Read "Martin Valliant" by Warwick Deeping online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The Forest had sounded its war-horn, and the woods and heaths and leaf-hidden hamlets gave up their men. They gathered in Woodmere valley, foresters, laborers, charcoal burners, breeders of horses, swineherds, and a scattering of broken men. The gentry and their tenants were passably horsed and harnessed; the foresters had their bows; but there was many a fellow who had no more than an oak cudgel or a scythe blade lashed to a pole.
They brought cattle and sheep with them and tumbrils laden with sacks of flour. Booths were built, fires lit, scouts sent to watch the woodland ways and the gray menace of Troy Castle. The vault at Woodmere was emptied of its arms, and a new bridge built in place of Martin's single beam.