Cross of Fire

by David Gilman

  Gunther heard distant screams, dulled by his helmet, as the charging knights clashed with the horsemen’s downhill impetus. The sickening thud of horses barging into each other and their plaintive whinnying heralded the death of man and horse. But there was no time to think of the others now; Gunther raised his shield, angled his horse into the more lightly armed routiers and struck fiercely left and right. Two men immediately fell from the saddle; four more had already spurred ahead of him but his own mount was stronger and more swift and he cut another two routiers down before they had a chance to defend themselves. Those attacking from the forest must have seen their comrades were overwhelming the Germans and swung their horses back to encircle Gunther. He heeled his horse, swept the blade high, caught a routier below his chinstrap and then plunged his sword down into the man’s horse. It rolled its eyes, bellowed in pain and went down, which is exactly what Gunther wanted. The flailing beast and its dead rider blocked the immediate attack from others closing in. Blades struck Gunther’s armour, and he was thankful Wolfram had been insistent on it being worn. His strength surged: he battered his attackers, taking their strikes against his shield and armour. His blows were precise and controlled, unlike the abandoned ferocity of the routiers. He grunted, sucking air, holding breath in his chest and forcing it out to give more power to his arm. The swirling mass of men made it difficult to see where the next blow might come from but with rein and heel he turned his horse this way and that, using its weight to push others aside and expose their riders’ vulnerability. He had slain several men and fatally wounded more but now they were smothering him, making it impossible for him to fight his way clear. At least, he thought, he had drawn these men to him and given the others a chance to escape.

  A heavy blow from a mace on the back of his neck threw him forward over his mount’s withers. The routiers boxed him in and, unable to find a weakness in his armour, went about killing his horse. It fell, throwing him clear. He hit the ground with such force his breath was driven out of him. Through the narrow slit of his visor he saw his comrades being hauled from their saddles; some were already being dragged away like slaughtered carcasses. His vision blurred as his attackers bellowed a warning, momentarily taking their attention away from him. He turned his head and saw the two half-brethren at the charge, shield and sword raised in a vain attempt to rescue the knights they served and adhere to the vow they had taken. They gave a good account of themselves but were soon hacked to death. Gunther’s cumbersome armour made it impossible for him to get to his feet quickly enough to continue fighting. He half raised himself, reached for his sword and saw the dark shadow of a man above him whose snarling face spat a curse as he swung his mace hard and fast, sending Gunther into the black abyss of unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Blackstone’s horse suddenly pulled its head back and stopped as if an invisible hand had restrained it. There was no apparent danger ahead. The open rolling meadows cut a swathe through forests of varying sizes, none too close to allow an ambush. Killbere’s horse shied at the bastard horse’s sudden halt. Horses behind had to swerve. The bastard horse was as fixed as a boulder in the landscape, ears raised, nostrils flared. A shiver ran down its withers.

  ‘God’s tears, Thomas, horses are skittish creatures at the best of times but that mongrel beast has a disposition fit only for the damned slaughterhouse. I doubt it would be docile if it was gutted and hung on a meat hook.’

  Blackstone raised a hand to silence his friend and quieten the muted curses from the others behind him as they jostled to avoid colliding with each other. He listened but heard nothing. Blackstone kept his eyes trained on the changing landscape. The meadows offered no threat, nor – as far as he could see – did the copse of trees. No crows fluttered cawing into the sky. He looked at the bare top of the tree canopy. The breeze shifted this way and that, more noticeable at that height than on the ground.

  Blackstone spoke quietly, eyes still sweeping the way ahead for anything untoward. ‘Gilbert, this wretched beast is precious to me. I prefer its belligerence to the world about it. It suits my own temperament, but it has never failed to warn me of danger. I trust the goddess Arianrhod I wear at my throat, you and my men at my side and this devil-spawned, war-mongering, black-hearted creature to keep me safe.’

  A distant cry reached them. Gilbert raised a hand to shield his eyes against the brightness of the clouds.

  ‘There,’ said Jack Halfpenny. ‘High in the sky ahead.’

  Blackstone and Killbere looked to where the sharp-eyed archer pointed. After a moment’s concentration the speck showed itself a half-mile ahead. A buzzard soared in spiral flight. It keened again. The wind whipped the raptor’s cry around the sky.

  ‘Only a buzzard, Thomas,’ said Killbere.

  Blackstone stayed vigilant. ‘No, Gilbert. It’s more than that.’ He pointed to where they had first seen the buzzard and then to left and right. The clouds had separated: darker below; lighter, higher clouds above; and the swirling black specks became more than the one raptor. ‘Crows on the wind. They’re settling.’ He patted the horse’s neck and loosened the reins. The horse walked on but Blackstone felt its tension beneath him. Its ears stayed upright. And then it snorted and insisted on veering to one side. Blackstone did not fight it, and after forty yards it turned again so that the breeze now blew directly into the men’s faces. Another high-pitched keening reached them. Clearer this time. No raptor’s call. A man’s scream.

  *

  Blackstone ran at the crouch around the edge of the low hillside. Had he and the men travelled four or five hundred yards from the other direction they would have seen the tracks made by the Teutonic Knights. The King’s sergeant, William Ashford, had quickly secured his men in the copse of trees and surrounded his charge, Father Torellini. Henry attended to his father’s horse and Jocard helped hold the others to the rear of where Blackstone and the men waited. Lady Cateline and her daughter sat huddled with Torellini. Ashford had followed Blackstone’s instructions without question. If there was trouble his defensive position would buy him and his men time until Blackstone returned.

  ‘There!’ said Killbere. There was no need for him to point out the twenty or so routiers and their grazing horses. The men were on foot, gathered haphazardly around a fire pit that had been stoked for some hours and reduced to a deep bed of embers. The heat would be intense and the man who dangled over the pit had his wrists bound above his head to a makeshift pole and trestle.

  ‘The bastards are cooking him alive,’ said Meulon.

  The tortured knight was still in his suit of armour and as he fell in and out of consciousness his gasping breath became an agonizing scream. The routiers were laughing. Another four men stripped to their underclothes were bound to a length of pole. They did not escape punishment either. Two of the routiers kicked and punched them in between swigging from a wineskin. The burning man’s chilling screams increased.

  ‘Whoever those men are they need help,’ said John Jacob.

  ‘They outnumber us but John’s right,’ said Killbere. ‘Thomas?’

  Blackstone nodded. Quickly surveying the ground ahead, he turned to Will Longdon. ‘Will, you and the lads get into that gully. Stay low and get as far along it as you can.’

  Longdon and his archers had already freed their bows from their bags and nocked their hemp cords. ‘We can’t kill those skinners easily, Thomas. Those prisoners are right in their midst.’

  ‘I know. When I give the word kill the man over the pit. Your bodkins will get through his armour. We can’t let him die like a spitted pig.’

  Will Longdon’s grim countenance and nod of acceptance was enough. The suffering man would soon be out of his misery. The centenar turned to Halfpenny. ‘Jack, you and me both. We loose together. It’s a long shot.’

  The archers crabbed their way towards the ditch. Blackstone and the others backed away. ‘Gilbert, ride across their flank, cut them off if they try to escape. Their horses are untethere
d. With luck, they’ll scatter before they have time to mount. Meulon, take your men to the right. We box these bastards in. Renfred, go straight at the prisoners. Protect them. John, you and I will take the centre.’

  John Jacob understood. He and Blackstone were going into the heart of the beast. They would be in the most danger. A broad grin creased his face. ‘We kill them all?’

  ‘We kill them all,’ said Blackstone.

  *

  Within minutes Blackstone’s men were mounted. Swords drawn, shields up. The gap between the edge of the forest and the hillside was a narrow strip of land that would obscure their attack for the first fifty yards. Will Longdon and his archers crouched in the chest-high ditch. He addressed his archers, who each waited a yard apart from the next man. ‘Jack and me will shoot first. You lads pick a target that’s nowhere near them prisoners as soon as Sir Thomas makes his ride across the field.’

  The centenar and Jack Halfpenny looked towards the tortured man. His head was free of a helm but even at that distance they could see his bared teeth. An animal screaming in pain. A man begging for mercy. Voices drifted on the breeze. Laughter taunting the suffering man. They would give no mercy, one voice bellowed, drunk with the visceral pleasure of inflicting agony.

  ‘No mercy for you either, you skinner bastard,’ said Jack Halfpenny. ‘Will? Two hundred and twenty-five yards?’

  Will Longdon gauged the distance. The breeze was light. And it now brought the smell of burning flesh. ‘I see it as two hundred and ten, perhaps a few strides more beyond that.’

  Halfpenny squinted at the target and nodded. Longdon and Halfpenny did as the other archers and nocked a yard-long, inch-thick ash arrow onto their bow cords. Staying crouched, they peered along the line of bowmen to where Blackstone moved his war horse into view. Blackstone turned to face his archers, raised his sword to order the death of the tortured man and spurred his horse.

  The two veteran archers stood, bent their backs, their target fixed in their mind’s eye. Before the first horse broke cover, the two arrows whispered through the air. A half-dozen heartbeats later they saw them strike. Will Longdon’s arrow killed the man instantly, striking through his forehead. Halfpenny, a breath later, punctured his chest. In the time it took for a routier to stumble back, gazing upwards in disbelief, horses thundered across the open meadow. The skinners panicked, wildly grabbing weapons, running for their mounts, some of which had bolted. By the time Blackstone’s men swept across the field two more flights of arrows had punctured routiers and horses. Those mercenaries who broke to the flanks fell from the archers’ rapid shooting further down the line. Will Longdon saw they could loose no more arrows without hitting their own men. He ordered his archers to clamber out of the ditch, run forward and pick whatever target presented itself. Two escaping routiers swerved their mounts through Blackstone’s horsemen and galloped towards the vulnerable bowmen. They fell, each punctured by arrows in their chests less than eighty paces from where the ragged line of archers stood their ground.

  Blackstone and John Jacob punched a gap through the routiers who had quickly formed a defence. The impact of shields and the crushing weight of their horses buckled the first group of mercenaries. The gap opened wide enough for Renfred and his men to sweep aside the light resistance offered and quickly secure the prisoners. Renfred shouted his orders over the screams and shouts of the mêlée: ‘Stay with them! Cut them free!’

  He wheeled his horse. Blackstone and John Jacob were being attacked by more men on horseback and those on foot who had gathered their wits and their weapons as soon as the surge of horseman swept down upon them. Renfred trampled one routier and then slashed down and back with his sword to take another from chin to scalp. His horse barged aside a third and then it was the three of them fighting side by side, turning this way and that in practised discipline and unbridled ferocity. The routiers broke, crying surrender. Those immediately in front of Blackstone went down on one knee, turning their swords to offer the hilt to Blackstone. Blackstone slew them.

  The released prisoners took the risk of running through the edge of the skirmish line to lower their comrade from above the pit. The nauseating stench of their friend’s flesh assailed them and they could not sever the rope ties quickly enough to stop his scorched body from being burned further.

  Blackstone spurred the bastard horse into the two horsemen who stood between him and the prisoners. The beast turned to a quick leg and rein command, swung its head like a battering ram, forcing the opponent’s horse to rear up. Blackstone rammed Wolf Sword’s point into the flailing rider’s face. The bastard horse bunched its hindquarters; Blackstone tugged the reins. It fought the bit but did as commanded, crashing its weight against the poles that held the suspended knight. He fell free from the fire pit.

  Blackstone, John Jacob and Renfred were suddenly alone. Bodies lay strewn around them, as though they were farmers amid a field of scythed wheat. Meulon picked off stragglers on the flanks: he speared and gutted them while his men chased down those few who had broken free and they too went under the sword. Will Longdon had brought his men within fifty yards of the fighting, his extended line of archers ready to shoot into any target that presented itself. The men-at-arms gave them no such sport. Killbere and the men with him had rooted out those who had scurried into the fern-deep forest. As Killbere spurred his horse back towards Blackstone, Longdon raised his bow. ‘All right, lads. Finish off any of these scum with the knife. See what booty they yield.’

  The archers ran forward, eager to claim anything of value before the horsemen dismounted and sought their share from the slaughter.

  Killbere, sprayed with blood on his chest and legs, reached Blackstone. ‘Too easy, Thomas! Good sport though. Killing vermin has its pleasures.’ He checked the equally blood-splattered Blackstone and his companions. ‘Outnumbered be damned. It’s better that way. Gives a man a greater will to live. How many do you think? Thirty or so?’

  ‘Forty-five by a quick count, Sir Gilbert,’ said John Jacob.

  ‘Fewer than that,’ said Renfred.

  Killbere drank thirstily; then he swilled the specks of blood from his beard. ‘Renfred, do not spoil a man’s pleasure at his achievements. Why do you Germans have to be so exact about everything? Forty-five it is.’

  One of the prisoners who had helped drag free their comrade faced Blackstone. His back was straight, fists clenched at his side. Dried blood streaked his face and beard. The routiers had beaten him as hard as they had his companions, all of whom sported bruises and wounds.

  ‘You bear the blazon of Thomas Blackstone. Are you he?’ said Wolfram von Plauen.

  Blackstone looked down. ‘I am.’

  The tall, muscular man raised his chin. ‘I am Wolfram von Plauen. I came here to kill you,’ he said, his tone of voice a formal declaration.

  ‘Then I suggest you put some clothes on,’ said Blackstone.

  Blackstone’s men’s laughter pricked the Teutonic Knight’s pride. His skin flushed. He quickly recovered. ‘It is no laughing matter!’

  ‘You’re not sitting where I am,’ said Blackstone.

  Ignoring the man’s suppressed anger he wheeled the horse away, Killbere at his side.

  ‘Mother of God,’ sighed Killbere. ‘We found the damned Teutonic Knights and they are as far up their own arses as I remember.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  They left the fallen routiers where they lay, scattered across the open field. The Teutonic Knights pulled on their breeches and a linen shirt, giving them sufficient dignity to drag their own dead close together. They laid the two half-brethren next to young Walter von Ranke. They did not try to free him from his armour. His flesh would be too badly seared. Then the Germans, ignoring their own wounds, attended to digging graves for their comrades. They found a place near a rocky outcrop and dug four pits. Andreas von Suchenwirt had also fallen. He had seen a figure running free from the routiers’ camp: a crouching Guiscard, crabbing his way across the field, safe fro
m the attack. Andreas had fought through the men who opposed him but as he pursued the crippled peasant a crossbow bolt struck him. He managed to ride down and kill the woodcutter who had betrayed them before, weakened by his mortal injury, he turned to throw himself into the fray, smashing through horsemen that surrounded von Plauen and Rudolph von Burchard. He had been dragged down from the saddle and put to death.

  The knights laboured despite their injuries until the graves were deep enough to dissuade any wild creature from digging up the bodies. They left no marker for fear of brigands disinterring their friends thinking there might be weapons or money buried with them. They scattered the excess dirt and flattened the burial mounds with rocks until it looked no different from the surrounding area.

  Blackstone and the men had withdrawn to the forest where William Ashdown had kept the rearguard, frustrated by the duty of protection that kept him from the fight. Blackstone’s men had minor wounds and knew they had been lucky not to lose anyone in the skirmish. Blackstone ordered the men to camp for the night and treat their injuries. The captains placed the pickets; cooking fires were lit and horses fed. Blackstone and Killbere went among the men and assessed their injuries, ensuring every man washed their wounds, bound them with clean dressings and made good use of the potions and herbs they carried to stop infections. ‘You took a cut on your back and side,’ said Killbere. ‘You’ve bled down into your britches.’

  ‘My shirt sticks and seals it. Once the men and horses are seen to, I’ll attend to it.’ Blackstone looked to where the Teutonic Knights knelt in prayer at their comrades’ graveside. ‘They honour their dead with a deep fervour, Gilbert. They’ve been on their knees for a long time.’