Free Rexanne Becnel by The Knight of Rosecliffe

sweeping gesture with his hand. “Go on with you. Reveal to your new English friends what the last true Welshman plots. I will not prevent you from your traitor’s mission,” he finished with a sneer.
    Newlin stood utterly still—save for a faint swaying forward and back, forward and back. “The stones of these lands grow. They sprout tall and sturdy, into fortress along the shores and rivers, even as the forests shrink away. ’Tis not for me to say if it is good or no. The world turns. Change comes.”
    “The world turns? The world—this world—in not turning.
And if there is to be any change, it will only be that as proscribed by nature,” Rhys countered. “An old man dies. His grandson is born and takes his place. The English think their grandsons can take the place of the Welsh who die here, but they are mistaken.
    “I know well the remainder of that superstitious chant,” he continued. “A fool might believe that the stones have grown, but darkness at noon? And heat in the winter?” He stared belligerently at the bard. “Not this year. The sun hangs as it always does. And the winter to follow the coming summer will be as cold a one as this year past. I’ve lived all my life in these wild woods. I know the signs. The English will not prevail. I will see to it.”
    Newlin sighed. “As you say, young Rhys. Your father fought this battle and now you do the same. But do you truly know your enemy?”
    “I know my enemy is just a man, and that he bleeds and dies like any other man.”
    “And loves like any other man.”
    Rhys made a sound of disgust. “But he does not love us. Begone, old man. This battle is for younger men than you. Braver men.”
    After a moment the bard shuffled away. Behind him, Rhys heard the nervous mutterings of his men. They might be afraid of Newlin, but he was not. Still, the bard had left him uneasy. What did he mean, that the English loved like other men? They loved to steal other men’s lands. Other men’s women. They planted their seed in Welshwomen’s bellies and peopled the land with their English bastards.
    Then he sucked in a harsh breath. Their English bastard! Suddenly he knew his way in. Randulf FitzHugh’s bastards. The man had sired three of them, and it was said he was a maudlin fool over them.
    They were his weakness and it was at that weakness Rhys must strike.
    A surge of power swept over Rhys. He would take FitzHugh’s children hostage. They were Josselyn’s children too, but he would not let that deter him. Still, a fragment memory
of the first baby—a little girl—stole unwonted into his mind. She’d been bright-eyed and merry, and though he’d been but a lad himself, Josselyn had encouraged him to play with her.
    It had been such an oddity to have a woman fussing over him. He’d been a motherless child with an unfeeling father, so Josselyn’s affection had drawn him like a flame draws the moth.
    But that had been another time, he reminded himself harshly. Before Josselyn’s betrayal had led to his father’s death. Before the English stranglehold had tightened. If he was to defeat his enemies, he could not let that sort of foolish sentiment distract him. He must use whatever tools he found in this war for survival.
    Even little children.

Five
     
     
    It was a good plan, Rhonwen conceded. In a head-to-head battle the Welsh could not defeat the English protected behind the stout walls of their fortress at Rosecliffe. But kidnapping, using hostages to force the English to abandon the castle—that might avoid bloodshed altogether. Still, Rhonwen listened to Rhys’s plan with mounting dismay.
    “They are but children,” she protested. “’Tis not right to use them so cruelly.”
    “Do you forget, Rhonwen, that I was but a child—that you were but a child—when the English came here?”
    “But they never used us poorly. They never kidnapped us.”
    “They used me,” Rhys muttered. Abruptly he turned away and Rhonwen frowned.
    “Randulf