John set about calming and reassuring them. Help would come very soon, he said. He had a rich, bass voice that he knew how to control so that it enfolded the frightened villagers like a comforting blanket. His arm around a weeping, pregnant woman, he listened to the triumphant yells of the raiders and the first ominous crackle of flame and wondered if he could remember the damning words of the excommunicat. He had never had occasion to use them before. From the bell tower, the tocsin stuttered into life and was unevenly sustained, although John was unsure if the sequence was quite correct. The roar of flames grew louder as more of the village fell to the torch, and then they all heard the heavy thump of a sword hilt against the barred church doors.

John told the villagers to go and kneel before the altar, the women in the centre, the men protecting them in an outer ring, and the armed men of his escort and Elene’s standing slightly forward. John himself stood alone in the nave by the font to face the door as it trembled beneath the blows rained upon it. He heard snarls and threats, as though a pack of wolves yammered outside. A final blow and the hinges gave way and the doors reeled inwards.

‘Silence those bells!’ howled the foremost routier, sword blade dripping with what John hoped was nothing more serious than animal blood. ‘Now, priest, before I cut off your head and stuff it up your arse!’

Elene and Renard might have recognised Hamo le Grande. John had never encountered him before, but he recognised the type well enough. The Earl of Leicester kept such men in his own employ and for a similar purpose. Ministering to them was generally a waste of time unless they were dying and in fear that they would do so un — absolved of a lifetime of atrocity. Killing a priest on holy ground while the excommunicat rang out might daunt them, but it depended how hardened they actually were.

John filled his lungs, pointed a finger, and channelled all the charisma he possessed into his powerful voice as he began the Latin words that would damn the routiers to eternal hell.

Renard had ridden less than a third of the way to Caermoel when Gorvenal started to limp. Cursing, he dismounted and ran his hands down the stallion’s foreleg. It was cool to the touch and felt sound, no sign of swelling at fetlock or cannon. He picked up the hoof to examine that and immediately the source of the problem became obvious. A stone had lodged in the tender frog. Gorvenal laid his ears back and tugged against the bridle that Owain was holding close in to his head. Another knight dismounted and helped the lad to hold the horse. Gorvenal’s hatred of having his feet picked up was notorious, and this time Renard had no dried dates to sweeten him.

Unsheathing his meat dagger, Renard braced his body against the jarring shocks of the stallion’s attempts to plunge, and tried to gouge the stone from the hoof without sticking the point of the knife into the sensitive frog.

He succeeded, but not without a deal of swearing, at the horse, the stone, his squire and the knight. By the time the stone finally did fly out on to the grass, tempers were boiling, limbs weak, and the stallion’s hide was creamed with sweat. Renard wiped his hands on his surcoat, his brow on the sleeve of his gambeson, and sat down on the tussock to regain his breath.

‘Do we ride on, my lord?’ a young knight said hesitantly.

Renard restrained the urge to be sarcastic. ‘I think we’ll eat first,’ he said. ‘It’ll give the horse — and me — a chance to recover. It’s only a bruised frog, nothing that will hamper him. Owain, mount up and stand lookout on that hill up there.’

The boy left. Renard rose and went to Gorvenal. He gentled the horse with soft words and fondling, unslung his wine costrel from the pommel and took a packet of food from his saddle roll. Leaning against the horse, he ate cold roast fowl and bread, washing it down with the slightly sour wine. A skylark bubbled. Renard squinted into the cloud-ridden blue and sought it out — a tiny, dark speck with a song ten times as loud and spectacular as its drab, brown plumage. He was reminded of Elene and smiled.

Temper forgotten, Gorvenal swung his head to butt Renard and demand a chunk of his bread. The stallion’s full, black tail swished at the flies. His glossy hide shivered. Renard scratched the horse’s withers and enjoyed the peace of the moment, culled from the midst of uncertainty and war.

Following the aborted siege of Caermoel, hostilities between himself and the Earl of Chester had ceased for a while, and then, like a cry cast into a well, the echoes had resounded, on and on for ever. Ranulf, having learned his lesson, did not attempt another siege or blockade. Instead he used Welsh tactics and struck out at the small and vulnerable targets. Timber and wattle manor houses, and villages. Wanton, indiscriminate destruction. Renard retaliated with equal savagery, but sometimes, looking at earth that was scorched instead of growing with young crops, or at slaughtered plough teams, he was sickened. Watching the skylark now, he wondered if Elene understood.

The bird plummeted like a stone. Owain came down the hill at a gallop, shouting something that was snatched away by the wind. Renard dusted off his hands. Stoppering the costrel, he looped it quickly back around the saddle, and mounting up, cantered to meet the squire.

‘It’s Woolcot!’ the boy gasped out. ‘Woolcot’s burning!’

Renard spurred Gorvenal to the crest of the hill to look for himself. A thick, grey coil smudged the horizon, too large to be a midden bonfire or anything legitimate concerned with Elene’s weavers and dyers. He wrenched the horse around and sent him flying back down to his men. Owain had already passed on the news and they had remounted, food abandoned, and were looking to him for confirmation.

‘The whoresons have hit Woolcot,’ he snarled, ‘but they’ve reckoned without us being so close. Gerard, when we get there, sweep round by the mill with half the men. I’ll take the other end. We can talk as we ride!’

It was a little more than three miles back to Woolcot and Renard and his men covered the distance as though they were racing each other on the Smithfield coursing ground rather than bumpy sheep terrain. As they neared the stricken village they heard the tolling of the church bell and the smell of the smoke thickened and gouted on the wind. Added to it came the stink of charring meat. It caught in the lungs and cut off breath. It stung the eyes with more than just the irritation of smoke.

Garden crops were burning, dwellings were on fire. Animals lay where they had been slaughtered. The main street was an avenue of fire, every building alight. The roar of the flames was like the breath of a ragged, mythical beast, stalking and destroying in the wake of the perpetrators. Of them there was not a sign except for one body trapped beneath the bulk of a dead ox.

Gerard de Brionne split away from the main group and took a handful of men round by the fulling mill. That too was on fire, although not yet as wildly ablaze as the houses. Torches still held aloft, three men were backing away from the building, shouting gleefully to each other. Gerard and his companions rode them down, dousing both brands and men in the fast-flowing river beside the mill. Their armour pulled them under. Those who floated were encouraged to sink. Renard’s knights removed their cloaks, saturated them in the river and set about beating out the fire.

Renard came round to the church by way of the village pond where incongruously, amid all the destruction and chaos, a pair of ducks still dabbled with a total lack of concern. The church itself, stone-built by Elene’s father, was untouched by fire, but the doors hung drunkenly wide, and clustered around them were a group of routiers in mail shirts and quilted tunics. From the belfrey, the excommunicat resonated, tolling amid the drifts of windblown smoke. The wind veered and the bells faltered and suddenly died. Within the church a child wailed.

‘Hah!’ Renard cried and spurred Gorvenal. The horse passed the pond at a canter. Renard leaned forward, left fist curved around the hand strap of his shield, right around his sword grip. The child’s wail became a full scream, and above the roar of the flames Renard heard a man’s voice thundering in Latin. John, he thought, recognising it even as it was cut short.

He spurred Gorvenal again, frantically, and they galloped into the churchyard. Without stopping, Renard took the stallion straight up the path to the broken church doors. A routier stared. His mouth widened to yell a warning. Renard stood in the stirrups and clove him like a bacon pig. Gorvenal dealt with a second man, a lashing kick doubling him over, and Renard finished it. Then he was riding into the church, horseshoes clattering on the stone flags of the nave.

Hamo le Grande turned and gaped as a vision from the hell the priest had just promised him bore down the nave. A horseman of the apocalypse, his sword edge dripping blood and his horse wild-eyed with crimson-lined nostrils. At Hamo’s feet, John used his good arm — the one that the mercenary had not slashed to the bone, to grasp Hamo’s ankle and pull hard. The mercenary threw out his arms to save himself, but was too late. The cry of surprise on his lips rose to a scream as he landed without cushioning on the hard flags. They all heard the crack of bone as his spine broke. And yet he was still alive to suffer the agony. Unable to move, he watched Renard slow the horse and pace him up the nave, finally drawing rein before him.

Renard looked down implacably. ‘Take him out,’ he commanded to the men waiting behind. ‘And hang him … slowly.’

Hamo’s screams as he was dragged outside the church faded to background insignificance. Renard dismounted. Owain appeared, to take charge of the horse and lead him outside. Renard knelt beside John who was ashen with pain. His habit sleeve was saturated in blood.