It was a pity—he hadn’t found any.
He had searched the woods along both sides of the riverbank.
Oaks, hazel trees, birches, and wild blackberry bushes were everywhere, but there was no sumac.
He still remembered the frost-covered berries and their salty taste, yet they did not seem to grow in this forest.
Perhaps the area was too remote, or perhaps it was simply the wrong season.
He set the matter aside and turned his attention back to hunting.
The game along the riverbank was far more plentiful than he had expected.
Every morning, when he went down to fetch water, he found fresh hoofprints pressed into the mud.
Red deer, roe deer, and wild boar had all left their marks.
Large and small, deep and shallow, the tracks overlapped one another in tangled layers.
He squatted on the bluestone beside the river and studied them as he drank.
The tracks emerged from the woods, crossed the muddy bank, and converged at the water’s edge.
Once the animals had finished drinking, they either returned the way they had come or followed the river downstream.
Every living creature in the forest had to visit this river eventually.
There was no need for him to venture deep into the woods in search of prey.
Sooner or later, the animals would come to him.
On the upwind side of the riverbank, he gathered several stones and stacked them into a low wall about half the height of a man.
It was just high enough to conceal him while he crouched behind it.
He filled the gaps between the stones with dead grass and branches.
From a distance, it looked like nothing more than a heap of rubble.
The wall stood roughly thirty paces from the riverbank, with no cover between it and the water.
At the first hint of dawn each morning, he would crouch behind it with his short axe beside him and a sharpened wooden spear resting across his knees.
The shaft was not perfectly straight, but the tip had been hardened over charcoal until it was almost as solid as stone.
After watching the riverbank for several days, however, he discovered something even more useful.
There was a path.
It was not a path used by humans, but one made by animals.
It ran out from the depths of the forest, passed through a patch of hazel trees, and sloped toward the riverbank.
Hoofprints covered the mud from one end to the other.
Old tracks had been trampled into shapeless depressions, only to be buried beneath fresher ones.
Red deer, roe deer, wild boar, and even the occasional wolf all used the same route.
Their tracks, deep and shallow, crowded together along the narrow trail.
It had neither been carved by humans nor formed naturally.
Over the years, countless animals had worn it into the earth as they came to drink.
Their hooves had struck the same stretch of ground again and again, tearing through grass roots and pressing gravel into the soil.
Eventually, they had stamped out a narrow, winding animal trail.
He moved his stone wall to the upwind side of the path, about twenty paces away.
A cluster of blackberry bushes grew between the wall and the trail, their tangled branches spreading in every direction.
The bushes were thick enough to obscure his silhouette while he crouched.
Through the gaps between the leaves and thorns, however, he could clearly see every creature that passed along the trail.
Hunting was a craft.
Strength alone was not enough.
Serfs did not hunt, not because the forests were empty, but because they possessed no bows and were forbidden from using them.
In a lord’s woodland, every beast belonged to the lord.
The red deer belonged to him, as did the wild boar.
Strictly speaking, even the rabbits darting through the undergrowth were his property.
Serfs were generally allowed to catch rabbits with snares, wooden sticks, or their bare hands.
Rabbits were small, slow, and bred quickly, so most lords chose to turn a blind eye.
But if a man entered the forest carrying a bow and dared to loose an arrow at a deer, he was no longer merely a serf gathering food.
He was a poacher.
Adrian had seen what happened to such men once, back in Northumbria.
A young man from a nearby village had killed a roe deer with a bow he had carved from elm wood.
Someone saw him carrying the carcass home and reported him to the baron’s steward.
The following day, the young man was hanged from the old oak tree in the center of the village.
His tongue hung from his mouth, his neck twisted to one side, and his face had turned purple.
He wore no shoes, and his bare toes dangled less than a foot above the ground.
The villagers walked beneath the tree without once looking up.
His woman knelt below the corpse.
She did not cry, but simply clasped her hands before her as though praying in church.
The steward stood nearby and watched until her voice became hoarse.
Only then did he order his men to drag her away.
The noose swayed gently in the wind.
Each movement produced the faint creaking of taut leather rope.
There were men employed specifically to deal with such matters in the lord’s forest.
They were hunters—or gamekeepers.
They were neither knights nor squires, but ordinary men who knew how to draw a bow, set snares, and identify every kind of hoofprint and dropping.
They hunted wolves for the lord, turning in the pelts and hanging the severed heads along the fence.
At times, they hunted deer as well.
The venison was sent to the castle, while the antlers were sawed off and mounted on the walls.
They were not noblemen, but they carried bows in their hands and knives at their waists.
Within the forest, their word was final.
Poachers feared these men far more than they feared the baron.
The baron would never crouch in the undergrowth searching for them, but the gamekeepers would.
Adrian crouched behind the blackberry bushes with the sharpened wooden spear resting across his knees.
He was a poacher now.
Or perhaps not entirely.
He was a knight of legitimate standing.
He possessed the proper documents and could trace his family lineage, so no one could question his status.
If he killed a deer in the wilderness and ate its meat, few men would dare interfere.
Even if this forest had a lord and the lord’s men caught him in the act, the law could do little against him.
A knight was neither a serf nor a commoner stealing game.
A lord could hang a poaching serf and display the corpse as a warning because the serf was considered his property.
When one piece of property stole another, the lord claimed the right to dispose of it as he pleased.
A knight, however, was a free man.
He had been dubbed, possessed a coat of arms, and was recognized by name under the laws of the kingdom.
A lord could not simply punish another man of rank, even if that knight currently held no fief, served no master, and owned little more than a sword and a short axe.
Under the laws of Mercia, hunting in another man’s woodland without permission was considered a civil dispute rather than a serious crime.
If the lord insisted on pursuing the matter in county court, the worst likely punishment would be an order to pay the value of the deer.
No one would hang a knight over a single animal.
Besides, it was not even clear whether this stretch of riverbank belonged to anyone.
Still, such matters were irrelevant for the moment.
Hunting large game remained difficult.
He had no bow, and his only ranged weapon was the wooden spear.
It was hardly suitable for bringing down a deer.
Throwing it from twenty paces away gave him little chance of striking a vital organ.
Even if fortune guided the spear into the animal’s body, a two-hundred-pound stag could still run half a mile before collapsing.
Close combat was equally foolish.
The hind legs of a red deer could strike with the force of iron hammers, while a wild boar’s tusks could tear open a man’s belly as easily as ripping through an old linen tunic.
These animals wore natural leather armor, and their horns, tusks, and claws were weapons refined over tens of thousands of years.
Facing them directly would be no different from challenging an armed opponent.
Countless lords had died on hunting grounds after being thrown from frightened horses, gored by wounded boars, or struck in the thigh by a stag’s antlers.
Once the great vessels inside the leg were pierced, their blood drained into the mud while their terrified squires stood helplessly around them.
Their faces would grow pale as paper before they died on the very land they claimed as their own.
Adrian had no intention of following in their footsteps.
The safest method was to build a trap.
And the best place to dig it was directly across the animal trail.