I heard the drumbeats of hooves and wakened from what had been an exhausted slumber. I sat up quickly, opened my mouth to shout a warning and closed it again very quickly. Thinking that it might be Father or even Robert, I lay still with my eyes open in hope.
That was perhaps the worst decision I had ever made in my life; or perhaps the best.
The horsemen came onto the sleeping camp like a torrent. They did not say a word until they were amongst us and then they gave a series of co-ordinated yells that raised the small hairs on the back of my head.
"An Armstrong! An Armstrong!"
There was instant consternation in the camp as the youths rose to meet this threat. I saw the Yorling raise his sword, to be instantly knocked to the ground; I saw the young boy who was saved from the hangman"s
