The Lion of Farside by John Dalmas

Two hours later they were in unbroken forest; by evening they’d reached camp. The packstring was already there, and the cattle and tax girls. Everyone cheered Macurdy, acting as if he was some kind of genius. Melody kissed him soundly, while rebels grinned.

And Blue Wing was there, with news. He’d reached Wollerda before the mounted courier, and Wollerda, instead of going home, had led his company westward across the North Fork Road, pushing their horses in a forced march on country lanes, still determined to engage the reeve’s company. Blue Wing had served as scout.

After Macurdy’s second ambush, the soldiers had turned back. They traveled slowly, partly because of their wounded, and partly because some were riding two on a horse. Wollerda jumped them at a draw south of the first ambush site. Numerous soldiers were killed there, and most who fled were caught. Prisoners were disarmed, and their horses and boots taken. They trudged south barefoot, carrying the news.

It took two more days for all of Macurdy’s survivors to straggle in, some of them wounded. All but eleven of the original fifty-two made it, and Tarlok was unscratched. The flatland teenagers weren’t among them.

Meanwhile a messenger arrived from Jeremid. He hadn’t been pursued, and was on his way with grain, twenty-three head of cattle, and several flatlander volunteers. He expected to bring more recruits from Three Forks. The only fighting had been brief, at the bailiff’s stronghold; none of Jeremid’s men had been killed, and only three wounded.

Macurdy sent a detail south with pack horses to strip the dead armsmen of byrnies and weapons.

Rebel morale was out the roof. Even their worrywart commander was feeling pretty good.

27: Of Truth and Lies

One of the nicest things Macurdy returned to was Melody. She didn’t try to take him to bed, just ate breakfast and supper with him, teasing him hardly at all. She seemed reconciled to his marriage vow, though why she remained interested, he didn’t understand. Meanwhile she had a women’s tent set up to accommodate the tax girls and their guardian, as well as herself and Loro, the ex‑captive from the Orthal days.

Three days after Jeremid returned, Macurdy sent him with a full company to hit the reeve’s stronghold. The guesstimate was that fewer than twenty of the reeve’s company would have returned from their pursuit of Macurdy and his raiders. His fort would be thinly defended, unless he’d been reinforced. Not the usual stockade, its walls were stone, twenty feet high.

Jeremid had known what to use for opening the gate; he just hadn’t expected to find one so handy. Scarcely two hundred yards from the fort was an inn, its taproom catering to armsmen. A new stable was being built for it, and there, waiting to be raised, was the forty-foot roofbeam. Now he wouldn’t have to tear down someone’s roof to get his battering ram.

It took him less than half an hour to have an A-frame made from other timber at the site, meanwhile sending a platoon around behind the fort with bows and scaling ladders. These then threatened an attack on the rear, holding defenders there, while construction laborers and stable horses, protected by byrnie-clad Kullvordi shieldmen, dragged first the A-frame, then the ram to the fortress gate.

It took a bit to set things up, and despite the shieldmen there were casualties, but within half an hour the gate had given way. The fort’s defenders—fifteen escapees from Wollerda’s massacre, plus a dozen household guards—surrendered promptly.

Jeremid didn’t send all his men inside. Four galloped off toward Gormin Town, two miles east, to the tent camp outside its partially burned palisade wall. Less than an hour later, a mob was forming outside the fort, shouting that they wanted the reeve turned over to them.

Meanwhile Jeremid’s men had commandeered the thirty horses in the reeve’s stable, and across their backs put rope slings. Then they loaded most of them with tax grain brought in from the bailiwicks—two heavy sacks of wheat, and two of the much lighter oats per horse. A few, instead of being loaded with grain, would carry all the weapons his men could find.

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