The Hostility of Hanno: An Outlaw Chronicles short story by Angus Donald Read Free Book Online Page A

to the enemy. The King
     had charged me with reinforcing the garrison of the castle of Verneuil-sur-Avre, forty miles to the south-east, which was
     now besieged by King Philip. In truth, I had volunteered for the task: I had a very good reason for wanting to preserve one
     of the occupants of Verneuil from the wrath of our King’s enemies. The plan was to use surprise and speed to break through
     the French king’s lines to the north of the fortress. Once inside, we were ordered to bring hope and good cheer to the besieged,
     stiffen their defence, and to reassure them that Richard and his whole army of some three thousand men were only a matter
     of days behind us.
    Apart from my private reasons for wanting to succeed in this task, I was very conscious of the fact that, as captain of the
     Locksley contingent, I was representing Robin. While I knew that King Richard had confidence in me as a soldier, I wanted
     to do well in this task for Robin, my liege lord, and for all the men of the Locksley lands. But I was more than a little
     concerned about being able to fulfil Richard’s instructions. He had spoken breezily of our galloping through King Philip’s
     battle lines, as if they were merely a cobweb to be brushed aside. I didn’t think it would be so easy. So, when we stopped
     at noon to rest the horses and snatch a bite to eat, I detailed Hanno and two mounted archers to ride several miles forward
     as scouts and bring back a report on the French dispositions.
    As we approached the vicinity of Verneuil the mood in the column changed significantly. I put out more scouts to the east
     and south and we all rode in our full armour, with lances at the ready, swords loose in their scabbards and our eyes constantly
     searching the copses, woods and hedgerows for signs of horsemen. The flat land we rode through that afternoon, once so rich
     and well cultivated, now bore the harsh imprint of war. King Philip’s Frenchmen had been ravaging the farms and villages hereabouts
     with all the usual savagery of soldiers let loose to plunder and burn at will. It was a common tactic that allowed the occupying
     army to provision itself at no cost to its commanders and at the same time destroyed enemy lands and deprived the local lord
     of the bounty of his wheat and barley fields, his root crops, animals and orchards.
    We rode through a battered, scorched landscape, the crops burnt down to charred stubble, the hamlets black and reeking, the
     bodies of slaughtered peasants – men, women and even children – lying unburied at the roadside, with the crows pecking greedily
     at their singed corpses. We did not stop to bury the dead like Christians, not wishing to delay our advance, though we could
     all feel the presence of unquiet spirits as we rode more or less in silence through those cinder-dusted, desecrated lands.
    I was, however, sorely tempted to have the men stop and dig a decent grave for a young fair-haired peasant that we passed
     hanging by his neck from a walnut tree. There was something horribly familiar about the canted angle of his neck and the awful
     vulnerability of his dangling bare feet. I realized as I rode past that gently swaying corpse that it put me in mind of my
     father’s death, ten years before, in the little hamlet just outside Nottingham where I was born. My father Henry, my mother
     Ellen and my two younger sisters Aelfgifu and Coelwyn and I all scratched a living from a few strips of land in the fields
     on the edge of the village. Despite long days of hard labour, we were barely able to feed ourselves; but there had been an
     abundance of laughter and happiness in our small cottage, and much music and singing. My father had a wonderful voice, slow-rolling
     and sweet like a river of honey, and my fondest memories of that simple household were of my mother and father singing together,
     their voices intertwining, their melody lines looping and folding over each other in the smoky air of the low,