The timewasnow.
*
When Roi arrivedat the village of Colesborne, he wasn’t any clearer about the situation than he had been when he first received Cheltenham’s request for aid.
Something seemed off.
In the first place, Colesborne was not nearly as destroyed as the missive had led him to believe. There had been some burning on the edge of town, and the street of merchants had been mildly looted, but nothing crucial. The villagers seemed scared more than anything, and they were very clear that the Cirencester army was on the east side of the village, out in the heavily forested areas, but the Cheltenham army was nowhere to be seen. Roi and the men he’d brought with him made sure the village was secure and helped put a couple of fires out, but for the most part, the damage wasn’t too terrible.
Very strange, indeed.
“For a raid, I would say there is very little damage,” Roi said to Adrius. “What in the hell is Cirencester doing?”
Adrius looked around. “I would not know,” he said. “But I was thinking the same thing. This was not a raid.”
“Nay, it was not,” Roi said. “It seems like it was simply annoyance. No one is dead, nothing is stolen. The man at the end of town said one of his horses was taken by the army but that it returned to the corral on its own, unharmed.”
Adrius pushed his helm back and scratched his forehead. “This makes little sense,” he said, looking around. “And where is Cheltenham in all of this? Should he not be here?”
Roi shrugged. “I would assume so,” he said. “But this situation is so bizarre… who can tell? The villagers said the Cirencester army is to the east, so mayhap he’s there. If they are engaging, then that is where we should go.”
Adrius agreed. He had the sergeants round up the army, which was mostly helping villagers at that point, but barked commands had them all mounting their horses and following Adrius and Roi as they charged to the other end of town in search of Cheltenham’s army. Once they cleared the village outskirts and the hedgerows cleared, giving them a view of the meadows and fields around them, they could see an army to the east.
They were simply standing around.
Roi and Adrius looked at one another, baffled, but the moment the other army caught sight of the de Lohr men, they began to yell and run. They leapt onto their horses, tearing off in a panic, and the natural response from Roi was to follow. They chased them across two big fields and onto a narrow road that angled downward. It was surrounded by heavy trees, a green canopy overhead, but Roi continued after them.
Some of the men were branching off from the bulk of the fleeing army, taking off in different directions, and a few of the de Lohr men went off after them. But most of the de Lohr army was close on the heels of the retreating army, and by the time they hit a forested area where the road leveled off and crossed a large brook, Roi could see that they were closing in on the retreating army.
But that was when the sky let loose.
It was raining arrows.
Roi was hit almost immediately, a powerful bolt that hit him in the back, just below his left shoulder blade. It wasn’t enough to knock him off his horse, but he knew that he was in trouble. He cursed himself for being stupid enough to chase the fleeing army through an area that was ideal for an ambush. It had all happened so quickly that he hadn’t given it much thought, but given the strangeness of the situation, he should have.
Damn… he should have.
They had to get out of there.
Roi had whirled his steed around, bellowing orders to his men to go back the way they came, when another bolt hit him in the chest. That one was enough to topple him from the horse, and as he went down, he could see Adrius going down as well with a bolt through the neck.
Suddenly, a puzzling skirmish had become deadly.
Roi wasn’t one to panic, but he hit the ground hard, feeling genuine fear because he was wounded and without his broadsword, which was still on the horse when it darted away. He was in the stream, face-first in the freezing water, but he managed to push himself up and get clear of the water. There was chaos all around him while his men fought for their lives as the trees came alive with men bearing swords. Hand-to-hand combat commenced. Even the retreating army was returning now that Roi and his men had been ambushed. They were being attacked from all sides.
Roi knew they were in trouble.
He could feel the bolt in his back. He didn’t know how bad it was, but he couldn’t get to it. He could, however, get to the one in his chest, and the moment he ripped it out, he was sorry. It had nicked a lung, and now he had a sucking wound that was causing him to feel faint because he couldn’t catch his breath. Slapping a hand against it to try to seal the hole, he staggered over to Adrius, who was lying on his back bleeding to death.
Reaching out, Roi grasped him by the arm and began to drag him away from the fighting, which was quite heavy and quite vicious. A few of his men saw what he was doing, and they immediately rushed to Roi to protect him and Adrius. It was common, in any battle strategy, for the enemy to remove the knights and commanders of the opposing army at the beginning of a battle in the hopes of splintering the army. That was exactly what the ambush had done—taken out the command. Roi thought they might have a chance to get clear of the fighting when a barrage of arrows let loose on his group and the men protecting him all went down, leaving Roi standing there alone, still gripping Adrius’ arm.
He looked up to see an armored man and several men with loaded crossbows moving swiftly in his direction.
“Stop,” the man called to him. “Stop what you are doing and I will call my men off. If you try to get away, I will be forced to kill you.”
Roi was in a bad way. The fighting had moved off toward the west as his men tried to flee, so there were pockets of fighting. From what he could see, he’d lost a few men in the initial arrow barrage, but for the most part, they seemed to be holding their own. They were outmanned—he could see that—but they were giving it one hell of a fight.
But for Roi, that fight had ended.
