walked away before I could stop her, and though every instinct told me to go after her and remove the pot by force, there was no time.
The Norman horns were deeper than Wulfric’s, a low, cold sound that rolled through the trees until the whole camp seemed to hold its breath.
Wystan came running.
“They are at the first barrier.”
“How many?”
“Wulfric says near ninety. Some on horse.”
My stomach dropped. We had fewer than half that number who could fight, and many of ours were villagers holding spears because the alternative was standing empty-handed while men on horseback came through the trees.
“Tell him the children are moving, and I need warning before he falls back.”
Wystan nodded and ran.
“Not through the center,” I shouted after him. “Use the west path.”
He changed direction without slowing.
The first wounded man reached us minutes later. It was Osric, blood covered one side of his face. I caught him by both shoulders before he could stagger past.
“Where?”
“My head.”
“I can see that. Are you dizzy?”
“Nay.”
“Can you see me clearly?”
“Aye.”
“Good. Sit.”
“I must go back.”
“No.”
“My brother?—”
“Is still fighting, and you bleeding beside him won’t improve his mood.”
I pressed folded linen against the cut near his temple and put his own hand over it.
“Hold that hard, and if you feel sick, dizzy, or suddenly think Gilda is charming, tell someone immediately.”
Another man came through the trees limping, and then another, until the space behind the shelters had become a rough receiving point for the wounded.
The battle itself was still beyond the clearing, but I could hear it now beneath the shouts and horns. Metal striking metal, horses crashing through brush, men crying out in anger and pain. Every instinct in my body wanted to go toward it, the old pull of the call for help.
Go in. Find them. Get them out. But this time, I forced myself to stay, because these people were my fire.
A woman screamed. I spun toward her, ready for blood, only to see her husband staring at a torn sack of barley lying in the mud.
I crossed the clearing. “Leave it.”
“It is winter grain.”
“I know.”
That was the cruelty of it. I did know. Food wasn’t replaceable here in the way it had been in my world, and a torn sack might mean hunger months from now, but a dead man couldn’t eat winter grain.
“Go.”
He stared at the barley spilling gold into the mud, then turned away.
The first arrow landed near the fire.
“Everyone not fighting, north now!”
The second arrow struck the roof of a lean-to, and what followed was worse. A burning bundle landed in the thatch, scattered sparks, and rolled into the dry grass.
“Water!” someone shouted.
Two women ran for buckets.
“No. The wind’s south to north,” I said. “If the roofs catch, the smoke follows the retreat path.”
Their faces went pale.
“Take the water to the path. Wet cloths for the children. Move.”
More fire landed among the shelters, and the camp changed within seconds as smoke began to flatten beneath the trees and drift north.
People coughed. A horse screamed somewhere beyond the southern barrier, then Wulfric appeared between the trees.
“Darcy.”
He was blood-spattered but not wounded, so at least it wasn’t his blood.
I pointed toward the smoke curling between the shelters and sliding toward the north path.
“Another ten minutes and your retreat route becomes a chimney.”
Wulfric looked from the fire to the path, then turned, lifted the horn, and blew three short blasts.
Retreat.
The sound tore through the forest, and for half a heartbeat nothing happened.
Then men began to emerge through the trees, not running, but falling back in groups because Wulfric had drilled them and because, somehow, they still trusted his voice enough to listen when every instinct must have been telling them to flee.
“Keep the lane open,” I shouted.
Godwin took up the call farther north, his voice booming between the trees.
“Move. Do not stop.”
A man stumbled and two others lifted him, while another turned back toward the clearing for a shield.
I caught his tunic. “No.”
“My father made it.”
“I’m sorry.”
The words hurt because I understood exactly why he wanted it.
“Go.”
He went and I heard Gilda scream. I found her near the eastern edge of the clearing, half carrying one of the refugee women while blood streamed down her arm.
“Put her down.”
“The woman cannot walk.”
“Then I’ll take her.”
I pulled the injured woman’s arm across my shoulders and shouted for help until Edwin appeared through the smoke.
“Take her north.”
Once he had the woman, I turned back to Gilda. The cut ran from below her shoulder almost to her elbow, deep enough to gape through the torn wool of her sleeve, as the sight of it sent something cold through my stomach.
“What happened?”
“Norman scum.”
“Very descriptive.”
“He had a sword.”
“Better.”
She swayed and I caught her before she fell. Wulfric appeared beside us, and for the briefest moment his eyes went to the blood on my hands before shifting to Gilda.
“Take her,” I said.
He lifted her as if she weighed nothing.
Naturally, she protested. “I can walk.”
“Aye,” he said. “Later.”
Behind us, the southern edge of the camp erupted as flame climbed one shelter, caught the next, and raced across the dry roofs faster than anyone who hadn’t seen fire move before could believe.
We went toward the north trail. People stumbled, coughed, cried, swore, and dragged one another through the trees while the smoke followed, yet the path remained open because the children had gone first, the wounded were moving, and no one stood in the clearing thinking about going back for their belongings.
By the time we reached the ridge above the second camp, what we had built below us was burning. Wulfric stood beside me after Gilda had been carried to safety, and firelight moved across the hard lines of his face.
He had lost the ground, the shelters, the stores we couldn’t carry, and everything he had believed it was his duty to defend. Yet below us, through the trees, I could hear children crying, women calling out, and men beginning the count.
“They took the camp,” he said.
“Yes.”
His jaw tightened, and for a long moment I thought he might turn back toward the fire simply because every part of him had been taught that retreat was something a lord survived only by never ordering it.
“But not the people.”
“No.” We watched as the fire roared higher behind us, bright enough to stain the smoke red, and after a few minutes, Wulfric turned his back on everything he had lost, and looked forward.