Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

‘We must go on doing well, sire.’

‘Is that the boy prince?’ The Prince of Wales had seen the golden coronet surmounting a polished helmet in the French ranks and knew, from the largest banner, that the dauphin must be part of this attack.

‘A prince, certainly,’ Sir Reginald said, ‘or maybe a substitute?’

‘Real prince or not,’ the real English prince said, ‘it would be courteous to pay him my compliments.’ He grinned, swung his leg over his saddle’s high cantle, and dropped to the turf where he reached out to his squire. ‘Shield,’ he said, stretching out his left hand, ‘and an axe, I think.’

‘Sire!’ Sir Reginald called, then fell silent. The prince was doing his duty and the devil was rolling the dice, and advising the prince to be cautious would achieve nothing.

‘Sir Reginald?’ the prince asked.

‘Nothing, sire, nothing.’

The prince half smiled. ‘What will be, Sir Reginald, will be.’ He snapped down his visor and pushed through the English ranks to face the French. His chosen knights, there to protect the heir to England’s throne, followed.

The enemy saw his bright jupon, recognised the insolent French arms quartered on his broad chest, and gave a roar of challenge and anger.

Then charged again.

Fifteen

Thomas reached the hilltop just as the battle was widening. The French had forced their way through the gaps in the hedge and were spreading along its length, while others were hacking through the thick brambles to make new gaps. Somewhere to Thomas’s right a man shouted, ‘Archers! Archers! Here!’

Thomas slid from his saddle. His men were arriving in small groups and adding themselves to the left of the English line, which was not yet engaged, but he ran behind the line to where the call had sounded. Then he saw what had provoked the shout. Two crossbowmen had found a way to the hedge’s centre with their pavisiers, and they were shooting into the Earl of Warwick’s men. He paused to string his bow, placing one end on a protruding tree root and bending the other with his left hand so he could slip the loop of the cord onto the nocked horn at the bow’s upper end. Most men could not even bend a bow sufficiently to string it, but he did it without thinking, then took a flesh arrow from his bag, shouldered his way through the rearmost ranks and drew the cord. Both crossbowmen were about thirty paces away and both were being sheltered by their vast shields, which meant they were cranking the handles that rewound their cords. ‘With you,’ a voice said, and he saw Roger of Norfolk, known to everyone as Poxface, had joined him with his bow drawn. ‘Yours is the one on the left,’ Thomas said.

The shield of the man on the right suddenly swung to one side and the crossbowman was there, kneeling, his weapon aimed at the English men-at-arms. Thomas loosed, and the arrow took the French archer in the face. The man fell backwards, his finger reflexively tightening on the trigger so that his crossbow shot, and the bolt seared into the sky, then the man beside him spun away with Poxface’s arrow in his chest. Thomas had already drawn again and sunk an arrow into the back of the fleeing pavisier. ‘I love archers,’ one of the men-at-arms said.

‘You can marry me,’ Poxface said, and there was a burst of laughter, then a shout because a mass of Frenchmen was coming along the hedge’s inner face.

‘Hold them back, fellows, hold them back!’ a voice roared. The Earl of Oxford was behind the line now. His horse had a streak of blood on its rump where the stump of a crossbow bolt showed. Thomas pushed his way free of the tight ranks and ran back to the left where his men-at-arms were extending the line.

‘Close up to the hedge!’ Thomas called.

Keane was collecting abandoned horses, picketing them to a low oak branch. The archers were stringing their bows, though they had no targets because the men-at-arms concealed the enemy. ‘Sam! Watch the end of the hedge!’ Thomas called. ‘Let me know if the bastards try to come around.’ He doubted they would, the slope steepened there, which would make it a difficult place for the French to attack, but the archers could hold that flank against anything but the most determined assault.

The danger was inside the hedge where the French, sensing they were reaching the end of their enemy’s line, were making rushes. A group of men would assault together, screaming their war shout. The drums were still beating. Trumpets were braying beyond the hedge, encouraging the French to break this enemy. Break them and split them and drive them back into the forest where they could be hunted down and slaughtered. That would be vengeance for all the damage the English had caused across France, for the burned cottages and slaughtered livestock, for the captured castles and weeping widows, for the countless rapes and stolen treasures. And so they came with renewed anger.

Thomas’s men-at-arms were fighting now. If they broke there was nothing beyond them, but Karyl was standing like a rock, daring the French to come within range of his mace. They dared. There was a shout, a rush, and men were beating at each other with axes, maces and war hammers. A Frenchman latched his poleaxe over Ralph of Chester’s espalier and pulled him hard, and the Englishman stumbled forward, dragged by the hook in his shoulder armour, and a mace slammed into the side of his helmet; he fell, and another Frenchman swung an axe to split his backplate. Thomas saw Ralph jerking; he could not hear his screams over the battle noise, but the mace slammed down again and Ralph went still. Karyl landed a glancing blow on the killer’s arm, just enough to drive him back, but the French came again, sensing victory, and the clash of steel on wood and steel on iron was deafening.

Thomas laid his bow and his arrow bag at the tree line and forced his way into the line. There was an axe on the ground and he picked it up. ‘Get back,’ someone told him. Thomas wore nothing but mail and leather, and this was a place where men were sheathed in steel, but Thomas pushed into the second rank and used his archer’s strength to swing the axe overhead, bringing its weighted blade down hard onto a French helmet and the weapon went through plume, steel and skull. The axe had been swung with such force that its blade had bitten deep into the enemy’s chest cavity where it was trapped by a mangle of ribs, flesh, and steel. A mist of blood flared in the morning sun as Thomas tried to pull the weapon free, and a stout, broad-chested man wearing a snouted helmet saw his chance and rammed a shortened lance at Thomas’s belly. Arnaldus, the Gascon, hit the man with an axe, knocking his head sideways, and Thomas abandoned his axe and seized the lance, pulling it to drag the man into his ranks where he could be killed, and the man pulled back. Karyl swung the mace and the snout-visor was knocked free, dangling from one hinge, and the Frenchman still would not abandon the lance. He was snarling, screaming insults, and Karyl slammed his mace into the moustached face, crushing the nose and breaking teeth, and now the man, his face a mask of blood, tried to ram the lance forward again, but Karyl punched the mace a second time and Arnaldus brought his axe down onto the man’s shoulder, splitting his espalier, and the enemy went down onto his knees, spitting blood and teeth, and Arnaldus finished him with a mighty swing of the axe and kicked the kneeling body back towards the French.

The battle was now shrunken to the distance a man’s weapon could reach. Enemy could smell enemy, smell the shit as bowels emptied in terror, smell the wine and ale on their breath, smell the blood that slicked the grass. There would be a brutal bout of fighting, then a pause as men pulled back and caught their breath. Thomas had picked up the shortened lance. He had no idea where his own weapons were, presumably on a packhorse that might have been brought up the hill. The lance must do for now. The French, of whom he could see perhaps a hundred close by, were watching through closed visors. Most wore a livery of pale blue with two red stars. He wondered which lord they served and whether the lord was among them. They watched, they judged, they were readying for another charge. Thomas’s archers were holding poleaxes or maces. The Welsh archers were singing a battle song in their own language. Thomas assumed it celebrated a victory over the English, but if it helped them break the French then they could sing of English defeats till hell froze over.