Hoodsman: Hunting Kings

by Smith, Skye

  He could see the entire far wing, the east wing of the Norman cavalry being pushed by the reserve cavalry along the ridge and up the hill. The battle had been won in minutes by half of the cavalry, and now the rest of the cavalry wanted to share in the spoils.

  Raynar strained his eyes in the twilight to see why so many horsemen were charging up the eastern side of the hill. He could see nothing, but he assumed that the English camp must be at the top of the ridge over there, or perhaps just over the crest. Meanwhile, the Normans had taken the west and the center of the hill, and they were hacking, and hacking, and hacking at the English infantry.

  Deeper and deeper he crept into the trees, all the while weeping. In his hide, which was a safe distance from his mare, he spent the night curled up, terrified, and very alone. Now he had another message to deliver, this time to Edwin, but it would have to wait until first light.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  THE HOODSMAN - Hunting Kings by Skye Smith

  Chapter 4 - The Aftermath, Hastings Road, E.Sussex in October 1066

  It was still not quite dawn when young Raynar found a track that took him to the cartway to London. It would have taken longer to find his way through the maze in this dim predawn light, if he hadn't heard the sounds of men that could only have been coming from the highway. When he was close, he tied the mare up out of sight and crept towards the voices.

  The voices grew louder, and he was so intent on listening to them, trying to catch what language they were speaking, that he almost stumbled out onto the cartway. He pulled back and watched. There were blooded and ragged men marching, limping , and talking. They were all English fyrdmen. They had no weapons or armour, and they seemed to have no escort or anything else, save their boots and their chatter.

  Raynar dropped his bow and quiver and sword sheath, and unbuckled his brynja and dropped it too. He came out of the bushes play-acting as if he was one of them who had stopped to have a morning squat in the bushes. He walked with the men and listened to the patter of the talk, and the rhythm of the accent, and then, in what he hoped was a convincing Sussex accent, he asked the man walking next to him, "What happened to the king?"

  The man looked at him like he had two heads. "He's dead int e."

  "Did you see him dead?" he asked.

  "I saw them all kilt. We all saw them all kilt. Where wus you."

  "I was hit on the head and don't remember"

  "They kilt everyone in armour. Cut their throats."

  "The infantry cut their throats?" Raynar's heart was in his mouth.

  "The cavalry, first time I ever saw them take their fat arses offen them horses."

  "Where are we goin?" he asked in a better practiced Sussex accent.

  "Far from here before they have us digging all the graves. Home, harvest, bed."

  Someone jested from behind. "You'll have to kick the priest out of your bed first."

  Raynar supposed the high spirits were because they had escaped death. "Where are the Normans?"

  "Headed south, that's why we're goin north. They didn't take the camp. All those ditches and horse traps that Harold had us dig did a mighty fine job of protecting the camp. eh lads?"

  The man beside him said "Prince Edgar should have ordered his reserves to charge. Them bugger cavalry were sprawled all over the ground and their horses were spitted on the stakes or dragging legs. Stupid to put a teen as camp commander. The only order out of his mouth was to retreat to London."

  Raynar play acted holding his belly and stopped and waited for the next group of men.

  "Did you see the King's body?"

  "Nope."

  "Is he dead?" repeated Raynar.

  "The king, his brothers, the lords, the huscarls. Them all wear armour don't they. They butchered any in armour."

  "You saw him dead?" he kept repeating.

  "King wore armour din't e"

  The same answers over and over. Everyone in armour was killed. No one saw Harold's body.

  Raynar play acted holding his belly again and dove into the bushes. He backtracked through the bush and found his gear and his horse. He must warn Earl Edwin but first he must be sure of the facts. He groaned to himself, "What am I doing here? I am a porter working for an abbey. No one would miss me if I simply rode back to the Peaks. Shit, shit, bloody shit. I promised Brother Tucker that I would return with the carts and I won't break my promise to him."

  When he mounted the plucky mare, she naturally turned towards Hastings, the way they had been headed yesterday. That way led to the gore, the wounded, the bodies, the battlefield, the camp, maybe to some prince called Edgar, but more likely to a duke called William. He pulled her around to head back to Edwin, but then stopped.

  He would be treated as a fool by Hereward if he returned without the full story of what happened to the camp. If the camp was still held by the English then Edwin's reinforcements were needed to keep the highway to London blocked. If both armies had left the field, and if the carnage was a bad as the fyrdmen had said, then Edwin's men would be needed to help the wounded, bury the dead, and glean the wealth. There was nothing for it but to turn the wise mare, yet again, and see what was what at the camp.

  It was less than a half a mile to the fork that his messenger had told him about. There were armed men at the fork and they looked English, so he rode up to them to wish them well. He was grabbed and dragged from his horse despite his hearty politeness.

  "Wait, wait, I am a courier," he yelled with his most Sussex of fake accents to stop the men from doing him injury.

  "We can see that, ducks, but for which side. We have no archers, and English archers certainly don't have bows like that one. Speak up. Which side?" The man had the same Sussex accent as the messenger he had ridden with. Of course, that did not prove which side these men were on. Hereward had told him that there were men on the south coast who had sided with William.

  He had to play the odds. "I am from Earl Edwin. I am Hereward's man. I have a message for Prince Edgar."

  The man in charge limped over and spat, and then asked, "And why should we believe you? You are dressed like a Norseman and you carry an eastern bow."

  "I was at Stamford!" yelled Raynar, wriggling against the grip of the two men holding him.

  "So were the Norse," replied the man in charge. "Where were you in the battle, what company?"

  "I was with Rodor's skirmishers blocking the cartways leading south to the Norse ships. We helped to take the bridge from the Norse, and tried to keep the hill from them," He was now desperate and speaking quickly.

  "Oy" said a man who was using his throwing spear as a crutch. "That's the twerp what killed the ogre on the bridge. Cheated me of my turn at it else I'd av done for him with this spear." The men around laughed at him. The ogre had felled ten men and would have felled another ten if an arrow hadn't dropped him.

  The men holding Raynar looked to their chief for orders. The man in charge motioned them to let him go. "Give him his horse. Anyone who rode with Rodor is good by me." He waited while Raynar snatched his bow back and mounted the mare. "The camp is a quarter mile on. Be careful. The gleaners are working for both sides and for themselves."

  Raynar did not bother saying farewell to the men, but just kicked his horse to be free of them. The last words he heard were "Was he really the one that did for the ogre?" and "He's the one. Made fools of the rest of us."

  The camp was a total mess. What was left of the English army had left in a hurry, leaving stores and tents and broken equipment. The gleaners were poking into everything and filling their baskets and their hand carts. Beyond the gleaners there were two views that took Raynar's breath away.

  The first was a ditch to the east of the camp that was filled with the bodies of horses. Men were working hard at dragging the Norman bodies out from under the horses, up the sides of the ditch, and throwing them onto carts. As they did so they were killing any wounded horses.

  They were not removing the weapons or the armou
r from the men's bodies, so those gleaners must have been attached to William's army. That explained the small guard standing around the gleaners. They were to keep the local gleaners away from all things Norman.

  This must be the defensive ditch that the fyrdmen had told him about, the ditch that saved the camp. It was unthinkable that these horsemen would not have seen it, and instead would have charged into the pointed stakes sticking out of it. He thought back to the battle. It had been twilight at the time. Perhaps it had been in deep shadow, or perhaps covered with boughs and grass.

  The other view that made him hold his breath was the view down the slope of the highway to the battle field. When he had watched the battle he was on low land and he could only see the edges of the defenses. From up here he could see the sweep down the hill and the field in front of it. The wall of dead horses where the English shieldwall had been was not just one horse wide, but three or four wide.

  He did a quick count by fours. There were over five hundred dead horses in that wall. Most of the Norman bodies had already been cleared from in front of the wall of meat, but most of the English bodies still lay on the hillside.

  He felt his knees give out and the ground jump up at him. He lay on the ground retching. There was not a whole body anywhere on the hillside. They had all been hacked into pieces.

  "Fuckin knights," a voice said behind him. It was one of the gleaners. "So mad with vengeance that they ruined all that good armour. Look at it. All broken. Nothing you could just wash off and sell again. Not without a lot of mending first. Bastards," said the gleaner.

  "The knights did that out of vengeance?" Raynar asked.

  "Well they lost a lot of their cousin's to our lot, didn't they. They were right pissed that their mounted flashy knights were being done for by peasants with pole axes and pikes. They took it out on our huscarls and shieldmen, cause they couldn't catch the fyrdmen. The fyrdmen had no armour so were light on their feet and scarpered up the hill to the camp well ahead of those with armour."

  "Who is in charge of this camp now?" asked Raynar.

  The gleaner swung around and looked about, then pointed to a purple and yellow pennant flapping in the breeze on the eastern edge of the camp under a giant hawthorn tree. "Ask them under the hoare apple."

  He mounted the mare and rode slowly towards the pennant. Two guards had him dismount and state his business.

  "I am Earl Edwin's courier. Is there a message to take to him."

  There were two sets of commanders under the tree. English and Norman. He supposed that they were in charge of keeping the peace while bodies and wounded were retrieved. The guard pointed him towards the English one and so he walked that way. Everyone else on the hill was watching the Norman commanders. They and their men had just finished building a cairn and were praying in front of it. Raynar assumed it was a common marker for the many Normans that died on that hillside.

  "What do you want?" asked a grizzled man with an arm in a sling who had taken a half step to turn towards him.

  "I am one of Edwin's couriers. Do you have any messages for him?"

  "They have been sent already," the grizzled man replied, "but it would do no harm to send them again. Wait a moment while I have them prepared."

  "You are Walter, Harold's man?" queried Raynar.

  "Was Harold's man. He is dead. That is in the dispatches."

  "I need to know why there was no counter attack after the Normans met their fate in the ditch."

  "Well lad, if you were given the choice between following an untried fourteen year old in an attack against professional cavalry, or retreating for the whorehouses of London, which would you choose?" He looked hard at Raynar. "Never mind, you're not much older than Edgar. You've probably never been in a whorehouse."

  "Why didn't you lead the charge. I know you led in Stamford. You took the ford for Harold."

  "I was one of the wounded fleeing up the hill to the camp. I was with seasoned huscarls, but we were cut up and confused and dog tired from a full day of fighting. Edgar was in charge of the camp but his men were grooms and cooks and guards, not huscarls." Walter frowned. "Edgar did better than I expected. He stopped the able bodied from taking the horses, and instead had them loaded with the wounded. What is left of the army is well on its way to London."

  He handed Raynar a saddle bag. "Lad, if Harold or either of his brothers had survived, this camp would not be empty now. Together, the three Godwinson brothers were the Earls of all the South. The men would have followed any one of them down that hill, or more likely, they would have secured this camp and waited another day for Edwin and the northern army to arrive.

  Duke William had his spies. He knew that he had today, and today only, to kill all the Godwinsons, otherwise he must board his ships and return to Normandy. His attack was a losing gambler's dice throw of desperation. Well, it cost Normandy dearly, but that dice toss seduced the fates. All three brothers, including the king, were butchered, and they were the only warlords with the experience to beat the Duke."

  Raynar cinched the bag onto his saddle and mounted. He turned the mare north, back to the fork in the highway. "Where would Edwin be, now," he wondered to himself. Edwin was on the march and would no longer be where he last saw him. Once passed the fork he decided it wiser to stay off the highway, so he tracked north overland and headed for the high ground.

  It was up in the hills that he was found by his friend Wylie from the Battle of Stamford. The mare had just reached the crest of the hill, when five skirmishers appeared out of nowhere and surrounded him with nocked arrows. "Hold your arrows," shouted a voice, and Wylie stepped forward. "Raynar, we are going to stop loaning you good horses if you keep abusing them so."

  Raynar did not know whether to laugh or to cry. "Wylie, please take me to Edwin," was all he could say. Edwin was less than a half mile away on the other side of the hill. The advance guard of the northern army were now less than two hours fast march from the Battle of Hastings road.

  * * * * *

  Edwin already knew all the bad news. They had known for hours ever since the skirmishers had challenged the first of the couriers sent by Walter. They had been moving so fast southwards that they had not even put up Edwin’s Marquee. He had bivouacked for the night. His lords were all sitting on their saddles, their horseless saddles, around a low fire. Hereward was there. He rolled a good sized log towards the ring of lords and sat on it, and then motioned to Raynar to join him.

  Edwin stared at Raynar "My message for Harold, it was too late."

  "Yes sire, but it would not have mattered. It was William who was attacking, not Harold."

  "I have been told that the entire army was slaughtered." said Edwin.

  "Not all, but most of those wearing armour, sire."

  Edwin waved his hand as if to say that those without armour did not matter. "I have been told that William is back at Hastings now," said Edwin.

  "I don't know where he is, but part of his army are still burying their dead and gathering their wounded."

  "Why didn't Harold hold on for just another day?" Edwin asked of himself, not expecting a mere lad, and a peasant at that, to have an answer.

  "Sire, Harold was blocking the main highway to London. There were other highways. William could have gone around. Instead he attacked. Harold's man Walter says that William's spies must have told him that you were so close and that an immediate attack was his only chance. Walter told me that if William hadn't been able to kill all the Godwinsons, then he would have sailed back to Normandy. William was losing the battle until almost sunset."

  As one, the Lords sat forward to listen. Raynar told them about the trap William had set, and of the retreat of the archers, and how the Norman archers were used as live bait by the cavalry. He told them how the lack of archers had cost the battle, because Harold had no way of killing from a distance.

  "I played a small part in the battle because my route to Harold was blocked." said Raynar, "I was able to watch the battle, and took not
e of the strategies of both Harold and William. Harold knew how to beat the cavalry, and now I know that too. We can slaughter the Normans. All we have to do is catch them."

  Everyone leaned forward and encouraged him to keep talking. To tell them of Harold's strategies. He was interrupted by the arrival of a pot of warm gruel, and he sucked at it hungrily. Yes, he was hungry, but it also gave him a diversion while he organized his thoughts. Where to start?

  "The Norman's are able to use monster horses because of something called a stirrup. It is a foothold attached to each side of the saddle. William's strategies are all based on the weight of these monster horses as they charge and breach shieldwalls. He had no huscarls or shieldmen, but was using peasants as infantry and peasants as archers. They were lightly armed, more like grooms with sticks than actual infantry.

  From what I saw, most of the time his costly cavalry was as useless as tits on a bull. Their main effect on the battlefield was to create fear in the enemy, and to catch up and slaughter men who were already fleeing in terror. The mounted knights, despite their costly horses and armour, are little more than lazy butchers. That said, because they are mounted, they can quickly take advantage of their enemy's mistakes.

  They were so humiliated by Harold's shieldmen and pikemen, that when they finally did break through the shieldwall, they gave no quarter. They butchered everyone wearing armour, even those who had submitted."

  Everyone in the ring of lords began to talk at once, and Raynar was at a loss as to which question to answer first. He listened a while, until he realized that many men were asking about the fate of specific men. Raynar answered all these questions with one answer, "If your kin were wearing armour, they are either dead or on their way to London with Prince Edgar. As far as I know, none wearing armour were taken for ransom. If they were captured they were butchered."

  "You keep saying butchered rather than killed," said one of the lords who had been asking the fate of his son. "Is there a significance?"

  "I use the word butchered, because that is what happened. The men were first killed, and then their arms and legs and heads were severed from their bodies."