Castling The King

by Martin Archer

  “I want you and your men to stay mounted. Don’t start anything, but if they attack us, I want you to hit them in their rear and stay tight against them using your bows until they break. Take prisoners if you can but don’t let any of them get away. You know the drill. No matter what happens, don’t launch on them until the fighting starts down here. Don’t you start it; hopefully they’ll come to their senses and withdraw without a fight. Pull back and let them go if they do.

  “And you, Sergeant George, you go see to your men. Make sure they’ve got their arrows unwrapped and their range markers out to the front and to your left. And make sure they’ve water too, mind you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  George

  We laid out our arrow bales, put out the range markers and water skins, and waited. I had seventy-six men from my wains plus me. As I walked up and down getting them into position and checking each man’s readiness, I realised there was not a sergeant among them. They were almost all new archers who’d just gotten their first stripe. Most of them are like me—they’ve never been in a real battle.

  Until today, the closest I’ve ever been to a real battle was when I was in the rear with Uncle Thomas when Lord Courtenay came out of Okehampton to attack us when we were travelling to London. That’s when his lordship got himself and his friends killed and we somehow ended up with Okehampton for our trouble.

  Instead of the sergeants my fellow students and I had been told would be there to support me and repeat my commands, there were only five two-stripe chosen men who’d been left among the new archers to supervise their work as cart drivers.

  I quickly moved the chosen men around so each would be an acting sergeant in the key fourth-line position where the file sergeants and the command sergeant stand during a battle. When I finished there were three archers with pikes standing front to back in a line, a gap of ten paces, and then the sergeant himself with three more archers standing in a line behind him. In a regular archer company, the last man in the line would be the file sergeant’s chosen man.

  “Be ready to push, lads,” I shouted out as I walked through the ranks one last time to make sure every man was in place and ready.” Be ready to push longs and to change to heavies when you hear the command.”

  Yes, I said push. According to my uncle Thomas, regular archers such as those the king’s men might face in France hold their bows out in front of them and pull back on their bow strings to launch their arrows. Longbow men are different. We hold our bow strings and push out our bows with a great thrust to launch our arrows. That push and our much longer and stronger bows is why only strong men can push out a longbow. It’s also why our longs fly so much further and our heavies with their additional weight and iron heads can penetrate most armour. At least that’s what Uncle Thomas always told us in our school. I hope it’s true.

  I’d barely finished getting my chosen men in place and loudly reminding them, and everyone else, of their duties as the fourth man and commander of the file when warning cries of “here they come” erupted. The men were supposed to stay silent so the sergeants’ commands could be heard, but my men were green and nervous, and there began to be a lot of talking in the ranks.

  Everyone is nervous, particularly me. Actually, I’m not nervous; I’m excited. I’ve never done this before—command men in a real battle, I mean. I like it.

  “Silence in the ranks!” I roared as I slipped through the front three lines to stand as a sergeant captain in front of my battle men for the first time in my life. Then I gave the first real battle order I’d ever given.

  “Prepare to notch longs. Wait for my order to launch.” It was the first of our basic fighting commands, and every man had heard it a thousand times whilst training as an apprentice archer.

  Truth be told, I was so bewitched watching the mounted men moving towards us that I probably would have forgotten to give the order if I hadn’t heard Raymond and his sergeants bellowing it out from their positions in front of the squares to my right.

  I waited in front of my men with my longbow in my hand and watched in absolute fascination as the mounted men walked their horses past our hastily paced off range markers and into our kill zone. It was as if they didn’t know how far our longs could fly. We should have brought stakes and caltrops. Why aren’t we shooting?

  We did not launch our longs even though we could have reached the men forming up to charge us. Instead, we watched and waited, as Raymond had told me we must, until he and he alone gave the command to launch. The knights and their men slowly walked their horses towards us and began to spread out on both sides of the cart road to the extent they could for all the trees and the ditch running along either side of it.

  It was almost as if they expected us to break and run from the sight of them, as a gathering of rebellious peasants might run when the knights arrive to disperse them. It was silent in our ranks and in the bare trees of the forest along the road—so silent we could hear the hoofs of the knights’ horses hitting the ground and snatches of their talking.

  As I watched the knights in front of us, I heard their shouts and orders increase as they organized themselves and got ready to put their spurs to their horses and begin their charge. They were still getting themselves organized when we heard the shouted order we’d all been expecting from Raymond. I loudly repeated it and so did the chosen men acting in the sergeants’ positions in the fourth rank of each seven-man file.

  “Get ready to aim true with longs. Longs!”

  It was the traditional signal for longbow men to hold tight to their bow strings and get ready to push out their bows to launch their arrows. It was also to let them know I would now be stepping back into the fourth line, ready to push out my own bow and join the shooting.

  A moment later, Raymond gave the order sending us to war, and we all shouted it as well.

  “Push longs and continue! Push longs and continue!”

  All around me I heard the grunts and cries as the archers pushed their bows out from their bodies to launch their lighter, long-distance arrows towards the oncoming knights as fast as they could shoot them. Once the shooting began, the chosen men fell silent and continued to launch. I continued to shoot and constantly shouted the command all by myself, as a battle commander is expected to do.

  “Pick your targets and push longs; pick your targets and push longs.”

  My men’s rapid pushing out of arrows would continue until I gave a new command for my acting file sergeants to repeat. I knew them all by heart—the various commands, that is. I certainly should; I’d repeated them almost every day since Uncle Thomas gave me my first bow and began teaching us boys to be sergeants.

  ******

  A virtual hailstorm of arrows dropped on the surprised knights and their men. It caused much panic and movement among them as wounded horses screamed and bolted, throwing their riders and going down. Seconds later, a group of knights charged toward us. Most of the others, at least those still on their horses, soon followed behind them as if they were a herd of sheep.

  Within seconds, a disorganized mob of sword-waving men on horses bore down on us. Some were carrying lances. It was as if they thought that fighting archers and pike men would be the same as being in a tournament or joust.

  The knights and their men responded to the hail of arrows, as you might imagine, by quickly dropping their visors. In that instant they reduced their chance of taking an arrow in the face but became virtually blind just as they began their charge and picked up speed.

  Horses and men went down even before the charge began and continued to drop as the surviving knights pounded down the cart path towards us through a constant hail of arrows. My shouted orders changed as the gap between the charging knights and my little band of men rapidly narrowed.

  “Ready pikes and keep pushing. Now. Ground your pikes. Ground your pikes. Heavies. Use your heavies.”

  As the surviving horsemen thundered down on us, the archers in our first three ranks put down their bows and p
laced the butt of their pikes in the little hole each had dug in the ground. Then each kneeled—and held his pike with both hands to aim its point at the chest of the horse of whatever knight was coming straight at him.

  Only forty or so of the charging riders reached our front line, and most of them never saw our long, bladed pikes come up or realised what they meant. Those few who did tried to turn their horses; several in the rear succeeded, only to take multiple arrows in their backs. Most did not. They ran their horses straight onto our pikes and impaled them.

  Raymond’s men in the centre and on our right took most of the knights who reached our lines. Only six or seven charged on to our pikes of my men on the left and killed their horses and themselves. It wasn’t so much that the pikes took the knights. They didn’t; they took the horses.

  All along our line there were the screams of horses and the sharp crack as some of our heavy oak pikes shattered under the weight of the charging horses. The horses were stopped in their tracks and typically fell to one side or the other. Their riders, on the other hand, were still a danger because most of them flew off their horses and kept coming until they crashed to the ground or on top of the men in our first three lines and in the ten paces of open ground behind them.

  As soon as the last charging knight in front of us was unhorsed, the acting sergeants in the fourth line and I moved forward with our knives to finish off any of our attackers who were still alive—as many of the horsemen were, despite their broken bones. One had come down on top of the file of men in front of me. They were still trying to pick themselves up when I reached the fallen horseman. He wasn’t moving, but I slipped my dagger under his helmet and into his throat to make sure.

  To kill unhorsed knights is why our fourth line is ten paces behind the third. The knights rarely get that far when they come off their piked horses. It’s something Uncle Thomas said we’d learned to do on Cyprus when we fought its king over some men of ours he had taken for ransom. I was quite young at the time and don’t remember much about Cyprus at all.

  It had been quite noisy in our ranks, what with all the shouts and cries and the screaming horses and men. It seemed to go on forever. Suddenly everything was quiet all around me. Only then did I hear Raymond bellowing at me to get off my arse and get my sergeants out to finish off the knights and horses stretched out on the ground in front of us.

  I should have acted faster. Knights and their horses were all over the ground in front of us. Many lay unmoving, but I could see others struggling to get to their feet and some who had succeeded and were trying to get away.

  They didn’t get far.

  Chapter Fifteen

  George

  “That’s a nice collection. We’ll fetch some decent coins when we sell them,” Raymond said as he and Rollie and I stood looking at the growing pile of armour and weapons being gathered from the fallen knights and their retainers.

  “But it cost us a high price,” Raymond said.” Two of my men were killed, and I’ve got at least six with broken bones and such, including one of my best sergeants who may be needing a mercy.”

  Also in our booty were more than two dozen good horses, if you included the horses whose slashes and bruises could be healed sufficient to be added to our herd. We also took enough clothes and tents and saddles and such to overfill an entire wain. There were eight prisoners of which not a one was a knight, probably because, as everyone knows, knights tend to be too arrogant and unwilling to behave themselves when they are captured.

  I myself didn’t see any prisoners being taken on the battlefield. They must have been captured by the riders Raymond sent around to cut off the escapers and the knights’ servants.

  We stayed on the battlefield that night to bury the dead and barber our wounded, even though it’s hard to understand why taking more blood from a wounded man will help him recover or how it will fix his broken bones. I’ll have to ask my Uncle Thomas more about barbering. He knows about such things, being as he has talked to several Greek physicians and read books and such.

  I slept under a wain that evening, as we always do in case of rain, though it proved to be unnecessary. The next morning we put our wounded on top of the supplies in the wains and travelled on the cart road to Okehampton. One of our wounded cried out when the wain rattled about on the rutted road. He thanked us profusely when we gave him more flower paste to eat. Raymond’s dangerously ill sergeant had an ashen face but was still with us when we reached Okehampton in time for our evening food.

  The castle’s garrison of men from Launceston was more than a little pleased to see us and to be reinforced and resupplied. They were elated when they heard the knights and soldiers who had been camping outside the gate would not be returning. They said they knew something good had happened when they watched Raymond’s outriders gallop into what was left of the knights’ old camp and begin looking for loot.

  To celebrate our victory and the Horse Archers’ return to their base at Okehampton we cooked flatbread that evening and cut strips off some of the sheep from the flock kept inside the walls and toasted them over campfires in the bailey. In addition, every man was given a cup from the garrison’s two ale barrels and an onion from those few remaining in the castle’s dungeon. We also fed three families who had somehow been left behind in the evacuation or, perhaps, were newly arrived.

  Rollie and I traded our onions to Raymond’s cook for a rack of mutton. Sam is famous among the archers for being our best cook. Some say he’s even better than Thomas Cook when the lieutenants and senior sergeants aren’t around to hear them and disagree.

  Okehampton castle is full to overflowing with men. My men and our wounded slept in the great hall and the Launceston archers in the wall towers where they’ve been camped ever since they first arrived. The Horse Archers slept in their own beds in their barracks along the curtain wall next to the stables.

  Raymond took his own room and graciously offered his sergeant apprentice and me the use of the other upstairs room and bed, which had been hurriedly vacated by Lady Isabel and her maidservant when they left for Launceston. My men slept downstairs in the great hall with a roaring fire to keep them warm. I made sure our wounded men got the best places as Uncle Thomas had taught us in our school. The prisoners got tossed into the dungeon cell where the onions were stored.

  I wonder what Lady Isabel will say about Raymond offering Rollie and me the use of her room and bed. Are she and her maid not coming back? Raymond said it was to keep us close in case he needed us to read or scribe, but I wonder.

  Raymond’s sergeant apprentice was Rollie, a longtime friend and fellow student ever since Cyprus. Rollie and I stayed up half the night talking about what had happened and who’d done what. We were both still excited about our first battle and could hardly sleep, what with telling each other all about what we’d seen and heard and done. Rollie was almost hit by a knight when the man flew off his horse. The knight broke his neck but could still speak until one of Raymond’s archers gave him a mercy. Rollie couldn’t stop talking about him.

  ******

  On our fifth morning at Okehampton, just as we were preparing to leave, a messenger came in with a long parchment for Raymond from my father. I was there when Rollie read it to him. It said Sir William Marshal was on his way to Okehampton from his camp in Ilchester to inquire about what happened to Brereton and his men. As a result, someone who was at the battle was to stay and tell Sir William all about it and then gallop for Fowey. That someone was me.

  There was also a separate parchment for me with specific orders as to what I was to say to Sir William and what I was not to say. Lieutenant Raymond left two of his outriders with me and a spare riding horse for each of us. We were to leave for Restormel as soon as I finished speaking with Sir William.

  Not everyone was ordered to leave. The Launceston archers were to stay and garrison Okehampton. Everyone else including any prisoners were to leave immediately for Restormel.

  The Launceston men were given specific o
rders to remain inside the walls with the drawbridge up and on high alert at all times. No one was to be allowed into the castle for any reason, especially not Sir William and his men “because there are noble ladies inside to whom we’ve sworn no one would enter.” Actually there had been only one noble lady and she was long gone to Restormel. I was sure of that; I’d been sleeping in her bed for the past five days.

  ******

  Sir William Marshal arrived at Oakhampton late this morning with about forty men. They appeared to be his household knights. I was standing by my horse outside the castle wall with my two outriders when they trotted up. I was wearing a priest’s robe and carrying no weapons except a wooden cross and my secret wrist knives.

  Sir William reined in his horse in front of me and dismounted with a weary groan. The drawbridge was up, and the Restormel archers and our wounded men were in the castle with its gate closed. The archers were standing on the battlements so they could be seen. Everyone else was on their way to Restormel in response to my father’s summons.

  We were hopeful Sir William and our enemies, whoever they might turn out to be, won’t ever know how few men we actually have defending the castle. If they did, they might be misled by the small number of defenders and try to take it. If they did, they’d most likely die in the process as the men in the castle were well trained, well equipped, and well sergeanted archers—more than enough to hold it for quite some time.

  I’d never done anything like this before and was more than a little anxious when the leader of the riders dismounted. I knuckled my head, bowed to him, and followed my orders. I immediately explained I was a priest who been at the battle with Brereton near Launceston ford. I had, I said, received a parchment from my bishop ordering me not to return to Restormel “until I describe to Sir William Marshal exactly what happened when the robbers attacked the bishop’s wains.” I certainly didn’t tell him I was my father’s son or that I’d been told what to say and what not to say. Robbers? Yes, robbers I was told to always use the word robbers when describing the battle.