Footsteps in Time by Sarah Woodbury Page A

his
soldiers.”
    “ And they were still doing
this five hundred years from now?” Father said. “Sadly, I’m not
surprised.”
    David laughed and dropped
the boot to the floor. “The first president of our country was a
man named George Washington. He was hard pressed through a long
winter, with little support and fewer men. Many were dying from
infectious diseases and dysentery. He feared that many of the men
wouldn’t re-enlist at the New Year unless he had a victory to show
them, so he concocted a bold and unexpected plan.”
    “ Ha,” Father said. “I like
the man already.”
    “ On Christmas night, he
rowed his men across the Delaware River and force-marched them to a
town called Trenton, where the English mercenaries were sleeping
off their meal. Washington’s men attacked shortly after dawn and
completely routed the enemy. Nobody suspected that they would
attack on Christmas night—and in such bitterly cold
weather.”
    Father stretched out his legs towards
the fire and put his hands behind his head, leaning back in his
chair. “Your Uncle Dafydd tried something like this, with great
success, on Palm Sunday last year,” Father said. “Unfortunately,
Christmas is past.”
    “ It is bitterly cold,
though,” David said. “I understand that five years ago, during King
Edward’s march through Wales, he cleared the land of trees and
settlements so that we couldn’t ambush him—so we couldn’t use what
in the modern world we call ‘guerilla warfare’.”
    “ Yes,” Father said. “I
assume he will do so again, yet I’m loath to meet him on the open
field. He has more cavalry than we do, more soldiers in general,
and more experience with moving armies great distances.”
    “ Yet, the English are far
from home,” David said. “They’ll be marching with their supply
lines stretched out behind them. They expect to besiege us and
force us to sue for peace. What if we were to divide our men into
small groups and attack them at night? They may have cleared the
trees around their camps, but they still have to sleep, and we know
the terrain.”
    “ My castles are my
strength,” Father said. “I am loath to abandon
Dolwyddelan.”
    “ I didn’t mean that you
should,” David said. “But we can maximize their weaknesses. How
many rivers does Edward have to cross to reach us here?”
    “ About eight.”
    “ How far can our archers
shoot? I’ve heard many times that they are the best in the world.
I’m suggesting that we use them; that we plan a systematic,
guerilla-like attack to whittle down the English numbers and
demoralize them at the same time. We can blow through the English
at their most vulnerable moments—when they ford rivers and at
night. Yes, we need Uncle Dafydd to take Rhuddlan, but even more we
need to drive the English away.”
    Father sat up straight, his
hands gripping his knees. “I like it. I’ll like it even more if it
starts to rain as promised.”
    “ Why?” David
said.
    “ Because the rivers will
rise, the ground will become as soggy as a bog, and his men will be
camping in the rain without a fire or succor.”
    “ Of course, then, so will
we,” David said.
    “ Yes. But we like it.”
Father was looking at the fire as he said these words but then
glanced over at David. He was only half-joking. “Our men will know
that the weather is our ally.”
    Pause.
    “ How worried are you?”
David said.
    “ It may be a near thing.
This isn’t a comfortable world you’ve fallen into, my son.” He
hesitated. “We may not live through this.”
    “ I know,” David said,
though he’d not spent a single moment thinking about it. He
couldn’t.
    “ Don’t think on it,”
Father said. “We’ve still several days and many miles between us
and Edward. We’ll prepare as best we can, and pray, and wish for
the kind of luck that we’ve rarely had in the past but which seems
to have found us here at last.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    Uncle Dafydd and his men
vanished into the