3 stars & 3/10 hearts. I enjoyed this story. The characters, which is obviously Sutcliff’s forte, are absolutely amazing. I love Bevis so much, and he and Randal are an amazing pair. Sir Everard is a dear, and so are so many of the other characters. There were mentions of magic, & a capital G for a false god; also some swearing; and also Ancet was a witch. So I disliked that part. I think I’d reread this book, but I would skip certain parts. It’s definitely not my favourite Sutcliff book, but it was still a good read.

A Favourite Beautiful Quote: “[O]ut of the darkness of the river winds below them rose one clear, perfect note of birdsong, long drawn and insistent, repeated again and again, then breaking into a shining spray of notes, a cascade of runs and phrases that seemed to shimmer on the ear. it was a song that the two young men … had heard often enough before; but surely it had never sounded quite like this, so that it was one with the white flood of moonlight and the smell of the elder flowers.”
A Favourite Humorous Quote: ”[H]e longed to catch hold of the girl and shake her[.] But the feeling was mingled with an exasperating helplessness, because he knew the ways of men and hound but not girls, and certainly, save for giving her the shaking, which he supposed regretfully was out of the question, he had not the faintest idea how to deal with a girl as angry as this one seemed to be.
“’Gervaise is trying out a new horse in the river field,’ he heard his own voice saying with careful courtesy[.] ‘Maybe you would like o come and watch him, Mistress Gisella.’
“She swung round and stood looking at him[.] ‘You sound just as though I was four years old and you were trying to coax me out of here with a sweetmeat.’
“That, Randal realized with fresh exasperation, was perfectly true.”