‘Mathrafal?’ I repeated, making sure that I had heard him correctly. It did not seem like a word at all, but rather the kind of noise one might make when drawing forth phlegm to spit. An evil-sounding name, for certain.
‘That is where the usurpers are mustering their forces,’ Ithel replied. ‘Or at least so they say.’
I had no fears regarding their honesty. Knowing that their very lives depended on giving us the answers we wanted, these men would not think to lie. ‘How far is it from here?’
He shrugged. ‘A full day’s march by the old road, I should think, and longer if we strike out across the hills. I have never been there, though I have heard of it, so I cannot say for certain.’
‘Then find me someone who has,’ I said.
The morning’s skirmish had not quenched my thirst for battle, and though I would not admit it I was contemplating riding ahead to this place Mathrafal, if only to see for myself the enemy camp and find out how many they truly numbered.
One of the captured foemen was soon dragged before me. Unlike most of his countrymen, who took care of their appearance and usually went clean-shaven, he wore a straggling beard, and most of his top row of teeth was either broken or missing, so that when he did speak it was with something of a lisp. He was decked out in mail, although it was too big for his frame, and I guessed he had won it as plunder, for he did not look rich enough to be able to afford it otherwise.
‘Who is this?’ I asked.
‘He calls himself Haerarddur,’ said Ithel. ‘He was the leader of this war-band.’
I raised an eyebrow. Their leader he might have been, but he was a poor one if he had thrown down his sword while around him his countrymen had continued to fight. From the way that he trembled as he was forced to his knees in front of me, certainly I would not trust him to hold the shield-wall or to rally a battle-line.
‘Tell him to describe Mathrafal for me,’ I said.
I waited while Ithel put the question to him and the answer was given.
‘He says it is some years since he was last there,’ said the ruddy-faced Welshman. ‘As he remembers, though, it is little more than a village. It sits at the bottom of a broad river plain, surrounded all about by pastureland and hay-meadows, with a great hall at its centre.’
‘Then why muster there?’ I mused aloud. It did not sound like a place that would be easily defensible.
‘It is the stronghold and ancestral home of Bleddyn and Rhiwallon. The heart of the kingdom of Powys, and, some would say, of Wales itself.’
A natural rallying point, from the sounds of it. ‘This hall,’ I said as my own back at Earnford rose to mind, ‘how well is it protected? Is there a wall, a rampart, a stockade?’
He frowned. ‘You aren’t thinking of attacking them, surely?’
‘Just ask him,’ I said, though I knew that Ithel was right. Regardless of what defences the enemy might or might not possess, we lacked the men to go marching straight into the heart of their camp. Besides, somewhere to the north Earl Hugues’s army would be beginning to march; his scouts would be watching them, waiting for the most opportune moment when he could make his attack. All I had to do was distract the enemy enough to divide their attention and draw them out. That was the task that Fitz Osbern had presented me with, and even though I did not much like it, that was what I had sworn to do.
‘A stockade, yes,’ Ithel again came back with the answer. ‘A water channel runs around the entire circuit, fed by the nearby river. There are two gates: one at the southern end and the other at the western side where the road descends from the village.’
I turned my gaze towards Haerarddur himself, trying to discern whether or not he was speaking the truth. There had been no mention of a tower or a mound, or anything more substantial than that. It was beginning to sound less like the castle that I imagined than a simple holdfast, a refuge in times of need. The trickiest obstacle to any potential attacker would be the moat, and yet depending on how wide and deep it proved, even that need not necessarily pose much of a problem. Still, useful though it was to have, none of that information was enough to tempt me: there was nothing to be had in risking our party unless victory could be all but assured, as it had been today.
‘Very well,’ I said to Ithel. ‘Unbind the others and let them go.’
‘And this one?’
‘We’ll bring him with us. If we discover that he’s been lying to us, then his life will be forfeit.’