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Updated: May 15, 2025
Then in a moment I knew what the word which had been passed meant. The Mercians who had drawn off from the side attacks closed up and charged down on the scattered Welsh, on whose pursuit Gymbert and his men turned. We could do naught but stand and watch, helpless, for we dared not leave the gate, which we could not close against the retreat which must come.
And so the first attack ended, and for all that Gymbert from the gate tried to urge them on, his men stood sullenly in the deep ditch and under the gate, where we could not well reach them, save by casting javelins and darts high into the air, that they might pitch among them; but there were few throwing weapons to spare.
As we had reason to think, the whole affair was the doing of Gymbert, so far as his men knew. Behind him was the hand of Quendritha, of course, but of that they had heard no more than that to take us would please her. When the storm ended, with naught but a far-off mutter of thunder among the hills beyond the Wye to mind us of it, I went out to find Jefan.
Man, one needs eyes in the back of one's head if you are about." Then he turned to the Mercian thane. "Is this the way of Gymbert as a rule? or has he only been suffered to come out today?" "A man gets careless at these times," answered the thane. "Anyway he is like to lose a good horse, and I will not say that it does not serve him right.
It seems that when the archbishop came back here from Sutton he excommunicated, with all solemnity, every man who had aught to do with that deed of which he had been told. Wherefore Gymbert, if he cared aught for the wrath of the Church, might be desperate, and would heed little whom he destroyed, so that he ended those he meant to harm.
Have you sounded yon Frank?" she says. "He is no Frank, but a Wessex thane and a hired man of Carl's; moreover, he is Ethelbert's friend." "Fool!" she says. "How far went you with him? What does he know or suspect?" "Naught," answers Gymbert stiffly. And with that he tells her what passed between us. "Come to me tomorrow early," Quendritha says, and goes her way.
Wait till all is well for you and for the king and then, maybe; but I pray you have a care of Gymbert." Now I would have told her that I had no fear of him, and mayhap I should have heeded her other words little enough. But at that moment Father Selred came back and beckoned to us, and silently we went after him. The king had seen him and called to him.
Take it all round, it was hard to see how Gymbert expected to take the place, or why he would try it at all. "Quendritha is driving him," said Kynan, laughing, when I said as much. "If that woman bids a man do a thing, he has to do it, or woe betide him. But it will be a fight, for a time."
We had wandered onward as we searched, and it is a wonder we had seen no man. But perhaps it was because this place was mostly deserted, being out of the way to anywhere, that Gymbert chose it. The traffic of the palace went along the road to Fernlea and the ford of the host there, away from here.
I do not think that I took in all the terror of it at the time, for on that field there was death in so many forms death brought needlessly by his contriving again, and in all injustice and this end of his was to me but right and fitting. Some terrible fate the man deserved, and he had met it. Now I had my own friends to think of. "See to Jefan!" I said to Kynan, without a word of Gymbert.
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