Prince of Time (32 page)

“The only thing standing between him and us is a barbican,” Math said. “Two barrels of powder at its base and it’s gone. He must know by now we have the means to take his keep. Painscastle can be ours if we’re willing to raze it to the ground, along with everyone in it.”

Prince Llywelyn shook his head. “Give him a few days to think about it. His choice is to surrender or die and he knows it. He’ll see reason eventually, and if he doesn’t, we can still take the castle.”

Dafydd turned to me. “How is the men’s morale? Are they still willing to fight?”

I laughed. “You couldn’t stop them, I don’t think. They’re drunk with the power of being Welsh.”

“Drunk with victory, and soon to be drunk with mead,” Bevyn said. “We’ll need to keep an eye on them if we hope to have any fighting men left to watch the keep.”

“Two cups each,” Goronwy said. “That’s what I ordered. If a commander allows differently, he knows that he’ll regret it.”

“Good,” Prince Llywelyn said. “We need the men alert and awake. I don’t want to just defend the border, I want to control it. I need every man who can walk or ride divided into companies within the hour. From this moment, no Englishman may set foot in Wales without my leave.” He fisted his right hand and slapped into the palm of his left as he spoke.

“This is our hour,” Goronwy said. “We must make the most of it.”

“See to it,” Llywelyn said. “Hereford has three days to admit the error of his ways. After that, we will move again, and any Englishman who stands against us will pay a stiff price.

Chapter Thirty

Bronwen

I
euan was in a hurry. I could feel him urging the car faster as we left Painscastle behind us, heading east to England. His face and shoulders reflected his intensity. We were going fifteen miles an hour, which admittedly in a car feels like a slow crawl, but it was far faster than we would have been going on horseback. The dashboard glowed blue and red, but otherwise we were riding without lights.

Molotov cocktails and the pots of unmixed Greek fire filled the backseat and trunk. The pots exploded on impact, no matter if we threw them on the ground or at buildings. The glass bottles which contained the cocktails, on the other hand, were proving a more sturdy container than we’d anticipated, having been invented in a land of pavement and concrete, of which there was none in the Middle Ages.

“Why didn’t you tell me it was so soon?” I said.

“Prince Llywelyn’s orders,” Ieuan said.

“It’s only been two days, not the three that Prince Llywelyn gave Hereford,” I said, trying not to feel betrayed.

“Events encouraged us to pick up the pace,” Ieuan said. “Pull over here, to the right.”

I parked fifty feet from the Dyke beneath two beech trees that had become intertwined in a mass of branches and brambles that marked the edge of a farmer’s field. The Dyke lay just ahead, lit by an unexpectedly bright moon after a long day of rain. We didn’t want to alert any nearby English to our presence by driving the car any closer. In the twenty-first century, the sound of a vehicle was like nothing—so common you hardly ever noticed it. Here, where the only sounds were natural, it stood out.

Ieuan eased the door open. “Stay here.”

“Where are you going?”

Ieuan stopped by the trunk, listening. I waited, and then heard what had caught his attention: hoof beats. Ieuan shrank into the shadow of the trees. The pounding rang out as rider passed us a few feet from the car. Even I recognized the horse, the armor the man wore, and the set of the man’s shoulders.
Tudur.

“There he goes,” Ieuan said.

“You expected him?” I said.

“I did,” Ieuan said. “And now we’ll see if the bastard is true to his word.”

Keeping to the grass beside the road, Ieuan cat-walked to where the Dyke rose above him, a bulk in the dark. He climbed down into the ditch and up again, to the top of the wall, and then scurried over it. I waited. Nothing.

This is unacceptable
.

I got out of the car and ran in a crouch to the point Ieuan had gone over the Dyke. I knew he wouldn’t like it, but as long as I stayed on the Welsh side of the wall, I thought I’d be all right. I climbed to the top of the earthen wall, my feet losing their traction repeatedly in the mud, and crawled on my stomach across the flat top to the far edge. Fortunately, I managed to bury my gasp in my sleeve.

Below me, a dozen yards away, a campfire blazed next to a small hut. A disarmed Ieuan, with his hands out, stood back to back with Tudur, who’d lost his helmet. A sword length away, a thickset, bearded man glared at them. On the edge of the camp, just within range of the firelight, a company of English soldiers in full battle armor waited.

I spent ten seconds trying to find my breath, my head down on my arms, and then pushed backwards off the Dyke and dropped to the Welsh side. I turned to run back to the car and froze.
Worse and worse.
Ten men on horseback surrounded my car. They must have heard the thud on the grass as I fell, or sensed my movement, because they turned as one to look at me.

“Bronwen!”

I ran towards Prince Llywelyn, who dismounted to greet me. I spoke through choppy breaths. “Ieuan...Tudur...English soldiers...the other side of the Dyke...must save him!”

“How many men?”

“Forty?” I guessed.

“Ach,” the Prince said. “They outnumber us four to one.”

“Not the way I see it,” I said.

I popped the trunk and everyone gazed down at my Greek Fire canisters. They resembled small urns, with a narrow top and base and a septum down the center that separated the water from the powdered mixture. When the pot broke, the ingredients spontaneously combusted. I was quite proud of them and would have been prouder if we weren’t going to use them to kill people—or at the very least injure them.

I handed one to each of Prince Llywelyn’s men and put the remaining five carefully on the front passenger seat. I moved the box of Molotov Cocktails to the floor, under the glove box. Meanwhile, Llywelyn tied his horse to a tree.

“What are you doing?” I said, and then kicked myself for leaving off the ‘my lord.’ He didn’t appear to notice.

“Coming with you. Someone has to throw those weapons, and it can’t be you if you’re driving.”

I was too concerned about Ieuan to argue. Ten minutes had passed since I’d seen him.
Please be alive! Please still be alive!
“The men are to the left of the road,” I said. “If you stand in the doorway, you can hang on with one hand and throw the devices over the top of the car with your right arm.”

I started the car, Llywelyn grasped the interior handle, and put one foot on the seat and the other on the rim of the car. He pulled the door more closed so he was sandwiched between the door and the roof.

“I’m going in hot,” I said.

I gunned the engine, we skidded, and then picked up speed as I pulled onto the road. I flipped on the headlights and rocketed along at nearly forty miles an hour, with Prince Llywelyn’s men thundering along behind me; we drove through the cut in the Dyke and into England.

“Ieuan, down!” I shouted, at the same time the Prince barked, “Tudur!”

Llywelyn lobbed the first pot of Greek Fire. Ieuan threw himself towards the Dyke, his hands over his head. The canister hit the back of an English soldier’s metal helmet. It exploded with a sharp crack, engulfing the man’s head in flame.

Crack! Crack! Crack!
Llywelyn’s men threw their pots. One settled in the grass without igniting, but the rest blew, throwing fire everywhere. The men who survived ran for their horses. I lobbed a Molotov Cocktail out the window in the direction of the camp fire. It bounced once and rolled into the flames.

Oh my God! What have I done?
I ducked below the level of the window in anticipation. The bottle exploded.

Glass shot in every direction and the fire burst upward. Men screamed. It was as if a high wind had come up and blown the English to the east. Within two minutes, the only men remaining lay on the ground.

I brought the car to a halt and ran to Ieuan. The first pot had sprayed him with fragments and fire, but he’d rolled in the dirt to extinguish the flames. He sat up and I threw myself at him, nearly knocking him over.

“It’s all right,
cariad
,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. “I’m only singed.”

“Do we pursue, my lord?” called one of Llywelyn’s men, still seated on his horse.

“No,” Llywelyn said. “Not yet.” He surveyed the camp, and then strode to the smoldering body of a man who lay face down in the dirt. He crouched beside him and his face fell. “Tudur,” he said.

Tudur moaned. I crawled over to him and helped the Prince roll him over. I pressed my ear to his chest. “His heart is strong,” I said.

The Prince blew out a sharp breath of relief.

“And Hereford?” Ieuan said. “Where is he?”

“Him, I would pursue,” Llywelyn said, “but we should regroup and prepare to support Dafydd and his men when they come. It’s bad enough we used all their spare ammunition.”

Llywelyn’s words washed over me. I knelt in the grass beside Tudur, my breeches muddy, my hair undone, my heart still pounding from the tension of the scrimmage. For the thousandth time since I’d come to Wales, I felt like I was in the middle of a rising river, flooding over a waterfall in a rush, headlong towards an impossible future. More than fear or uncertainty, I felt incredulity.
How is it that I’m here? How could any of this be real?
But the wounded man before me was real, the Prince who loomed over us, his hands on his hips, jaw set, was real, and so was his son, who’d soon come pounding up the road with a hundred men, all set on rewriting history books that had not yet been written.

* * * * *

“I’m a firm believer in overwhelming force,” David said an hour later. David, Ieuan, and I stood on a high spot on the Dyke, watching the Welsh archers fire one flight of arrows after another at the English encampment near Huntington Castle, not far from where I’d first driven into England from Pennsylvania.

Goronwy and Math had ridden with their companies along the road to the north of Painscastle before crossing into England and riding south. David had met Carew at Hay and fanned out across the English countryside, burning as they went. It was total war. We weren’t looking to defeat the English
army
, we were looking to defeat the
English.

It wasn’t that the English hadn’t posted sentries or were unaware that we were dangerous, but they weren’t prepared for the speed and ferocity of our night attack, and for the new weapons we used. Although the Greek Fire was spectacular, and now that we knew that the Molotov Cocktails exploded nicely in a campfire they were useful, it was the fire arrows and the gunpowder that truly won the night.

The bowmen shot, and shot, and shot again. Even though we had only a hundred archers, each one could shoot at least six arrows a minute.
Anyone can do the math and reach an inescapable conclusion...we’re going to win, this round anyway
. Our archers shot arrowheads laced with a sticky mixture comprised of black powder and oil, with the consistency of pitch and set on fire just before the archer shot it. They landed in the English camp and were impossible to extinguish, especially as the grass was wet from a downpour that had just ended. The moon was again behind us, but otherwise, the only lights was from the arcing arrows, flying one after another.

Another flight of arrows left the bows and descended to the field two hundred yards away. Lili had determinedly kept with the company of archers. I moved closer to Ieuan.

“Did you speak with her?” I said.

“Yes.” He handed the binoculars to David, who put them to his eyes.

“Lili is very reasonable in her unreasonableness,” Ieuan said. “She insisted on joining the men, and swore, once again, that she wouldn’t deliberately expose herself to danger.”

David put down the glasses. “She still wanted to fight, then? I was hoping it would lose its allure.”

“I don’t think she wanted to,” Ieuan said. “I think she felt it was her duty.”

“Huh,” David said, and despite the mayhem going on around us, I had to smile at the totally American expression that said everything and nothing in one simple syllable.

“We’ve won,” Ieuan said as another hundred arrows hit and exploded. Every English tent was alight and the archers had started to aim their arrows over the castle walls at the defenders on the battlements. “We don’t even need the castle.”

“Don’t you?” a voice said in English. An arm snaked around my waist, jerking me backwards until I was three steps away from David and Ieuan. The man held a knife at my throat. “We will turn defeat into victory, I think.”

The men had turned at the voice, but now stood frozen, staring at the man behind me, their swords not even a quarter out of their sheaths. Then four English soldiers materialized behind Ieuan and David. They’d been lying prone all this time, right at our feet.

“You’re not the only ones who can orchestrate an ambush,” the man said. “Don’t look for your men. They’re dead.”

Cadwallon; Gruffydd; Madoc.
I choked back a sob.

“Bohun,” Ieuan said. “Trust you to use a woman as a shield.”

“You,” Hereford either didn’t understand his words, or ignored them. He gestured with the knife, “Royal whelp. Stand apart.”

“Nothing ever quite works out the way you plan it, does it?” David said. He spoke under his breath to Ieuan, and in unison, they each took a step, Ieuan to the right, and David to the left. At that, three soldiers surrounded Ieuan, swords out. He had his hands to his sides, palms out.

One of the soldiers shoved at his shoulder, turning him north in the direction of Huntington. I’d been looking at David, who had only one man on him, the soldier’s sword held in the small of his back and I realized from the distribution of the soldiers that Hereford thought Ieuan, not David, was the Prince of Wales.