The abbot frowned and fumed, unwilling to accept a word of it. Count Falkes, on the other hand, appeared pleased and relieved; he replied, "For my part, I believe you have acted in good faith, Abbot." Turning towards the gallows, where everyone stood looking on in almost breathless anticipation, he shouted, "Relacher les prisonniers!"

Marshal Guy turned to the gaoler and relayed the command to release the prisoners. As Gulbert proceeded to unlock the shackles that would free the chain, Sheriff de Glanville rushed to the edge of the platform. "What are you doing?"

"Letting them go," replied Gysburne. "The stolen goods have been returned. The count has commanded their release." He gave de Glanville a sour smile. "It would appear your little diversion is ruined."

"Oh, is it?" he said, his voice dripping venom. "The count and abbot may be taken in by these rogues, but I am not. These three will hang as planned."

"I wouldn't-"

"No? That is the difference between us, Gysburne. I very much would." He turned and called to his men. "Proceed with the hanging!"

"You're insane," growled the marshal. "You kill these men for no reason."

"The murder of my soldiers in the forest is all the reason I need. These barbarians will learn to fear the king's justice."

"This isn't justice," Guy answered, "it is revenge. What happened in the forest was your fault, and these men had nothing to do with it. Where is the justice in that?"

The sheriff signalled the hangman, who, with the help of three other soldiers, proceeded to haul on the rope attached to the old man's neck. There came a strangled choking sound as the elderly captive's feet left the rough planking of the platform.

"It is the only law these brute British know, Marshal," remarked the sheriff as he turned to watch the first man kick and swing. "They cannot protect their rebel king and thumb the nose at us. We will not be played for fools."

He was still speaking when the arrow sliced the air over his shoulder and knocked the hangman backwards off his feet and over the edge of the platform. Two more arrows followed the first so quickly that they seemed to strike as one, and two of the three soldiers hauling on the noose rope simply dropped off the platform. The third soldier suddenly found himself alone on the scaffold. Unable to hold the weight of the struggling prisoner, he released the rope. The old man scrambled away, and the soldier threw his hands into the air to show that he was no longer a threat.

The sheriff, his face a rictus of rage, spun around, searching the crowd for the source of the attack as an uncanny quiet settled over the astonished and terrified crowd. No one moved.

For an instant, the only sound to be heard was the crack of the bonfire and the rippling flutter of the torches. And then, into the flame-flickering silence there arose a horrendous, teeth-clenching, bone-grating shriek-as if all the demons of hell were tormenting a doomed soul. The sound seemed to hang in the cold night air; and as if chilled by the awful cry, the rain, which had been pattering down fitfully till now, turned to snow.

De Glanville caught a movement in the shadows behind the church. "There!" he cried. "There they go! Take them!"

Marshal Gysburne drew his sword and flourished it in the air. He called to his men to follow him and started pushing through the crowd towards the church. They had almost reached the bonfire when out from its flaming centre-as if spat from the red heat of the fire itself-leapt the black feathered phantom: King Raven.

One look at that smooth black, skull-like head with its high feathered crest and the improbably long, cruelly pointed beak, and the Cymry cried out, "Rhi Bran!"

The soldiers halted as the creature spread its wings and raised its beak to the black sky above and loosed a tremendous shriek that seemed to shake the ground.

Out from behind the curtain of flame streaked an arrow. Guy, in the fore rank of his men, caught the movement and instinctively raised his shield; the arrow slammed into it with the blow of a mason's hammer, knocking the ironclad rim against his face and opening a cut across his nose and cheek. Gysburne went down.

"Rhi Bran y Hud!" shouted the Cymry, their faces hopeful in the flickering light of the Twelfth Night bonfire. "Rhi Bran y Hud!"

"Kill him! Kill him!" screamed the sheriff. "Do not let him escape! Kill him!"

The shout was still hanging in the air as two arrows flew out from the flames, streaking towards the sheriff, who was commanding the gallows platform as if it was the deck of a ship and he the captain. The missiles hissed as they ripped through the slow-falling snow. One struck the gallows upright; the other caught de Glanville high in the shoulder as he dived to abandon his post.

Suddenly, the air was alive with singing arrows. They seemed to strike everywhere at once, blurred streaks nearly invisible in the dim and flickering light. Fizzing and hissing through the snow-filled air, they came-each one taking a Ffreinc soldier down with it. Three flaming shafts arose from the bonfire, describing lazy arcs in the darkness. The fire arrows fell on the gallows, kindling the post and now-empty platform.

Count Falkes, transfixed by the sight of the phantom, stood as arrows whirred like angry wasps around him. He had heard so much about this creature, whom he had so often dismissed as the fevered imaginings of weak and superstitious minds. Yet here he was-strange and terrible and, God help us all, magnificent in his killing wrath.

The last thing Falkes de Braose saw was Sheriff de Glanville, eyes glazed, clutching the shaft of the arrow that had pierced his shoulder, passed through, and protruded out his back. The sheriff, staggering like a drunk, lurched forward, dagger in his hand, struggling to reach the phantom of the wood.

Count Falkes turned and started after the sheriff to drag him back away and out of danger. He took but two steps and called out to de Glanville. The word ended in a sudden, sickening gush as an arrow struck him squarely in the chest and threw him down on his back. He felt the cold wet mud against the back of his head and then… nothing.

See now, Odo," I tell my dull if dutiful scribe, "we did not plan to attack the sheriff and his men-we were sorely out-manned, as you well know-but we came ready to lend muscle to Abbot Daffyd's demand to stop the hangings."

"But you killed four men and wounded seven," Odo points out. "You must have known it would come to a fight."

"Bran suspected the sheriff would betray himself, and he wanted to be there to prevent the executions if it came to that. As it happens, he was right. So, if you're looking for someone to blame for the Twelfth Night slaughter, you need look no further than Richard de Glanville's door."

Odo accepts this without further question, and we resume our slow dance towards my own appointment with the hangman. Bran was angry. Furious. I'd never seen him so enraged-not even in the heat of battle. When fighting, an icy calm descended over him. With swift but studied motion, he bent the belly of the bow and sent shaft after shaft of winged death to bite deep into enemy flesh. He did not exult; neither did he rage. But this! This was something different-a black, impenetrable fury had swept him up, and he shook with it as he stalked around the fire ring in his hut, his face twisted into a rictus of ferocity. Like a terrible, monstrous beast, anger had consumed him completely.

Seeing him now, a body would not have known him as the same man from the night before. For as we stood in the town square on Twelfth Night and the realisation broke upon us that Sheriff Bloody de Glanville would hang those three men even after recovering the treasure, Bran simply turned to us as we gathered close about and said in a low voice, "String your bows."