Walter has forgotten his duties as vintenar and is mumbling prayers.
‘Keep a line!’ Geoffrey shouts in his stead. ‘Keep steady there. Steady, lads. Forget the guns. Forget them.’
They are near the bottom of the slope now, getting into the boggy ground of the river’s flood plain. The mud sucks at their boots. There are pools of brown water where the river’s burst its banks. Around him Thomas can only hear the din of men beginning to run in armour.
And that is when he sees it.
And this time he is sure.
It is waved, like a signal. It rises briefly in the extreme left-hand end of the wall. Riven’s flag.
Thomas stumbles, trips, nearly falls. But he feels as if he is floating, being held up by some unknown force. He feels invincible. The bog beneath him firms and he surges forward.
‘Come on then!’ he roars. ‘Let’s go!’
He elbows his way to the front of the archers, splashing through the mud. He cuts across the line and men follow him, bunching up on the left.
‘Thomas!’ Geoffrey calls. ‘Slow down! Let the billmen take the brunt!’
They are six hundred paces from the enemy line now, six hundred paces from those guns, but Thomas runs on into them, his eyes fixed on that flag. He can hear the enemy roaring at them. At him. He keeps running.
Five hundred paces.
The line is stretching to the left, hollowing out in the middle. Thomas is still ahead, mud caked up to his thighs, leading them towards the King’s right flank. Whatever plans Fauconberg had for his attack they are of no use now. Everyone is pouring after Thomas.
Four hundred paces.
And then the first gun goes off: a spike of grey smoke that stabs across the ditch towards them. It is followed instantly by a clap of thunder. The boulder cuts through the air behind him, throbbing through the space the archers have just left. It drills into the ranks of the men-at-arms who’ve moved up to take their place. The noise is shattering. Thomas glances back to see a man in mid-air, his feet above his shoulders, his head gone.
Behind him an alleyway has appeared in the ranks, paved with the dead and the dying, men skilled in the tilting yard, men who’d trained all their lives with lance and sword and hammer, men who can control a horse with their knees and heels, men now bowled over and left on the ground like butchers’ spoil.
Another gun. Then another. The sound splits the sky. With each one a new hole opens up between the ranks. Smoke drifts across the meadow and the bitter tang of saltpetre fills the air. Thomas can smell it above his own sweat and the blood and the lush earth beneath his feet.
He falls. He spills his bow and a bag of arrows. A man treads on him, can do nothing else. He is pressed into the mud. Men thunder past. He wrenches himself up, crawls to his knees, and is pushed down again. He hears an oath in his ear; he snatches his bow and then gathers himself and stands and starts running again. He is well back now, but around him men are wavering.
It is the boulders. This is not why they have flocked to the Earl of Warwick’s banner, Thomas thinks, to be torn apart by a stone fired from a wall by French mercenaries.
An archer from another company is writhing on the ground, crying out for his mother. Blood is leaching from a smoking hole in his jack.
The archers around him slow. They are in position now and they fumble with their bows. Thomas pulls an arrow from his belt and nocks it. He looses it and moves forward. He sends another, flitting across the meadow at one of the gunners prancing on the wall. He hits the man, knocking him down in a heap. A fourth gun fires and the stone skips across the marsh and decapitates a man so quickly his body stays upright for a moment. The stone ploughs into the mud under the heels of some billmen who’ve turned to begin back up the hill.
And suddenly there is Walter, seemingly restored, and all is well.
‘Loose and move!’ he is shouting. ‘Loose and move!’
Thomas nocks another and looses it. He is still pulling them to the left.
The billmen are pressing up now, coming through the archers’ ranks in their companies.
Then the fifth gun fires, but instead of the expected crack that follows, this one gives a muffled sigh. Walter pauses and lowers his bow.
‘A misfire,’ he shouts.
Then comes an even softer report as another gun misfires, and smoke billows above the enemy lines. There’s yet another low thud.
Walter starts laughing wildly and pointing to the sky.
‘It’s the rain!’ he shouts. ‘The bloody rain! God is on our side! They can’t light their bloody guns!’
They can see the Burgundians now, throwing their hands up, turning from their guns, trying to run away. One of the King’s men, in full armour, slashes at a Burgundian to stop him retreating, knocking him flat. He raises his sword at another, but a third throws something at him, knocking him down, and there are running men everywhere.
‘Come on!’ Walter bellows. ‘Move up! Move up! We’ve got them now!’
He gestures to a captain of the billmen, a gangly boy in a rusting helmet and greaves he’s probably borrowed from his father. They are still two hundred paces from the wall, coming into range of the enemy archers, and just as the men-at-arms and billmen next to them begin their charge, the sky above darkens with arrows.
‘Look out!’ someone cries.
There is a sudden frenzy of noise, like a hundred hammers falling in succession, and all around him men fall, and arrow shafts are bouncing among them, cracking and splintering. The men-at-arms huddle in their shells, heads down, pushing forward, their vision blocked by their visors so that all they can see is the neck of the man in front. Speed is vital. There is no help for the wounded. To dither is to die. They keep on, charging over bodies, knocking the wounded out of the way, just trying to get through.
And all the time Thomas is nocking, pulling, loosing, three or four steps forward, nocking, pulling, loosing, three steps forward. Then he is out of arrows.
In front of them the boy in his father’s greaves writhes on the ground, splashed in his own blood, gagging for breath. He is trying to pull an arrow out of his chest, but he has one through his thigh as well and it is all up for him. One of the vintenars lowers his bow and looses an arrow into the boy’s throat.
‘Only to shut him up,’ he shouts, as if the others have accused him of something, but he too is already moving on, nocking and loosing, nocking and loosing. They scurry through the beaten-down, blood-soaked grass of the meadow, feet squelching in mud and worse. Bodies lie pinned to the ground, and the turf around them bristles with fletches. Thomas steps over a man apparently asleep in the grass, and next to him another one is screaming with an arrow in his stomach.
A hundred paces.
Sweat stings his eyes. He pulls arrows from the ground, nocking and loosing them all in one movement. He sends his shafts thumping into the faces of the men on the other side of the ditch. He is only a few yards behind the men-at-arms now, moving towards the river, moving towards that banner.
Fifty paces.
The shouts from the enemy rise into a solid wall of muffled sound as Fauconberg’s men-at-arms reach the wall. Thomas waits for the crash of arms as they meet the enemy, but the impact never comes. Instead of the mêlée, there is another sort of excitement.
After a moment of confusion, he looks up.
Men are roaring with joy.
There are others standing on the wall. Men in red livery with grey badges. They aren’t fighting. They are breaking down their own barricade. They are spilling out on to the top of the earthwork and throwing down the logs and stakes to make walkways across the ditch. Fauconberg’s men in their blue and white livery are storming up them. They are charging through the gaps in the defences and jumping down into the camp. The men in red are helping them, offering hand-ups. One of them stands on the barricade and waves them forward. He has a grey ragged staff on his chest.
Walter is screaming with delight.
‘They’ve turn
ed! Ruthyn’s men have turned. Come on, you fuckers! Let’s get at ’em!’
They scramble across the rough bridges, Thomas helped by the outstretched hand of one of Ruthyn’s men, and then they are in the camp. Underfoot it is foul with mud, river water, blood and shit. There is a pile of corpses to one side, stuck with broken arrows; already one of Fauconberg’s archers is going through them. Thomas tries to push through the crowd of men, to get back towards the river, towards Riven’s flag.
But the fight isn’t over yet. In the camp trumpets sound, drums beat, and orders are shouted. The rage of the recently betrayed lends the King’s men an unstoppable savagery. They tear into Ruthyn’s troops, men who only moments before had been their comrades in arms, and begin driving them back.
For a moment it looks as if they’ll be cut down or thrown back into the ditch to drown, but as more of Fauconberg’s men-at-arms join them, the balance begins to tip against the King’s army, who have relied on the guns instead of archers, and on the strength of their wall instead of numbers of men. Now both have let them down. They are outnumbered and outflanked. There are only two things they can do: run and be killed, or fight and be killed.
They choose to fight.
One knight in black and red livery blocks Thomas’s way. His plume of exotic feathers bobs and sways as he clears a circle around him with a long hammer, as if cutting hay. Bodies of every hue are piled around. He stands on dead men and knocks a billman’s glaive to the ground, steps forward and despatches him with a backhanded chop that passes through his teeth. He is inhuman, sealed in his blood-glazed armour, wheeling and stabbing. Nothing can touch him.
This is no place for a man without even the meanest armour, but Fauconberg’s men are crowding forward. Thomas is caught in the crush, his arms pinned to his sides, shunted towards the knight. Nor is the knight alone. His household men are together holding back the blue and white liveried tide.
Thomas pushes and shoves; he tries to slip away, but men push back. The din of steel on steel is louder than in any smithy; iron thunders against iron. He can’t get through. He is face to face with one of Fauconberg’s men, snarling, but his opponent is stuck too. Thomas turns to find himself facing the man in harness. He drops his bow and swings his pollaxe up. The man lunges at him. Thomas throws himself back. The crowd behind gives. The man in armour slips on a dead body and Thomas catches his dagger with the butt of his axe. The knight is committed, pulled off balance for a moment, and a man on the ground grips his bill in both bloody hands and hooks the knight behind his knee. The knight staggers, tries to right himself, isn’t quick enough.
Another of Fauconberg’s men-at-arms hammers his halberd down on the knight’s shoulder. The knight buckles, rears back again, but his armour is jammed. He can’t move his arm. Another billman, smaller, like a ferret, darts forward and smashes the knight’s visor up while a third plunges a long spike into his mouth. The knight’s retainers have been too slow, and now they turn and run, or try to. But their path is blocked and Fauconberg’s men cut them down from behind, hacking at their hamstrings. It is so easy.
Now Thomas can move. He forces his way towards the river, scrambling between two carts. Some archers have discovered the King’s ale and are busy trying to drink themselves stupid. Dead bodies lie everywhere in the mud. Wounded men blink at him. Thomas ducks left, down a path between the rows of tents, shoddy canvas bivouacs for the common soldiery, finer for the nobility, his boots sliding under him.
There is another surging cheer from the main field and the percussive ripple of arms as Warwick’s men engage, and now the King’s men begin streaming back through the camp, ripping off their armour as they come, casting weapons aside. A billman, wild-eyed, half his clothing missing, bounces off Thomas, flinching when he sees the axe, and hurtles away through the tents towards the river. Another’s clothes are smoking.
Thomas follows the path and comes to a clearing. Dafydd and Owen and Henry are there before him, crouching pale-faced over a body in white livery. Dafydd is trying to unscrew a ring from the dead man’s finger. Unarmed men flash past, right to left. Henry nocks an arrow and follows a man just as a huntsman might follow a bird. He shoots straight through the man’s chest and sends him bowling. He laughs.
Dafydd glances up, sees where Thomas is going.
‘You don’t want to go up there just yet,’ he calls. ‘A bit hot for the likes of us. Come and have a drink.’
Owen holds up a flask. Thomas shakes his head, carries on.
‘Bloody hell!’ Dafydd shouts. He drops the dead man’s hand, slings his bow and pulls Owen after him. Henry follows. He is out of arrows anyway. Along the path they can see the King’s tent, a coat of arms on the canopy, banner flags drooping from both poles. In the clearing before it, over the ashes of last night’s watch fire, a crowd of Fauconberg’s billmen are gathered around five or six knights in harness, hacking and chopping at them, wearing them down as dogs bait bears.
These are the lords, the dukes and the earls, those too well known to need to bother with livery coats, and they are differentiated only by the decoration on the crowns of their helmets. They have been deserted by their retainers, or perhaps they are all that are left alive of their household men, and their billmen – in red and black livery coats – are being beaten back by Fauconberg’s men. Behind them, watching with pale faces that remind Thomas of the monks at the priory, are the royal heralds in their quartered tabards.
And then there is Riven.
He is unmistakable, even in his ornate harness, a long black hand-and-a-half sword in both hands, parrying, twisting, feinting, ducking the thrusts of the billmen with well-practised moves. Thomas is rooted for a moment, watching. Riven steps aside to let a bill glance off his thigh, then grabs it, pulls the billman forward on to the point of his sword and then thrusts him backwards to die on the ground with blood frothing at his throat. Riven never looks at the man again, but hurls the butt of the bill at another one of Fauconberg’s men, distracting him for the moment it takes one of the other knights to reach forward and smash his mace into the man’s face.
‘Christ on His cross,’ Dafydd mutters. ‘I’m not having anything to do with that.’
But Thomas takes his place in front of Riven. He stares into the dark slits of Riven’s helmet. He expects some sort of reaction. He gets it in the form of a lunge. The tip of the sword, flat and round like a tongue, hums past his eyes as he throws himself back. He rolls away and gets to his feet. Then he moves in again and ducks and swipes the pollaxe at Riven’s right side.
Riven steps aside, dodging the blow, but the axe’s spike catches and runs down his side, rippling over the buckles of his cuirass. It breaks the bottom leather strap and the cuirass sags. Riven feels the change and pats it with his steel-ringed fingers. There is nothing he can do about it.
He waits. Ash rises around his feet. Dafydd is on Thomas’s shoulder, Henry sliding around to the left. He’s picked up a bill from a dead man. Thomas feints with the pollaxe. Riven lunges. Dafydd steps in with his sword, takes Riven’s blade on his buckler, staggers under the force, and slashes at Riven, but his sword bangs uselessly on Riven’s vambrace. He skips away with a yelp, clutching his hand. Riven smashes his quillon at Dafydd’s head. It hits his helmet and Dafydd staggers back, blood streaming into his eyes. Riven turns, faster than ever, and slices his blade at Henry, aiming for his legs.
Henry takes the blow on his squeaking greave and swings the bill short-armed at Riven. Riven steps inside and crashes his elbow into Henry’s face. Now Henry sags, two spurts of blood on his lips. Riven steps over him and lifts the sword. Thomas steps in, jabs at him, the point of the pole ringing on Riven’s cuirass, sending him staggering, breaking another of the leather straps.
Henry forgotten, Riven rounds on Thomas, who ducks and runs. Five paces: he turns and comes back. He chops at Riven. Riven blocks, then cuts back. Thomas drops back. One nick of that sword and it will all be over. He comes again, and once more Riven sends him s
currying away. His blade is so quick it defies the eye to follow it.
But the knight next to Riven is floundering. His sooted armour is crimped from some earlier blow, and he is finding it difficult to move. He is staggering as the other billmen lash their pikes at him. He’s being beaten down. He doesn’t have long to live. Riven is tiring too. Thomas slashes at him again, the point of the axe scraping a weal down the side of his visor, nearly unpinning it. Riven dances aside; his sword flashes and slices through the meat on Thomas’s shoulder. It feels as if it has been burned and he gasps with the pain.
Henry has recovered, but his legs are sloppy, and his chin and chest are covered in blood. He comes at Riven from the other side. Riven forms a triangle, back to back with the two knights still standing. There are dead billmen lying in the ashes under their feet. Many more are wounded enough to want no further part in this.
A moment later the third knight goes down under a flurry of blows from the other billmen, but as they move in to finish him off, one of the billmen loses his wrist to the second knight’s axe. Blood sprays over their feet in the ash as the billman slides away.
Thomas goes back at Riven and for the next minute they trade blows with blocks and near misses. Riven keeps him and Henry away with sudden feints, swapping his sword from one hand to the other, but after Henry breaks the final leather strap on his cuirass, he begins to move more stiffly. The plates of armour gape, showing a sliver of vulnerability.
Again Thomas attacks, sweat and blood and rainwater in his eyes, his joints vibrating from the blows; but Riven is moving sluggishly now, an almost different creature from before. Each time Thomas attacks him, Riven’s sword gives an inch or two. Thomas starts to land blows on his body as well, and Riven’s armour is dented. He is still strong enough though: he knocks the bill from Henry’s hands. Henry trips over a wounded man.
Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims Page 25