“Go ye not too near unto him, lest ye disturb his sleep, for little might the twain of ye do against him ah ye hurtled with him.”
“Nay, young master, but we are many; he is one.”
“Nay, I see but two of ye.”
“Aye, but others fill the forest and they have sent us to ask of him whether it be true as they say, that he is Feargus through whom king Penda was slain, for so we are told by men of the North English.”
Then Torfrida turned and went within the barrier, saying, “Surely he will best answer you himself.” And so she said to Feargus in Gaelic, “Arise, beloved one, for our troubles seem but begun; arise and lift with thee thy bow with arrow ready, for our foes are about us on every hand. Safer I doubt we would be among the wolves of the west than here.”
Then Feargus arose and stood before his enemies.
“What dost want?” said he, “that I may not be left in peace here in the greenwood?”
“They say thou art Feargus the Pict, the captain of king Penda.”
“And what if I be Feargus: what is’t that I owe thee?—nothing. Forget ye not that Osbert would not wait but forced me to fight, and so we both broke tryst with the king at the last, yet I served him right well—as well as the best of ye his own kin; and my men, who knew that Feargus would never desert his master, thought me dead and all died for Penda and stood to him saving his name when his own Mercians fled and left him. And what did Feargus himself do? Did not the king say that he it was who won the fight with king Sigmund by Trent water and at Mansfield town, and he had no small share in the victory at Camulodunum over king Anna of the East Anglians. So what is’t that he owes ye?”
“Aye, but Feargus lost the cause at the last, so that all his deeds were of little profit. He is a traitor and we will slay him.”