Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

‘They both need to look like men-at-arms,’ Thomas said, ‘even if they’re not. And we need spare horses too. We’ll be riding hard.’

‘Ambush,’ Karyl said with relish.

‘Ambush,’ Thomas agreed, ‘and we need to make it quick, brutal and effective.’ Now that he was with his men he was feeling vengeful. Genevieve’s plight tortured him, even though he assumed she was merely a bargaining piece for Bertille, and Bertille was safe in Castillon d’Arbizon and he doubted that Sir Henri would release her without Thomas’s permission. All the same he wanted to avenge Genevieve, and the anger overflowed when, just before midday, they sprang the ambush.

It was simplicity itself. Keane and Brother Michael, the two men without mail or helmets, simply showed themselves in an olive grove that was visible to one of the bands searching the countryside. Those men whooped and hollered, put spurs to horses, drew swords and galloped. Keane and Brother Michael ran, vanishing from their pursuers into a small valley where Thomas’s men waited.

And the anger was spewed into sword-strokes. Six men were in the hunt and they were racing one another to catch the fugitives. The first two were mounted on small fast horses, and they outstripped their companions to gallop over the crest and down into the valley. Their horses were splashing through a tiny stream before they realised that they were in trouble. Thomas’s men closed from both sides as the remaining four hunters thundered over the skyline, saw the melee below, and desperately tried to curb and turn their horses.

Thomas kicked his horse up the slope. A man wearing the livery of Montpellier was trying to turn away, then changed his mind and swung his sword back at Thomas, who leaned left in the saddle, let the blade slide past his face, then brought his own sword in a savage blow that struck the back of the man’s neck just beneath the helmet rim. He did not bother to see what happened, he knew the man was out of the fight, just drove his horse higher up the slope and rammed the blade at a second man, as Arnaldus, one of the Gascons in the Hellequin, backswung a battleaxe into the man’s face. Karyl had hauled a man out of the saddle, now turned and stabbed down with his sword, and Thomas saw blood spurt higher than Karyl’s battered helmet. Keane was holding one of the first horsemen under the water, drowning him as the two hounds savaged a flailing arm.

Six men down in fewer seconds and not one of the Hellequin was injured. ‘Keane! Get the horses!’ Thomas shouted.

A second band of men had seen the first group spur northwards and they were now following, but the sight of mail-clad horsemen waiting at the top of the olive grove dissuaded them. They turned away.

‘You,’ Thomas pointed at Brother Michael, ‘find a coat of mail that fits you. Find a helmet, find a sword. Get a horse.’

They rode north.

Roland de Verrec ordered the horses tied in the ruined nave, then climbed the steep, narrow steps of the bell tower. There was no bell any more, just an open space. Each of the four walls was pierced by a wide arch, the roof was rotted rafters from which most of the tiles had fallen, while the floor creaked dangerously under the weight of his men. ‘The arrows will fly through the arches,’ Genevieve told him.

‘Be silent,’ he said and then, because he always tried to be courteous, added ‘please’. He was nervous. The horses stamped in the nave, someone called from the village, but otherwise the world seemed silent. Darkness was falling fast and throwing lumpy shadows across the graveyard next to the church. The graves had no markers. This village must have been struck hard by the terrible plague that had carried away so many souls, and the bodies lay in their shallow pits. Roland remembered seeing the wild dogs dig up plague victims. He had been a boy, and he had wept for the pity of seeing the dogs tear the rotting flesh of his mother’s tenants. His father had died, as had his only brother. His mother had said that the sickness was sent as a punishment for sin. ‘The English and the plague,’ she had said, ‘both are works of the devil.’

‘They say the English have the plague too,’ Roland had pointed out.

‘God is good,’ the widow had said.

‘But why did Father die?’ Roland had asked.

‘He was a sinner,’ his mother had said, though she had still turned her house into a shrine for her husband and for her eldest son, a shrine with candles and crucifixes, black hangings and a chantry priest who was paid to say masses for the father and heir who had died vomiting and bleeding. Then the English had come, and the widow was turned out of her land and had fled to the Count of Armagnac who was a distant cousin, and the count had raised Roland to be a warrior, but a warrior who knew that the world was a battlefield between God and the devil, between light and darkness, between good and evil. Now he watched the darkness darken as the shadows crept across the plague-humped land. The devil was out there, he thought, sliding through the dusk-blackened trees, a serpent coiling about the ruined church.

‘Perhaps they didn’t follow us,’ he said almost in a whisper.

‘Perhaps the first bows are being drawn now,’ Genevieve said, ‘or perhaps they’ll light a fire beneath us.’

‘Be quiet,’ he said, and his tone now was pleading, not commanding.

The first bats were flying. A dog barked in the village and was hushed. The dry branches of pine trees rattled in a small wind, and Roland closed his eyes and prayed to Saint Basil and Saint Denis, his two patron saints. He gripped his scabbarded sword, Durandal, and touched his forehead to the big pommel. ‘Let not evil come to me in this darkness,’ he prayed. ‘Make me good,’ he prayed as his mother had taught him.

A hoof sounded in the trees. He heard the creak of saddle leather and the chink of a bridle. A horse whinnied and there were more footsteps. ‘Jacques!’ a voice called from the dark. ‘Jacques! Are you there?’

Roland lifted his head. The first stars were glinting above the hilltops. Saint Basil’s mother had been a widow. ‘Let not my mother lose her only son,’ he prayed.

‘Jacques, you bastard!’ the voice shouted again. The men-at-arms sheltering in the tower looked at Roland, but he was still praying.

‘I’m here!’ Jacques Sollière called into the dark, ‘is that you, Philippe?’

‘I’m the Holy Ghost, you idiot,’ the man called Philippe shouted back.

‘Philippe!’ The men-at-arms in the tower were on their feet now, shouting a welcome.

‘They’re friends,’ Jacques told Roland, ‘the count’s men.’

‘Oh God,’ Roland breathed. He could not believe the relief that flooded through him, so much relief that he felt weak. He was no coward. No man who had faced Walter of Siegenthaler in the lists could be called a coward. The German had killed and maimed men in a score of tournaments, always claiming the carnage was an accident, but Roland had fought the man four times and humiliated him in every bout. He was no coward, but he had been terrified in this creeping dusk. War, he was realising, had no rules, and all the skill in the world might not be enough to help him survive.

Philippe appeared as a shadow beneath the tower. ‘The count sent us,’ he called up.

‘Labrouillade?’ Roland asked, though the question was unnecessary. The count’s men-at-arms had greeted their comrades familiarly.

‘The English are marching,’ Philippe explained. ‘Are you the Sire de Verrec?’

‘Yes. Where are the English?’

‘Somewhere north,’ Philippe said vaguely, ‘but that’s why we’re here. The count wants all his men-at-arms.’ More soldiers were coming from the dark, leading their horses into the ruined nave. ‘Can we light a fire?’