He followed the man. The girls, four of them, had been brought outside. Macurdy judged their ages as being from twelve to perhaps seventeen. Even by moonlight they looked terrified. Two, seemingly the younger, were crying, their voices keening. He spoke to the one he judged oldest: “Tell them no one’s going to hurt them. Tell them I’m going to send you all home.”
Someone else came to him, to announce that the bailiff was dead. “And Captain, we found a little casket in the house, full of coins—silver and gold!”
“Good. Tie it shut and load it on a packhorse.”
Someone came to tell him that the battering ram wasn’t doing the job. They’d also tried using the ironwood pry poles Macurdy had had them bring along, to pry the gates up off the hinge pins, but the pin ends had been hammered, and the hinges wouldn’t come off. Macurdy raised his head. “Someone bring an ax to the gate!” he bellowed, “and a torch. Right away!”, and jogged to where the men had laid down their ram.
A sizeable crowd was gathering outside. Tarlock was talking to them. Damn! Macurdy thought. If we don’t get this gate open right now, we’re going to look like a bunch of clowns to these people.
“Captain! There’s a guy here’s got something he says is important.”
“Have him wait! Where the hell is that ax?” As he asked it, a man ran up with one and handed it to him. Macurdy stepped up to the wagon gate, eyed the U-shaped padlock bolt, wound up and hit it as hard as he could. The body of the lock fell to the ground. He grabbed the chain, hanging loose now, and pulled it out of the eyebolts, then four of his men shoved the gate open.
The person with the important information was a boy of about fifteen years. He’d seen someone come out of his father’s horse shed, leading his father’s best horse, a man wearing the helmet of a bailiff’s armsman. He’d mounted and ridden quietly south, headed out of town.
The outside guard, Macurdy suspected, on his way to notify the reeve.
The next man who wanted to talk to him was the village spokesman, the man voted by the villagers to represent them with the bailiff. He was agonizing over the tax girls. When Macurdy said he was sending them home, the spokesman blinked with surprise, then shook his head. “The reeve has already been sent an inventory. He will come here and take them back; hunt them down if he must.” The man looked worriedly into Macurdy’s face. “It’s best if you can take them to a safe place.”
For just a moment the two men traded gazes. Shit! Macurdy thought, things must be bad here, if he’s putting his trust in us. “All right,” he said, “but two of them are children. Bring me a woman of the village, a strong one who can ride well, to look after them. And tell your people why we took them.”
He turned away from the spokesman and went to check on the loading of the packhorses, to make sure they weren’t overburdened. They’d have to keep up with the saddle mounts. But the spokesman, he became aware, was following him anxiously. “Excuse me, Captain,” he said. “Did you know the reeve has stationed his company at a farm on the Great Road? They are more centrally located there, and also much nearer to us. If they arrive before you leave . . .”
“Tarlok!” Macurdy bellowed, and the man came running. Briefly they talked, and given this new information, Macurdy decided they had little or no chance of making it via the North Fork Road. They’d have to go back the way they’d come, and as quickly as they could. He sent one of his best riders, a youth who might have weighed 120 pounds, on the bailiff’s best horse, to find Wollerda and let him know the trap was aborted.
Hurriedly they then finished loading the pack horses with two bags each of wheat. The tax girls and the woman who’d tend them were helped onto five of the bailiff’s horses. Another townsman had told him there were tax cattle in a paddock just outside town, and Macurdy sent men to get them. The guards there had fled too, it turned out.