El Campeador by Griff Hosker

Author:Griff Hosker [Hosker, Griff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sword Books Ltd
Published: 2020-03-24T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

This had been a battle in which both kings had sought to test the other’s weaknesses. We had found theirs and won. King Alfonso would lick his wounds and try to find a way to defeat us the next time we fought. We had too few men to invade King Alfonso’s kingdom and so we entered Valladolid and demanded tribute from that city. We returned home using the river and took tribute from all of the border towns. King Sancho took half of the tribute, but he was generous and the army which followed him was given the other half. King Sancho was pleased that it had been his strategy and battle plan which had succeeded and not Rodrigo’s. I do not say that King Sancho was jealous of El Campeador, but it must have been hard for him to hear his knights extolling the virtues and prowess of the Armiger Regis.

After parting from the rest of the army and with wagons groaning under the booty and the pay we had been given we headed home to a strong castle and women who were pleased to see us. Maria, Anna and Isabelle must have kept watch for us along the road as they were at the gate to greet us as we rode through the gates. I think that they were surprised by the size of our column for we had grown in number. Our army had not lost many men in the battle but the men at arms who had defended King Sancho had been more than hard-pressed. They had fought valiantly, and some had died. Many of the men who fought were men such as my father and his friend Alfonso who had been swords for hire. Unlike my father they had not settled down when they had married. They had taken their families with them. Such an occurrence was not unusual and the camps of the armies which moved around from battle to battle had many such women and children. The women cooked for men and the companies of men paid the women. The children were similarly employed. If an army was victorious then there was plenty of coin to be spread around. Defeat was always a disaster! When we had headed to Valladolid, I was approached by two of the women who had lost their men. These were pragmatic women and the two had found warriors who were willing to continue the arrangement begun by their dead men. However, neither of the warriors wished to be encumbered with another man’s children and the two women had but one child each, in both cases, a boy and they asked if I would be willing to train them. The two youths, for they both looked to be twelve summers old, were also keen to be trained. If you were a camp brat then, inevitably, you would gravitate towards a life with a sword in your hand. Your father normally trained you enough to protect their camp and if they had no one in their life to train them then they would seek another.

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