“We need a horse for this,” Bertrand said, pointing to the corpse. “I must have one.”
“Leave it,” Richard told him. “That will slow us down. Let the ravens have it, if they want!”
“Nay,” Bertrand said, looking at me. “I can not, for the boy.”
Then Bertrand’s own horse, Fire, who had escaped and would not be led by any Norman, was brought to us. Bertrand gently hoisted Neatsfoot’s body across his back, face down, and then he led it, naked as he was, away from the spring, with the rain now easing up and the morning beginning to reclothe its bright, warm self in the midst of darkness.
“Where’s the Baron?” Bertrand asked as we walked back, barefoot, towards the other horses that the forest men now kept.
“They’re gone,” Richard announced. “But never for long. Medeems that the Baron will fo
