Winning His Spurs | Page 4

fast and far."
"I have, Cnut; I have not once stopped for breathing since I left
Erstwood. I have come to warn you of danger. The earl is preparing for
a raid."
Cnut laughed somewhat disdainfully.
"He has raided here before, and I trow has carried off no game. The
landless men of the forest can hold their own against a handful of
Norman knights and retainers in their own home."
"Ay," said Cuthbert, "but this will be no common raid. This morning
bands from all the holds within miles round are riding in, and at least
500 men-at-arms are likely to do chase today."
"Is it so?" said Cnut, while exclamations of surprise, but not of
apprehension, broke from those standing round. "If that be so, lad, you
have done us good service indeed. With fair warning we can slip
through the fingers of ten times 500 men, but if they came upon us
unawares, and hemmed us in it would fare but badly with us, though
we should, I doubt not give a good account of them before their
battle-axes and maces ended the strife. Have you any idea by which
road they will enter the forest, or what are their intentions?"
"I know not," Cuthbert said; "all that I gathered was that the earl
intended to sweep the forest, and to put an end to the breaches of the
laws, not to say of the rough treatment that his foresters have met with
at your hands. You had best, methinks, be off before Sir Walter and his
heavily-armed men are here. The forest, large as it is, will scarce hold
you both, and methinks you had best shift your quarters to Langholm
Chase until the storm has passed."
"To Langholm be it, then," said Cnut, "though I love not the place. Sir
John of Wortham is a worse neighbour by far than the earl. Against the
latter we bear no malice, he is a good knight and a fair lord; and could

he free himself of the Norman notions that the birds of the air, and the
beasts of the field, and the fishes of the water, all belong to Normans,
and that we Saxons have no share in them, I should have no quarrel
with him. He grinds not his neighbours, he is content with a fair tithe of
the produce, and as between man and man is a fair judge without
favour. The baron is a fiend incarnate; did he not fear that he would
lose by so doing, he would gladly cut the throats, or burn, or drown, or
hang every Saxon within twenty miles of his hold. He is a disgrace to
his order, and some day when our band gathers a little stronger, we will
burn his nest about his ears."
"It will be a hard nut to crack," Cuthbert said, laughing. "With such
arms as you have in the forest the enterprise would be something akin
to scaling the skies."
"Ladders and axes will go far, lad, and the Norman men-at-arms have
learned to dread our shafts. But enough of the baron; if we must be his
neighbours for a time, so be it."
"You have heard, my mates," he said, turning to his comrades gathered
around him, "what Cuthbert tells us. Are you of my opinion, that it is
better to move away till the storm is past, than to fight against heavy
odds, without much chance of either booty or victory?"
A general chorus proclaimed that the outlaws approved of the proposal
for a move to Langholm Chase. The preparations were simple. Bows
were taken down from the boughs on which they were hanging, quivers
slung across the backs, short cloaks thrown over the shoulders. The
deer was hurriedly dismembered, and the joints fastened to a pole slung
on the shoulders of two of the men. The drinking-cups, some of which
were of silver, looking strangely out of place among the rough horn
implements and platters, were bundled together, carried a short distance
and dropped among some thick bushes for safety; and then the band
started for Wortham.
With a cordial farewell and many thanks to Cuthbert, who declined
their invitations to accompany them, the retreat to Langholm
commenced.

Cuthbert, not knowing in which direction the bands were likely to
approach, remained for a while motionless, intently listening.
In a quarter of an hour he heard the distant note of a bugle.
It was answered in three different directions, and Cuthbert, who knew
every path and glade of the forest, was able pretty accurately to surmise
those by which the various bands were commencing to enter the wood.
Knowing that they were still a long way off, he advanced as rapidly as
he could in the direction in which they were