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well-placed tower-house, and easily defended at full strength.
    Only, Staward Peel was
not
at full strength.
    Its tower was already broken and badly maintained. Its walls, once as thick and strong as any in all Graynelore, had been breached many times in recent conflicts, and more poorly mended upon each event. The Elfwych could not depend upon it for their defence. They were a grayne in trouble; a surname in decline. Whatever gathering forces they could bring to their aid, we knew they would want to make their fight out in the open and on the run. In almost every way their misfortune was our advantage. And where it was not, our sheer weight in numbers would easily make the difference. For every fourth man Stain Elfwych could fetch up The Graynelord could fetch up ten. There would still be a hard fight, and killings, of course – no surname upon Graynelore would have it any other way – but the purpose of the Riding would be served. Old-man Wishard would get exactly what he was after.
    I, Rogrig Wishard, had ridden the raider’s trail often enough. I knew what was expected of a Riding. Ours was not an army of rank and file. This raid was to be far less a considered attack than it was a free-for-all. We did not advance in the way of a single tutored cavalry. Rather, we straddled the fells and the moorlands: a series of loose rabbles. Close kin preferring to rely on close kin for their aid. The members of each house making their own way and in their own time. (And as often as not…with their own intentions and intended victims.) Sometimes long chains of men sprawled thinly across the fells, steadily making their way on their hobby-horses (only a very few a-foot). Sometimes a thick knot of fighting-men moved together as one body: finding their strength and their bravery in their tightly gathered number. This had ever been Cloggie-Unthank’s preference. Each house had its own particular fighting tactics and stuck to them rigidly. On the principle that, if something had worked once before, it was certain to work again. (Not always a sensible provision, I fear.)
    For certain, there was to be no single great and glorious battle. What was expected here was a scourging. A series of melees and skirmishes taken up wherever they happened, rough-shod Ridings, and individual combats stretched out upon the day.
    Without a doubt, there were men among us who liked this fighting business a little too much – aye, and on both sides – fighters who would give no quarter, killing to the last man or woman…or child. Then there were those who would openly buy or sell their lives with whatever means they could offer if their sword arm could not do it for them. Sometimes a handful of coin was enough, or the gift of a horse or…or else the shaming of a young girl.
    It was in this way the Wishards were to answer the call of their Graynelord, and to make their mark upon the grayne of Stain Elfwych.
    I rode among members of my own house, with my greater cousins, and the elder-men of Dingly Dell. Together we made our own fighting band. By choice we rode, not in a close formation, but strung out at a distance; each rider keeping a watch for himself, but in sight of his nearest kin. We preferred having open ground between us – enough to swing a sword arm freely. Fight and flee; hit and run; the quick skirmish was ever our ploy.
    If I am to be truly honest, this Rogrig remembers very little of this particular Riding; the first of it that is: the setting out. (It was much like any other.) I can put scant detail to it.
    I must have ridden many a fell. Crossed and recrossed the many roots and stems of the River Winding. I must have passed settlements; each almost identical, with their heavy-walled farmhouses; their bastles, ugly and squat. (The men of Graynelore are not builders, not creators by nature. They are
all
fighters and thieves. What was made was of necessity – if it could not be stolen.) Their wary, weary occupants shut up inside with