He strode forward and swept the woman into his arms. For a moment, as he examined her battered face, rage owned him so completely that he lost hold of his sense.

Another figure darkened the threshold of the hut. A man, also wearing the livery of Arundal, strolled out, smiling and contented. Fixing his garments distracted him, and he was well away from the door before he noticed the many stares aimed at him.

His glance shot to his comrades, and then to Marcus. He tried a smile. “She was one of the thieves’ woman,” he said, assuming that explained it.

Marcus carried his burden over to some women and laid her among them. He returned to the tree, and gazed up at the thick limb. “We need three new nooses, I think.”

The red-haired man straightened with indignation. “You cannot. We are sworn to—”

“If I err, I will compensate him.”

His men prepared the tree. The condemned watched aghast as the ropes appeared and nooses were formed. A villager gladly braced his weight against the ladder set against the trunk.

Marcus waited, his head bursting.

Addis came to stand beside him. “You must not. You know that,” he said quietly.

“Are you saying my judgment is not just?”

“It is just, and I share your outrage, but this is unwise.”

“It is very wise. If I let them go, there will be no judgment at all. Arundal will not punish his own for killing a few Welsh villagers.”

Three of his archers were binding the men’s hands. The three soldiers reacted with horror at this evidence that Marcus was serious. The archers began pushing the first one toward the tree.

“Then do not let them go,” Addis suggested. “Bring them back to Anglesmore, and keep them until you are satisfied that there will be justice. But if you do this, the other marcher lords will see it as evidence that you cannot be trusted to protect England’s interests, and you will have a little war with Arundal even as you try to deal with Carwyn Hir.”

“Do not preach politics to me. This is not about that.”

“Nay, it is about powerless people made victims, and a woman raped by a man who expected no one who matters to object. It is their misfortune to have committed these crimes on the land of a man who has suffered such things himself. I understand that, but others will not.” He placed his hand on Marcus’s arm. “You must not do it this way.”

The darkness in his head left little room for Addis’s words, but they found a small place to settle all the same. He watched the first man get pushed and dragged up the ladder. He let the noose be fitted and tightened. All the while he felt that hand on his arm, beckoning him away from recklessness.