by Tony Roberts
Sir Godfrey gathered his men about him that night “We’ve done well to keep going so far, so well done, all of you! Tomorrow we make for Ancre and the river crossing there. I have been asked to detach some of you to help with the skirmishing at the vanguard; all of us have been asked to provide men since the vanguard is getting very tired with the constant efforts to keep the French from stopping us. The Duke of York wants more archers to keep the enemy at arm’s length. Therefore I’m sending Cass Long and his group to help.”
Casca smiled weakly. It was always him. A result of his prowess with war. Those with him groaned and looked at the scarred bowman. Casca nodded to Sir Godfrey. “Very good, sire. Should we go at first light?”
“No, now. Report to the captains at the van. You’ll be ready to march immediately the moment the order to go comes. Good luck, and may God go with you.”
The group made their way through the camp, carrying their stakes and eventually found the place simply by following other archers who had been similarly ordered. It seemed the Duke of York wanted a strong screen in front of him and to the flanks to keep the wolves at bay.
They gathered by a particularly big fire, directed there by a couple of sergeants, and a captain stood on top of a thick log that had been part of a large tree chopped down to make firewood, waiting for the last of the archers to gather. He was scruffy, tired looking, strong jawed, and had a few days’ stubble on his chin. He looked as tough as old nails.
Finally, satisfied all were there, he addressed them. “Welcome to the advance guard. We’re beginning to encounter increasing numbers of harassing French units trying to slow us down or break us up so they can deal with the smaller units. The Duke doesn’t want to lose his men to these dogs or have them tired out by having to fight every step of the way to Calais.”
He put his fists on his hips and slowly stared round at all the listening men, numbering perhaps two hundred. “It is clear the French army is ahead of us, and we hear that a second army is now on the way in our wake trying to trap us or join up with the other army. We must keep going to prevent this. The French know we are close to reaching Calais and once we are there we will be safe, so they will have to act sooner rather than later. So, they are now sending these few skirmishers to try to slow us down and weaken us.
“Your job is to keep these skirmishers away from us, using your bows. Do not stop to engage in a long running battle, or you’ll be left behind. You must keep up with the vanguard, to maintain your screen of safety. You will be split into three groups; one will advance in front of the army and the other two will advance to either side a few yards from the road. It’ll be wet, cold and uncomfortable, but it must be done.”
The archers looked at each other. They were keenly aware they were to be hung out to dry, so to speak, like some old sheet in the winter. They were to keep on going no matter what, no matter how many of them fell.
The captain began directing the groups to either left, right or forward. He looked at Casca, easily the biggest and most noticeable of his group. “Who do you look to?”
“Sir Godfrey Fulk, Captain.”
“Of Montgomery? Aye, well, you can help up front. You Welsh borderer yeomen can shoot as well as anyone. Your camp is beyond the last of the tents. Place your stakes in the ground overnight; you’re the pickets along the road.”
They wound their way round the camp fires and tents, muttering. It seemed they got all the tough jobs that nobody wanted to have. Taking up point would mean they were first contact so there would be no warning of any ambush, and they would be the target of every French skirmisher wanting to break through to the richer rewards of the main army.
“Who decided we were the whipping boys of this army, then?” Andrew wanted to know, swinging one arm in disgust. “They could have chosen almost any other group, couldn’t they? What are we, bloody soft targets, that’s what!”
The rest kept their thoughts to themselves but it wasn’t hard to guess what they were, judging by their expressions. Casca himself couldn’t give a damn; he was a fighting man, what he did best. Whether he was first to a battle or last, it mattered not to him. Battle called to him and he would answer it the only way he knew how - with the sword. He had no death awaiting to worry him; he would carry on as he always had, killing, fighting. Perhaps the Jew was secretly amused, watching him struggle on. Whatever, he would follow his destiny until the end, the day when he met the Jew once more and then could be put out of his misery.
They passed the last of the sentries with a whispered ‘good luck’ and were now out beyond the advance guard. Casca stopped and looked about. The road was there ahead of them and to the sides narrow ditches lay, full of rainwater. The drainage ditches at least kept the road free from floods, which he guessed was why they had been dug. This part of France usually flooded, what with the profusion of rivers and the mainly flat ground.
And of course, it fucking rained. October was a stupid time of year to march an army round this part of the world. You couldn’t start a siege or forage for food, and who wanted to fight a battle? What for? The only reason the French armies were in the field now was to chase them off or, if luck went their way, to surround and force the English to surrender.
“Walt, can you get a fire going?”
“In this weather?” Walt snorted, a droplet of water falling off his lank dark hair past his nose. “I’m not Merlin!”
“We need a fire. Do your best.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Walt sighed. “Come on, you three,” he waved to Will, Sills and Andrew, “let’s make a miracle of our own.”
Casca strode on slowly ahead, eyes peering into the darkness. There were pinpricks of light out there, but he didn’t know whether they were villages or fires of enemy groups in the distance.
The cold wind blew from the south-west, rustling nearby treetops. Casca scowled and paced back to the others. A pile of firewood was lying by the roadside. Walt was crossing one of the ditches, using his stake as a bridge. The rest of the advance group, some nine of them, were gathering wood to make more fires. Casca gruffly ordered them off the road. Putting a fire on the road was senseless since the army would have to march on it the following morning, and a fire would effectively block it. They made three fires that night; two on one side of the road and one on the other. Casca used the light of the fires to walk round a perimeter of his own making, marking the edge of the sentries’ area with sticks stuck in the soft and sodden ground, and got three men to begin patrolling around the sticks, making sure they overlapped and didn’t bunch. He didn’t want any gaps to appear.
He stood away from the rest, peering out into the night, listening to the sound of the wind, trees and distant cries of animals - foxes, owls and other hunters. His whole body trembled deeply; he knew a battle was coming, he could feel it in his bones. A big one. He’d been in many in his time and could now sense when conditions conspired to create one.
It wouldn’t be long till the French came for them now.
The new day was brighter, thankfully, and with a rumbling set of curses the men got up, quickly ate and kicked the remains of the fires into extinction. Scanning the horizons to left, right and ahead, Casca waved the men into a line that ranged either side of the road to a distance of about twenty yards. They stood there, shivering in the dawn, watching for any signs of movement.
Casca remained on the road in order to maintain a central position. The sound of hoofbeats came from behind and he turned. Sir Thomas Erpingham approached with his retinue. He stopped and looked down at the muddy, unshaven archer before him. A smell of unwashed and damp human came to him but he made no sign that it was unpleasant. They were, after all, in France, a shithole of a country.
“You know what you have to do?”
Casca bowed solemnly. “Sire. Advance and make sure the army is unmolested. What is our route today, sire?”
“Due west to the River Ancre. Do not approach the town too closely.”
“Sire.” Casca bowed
again and backed away, rather than turning his back on the knight. He didn’t want to enrage the man, not knowing how he’d react.
“And archer,” Sir Thomas said, pausing in the act of turning his horse round. “Don’t make a mess of it or I’ll have your entrails strung up by the roadside. Understand?”
“Perfectly sire.” Casca flashed a smile and loped off to his men. “Here’s the situation you lot, listen well. Sir Thomas wants us to precede the vanguard westwards towards Ancre. There’s a crossing at the town. No doubt they’ll try to stop us getting there, so we’ve got to do our bit. He’s threatened to disembowel me if we fail, so rest assured I’ll do the same to any of you who messes up. Got it?”
The others smiled faintly. They knew their job. The light was good enough to see to the distant horizons so Casca waved them off westwards. The road split in two, one fork turning north, the other west. They took the left hand route and slowly advanced, eyes searching left and right, bows ready. Their stakes were left behind; there was no way they could carry them now they were point for the entire army.
Casca walked along the muddy road with six men to one side and seven to the other, all of them with an arrow loosely fitted to their bows. The fact it was not raining made a big difference; their strings would not get wet. The ground to either side of the road was a mixture of long grass and thorny bushes, with farmland ranging in either direction. The occasional low rolling hill broke up the scenery and spires of churches could be seen here and there, denoting villages. They would be avoided as much as possible unless they lay across the road they were taking. Villages slowed an army down and they couldn’t afford to tarry.
Taking the west road was a neat trick, Casca mused. The French would probably think they would go north, towards higher ground and to avoid the wider stretches of the watercourses, and head for Bapaume. The marks on the ground from the French, however, had indicated they had gone in that direction, so King Henry had decided they would take the lower road, head away from the waiting French and risk the wider crossing points further downstream.
Behind them, the army marched. The sound of them making their way came to Casca and his men. Jingling, tramping, coughing, squeaking, rattling, sneezing. It was an indescribable yet unforgettable noise. The only drawback was that it masked any sound that may be coming from ahead or to either side, a forewarning of enemy activity.
“Why don’t they send outriders?” Sills queried, frowning. “Scouts go further and faster and can see better on horseback.”
“They might have got some out, Sills,” Casca said, not looking at the man, but keeping his attention on the countryside. “They’ll still need us out front as an advance warning.”
“I ain’t seen no horses,” one of the others commented.
“Nor those Frenchies there,” Casca nodded beyond the speaker, pulling on his string.
“Eh?” the man swung round and paled. Three figures were standing across a narrow brook in between a row of willows. Instantly the archers raised their bows, but the figures dived for cover behind the trees and long grass.
The sound of thundering hoofs caused Casca to swing round, and he cursed violently. “Decoys!” he yelled. Five Frenchmen dressed in rudimentary armor and sporting lances had suddenly broken cover from behind a thick growth of hazel and were bearing down on them. Casca loosed off his arrow, taking the one to the right of the leader from Casca’s perspective through the chest, knocking him clean off his saddle, but the four others came on grimly.
Two of the archers were right in their path and had little chance. With screams they were skewered neatly and collapsed to the dirt, but the other archers now loosed off, taking the French riders to whatever hell there was. One horse was hit as well and it galloped off, whinnying in pain and fright, dragging its luckless rider behind it, one foot caught in a stirrup.
Casca’s neck prickled still with alarm and he swung back to look across the brook. Sure enough the men behind the willows, and there were more than three, had stood up and now were jumping or wading across, intending to slaughter the remaining archers. “‘Ware left!” Casca screamed, using the slang all Englishmen knew.
As one, the others turned, automatically fitting an arrow to their strings. Eight French soldiers, wearing padded gambesons, sporting open-faced helmets and carrying a mixture of axes, swords and poleaxes, moved into the attack. Casca stepped to one side to allow himself a clear shot, away from one of his men who was panicking since he was closest to the Frenchmen. Casca coolly shot his arrow into one Frenchman’s chest and he could see the shudder run throughout the man’s body as it reacted in pain to the blow. The man clutched the shaft that now sprouted from his chest and fell sideways, his face screwed up in pain.
Walt ran forward three paces, stopped, and put his missile through a second man’s guts. The injured man screamed horribly and writhed on the ground. More shots took out three more but the three survivors pressed on, one of whom used his poleaxe to slice open the nearest archer’s throat. The unfortunate man fell to the ground, spurting red through his fingers, his eyes wide in horror.
Swearing mightily, Casca dropped his bow and dragged out his sword. The poleaxe-wielder was ten feet from him. “Right, you French cock sucker,” Casca snapped, “come and face me and die!”
“Piss in your face, English cochon,” the Frenchman said, hate written all over his face. He advanced on Casca and swung his poleaxe, narrowly missing the eternal mercenary’s face. Casca stepped forward, half-turning his body, and sent his sword up across the Frenchman’s throat, opening it to the air. The wounded man choked and staggered back, dropping his weapon, then fell backwards, his eyes wide and staring.
“Die!” screamed a man from close by.
Casca jumped backwards in reflex and the blow from an axe intended to split his head open missed its target, but bit nonetheless into his left shoulder. Pain exploded throughout his body and Casca roared in pain. He grabbed the axeman and slid his sword blade into his gut, slowly and deliberately. “Go to hell, goat-buggerer.”
“A pox.....on you...” the dying man wheezed, and slowly fell to his knees in front of Casca.
Casca pulled his blade free and kicked the man over onto his back, clutching his shoulder in agony. He looked round and saw that the last enemy soldier had been dispatched. He grunted with disgust. They had been fooled all too easily, and it had cost them three men.
Walt came up, slipping his bow round his shoulder, concern on his face. “You alright, Cass? Looks like a bad ‘un there.”
“Nah, its fine,” Casca lied. “Glancing blow. It’ll stop bleeding in a moment. “We lost three; that’s not good. Get the rest to watch every nook and cranny. We can’t be taken that easily again!”
“At least that’s thirteen of the swine sent to hell,” Will commented, looking at the bodies littering the ground. “Thought we were all done for there for a moment!”
“We damned well nearly were, Will,” Casca said, gritting his teeth. The axe had bitten deeply and had probably chipped his shoulder bone. It would be beginning to reknit already, and that would be why it hurt so damned much. Sweat beaded his brow. “Get the three of our group lined up neatly. Chuck the Frogs in the brook.”
“What about loot?” Sills asked, bending to take hold of the nearest dead enemy soldier.
“Yes, take whatever is of value. Save one of those open-faced helmets for me - I feel naked without one.”
A rider came galloping up from the vanguard, asking what had happened. Casca was concise and to the point. After a few moments the rider galloped back and a captain came riding up. He ordered the group to rest and stand down while a new group took up point. The eleven men relaxed in relief and watched as the forward units of the army passed them by, all turning their heads with curiosity to see what had happened.
The four horses that remained were claimed quickly by the first noble who came up to them, on foot. He looked relieved to be able to mount up, and settled in the saddle, wriggling for a m
oment or two. “Ah, will have to get my arse used to this,” he said. “Good work, bowman,” he said to Casca. “I see you paid for your labors in blood,” he nodded to the cut shoulder with tints of red around it. “Well, as a sign of my thanks you can have this,” he tossed a small leather bag of clinking coins at Casca. “Payment for the horses.” He nodded and rode on, his men pulling the acquired animals in their wake.
Walt came to stand alongside a rueful Casca who was weighing the bag in his hand. “He short-changed you?”
“Naturally, the tight-arsed bastard.” Casca held the bag over Walt’s hand, who turned it palm-upwards. He spilled a few coins into it. “Go pass this round to the others equally. We may visit a village tonight and I think the boys need a reward.”
“Won’t Sir Godfrey object?”
“Sir Godfrey can kiss my arse. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Get the boys together - we’re going to follow the vanguard away from the main body so we don’t get recalled to Sir Godfrey. He’ll still think we’re doing skirmish duty, won’t he?”
Walt chuckled. “I like your thinking.” He loped off, leaving Casca to pick up his bow and wipe the dampness off the string. He decided to unstring the bow and wrap the damp cord under his new helmet which Andrew passed to him. By the time they stopped for the night, it would be dry. He checked his wound, peeling aside the ripped padding of his tunic. He’d have to fix that when they stopped. The wound would be closed now, but it still hurt like hell.
Ah well, he mused, at least it wasn’t down the middle of my head!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
That evening the army camped outside a small village called Acheux, having crossed the Ancre without too much difficulty. The townsfolk were too intimidated by the size of the army to bother blocking their progress, and another river was now behind them. The only problem now was that word of their crossing would no doubt be in the hands of the Duke of Orleans, wherever he was, and he would know their position and route, while his army was still out of sight of the English.