A Flight of Arrows

by A. J. MacKenzie

  Doria frowned. ‘Do they think they can hit us at this range?’

  ‘We’re about to find out…’

  The air whispered, and then was torn apart by the passage of a thousand arrows. One hit the captain in the neck, two more piercing his body, and he fell to the ground. Doria’s horse was hit in the same instant, and the animal collapsed and pitched him out of the saddle. He fell heavily, rising with his white surcoat stained with mud, and stared in disbelief. The air was full of whistling death, arrows falling from the sky in clouds; all around him men were going down in heaps, their coats stained with blood.

  ‘Retreat!’ he shouted to the trumpeter, but the trumpeter was already dead.

  The rest of the Genoese had not waited for the signal; they were running, desperate to get away from that hideous rain of arrows. Doria followed them, gasping as he laboured on foot. The French horsemen crowded forward, and he heard Alençon’s voice raging at the Genoese. ‘Stand firm! Stand firm, you bastards!’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Doria screamed. ‘Can’t you see what is happening? They are slaughtering us!’

  ‘Cowards!’ Alençon spat. ‘Cowards and traitors, all of you! Come on!’ he shouted to his men. ‘Ride the bastards down!’

  ‘No!’ Doria yelled, but it was too late. Lowering their lances, Alençon’s men charged straight into the packed mass of crossbowmen, and the killing began.

  * * *

  The Genoese had betrayed them; that much was clear. They had taken English bribes and were refusing to fight. Alençon rammed his lance through the body of one crossbowman, felt the lance shatter, dropped the butt and drew his sword, slashing at the heads and shoulders of others. Up ahead, he saw Doria seize a crossbow, fit a bolt to the stock and shoot one of the French men-at-arms; the bolt punched through the man’s breastplate, and he slumped and fell from the saddle. Other Genoese were fighting back too, but Alençon ignored them. He rode straight towards Doria, bloody sword in hand. Rollond de Brus was beside him, yelling and waving the rest of his men forward.

  Doria had reloaded. He raised the crossbow again, aiming at Alençon, and squeezed the trigger. The bolt hit the count’s shield, splitting it in two. Ignoring the splintered shards hanging from his arm, Alençon raised his sword. Doria lifted the crossbow to ward off the blow, but Alençon smashed it out of his hands and raised the blade again. The second blow tore Doria’s face open and he fell to the ground, his head gouting blood.

  Hailstones rattled off the armoured men around him; had the storm returned? No, by Christ, those were arrows; the English were shooting again. A horse fell, throwing its rider; another went down kicking and thrashing. Furious that mere peasants should be shooting at his men, Alençon rose in the saddle, waving his sword. ‘Come on!’ he shouted. ‘Kill the bastards! Montjoie Saint-Denis! Come on, come on!’

  Shouting and screaming, the men-at-arms of the vanguard raced up the slope after him. The arrows lashed at them like furies, hundreds falling every second. Further up the slope came a blast of white smoke, and stone shot whirred in the air. Alençon’s horse screamed as an arrow scored across its neck, and he felt the repeated hammer blows on his armour, then a stab of pain as one found the gap between his cuisse and his knee guard. He tried to pull the shaft out of his leg, but was encumbered by his broken shield. Another arrow rammed into his shoulder, splitting his armour, and his arm went numb; he realised he had dropped his sword. He was disarmed, with the enemy only a hundred yards away. A wave of panic washed over him. He turned his head and yelled to Brus. ‘Christ, I’m hit! Get me out of here!’

  Three arrows protruded from Brus’s shield. ‘You led us into this hell,’ the Norman said violently. ‘You get yourself out of it.’ He turned in the saddle, waving his sword. ‘Montjoie!’ he shouted to his men, ‘Montjoie!’ and he spurred his horse up the slope, the rest of the French swarming after him.

  ‘Halt, God damn you!’ Alençon shouted through a haze of pain. ‘Obey my orders!’ No one heard him. His horse was hit again, and came to a halt. He tried to spur the animal into motion but it would not budge, and then an arrow shot by an eighteen-year-old woman from Warwickshire smashed through his visor and the front of his skull and drove into his brain. By the time his body hit the ground, he was already dead.

  * * *

  Standing by the windmill, Tiphaine could see everything clearly in the rain-washed air: the blizzard of arrows, the clouds of pale smoke belching from Courcy’s cannon, the charging mass of French men-at-arms disintegrating steadily, men and horses going down every second. She saw too with dismay that there were too many of the enemy; even shooting fifteen arrows a minute, the archers could not kill enough to stop them. She saw the blue and gold colours of Alençon fall, and then another coat surged into the lead as the French raced up the slope, and she felt suddenly sick. It was the red saltire of Rollond de Brus.

  She had to admit he had courage, not a virtue she had ever ascribed to him. The archers had marked him out; the air around him was thick with arrows, and she saw him hit twice, then again, but he never wavered. Behind him the arrows took their deadly toll, whittling his men away, but the rest forged on, dragged up the hill by his unflinching will. They were thirty yards from the English line when his horse was shot and foundered, throwing him to the ground. She had a brief glimpse of the red saltire moving feebly before the wave of armoured horsemen rolled over it. Then he was gone.

  The rest of the French did not pause. Lowering their lances, they crashed up the slope and slammed into the English line like a battering ram.

  * * *

  The Welsh spearmen held the first line of French attackers, but as more and more of the enemy charged home, they began to give way. The line of battle disintegrated, French horsemen surging forward, the Welsh and English men-at-arms trying desperately to stop them. Merrivale saw Despenser and Mortimer fighting back-to-back, saw Gurney wrestling on the ground with an armoured French knight, Thomas Holland duelling desperately with two mounted men circling around him swiping at his head. Shouts and screams and the hammer of metal filled the air.

  ‘Come on!’ yelled the Prince of Wales, and he ran forward into the fray, followed by Fitz-Simon the standard-bearer. The French spotted his coat of arms at once, and Merrivale heard men shouting behind their bascinets, ‘Le Prince de Galles! Take him, take him!’ The prince paid no heed, slashing one of Holland’s assailants hard across the leg, plunging through to help Mortimer and Despenser, fighting with desperate enthusiasm.

  ‘Ware your back!’ Merrivale shouted, but he was too late. Another French man-at-arms rode up behind the prince and raised his sword. The blow crashed down onto the prince’s helm with a shower of sparks, and he fell hard to the ground. Fitz-Simon stood over his body, standard in one hand and sword in the other, slashing at the French who circled around him like hawks over a kill. The sword rose and fell again, and Fitz-Simon collapsed beside his master.

  Merrivale ran forward and picked up the standard, ripping the fabric away from the wooden pole and gripping it like a quarterstaff. The horseman who had knocked the prince down rode up to him, armour dented, surcoat shredded by arrows, and pointed the tip of his bloody sword at Merrivale’s throat. ‘Do you yield?’ he asked.

  Merrivale looked at him (three gold boules on a red fess, his herald’s mind told him; the Count of Aumale). ‘I am a herald,’ he said. ‘I am protected.’

  He could hear the sneer behind the bascinet. ‘Then you should have stayed away from the battlefield, herald. I have killed the Prince of Wales. Now I will kill you, unless you yield.’

  The first blow of the staff smashed the sword out of Aumale’s hand. Reversing his grip, Merrivale aimed the second at his head, knocking his bascinet off; before it had hit the ground, the third blow fractured Aumale’s skull and he reeled out of the saddle. Sensing rather than seeing the men behind him, Merrivale whirled around, ducked under the belly of an onrushing horse and clubbed another man to the ground. Standing over the prince’s body, he fe
nded off the blows aimed at him, splinters flying from the staff. A detached corner of his mind said, I cannot hold them for long. Not alone.

  And then, he was no longer alone. Holland was beside him, and Salisbury and Despenser and Mortimer, and Gurney guarding their backs, and they fought with a desperate fury that stunned the French and drove them back. For a few moments the enemy circled them, probing with sword and mace, looking for an opening. ‘Christ,’ said Holland through his teeth. ‘We’re outnumbered.’

  ‘Nothing new,’ said Mortimer. His arm was dripping blood.

  ‘Let us make a good death, gentlemen,’ said Despenser, and the French turned again and closed for the kill.

  But even as the first blows fell, the wolves began to howl, ‘Rouge! Roooooouge! Roooooouge!’ and the Red Company were there, smashing bodily into the French and shoving them back. Warwick and Sully followed with a phalanx of men-at-arms behind them. Three of the French went down in a moment, and the bloody spears rose and fell as they lay on the ground. The rest, bleeding and battered, broke and fled down the hill, desperately trying to escape the arrow storm and return to their own lines.

  Merrivale leaned on his broken staff, gasping for breath. Thomas Holland knelt over the body of the prince, unfastening his bascinet and feeling his neck. ‘Praise God,’ he said, and when he looked up, there were tears on his face. ‘He is alive.’

  * * *

  ‘They’re running out of arrows on the front line,’ said the messenger. He was panting with effort, having run all the way from the prince’s division to the baggage train. ‘We need volunteers to carry them down to the archers.’

  Mauro and Warin were on their feet at once, other men crowding forward. ‘Me too,’ said Nell.

  ‘All right, lass. We’ll strap them to your back, like so.’

  The arrows were in bundles of four dozen; they were not heavy, but they were bulky to carry. They strapped five bundles across her back, loading her like a donkey, and she tucked two more under her arms and ran after the others down towards the prince’s division, passing the guns on the way and smelling hot metal and the strange brimstone stink of the burnt serpentine. The last of the French were galloping down the slope, still pursued by arrows. The men down at the far tip of the wedge would have been shooting longest, she reasoned; they would be most in need of arrows. She ran along the ranks of the archers until she came to the men in the red iron caps.

  ‘I brought arrows,’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘Good girl,’ said the master bowman. He unfastened the bundles and began handing round the arrows. Other archers came in from the field where the dead men and horses lay thickly on the slope, carrying more arrows with bloody points that they had pulled out of the corpses. Pip was one of them, holding an arrow that still had a string of flesh hanging from the barbs. ‘Did you bring any water?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I’ll bring a waterskin next time.’

  ‘Do it, and I’ll light a candle for your soul.’ The ground vibrated to sudden thunder, and she looked around sharply. ‘Here they come again. Get down, girl, and stay behind me.’

  Another French company was launching itself up the hill, bright banners flowing, lances levelled, men shouting ‘Montjoie! Montjoie Saint-Denis!’ The archers waited, tense and still, arrows embedded point first in the ground in front of them. Crouched behind Pip’s legs, Nell heard someone murmuring a prayer.

  ‘Steady,’ the master bowman said quietly. ‘Wait till they’re in range…’

  There were fewer horsemen than before, only a few hundred this time, but the drumming of their hooves was deafening and the ground shivered. Sudden panic seized Nell, and she looked around for somewhere to run.

  ‘Now,’ said the master bowman.

  Pip nocked an arrow, drew back the string to her ear and released. The first arrow was still in flight when she shot the second, and then she and all the archers around her became machines, nock-draw-release, nock-draw-release, nock-draw-release, over and over without pause. The grey-feathered shafts rose and fell, descending on the French like hail. Looking between Pip’s legs, Nell saw men falling and dying, some pierced with arrows, some trampled under the hooves of horses running mad with pain, more arrows sticking out of their bodies like pins in a cushion. She heard the shouting and screaming, the cries for help, the hoarse exhortations to charge on, charge on, until the French battle cries of Montjoie! were finally drowned out by the sounds of death.

  The enemy almost made it to the English line; the last horseman was shot down so close that his mount rolled kicking and thrashing in among the archers, knocking several down. Its rider lay on the ground a few feet from Nell, and she watched with fearful fascination as blood poured from the breathing holes in his bascinet. Then he gave a long groan of pain as his soul left his body, and lay still.

  ‘That’s the last of them for now,’ Pip said. She looked down at Nell. ‘Go on, girl, we need more arrows. And don’t forget that waterskin.’

  * * *

  The second attack had been led by the Count of Blois (white bend on blue, the herald’s mind recorded with detachment) and his brother-in-law the Duke of Lorraine (three white eagles on red). Both men were shot down within a few yards of the English line and their followers recoiled back down the bloody slope. ‘They attacked without support!’ Warwick said sharply. ‘What in hell were they thinking?’

  No one answered. The prince was on his feet, groggy, bleeding from a head wound; Fitz-Simon was up too, tying the standard to its battered staff. ‘You are wounded, Highness,’ said Burghersh. ‘You should retire.’

  The prince looked at him. ‘Retire, and leave my friends to fight? No, Sir Bartholomew. While there is a drop of blood left in my body, I shall remain here.’

  ‘By the looks of you, that won’t be long,’ said Roger Mortimer.

  The prince glanced at the bloody cut on Mortimer’s arm and grinned at him. ‘You’re one to talk.’

  In front of them, another French company launched its attack, and then another. Each time the arrow storm hit them and shattered them, driving any survivors back down the slope. Along the face of the ridge the bodies piled up, and the air stank of blood. ‘This is carnage,’ Holland said softly. ‘The fools. They had us in the palm of their hand, and now they are throwing it away.’

  Everyone knew the usual French tactics; form up in three divisions one after the other and attack in waves, the first division punching a hole in the enemy line, the second following to exploit the advantage and the third moving up to complete the rout. The French vanguard, after inexplicably massacring its own crossbowmen, had attacked according to plan, but there was no support. Now, a collective madness seemed to have overtaken the rest of the French army. Company after company came off the Abbeville road and attacked without thought or tactics, barely pausing to form up before launching up the hill towards the enemy. In companies of two or three hundred at most, they stood no chance. The archers slaughtered them like deer at a driven shoot.

  Afternoon turned to evening, and still the French came, and still they died. A larger corps of horsemen rode into view, and a murmur ran through the English ranks. Even at a distance, the lilies of France could be seen plainly. ‘The adversary is here,’ said Sir John Sully, leaning on his sword. ‘Now let us see what he will do. Will he call off the attack?’

  ‘I think it is too late for that,’ Merrivale said.

  * * *

  ‘Mary, Mother of God,’ John of Hainault said quietly.

  Men wandered dazed and wounded and bleeding, or simply sat on the ground in a stupor with arrows embedded in their bodies. Riderless horses galloped in confusion and pain, sometimes knocking men over. Beyond them were the dead Genoese, and then the slope of the ridge carpeted with dead horses and the bright motionless figures of men. Above them the English waited, the setting sun haloing their position with light.

  Beside him the king sat motionless, staring at the scene. ‘What in Christ’s name has happened?’ he said finally. ‘Whe
re is my brother?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hainault said. He called to a man-at-arms, his surcoat and armour stained with blood, leading a limping horse. ‘Montmorency! Where is the Count of Alençon?’

  ‘Dead,’ said the marshal. ‘They’re all dead. Alençon, Blois, Lorraine, Aumale, all of them.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘We were lambs to the slaughter.’

  Hainault nodded. ‘Go and get your wounds seen to,’ he said. He sat for a moment, thinking. This was a disaster, but it could still be salvaged. It had been a mistake to rely on Alençon, but a replacement could be found. ‘Your Grace, we must halt the attack. Withdraw, make camp, give the men time to recover and then resume in the morning.’

  ‘Withdraw?’ The king stared at him. ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘Sire, we have suffered heavy losses, but most of the army is intact. It is jammed together on the roads behind us, unable to get near the battlefield. Give the men tonight to rest, and then tomorrow form them up and attack in orderly fashion. Do you remember what I said? The principles of war?’

  ‘To hell with your principles,’ the king said violently. ‘If I withdraw now, I may as well abdicate. The nobles will spit me out like gristle and feed me to the dogs. No, Hainault. We are going to attack, and if we die, at least we will have died with honour.’

  ‘And let Edward win the victory?’ Hainault said steadily. ‘And perhaps seize your throne?’

  ‘If he can take my throne and hold it, he is welcome to it.’ The king shook his reins. ‘Trumpeter! Sound the attack!’

  There was nothing to do but ride forward, surrounded by the royal bodyguard, horses tripping and stumbling over the bodies underfoot, watching the grim lines of steel and the dark wedges of archers facing them. Hainault saw the bows come up and braced himself for the shock. Then the arrows fell in clouds, so thickly that they darkened the red sun, and the air was filled with the dreadful tintinnabulation of arrows striking armour and the screams and shouts of horses and men. The standard-bearer, the target of the storm, was shot half a dozen times in as many seconds and fell from his saddle. The king tried to snatch the standard before it too fell, and yelped in pain as an arrow slammed into his arm, piercing his vambrace and spouting blood. Another hit him high on the shoulder, wedging itself between breastplate and gorget. One after another the royal bodyguard went down, and the enemy were still two hundred yards away. The English cannon thundered once more, stone shot slamming into the French ranks and completing the wreck.