Free Tuck by Stephen R. Lawhead

directly overhead. The soldiers, awake now and ready, strained their ears in the drowsy quiet of the wood as, above the whir and buzz of insects, the first faint chimes of a church bell sounded across the valley—far off, but distinct: three peals.
    Then silence.
    They listened, and they heard the signal repeated. After another lengthy pause, the sequence of three peals sounded for the third and last time.
    After the second sequence had sounded, Marshal Gysburne, pressing himself to the ground, craned his neck from his hiding place behind an ash tree and looked down the long slope and into the bowl of the valley, where he saw a faint glimmering: Abbot Hugo and his white-robed monks making their way toward the forest. They came on, slow as snails it seemed to an increasingly impatient Gysburne, who like the other knights was sweating and stiff inside his armour. He inched back behind the tree and listened to the greenwood, hoping to catch any telltale sign of the outlaws’ presence.
    When at last the abbot’s party came within arrow-flight of the edge of the wood, a call like that of a raven sounded from the upper branches of a massive elm tree. The party of white-robed monks surrounding the abbot heard it, too, and as if acting upon a previously agreed signal, stopped at once.
    The raucous croak sounded twice more—not quite a bird’s cry, Gysburne thought, but certainly not human, either. He scanned the upper branches for the source of the sound, and when he looked back, there, poised at the edge of the tree line, stood the slender young man known as Bran ap Brychan.
    “Ah!” gasped Gysburne in surprise.
    “Where the devil did he come from?” muttered Sergeant Jeremias from his place on the other side of the ash tree.
    Dressed all in black, his dark hair lifting in the breeze, for an instant it seemed to the soldiers that he might indeed have been a raven dropped out of the sky to assume the form of a man. He stood motionless, clutching a longbow in his left hand; at his belt hung a bag of dark arrows.
    “Had I one of those bows,” Jeremias whispered, “I’d take him now, and save us all a load of bother.”
    “Shh!” hissed Gysburne in a tense whisper. “He’ll hear you.”
    When the outlaw made no move to approach the group of monks, the abbot called out, “M’entendre! Nous avons fait comme vous avez ordonné. Quel est pour arriver maintenant?”
    Marshal Gysburne heard this with a sinking heart. You old fool! he thought, the outlaws don’t speak French. He’ll have no idea what you’re saying.
    But to the marshal’s surprise, the young man answered, “Attente! Un moment!”
    He turned and gestured toward the wood behind him, and there was a rustling of leaves in the brush like a bear waking up; and out from the greenwood stepped the slump-shouldered Norman scribe—the one called Odo.
    The two advanced a few more paces into the open, and then halted. At a nod from Bran, the scribe called out, “Have you come to swear peace?”
    “I have come as requested,” replied Abbot Hugo, “to hear what this man has proposed.” Regarding the young scribe, he said, “Greetings, Odo. I suppose I should not be surprised to see you here—traitors and thieves flock together, eh?”
    Odo cringed at his former master’s abuse, but turned and explained to Bran what the abbot had said, received his lord’s answer, and replied, “The proposal is simple. Lord Bran says that you will agree to the terms put to you, or he will pursue the war he has begun.”
    “Even if I were to agree,” replied the abbot, “we must still discuss how the rule of Elfael is to be divided, and how we are to conduct the peace. Come, let us sit down together and talk as men.”
    Odo and Bran exchanged a quick word, then Odo replied, “First, my lord would have you swear a truce. You must promise to cease all aggression against himself and his people. Then he will parlera with you.”
    The abbot and his monks held a quick