by Tony Roberts
The clanking of the French line coming at them filled the archer’s ears. Will was swearing constantly. “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Walt, next to him, had a face set in stone, but his eyes were sick with fear.
Andrew was cursing the stupidity of being put out in front with no protection but lifted an arrow to his string and sighted along his arm. Casca spat the last of his spittle out onto the churned up mud and snarled. “Kill them! Kill them all! Loose, you lot! Loose for your lives! Don’t stop. Kill! Kill!”
The bowmen growled and drew back. There came the sound of strings being pulled taut and the wood of the staves being bent back against their wills. Men sighted down their arms and released, not really needing to aim. The target was so closely packed a hundred yards away and closing that there was no need. Any arrow that was loosed would surely hit something.
The eternal mercenary watched as the French line came slipping and skidding towards them, uphill. The ground was awful where they were, at the bottom. The rainwater had settled there and was now being torn up into a chaotic and confused mess. Men had feet twice their size and three times their weight, and were lifting them up ludicrously to enable them to make any headway. It was no faster than a slow walk.
The sky darkened with thousands of arrows speeding into their lines, and the entire front shivered. Some of the advancing warriors were hit five, ten times. Men shook, span, sank, coated in deadly spines. Casca sent his arrow into the mass and grabbed the next arrow without seeing whether it had hit or not. He fitted it between two fingers, set it against the string, rested the shaft on his fist gripping the center of his stave, and pulled, raising his bow arm at the same time. He felt the bow bend, almost a thing alive, and it trembled, as if begging to be allowed to loose the deadly missile at the swine stumbling and falling towards them, shedding mud, blood and guts in their wake.
An arrow impacted into a knight’s chest, puncturing the steel made in Italy and penetrating the man’s lung. The soldier screamed behind his pig-faced bascinet helm, and staggered two steps forward before losing his balance and falling onto his side. He hit the ground with a stunning impact and he lost his grip on his poleaxe. A man behind him trod on him, driving him deeper into the mud, and the liquid began seeping in through his breathing holes, clogging his mouth. He struggled to move but the press of people clambering over him pinned him into the mud, and he sank deeper, choking on the smothering mud that filled his helmet.
Casca shot a second man through the chest and this one sank to his knees before being roughly barged over by the men following him. The advance slowed as men slithered over toppled warriors, trying to get at the hated English. “Keep it up!” he screamed, seeing the French inch inexorably closer. The archers were mindless; they were dry-mouthed in fear, bending, straightening, loosing, bending, straightening, loosing. They would suffer afterwards but if the French got at them, then that wouldn’t matter. The unprotected archers would be slaughtered.
Another arrow. Casca held his breath. He loosed. Another impact, this time the upper leg of a very well armored man holding a banner of red with white fleur de lys on it. The man limped on, his sword raised. Another arrow knocked him back, striking him in the shoulder.
Shields were coated with arrows. Some of the French were coming on like nightmarish hedgehogs. Sprouting dozens of shafts. They were hideously wounded but honor demanded they close with the enemy and drive them from the sacred soil of France. Behind those first few advancing Frenchmen, a wall of bodies was beginning to grow, blocking the rest of the enemy, making them have to either climb the wall or find a way round, but the mass of armored men advancing up that sodden field of mud made that option all but impossible. So the French climbed.
Casca threw his bow aside. The injured man carrying the banner was closing on him, his intent clear, even though the man’s face was concealed behind a mask of steel. Out came Casca’s sword and he stepped forward. Perhaps ten had managed to get beyond the pile of bodies, and they were being cut down.
The first blow from the Frenchman was down from high, one-handed, since he was still gripping his banner. It was blocked. Casca shook from the blow but rode it. He slammed the pommel of his sword into the Frenchman’s face mask. His opponent staggered but kept his feet. His sword slashed from wide to his right. Casca saw it coming. Planting his feet wide, he stopped the blow.
Counter strike. Point first, he stabbed at the Frenchman’s neck. The blow was not quite accurate enough. The plate armor deflected the blow, but the force of the attack sent the warrior stumbling backwards. Due to his leg wound, the man wasn’t able to use his right leg properly and fell backwards, sprawling in the rutted earth.
Sliding his sword back into his sheath Casca picked up his bow and fitted another arrow. The man was struggling to get up and had rolled onto his side. The banner was lying on the ground and the Frenchman bent to pick it up.
Casca’s arrow smashed into his back from no more than ten feet. The Frenchman was pitched forward and lay across his banner, jerking feebly in pain. He would trouble nobody any more. There were few arrows left. “More arrows!” he shouted urgently. The cry was repeated. They had loosed off so many that their initial supply was running out.
The torrent of missiles had slackened and now the second line of Frenchmen were gathering, pushing past the wall of dead or dying, and coming on, deadly murder in their hearts.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A hand shot forward from behind, clutching a sheaf of arrows. Just in time! Casca grunted a thanks and more page boys were arriving, pushing much-needed sheaves of arrows at the desperate bowmen. Casca grabbed a new arrow and a thought entered his head; how many arrows did they have here? There were five thousand archers, each having a quiver of forty arrows. That was two hundred thousand arrows alone. Now more were being passed to them. How much effort was that? Casca knew it took half an hour to make just one arrow. He rolled his eyes in amazement. All that effort to produce arrows; there must be over a thousand thousand arrows here alone. Such effort meant that archers would have to be used in war to justify the expense of paying fletchers for all that time.
Another mental note to self, Casca mused, never agree to fight an English army. He sighted on a group of heavily armored men heading his way, one of whom was carrying a long, straggling banner atop a pole. His eyes widened in surprise. “God – the Oriflamme!”
Walt paused in the act of fitting another arrow to his string. “What? Where?”
Casca jerked his head in the direction of a large group of Frenchmen pushing their way through a pile of the fallen. A large number of armored men were shoving some of their wounded comrades aside to make way for a bigger group coming through behind them. One of them was holding aloft what Casca had identified. It was a long pennant of red, ending in four tasseled flaps, fixed to an ornate pole of wood which was decorated with a diamond design. The pole was taller than the man holding it in his left gauntleted hand. The man himself was wearing an enclosed pig-faced visored helm, and wore over his plate armored breastplate a yellow surcoat with three red hammers emblazoned across the chest.
“Who is that?” Walt shouted, having to yell to make him heard above the tumult of battle.
“Don’t know – but I’m willing to bet he’s a noble, probably of the Martel family! That banner – the Oriflamme – it means no prisoners! War to the death!”
“Well let’s kill the bastards and show them, then!”
Casca loosed off in the direction of the Martel noble, but hit someone in front of him. The unlucky man stopped, gripped the arrow sticking from his ribs and snapped it off, then came lumbering on. The archers were letting go furiously and the sky was black with arrows. More French warriors toppled to the ground and the attack stalled – except in two places. One was over to the right where the Duke of York was desperately trying to keep the right flank together, and the other was straight for the King. The French saw the royal standard and pushed grimly forward, no matter how many of their f
riends and family were being cut down.
Another arrow. Casca’s fingers were getting warm. They were stinging with the friction. The range was now only thirty feet, and it seemed an entire French division was pressing at him. Too many of them! He shot straight into the upper chest of a man heading directly for him and the knight stiffened in pain and from the impact, leaned back, and fell into the horrified arms of two men behind him.
Now the French were too close for those archers in front of the King and his bodyguard. Casca grabbed Walt by the shoulder and pulled him back. “Get behind the knights – now!” He yelled out to the others. Some were in danger of being carved up by the metal-clad warriors advancing grimly on them. Some had arrows protruding from them, yet they still came on, dripping blood out of the holes in their armor.
Andrew beat a hasty retreat and Sills followed, his eyes wide and staring. Will turned but his weakened state worked against him. He could not pull one of his feet out of the glutinous mud that held him fast. He tugged but just did not have the strength to free himself. He swung round and saw, to his horror, a man-at-arms closing in on him, his broad-bladed sword rising high, ready to plunge down on him.
“Cass!” he screamed, falling backwards in terror, his bow stave thrust forward to try to ward off the coming blow.
Casca turned and saw, as in slow motion, the blow coming down. “Noooo!” he yelled, transfixed as the blade cut down onto his unprotected friend. He shut his eyes in despair. Will hadn’t even had a chance to cry out as the blade cut through his bow, down across his neck and severed his head neatly.
The scarred warrior stood there staring at his fallen friend as a mass of men stepped forward to meet the first of the Frenchmen. Swords clashed and shields blocked, and now the air was full of the sound of heavy infantry whacking the hell out of one another.
Walt was on his hands and knees, shaking his head from side to side. “You see that?” he said, his voice raised, “that bastard cut Will’s head off!”
“I saw,” Casca said dully. “Poor guy just couldn’t get free of the mud.” It had been a gruesome ending, but nothing that Casca hadn’t seen in his time. In fact he’d seen far worse. He got to his feet and helped Walt up. The other archers were gathering, unsure as to what to do. They had peeled off to either side of the melee, so that they were separated from half of their comrades. “Come on, keep on loosing! There’s other Frenchies trying to get through, look,” he pointed to the right where more armored figures were advancing, struggling through the now totally churned up mud. Men were hardly moving forward through the viscid surface, shaking with exhaustion. The French had used up all their strength to get to the English line and were now facing fresh men.
Casca fitted an arrow and sighted on a man in resplendent colors and heavy duty plate armor. Clearly a senior noble. Someone would look to him for a ransom. Screw that. Casca shot his missile into the man’s chest, the pointed bodkin tip burrowing deep through the expensive German-made protective steel and into his ribs. The man jerked upright in pain and staggered sideways one step, then fell flat on his face.
Walt sent a missile into another man’s thigh and the Frenchman stumbled, but somehow kept on going. His yellow and black shield was bristling with arrows but he was out in front and now attracted the attention of dozens of archers. He was hit six, seven times and fell backwards in slow motion, stuck full of the deadly shafts.
Casca slid another arrow across his left fist and looked across the field for a target. The French attack had stalled. Directly to his left the melee was still going on and more English knights were falling. The French were making headway into the ranks, heading straight for the King! He threw down his bow and grabbed his sword once more. “Walt – to the King!”
There were only eight men left standing around the axe-wielding Henry. By his feet lay a badly wounded man – the Duke of Oxford, by the looks of things – and the King was flailing mightily, trying to keep the French off the fallen man. More Frenchmen closed in, led by a man with a shield bearing a coat of arms of blue with gold fleur de lys emblazoned across it, with a border of red with white roundels inset. Some big man in the French Court, no doubt. His men were battling the remaining English squires who were being overwhelmed.
Casca filled his lungs. “To the King!”
The other archers close by threw down their bows and grabbed their hand weapons; axes, mallets, swords. Anything. In a mass they rushed the French men-at-arms in an effort to save their liege.
As Casca got to the melee, jumping over a feebly-moving man with a huge gash in his neck, he saw the French nobleman strike at Henry’s head. The King flinched and a piece of his helmet flew off. The Frenchman drew back for another strike at the stunned King when Casca crashed into him, knocking the man off his feet and onto the bloodied and messed up mud. Casca had a brief vision of feet and swords, then scrambled up and raised his sword. The Frenchman was trying to get up, still clutching his sword and shield. Casca hammered down, but the shield deflected the strike aside.
He was aware that the other archers were mobbing the surviving Frenchmen, hammering at them, hacking, stabbing, slashing. The cumbersome armored men, worn out after their exertions up the hill, found the nimbly-moving unarmored archers too fast for them, and staggered under the repeated and frenzied blows.
Casca had to block a counter swipe from the man still on his ass in the mud. He was game, having a go. The knight got to his knees and blocked off two heavy smashes from Casca. Another slash. This time it struck the Frenchman’s helmet and it broke, the visor swinging off, the catches shattered. It revealed a stern face, sweaty, with dark brown eyes and a large nose. Very Gallic.
Another severe blow from Casca. It took the Frenchman under the throat and knocked his head back. The wounded man fell backwards, his arms spread-eagled. He began to sink into the mud. Casca stood over him, his sword raised. Damn the ransom, what good was that to him anyway?
The desperate man grabbed his dagger and slashed at his assailant. Casca felt a burning score across his lower leg. “You bastard!” he breathed, flinching in pain. With a snarl he plunged his sword tip into the man’s mouth, sinking it deep, out through the back of his head. The pain from his wound made Casca sit down. He looked about.
Walt was standing bloodied to one side, his mallet head soaked in red. At his feet lay a man who once may have had a head, but it was a crumpled ruin now. The King, behind Casca, was regaining his feet, holding his head. Sir Thomas Erpingham was coming over to assist him, aided by three squires.
It seemed every other armored combatant had fallen in the melee, and apart from the King the only ones still on their feet were archers. Bodies were strewn about everywhere. Some were covered in mud, others in blood. Casca grimaced and tore off a strip of his shirt and tied it round his wound. That would stop any flow and hide the abnormal healing process. Groaning, he got to his feet.
A charnel house greeted his eyes. The field was littered with bodies. Flags and poles lay at all angles above the sea of corpses. Already, overhead, black crows were gathering, settling in the treetops, waiting for the feast.
“How are you, Cass?” Walt asked, looking at him from top to toe.
“I’ve been better, but I’ll survive. You?”
“Ah,” Walt nodded and looked about. There were no more Frenchmen moving towards them. At the bottom of the field, only just visible over the mound of bodies, the remaining French were not advancing, staring with horror up at the carnage. They had no stomach to get caught up in the slaughter. One by one they turned and retreated, leaving their wounded to the mercy of the English.
“We did it,” Walt said, amazed. “We fucking beat them!”
“Language, Walt; sovereign present,” Casca jerked a thumb behind him.
Henry made no sign that he had heard. He was busy tending the wounded Duke of Oxford, who was speaking to Henry, his visor removed.
Casca limped away and crossed the field of bodies to the other side of the melee. Sat
in the mud was Andrew, cradling Sills in his lap. Sills had a huge gash across his guts and his tunic was soaked red. Casca and Walt knelt by Sills’ side.
“Stupid thing,” Sills gasped, his eyes rolling up to look at the two. “Dying in the arms of a Taffy!”
“That’ll guarantee you a trip to Heaven, you heathen,” Andrew said softly, a smile on his face.
Sills laughed once, coughed, vomited up blood and sank deeper into Andrew’s lap, his eyes unfocussing. Casca sighed and bowed his head. Walt turned away, shaking his head. Only three of the band had survived.
Everywhere men were walking round, trying to find their fallen comrades, or a French noble still alive, pinned under other bodies. The coughing and groaning of men was everywhere. Now the fight had ended, Casca felt himself come off the high and the normal depressed feeling set in. It wouldn’t last long but he hated the feeling. What made this one even more marked was the fact everyone had expected them to lose, yet they had slaughtered the best that France could throw at them.
They had endured and won an impossible victory.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It began to rain again. The King ordered everyone to stand and remain alert, just in case the French tried to attack once more. Casca, Walt and Andrew stood with the other archers of Sir Godfrey’s retinue and shivered as the sweat cooled and they began to get soaked in the cold, persistent rain once more.
The feeling of euphoria that had come over them died away and they silently waited, staring down the field to where more French were now arriving – the second army of rumor. Casca watched as an argument raged back and forth between the French and some, enraged at the apparent cowardice of those who had witnessed the slaughter, began to march up the hill. Immediately the archers snapped into position and loosed off a few volleys that scattered the newly arrived men.