Toby Clements - Kingmaker - Winter Pilgrims

John Perers follows.

‘Bit bloody strong that, ain’t it?’

If Riven is in the valley he will die, of that Thomas is sure. Someone will kill him or he will be drowned. But what if he is not?

He leads Perers northwards. They pick their way through the corpses that clot the field. Looters are bent-backed everywhere, using hatchets to remove rings from men’s fingers, stuffing their bags with weapons, purses, the silver livery badges that men wear, jewelled collars. Cruelty is everywhere. Mercy has fled.

Below to the left the ground gives way sharply, down to the river. It is too steep for men to climb up, and from their vantage point Thomas and Perers can look back and see the horror of the thing. While those higher up the slope are trying to escape the blades of King Edward’s men, those at the bottom are being forced chest-deep into the icy waters of the beck. They have cast off their armour where they can and are clinging to their companions. Some trust themselves to the flood and perhaps one or two make it. Most do not. Their linen-wadded jacks are blood- and water-soaked, heavier than armour, and they disappear under the waters with a final despairing wave to life.

Thomas cannot see Riven among their number, but that does not mean he is not there.

Still he walks on, something guides him, and farther downstream some of the northerners have managed to get across the river. Men are struggling to cross a ford, waist deep, shoulder deep, slipping on the treacherous stones under the surface. All order has broken down, and they are fighting one another to get across, turning their weapons on their friends, forcing one another down into the waters, and in the gloom it takes Thomas a moment to understand what he is looking at.

It is not a ford, but a dam of bodies.

So many of them have been drowned or killed and thrown into the waters that they are now piled the one on the other. They have risen above the river’s waters in a pile and now men are fighting to get across it, cutting and slashing at one other, trampling on the fallen, forcing them into the water the better to keep themselves dry.

Even Perers is aghast.

‘Dear Christ,’ he breathes. ‘Dear Christ.’

There is something about this concentration of cruelty that makes Thomas sure this is where Riven will be.

And that is when he sees him.

Not Riven. The giant.

He is forcing his way on to the dam, knocking down those before him with that pollaxe and then treading on them, battering them down into the waters. Building up the bridge for himself. Thomas remembers the giant’s fear of the water. Behind him is another man. For a moment Thomas cannot be sure. In the gathering gloom it might be anyone, but then, after a moment, he is certain of it.

Riven.

He has removed his harness, and now wears only bloodstained linen and hose, and he is using a short-bladed sword to stab any who impede him.

They are getting away.

Thomas has to stop them, but between them stand a thousand desperate northerners, too tightly packed to move their arms, let alone let him pass.

He turns to Perers.

‘Your bow,’ he says. ‘Let me have your bow.’

Perers shakes his head.

‘Worth more than my own wife, it is,’ he says.

‘Give it to me, now!’

It has come to this, this last moment. If Thomas does not do this now, he will never see Riven again.

Thomas stares at Perers. Perers hands the bow over. He is very reluctant.

‘A string! Quick! A string.’

Perers unwinds the string from his wrist.

‘You’ll be careful with it?’

‘For Christ’s sake! The arrows!’

But Perers only has one.

The giant is on the far bank now. He is stretching back to help Riven.

Thomas notches the arrow. He holds the bow down. Looks at Riven. Looks at the giant. He draws the bow, feeling that top-heaviness. It is an ugly bow, he thinks, unloved, rough. Perhaps that is perfect for this last thing he has to do? He raises it, holds the string to his cheek, his arms fluttering with the effort, and just as Riven scrambles past the giant up the far bank, he looses.

He misses.

But the giant pauses. He takes two staggering steps to his right, arches his back and drops the pollaxe.

‘God in heaven!’ Perers murmurs. ‘That was some shot.’

The giant tries to scrabble at something caught between his shoulder blades. He can’t reach it. He falls to his knees, then on to all fours. Riven turns back — perhaps the giant has shouted something?

‘Get an arrow!’ Thomas yells at Perers.

His eyes are fixed on Riven, who hesitates by the fallen giant, and for a moment Thomas thinks he might help him. But then Riven snatches up the pollaxe, turns and runs. The giant collapses in the snow.

‘Find an arrow!’ Thomas screams. He looks about too, but keeps one eye on Riven who is moving northwards along the far bank, scrabbling through the bare-branched undergrowth, slipping in the snow, leaving a trail of bloody footprints.

He is getting away. He is escaping.

Thomas casts aside his helmet and runs along the valley top, shadowing Riven. The ground is too steep to descend.

Perers follows.

‘My bow,’ he says.

Thomas ignores him. There is a great pile of corpses blocking his way, and there are caltrops scattered on the ground. He scrambles over them, still watching the shrinking figure of Riven, still looking for another arrow. He finds one, but the head is bent and curled back on itself. It will never fly true. He throws it aside. Runs on.

It is dusk now.

He will soon lose Riven in the dark.

He begins a prayer. ‘ Pater Noster, qui es in caelis . .’ Then he gives it up. Prayers are for later.

On the far bank Riven’s run is clumsy with fatigue as he stumbles through the trees, scrambles along the banks and wades through the river’s broken water where the valley walls press too steeply.

At last Thomas finds an arrow, sticking out of the ground in a rare patch of sodden earth. He pulls it out and runs to a spot between two low trees on the lip of the plateau.

Riven will pass below on the opposite bank any moment.

He notches the arrow and takes his stance.

The wind here is fitful, uncertain, blustering around the valley, gusting up the rise. He will have to be careful. He has but one shot, and then it will all be over.

For a moment he thinks he has lost Riven, but then he comes, a dark shape against the snow, moving like a spider. He climbs over a fallen bough among the trees on the edge of the copse. He seems exhausted, as if he will fall at any moment.

Thomas draws the string with the last ounces of his strength, getting his back into the bow, and he holds the stance for a long moment, and he waits, waits for the perfect moment, concentrating on nothing but Riven, who moves into line.

And then the bow explodes.

The arrow flits into the gloom and a chunk of the bow’s belly lashes against Thomas’s temple.

Darkness swallows him whole.

They moved up to the village of Lead in the morning and took over the little church surrounded by fishponds, and they have had nothing to eat or drink all day, and so when two of Hastings’s men bring in Sir John at dusk, Katherine is exhausted and so hungry that she does not at first recognise him.

His face and beard are crusted in blood. He cannot talk, and no one can tell what is wrong with him. Hastings’s men have removed his harness to lighten their load, they say, and they’d found it dented, but there seems to be no wound.

‘Face down he was,’ one of them goes on. ‘Almost drowning in the soup.’

She recognises him when she peels off his linen cap. He does not appear wounded, yet he lies there with waxy skin and anyone looking at him would have given him up for dead.