Hywel
Hywel cupped his hands around his eyes, shielding them from the glare caused by the setting sun behind him. Mold Castle would be his within the hour, and Hywel was roiled by a stew of emotions—jubilation, anticipation, as well as the anger that never left him. They were within a few days of the official end of the four-month peace he’d agreed to with Ranulf, the Earl of Chester, and that was close enough for him. He was finished with the enduring he’d been doing since Rhun’s death.
His father might never recover from Rhun’s loss. Hywel might never either. But this—this battle—was one thing he knew how to do.
“Fire!”
Hywel and his next oldest brother, Cynan, sent the shout into the sky at the same time from opposite ends of the field. Cynan was with the cavalry, who were waiting in a stand of trees at the foot of the road that led to the castle.
A heartbeat later, the arrows from two hundred archers’ bows arced through the air and disappeared over the castle’s battlements.
At nearly the same instant that the archers loosed the arrows, a handpicked group of some of the bravest men Hywel had, Cynan’s younger brother, Madoc, among them, moved the siege engine forward, driving it up the road towards the gate. They were protected front and back by shields and wooden barricades, designed to deflect any enemy arrows that might come from the walls, and to prevent their own men from killing them from behind with stray arrows.
Hywel wished he had a way to communicate with Madoc and Cynan, but he had to trust that his brothers knew what they were doing. The trees in which Cynan and his men were hiding lay a hundred yards from the castle, and the cavalry were waiting for the moment the gate was battered down to charge. The bulk of the army Hywel had brought to Mold were spearmen, and they remained as they had been, crouched low to the ground in front of Hywel and his archers, also making sure to keep out of their direct line of fire.
Hywel’s army had been given four months to stockpile arrows, and his archers did him proud now. They fired barrage after barrage at Mold Castle, successfully forcing Ranulf’s soldiers to keep their heads below the level of the wooden balustrade, unable to counter the steady progress of Hywel’s siege weapon.
Hywel could have ordered the arrows to be lit, but that would have defeated half the purpose of this endeavor. His father wanted Mold Castle taken intact, so he could fortify it against the English. Hywel would burn it to the ground if he had to—if he were desperate and it was the only way to win it—but he was a long way from desperate just yet.
“The door is weakening, my lord!” Cadell, the youngest of Hywel’s brothers currently on the battlefield, reined in beside Hywel, his eyes wild with excitement and anticipation of victory. He was smaller and slighter than Hywel and his other older brothers, and now that he was past twenty, wasn’t likely to grow more.
“I’m glad to hear it, Cadell.” Hywel secretly thought that Earl Ranulf, whose castle this was, had known Hywel was coming and had made a strategic decision to put up only a token resistance, so as not to waste men and resources on a lost cause. But Hywel wasn’t going to ruin Cadell’s pleasure by telling him so.
Maybe Ranulf really had all but abandoned Mold to Hywel. Maybe they could have walked right into the castle without any bloodshed at all. Hywel hadn’t wanted to risk that, however, and neither had any of his brothers. Hywel hadn’t even shown a flag of peace that would have offered terms to the castellan of Mold. They’d come too far and suffered too much since Rhun’s death to be satisfied with taking the castle without a fight.
Rhun couldn’t be avenged today, and it wasn’t the Earl of Chester who’d seen to his death, but ensuring the fall of Mold Castle to an army from Gwynedd was as good a place to start as any.
“I wish I was with Madoc!” Cadell was still circling around Hywel, restless energy in every line of his body.
He had begged earlier to be in the siege engine, but Hywel had forbidden it. Hywel understood Cadell’s excitement, just as he understood his need to be in the thick of things. If they’d been fighting on an open field, both of them would have been at the forefront of the cavalry, but sieges weren’t the purview of a commander, and Hywel’s men would have been more hindered than helped by his presence. They would have felt the need to protect him. It was one of the many changes in his life since Rhun’s death and his rise to the station of heir to the throne of Gwynedd.
Thus, it was Hywel’s fate as edling, and Cadell’s as his squire, to let others do the fighting today.
“This is the first real battle you’ve ever been in,” Hywel said soothingly. “It is better to learn by watching this one time. You have plenty of wars in your future.”
“You were younger than I am when you fought in your first battle!” Cadell threw the words at his brother.
Hywel didn’t take offense. “We were fighting for our lives in Ceredigion, Cadell. My aunt had just been hanged from the battlements by the Normans. Any man who could walk was on the field that day.”
“Rhun died—”
“He did, but not by Ranulf’s hand, and Ranulf does not threaten Gwynedd today. This is a skirmish,” Hywel said. “Perhaps I should have let you fight, to get your feet wet, but I thought it would be foolish to risk you in such a little war.”
Cadell subsided, perhaps slightly mollified. Hywel wished he could see better what was happening, and he stood in his stirrups, both hands shielding his eyes.
Then, without further ado, the front gate collapsed in on itself and, with a roar, Madoc’s company surged forward, past their siege engine and into the castle. Up until now, the archers had been aiming over their heads so the arrows would fall inside the castle. Hywel released a piercing whistle, and the firing ceased.
That was also the signal for the waiting cavalry to break cover. They charged up the road, anxious to support the brave souls who’d broken through the gate. The spearmen who’d been resting in front of the archers surged to their feet too and ran straight for the castle entrance. Not a single arrow came from Mold’s battlement. Perhaps Ranulf really didn’t have anyone able to fire one.
Hywel let them all go before urging Glew, his horse, into a trot, Cadell at his side. The younger man’s brown hair was mussed, and he’d taken off his helmet somewhere along the way. At this point, Hywel didn’t think it mattered what Cadell wore. Neither of them was even going to have to use their swords.
“Should I send word of the victory to the king?” Cadell said, looking around to see who was available to send. All of Owain’s sons had reverted to formality when referring to their father these days. He had made himself unapproachable—even—and maybe especially—to Hywel, as if it was somehow Hywel’s fault that Rhun had died.
Hywel blamed himself for Rhun’s death, it was true. He should have been the one to ride after Cadwaladr that day. But at the same time, Hywel knew within his heart that to blame anyone other than Cadwaladr was to deny Rhun’s right to act on his own behalf. Rhun had demanded the responsibility of hunting down Cadwaladr. There had never been anything Hywel could have done or said to dissuade him, and no amount of wishing was going to change the past.
“Let’s make sure the castle is really ours, first,” Hywel said, finding himself amused rather than annoyed by his younger brother’s enthusiasm.
Another half-hour, and the standard of Gwynedd waved from the top of the keep, proclaiming that Mold Castle had been taken in a single day—in a single hour—by the forces of King Owain. Hywel told himself to remember this day, to remind his future self what could be achieved with enough time and planning.
It had taken four months to reach this point: four months of heartache, grief, and rage, such that often Hywel didn’t know where one emotion ended and another began.
He did know, however, even as he rode through the demolished front gate, that he’d been lucky. Only a few weeks ago, on the last day of February, Prince Henry, the son of Empress Maud and the rival to the throne of England, had landed a thousand men on England’s east coast. Naturally, King Stephen had marshalled an army to counter the young prince’s force.
Once Earl Ranulf’s spies had reported the landing, Ranulf had taken Stephen’s occupation with Henry as an opportunity to march an army of his own across England to besiege Lincoln Castle, which King Stephen had taken from him earlier in the war, back when Ranulf was playing both sides against the middle.
Hywel had lost track of how many times Ranulf had shifted his support from Maud to Stephen and back again in the last ten years. Now, however, Ranulf had forsworn all allegiance to any side but his own. If Earl Robert, Empress Maud’s general and half-brother, hadn’t been weakened by illness, Ranulf might have found himself fighting both Stephen’s forces and Maud’s at the same time. As it was, both sides appeared to have decided to treat him like a particularly annoying gnat, to be swatted at but not squashed.
Not yet, anyway.
In turn, Hywel, who’d simply been waiting to attack Mold until the end of the peace between Gwynedd and Chester, had force-marched his own men across Gwynedd. They’d crossed the Clwyd Mountains yesterday, learned that many of the castle’s defenders had been called away east, and decided not to wait another day to take the castle. Because they weren’t quite at the end of the four-month peace period, Hywel hadn’t notified Lord Morgan of his presence—though surely he knew of it by now—and the only men in his company were those he’d brought from Aber. It seemed somehow fitting, since it was their hearts that had been broken.
They’d assembled the siege engine, the pieces of which they’d hauled from Denbigh in carts, and begun the assault, knowing that this evening’s descending sun would be shining in the defenders’ eyes.
And, at last, he had a victory to share with his father.
Cynan came forward to hold the horse’s bridle while Hywel dismounted in the courtyard of the castle. Cynan’s younger brother, Madoc, was there too. The two brothers were built similarly—squat and muscular—but with opposite coloring, Cynan being light to Madoc’s dark.
Once Hywel was on the ground, Cynan tipped his head to indicate the English soldiers, who were all that was left of the garrison, standing off to one side. “What should we do with them, brother?”
“Strip them of their gear and send them home to Chester on foot,” Hywel said, without even stopping to think about his answer. He’d taken the castle, which was what he’d wanted and needed. Killing men who’d surrendered was unnecessary in this instance.
In addition, Ranulf had left only twenty men behind to garrison Mold. The eight who’d fallen were just the latest casualties in the ongoing war. If Hywel guessed right, from the look of the dozen men before him, Ranulf had left these few here because they were his least competent soldiers—the oldest and the youngest, the unfit for duty or the drunk. None of the men were worth ransoming, and they would cost Hywel more to feed than they’d be worth in ransom, even if Ranulf would consider it.
“What are our losses?” Hywel asked Cynan.
“Four, my lord.” Cynan couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “Four. Bards will sing of this day for generations to come.”
Hywel smiled too. “I will sing of it myself.”
But then Cynan’s brow furrowed, and he lowered his voice. “There is one thing, Hywel. I am loath to mar our victory, but Madoc found something in the castellan’s quarters I think you should see.”
“No gold, I assume,” Hywel said.
Cynan shook his head. “We didn’t expect it. Ranulf stripped Mold of everything valuable before he took his men east. No, it isn’t that.” He still hesitated, whatever was bothering him held on the tip of his tongue.
Hywel knew his brother better than he had four months ago. For the whole of Hywel’s life, he and Rhun had been natural allies. While they’d been different in some ways as two brothers could be, they had also been born two years apart to the same mother. They’d been blood brothers in fact and life, and for Hywel the loss of Rhun had affected him as if he’d cut off his right hand and left it on the ground at the ambush site.
These other brothers—Cynan, Madoc, and Cadell—though relatively close in age to Hywel, hadn’t been part of his life until recently. He was far closer to his foster brothers—seven of them—the sons of his foster father, Cadifor. Some of them were also here, called to Hywel’s side since Rhun’s death. Initially, Hywel had sent for them because he couldn’t bear to let any brother out of his sight, and then afterwards, he’d used them with intent.
Hywel, who had spent his life sniffing out intrigue among his father’s enemies could smell it now among his allies. They saw weakness in the king, and even if King Owain had loosened hold on his mind and the reins of Gwynedd, Hywel himself was by no means willing to let go.
Hywel and Cynan had ridden together to oust their uncle from his lands in Meirionnydd, and then—unable to bear the silence at Aber—Hywel had ridden south to Ceredigion to see Mari and his children and to bring them north with him when he returned, installing them at Rhun’s former castle of Dolwyddelan. Throughout, Cynan had never left his side.
He wasn’t Rhun, but he was doing his level best to be the brother Hywel needed. Despite Hywel’s grief and an underlying resentment of anyone who tried to fill Rhun’s shoes, Hywel was grateful.
Hywel himself was trying to do the same thing for his father, and he knew that he too was failing.
“Spit it out, Cynan.”
“It is a letter from the Sheriff of Shrewsbury to King Stephen.” Madoc stepped forward from where he’d been talking to Cadifor. “Ranulf appears to have intercepted it—and very recently. It’s dated this month.”
Hywel held out a hand to take the paper Madoc presented, even as the grave expressions on all three of the men who faced him had him feeling very wary. He looked down at the paper. To his dismay, his eyes swam with tears. He blinked them back. Hywel didn’t know if Madoc saw his distress, but he continued to speak, telling Hywel what was in the letter so he didn’t have to read it.
“It says that Cadwaladr was seen in the vicinity of Shrewsbury on St. Dafydd’s Day, though the sheriff calls it the first of March. He describes in detail the events of last November and asks for guidance as to how he should proceed, since he doesn’t know if the king intends to shelter Cadwaladr or return him to Gwynedd for justice.”
Hywel’s eyes had cleared as Madoc had been talking, and he was able to read the words for himself. Hywel’s comprehension of written English wasn’t good, but this had been written in Latin.
He looked up. “How far is it to Shrewsbury from here?”
“Fifty miles by road,” Cynan said. “But surely you’re not thinking of going? The men are tired.”
“The men may be tired, and deservedly so. But I am not—and I shouldn’t take an army into England anyway,” Hywel said, making an instant decision. “You and Madoc need to stay and consolidate our victory. I will ride with Cadell and a handful of men. We can make better time that way.”
His brothers now looked so concernedly at Hywel, it was almost comical. Hywel tried to suppress his smile at the sight.
Then Cadifor stepped forward. “My lord, I offer my services.”
Now Hywel grinned, whatever anxiety he’d felt earlier at the mention of Cadwaladr completely dissipated at the sight of his foster father’s craggy but earnest face. “I accept your offer—but not from anyone else.” He looked with fondness at his family, warmth overtaking the anger for once. It was such a foreign emotion that he almost didn’t recognize it for the love it was. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll bring ten men, including Evan and Gruffydd, just in case. Besides, Gareth is in Shrewsbury, remember? He knows how to keep me in line.”
Cynan’s expression actually cleared a little at the reminder, and now Hywel really did laugh out loud. They trusted Gareth more than they did him, as well they might. His brothers had probably spent some time every day during the last four months on their knees, thanking God that Hywel hadn’t yet behaved rashly in his desire to bring his uncle to justice.
As much as Hywel would have liked to have done exactly that, his family was wrong in thinking that he couldn’t contain his anger. He was a realist, and he knew that he was hampered by two inconvenient truths. The first was that he didn’t know exactly where his uncle was and was having difficulty finding out. Cadwaladr didn’t appear to be anywhere in Wales; Hywel’s Danish spy, Erik, had found no sign of him so far in Dublin or Ireland; and Hywel’s spy network in the March and England was sadly deficient.
And secondly, his father was at peace with both King Stephen of England and Robert of Gloucester. If Cadwaladr had sought sanctuary with either party, despite Hywel’s personal desires, he had sense enough not to jeopardize that peace with ill-considered action.
Like a cat stalking his prey or a snake lurking in the grass, Hywel could bide his time, waiting for the opportune moment. And then he would strike.