This one’s very dangerous. If he gives his parole I’ll send him to Launceston; if he doesn’t he’ll have to help the churchmen with their prayers in Restormel’s cells until I can exchange him or Cornell ransoms him. But if I do that he’ll know about them and their fate.
Chapter Ten
In a few minutes some of my men and I are going to set off for Restormel with our prisoners and the wagons. We’ll walk all night so we can get there before the sun goes down tomorrow. I could take them all to Launceston Castle, but I won’t – I don’t want so many prisoners in the castle helping to eat up its siege stores.
Peter and the rest of our men, those with horses to ride, will remain behind to patrol the river and watch for Cornell and the invaders. They’ll base themselves in Launceston Castle and carry all the arrows and supplies they can carry as they range up and down the river on horseback in groups of two or three men.
I’m only leaving behind the men with horses to ride. It’s too dangerous to leave the others – sooner or later Cornell will get his horsemen across and be able to ride down any of our men who are on foot.
It will be interesting to see how and where Cornell tries to come across and get a foothold on this side of the river now that he knows we have archers but doesn’t know how many.
“How do you think they’ll come, Peter?”
“They’ve still got the ropes and the river’s going down so they may try to swim a few men across here or elsewhere; get them into defensive positions to hold the crossing while others come over. Our patrols will carry extra arrows and be able stop them with our longbows, of course, if we come across them before too many get across.”
Peter pauses for a moment and thinks about my question.
“But that’s not what I think will happen,” he finally says.
“I think his mounted men will all swim across the river at the same time at some open area where they can see we are not on the other bank. Once they get across and establish themselves they’ll use the ropes to bring the others over. Then they’ll march on the ford and hold it while their wagons come across.” He’s right. Of course he is.
“I think you’re right,” I tell him. “And I think Cornell will do it quickly – both because he’s got his wounded men to rescue at the ford and because he is likely to know that we don’t have enough horses to leave many archers along the river.”
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Before we leave I parade the prisoners and tell them that we are decent men and will not enslave or hurt them if they behave during the trip to Restormel - but if they attempt to escape they will be hunted down as outlaws and hung.
My plan is for the prisoners to walk during daylight hours while my men ride in the wagons; then have them ride in the wagons with their feet and hands tied when it’s dark and my men are walking around them.
Francis is another matter entirely. I tell him my terms in front of the other prisoners - if he will give me his parole as an honorable knight not to take up arms ever again in Cornwall I will free him without requiring a ransom immediately after the war is over.
Of course I ask for his parole in front of all the other prisoners; so everyone at his Hathersage Castle home will know he gave his word and he’ll be disgraced as a knight if he doesn’t keep it.
What I don’t do is tell Francis what will happen if he does not give his word. He’ll be in the Restormel cells where he will undoubtedly find out about the clerics who have disappeared and are not likely to be seen again. So if he doesn’t give his knightly word he’ll either have to be sent to permanently disappear in one of the cells in Launceston’s dungeon or taken to our ships at the mouth of the River Fowey and chained to a rowing bench until he can pull an oar on our next galley bound for Cyprus.
My concerns about Francis come to nowt. I’m relieved when Francis swears his parole in front of the other prisoners. He seems like a nice young man so I’ll take him and our other prisoners to our camp near Restormel.
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Our return trip is tiring but uneventful. We reach Restormel in time for me to enjoy a meal with Helen and George and the rest of Thomas’s boys. Before I sit down with them I send the wagons and what’s left of our prisoners on to our main camp about three miles to the west.
None of our prisoners ran during the day when they were walking, probably for fear that our archers would see them run and put an arrow in them. Last night in the dark, however, four of them somehow jumped out of the moving wagons and bolted off into the darkness together.
It really doesn’t matter. They’re not likely to be much help to Cornell even if they avoid starving to death long enough to rejoin him.
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My return to Restormel is joyous with great hugs and kisses for everyone, excited reports from George and the boys about their studies and catching fish in the river, and Helen rushing to bring me warm clothes and a bowl of ale.
We all eat a delicious hot soup of onion and cheese in a hollowed out bread loaf and listen as George and the excited boys tell us about their studies. I listen patiently while they chant their sums together in unison, chatter with each other and me in Latin, and show me the words they are learning to write on their slates.
Helen just sits with us at the table in front of the fireplace and listens until Angelo Priestly leads the boys up the stairs to bed and the great hall finally goes quiet.
We sit alone in front of the great fire without speaking until the talking in the sleeping room above us quiets. Then she comes around the table to where I’m sitting, lifts her gown and straddles me right there in front of the fireplace.
Afterwards she takes me by the hand and leads me upstairs in the darkness to our little corner and undresses me.
“I’ll be right back, don’t go away,” she whispers into my ear.
I can sense her moving away in the darkness and then I can hear her going down the stone stairs to the great hall. A few minutes later she comes back up the stairs, pulls the sleeping skins off our bed, and has me to lie on its leather strings while she rubs me all over with a warm wet rag. Afterwards she puts all the skins back on the bed and has me burrow in with her while she gives me a wonderful stroking all over my body.
We stayed awake half the night touching and enjoying each other - and I sleep late the next morning until she gently shakes me awake and hands me a wooden spoon and a bowl of warm gruel with some kind of raw egg beaten into it “to keep your strength up.” I was able to eat about half of it before I had to get up to pee.
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It is at least an hour after the sun comes up before I pull on my clothes and walk down the narrow staircase to the great hall – and find Henry and a dozen or so of my senior sergeants waiting to talk. Even Harold is here from the sailors’ camp. They are obviously anxious for news and want someone to tell them what to do.
After we shake hands and joke a bit the sergeants sit on the benches running along the table and listen as I stand at the end of the table and bring them up to date. My description of the little battle at the River Tamar ford and the success of our archers gets their fierce approval. They’re all archers except Harold so it would, wouldn’t it?
“We don’t have any idea who was standing around their horses on the other side but one thing is damn certain – most of them aren’t standing now and never will.”
We talk of many things and I go out of my way to make sure everyone understands how well Peter and our archers performed. The men in our companies, they all agree, are trained and ready for Cornell. What they ask about, and I can’t tell them because I don’t know myself, is how Thomas is doing with the mercenaries he seems to have hired.
There has been no further word from Thomas since Simon’s galley arrived more than a week ago – all we know is that he has signed a contract for a company of Scottish mercenaries and is off to meet them and lead them in an attack against Cornell’s Hathersage Castle - and a siege if they don’t take it immediately.
Our hope, of course, is tha
t the fighting at Hathersage will prevent reinforcements from being sent to Cornell here in Cornwall; at the very best, of course, the attack will so worry Cornell that he’ll return to relieve Hathersage.
Chapter Eleven
Hathersage Castle comes into view late in our third day of marching. It’s taken us longer than I would have thought because Leslie’s entire clan is marching with all of its men, women, and children. Hmm. That gives me an idea.
People see us marching along the track that passes through their fields and pastures and so do the travelers we meet coming the other way on the wagon path.
As you might expect, they all give us a wide berth. But for the most part no one seems to be greatly excited by our presence. The only exception is a knight who comes galloping out his castle to demand a toll – and quickly turns around and gallops back to raise his drawbridge when he sees the men walking around Leslie’s horse at the head of the column with crossbows and the crude old fashioned swords on their shoulders.
It doesn’t escape me that Leslie has all three of his crossbow men walking with him at the front of the column. The old swords look impressive but it is the armor piercing crossbow quarrels that concern knights and the length of their cast that affects castle sieges. Longbows in the hands of a trained archer have almost the same cast and impact while shooting as much as ten times more frequently.
“Captain Leslie, have you or the nobles hereabouts ever faced longbow men?” Have nobles such as Lord Cornell? That’s the question I’m really asking.
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My archers are walking with the Scots and they seem to be getting on well. I did another count after Roger came back from London with four newly recruited archers and a couple of apprentice archers who will need a lot of additional training to strengthen their arms.
At the moment we have a grand total of twenty eight longbow men and just over a thousand arrows. Leslie also has three crossbowmen with less than a dozen knight-killing metal quarrels apiece, a couple of bowmen with short bows and about twenty arrows per man, and about twenty pikes without the blade and hook we add to ours – basically just long pole with an iron spearhead on the end.
Leslie and I are riding side by side at the head of the column so we can talk. He likes to talk and I encourage him.
“How would you and your men stop knights on horseback, if I might ask?”
“Why Bishop, if they charge us we’ll get behind a line of our pikes and use our swords to slaughter them when the pikes knock them off their horses.”
And what happens if they get through your single line of pikes without being knocked off their horses?
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Cornell’s Hathersage Castle looks impressive and strong when we see it from a distance. It looks even more imposing and difficult to defeat when we get closer. It’s an awesome castle - its ramparts are manned and the drawbridge over its moat is raised. They know we’re coming.
Leslie and I sit side by side on our horses looking at it. Roger and Leslie’s son are right behind us. Finally I shake my head and tell him what I think.
“We’ll never take it by force; either we gull them and they let us in or we lay siege on the castle and starve them out.”
“Aye. That’s God’s truth, it surely is. It’s a siege for sure.”
With that piece of wisdom ringing in my ears, I watch as Leslie begins leading his men in a great circle around the castle and begins assigning positions to his men.
While Leslie is making his initial dispositions I ride into the nearby village where the castle’s serfs and churls live. It’s totally deserted.
The fact that the village is deserted is encouraging. It most likely means that some or all of the villagers have taken refuge in the castle and will join its defense. That’s actually encouraging since we have no intention directly assaulting on the castle – it’s good because it means there will be more people inside to help eat up its stores of food; it’s bad because it means there will be more men for sorties. It also means we’ll have someplace to shelter my archers and house Leslie’s mercenaries and their families.
What we don’t know, and would dearly like to know, is how many people are inside the castle and the size of its food reserves.
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It’s been three weeks of almost constant rain since we began the siege of Hathersage Castle. So far there has been no sign of either its surrender or a relief force. There isn’t much I can do here so I’m thinking about leaving Roger here with the Scots to continue the siege and returning to Cornwall. I want to be with George and my students to make sure they are learning what they need to learn.
My thinking changes when a messenger rides in from London with a parchment from Cornwall. In his message William reports that pilgrims and merchants are again moving between Cornwall and Devon - and the travelers coming out of Devon all say that Cornell and four of his five household knights were killed on the River Tamar by an ambush of enemy archers.
William says he intends send a force of riders into Devon in an effort to see if the reports are true. If Cornell is really dead and the threat has passed, William intends to send all of our ships except a cog for training and two galleys back to the Holy Land. He’ll send them with a goodly number of our archers and archer apprentices.
Four days later another messenger arrives from William. Cornell is dead for sure and William wants the siege to continue until Hathersage surrenders and we occupy it. He wants to add Hathersage to our holdings?
It’s time for me to go home to Cornwall.
- End of Book Four -
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Books One, Two, and Three of “The Archers” saga are also available in Kindle editions. The parchments for Book Five are being pieced together and translated. Book Five will be released sometime in 2015. Readers may also enjoy the similarly action-packed novels of the author’s “The Soldier” saga.
All of Martin Archer’s novels are available as Kindle eBooks (Search Amazon.com for “Martin Archer.”) and will sooner or later be available in print.
Other exciting eBooks by Martin Archer – “The Soldier” saga.
“Soldiers and Marines” (The story of a young soldier fighting in Korea)
“Peace and Conflict” (He fights with the Legion and the allies in Vietnam)
“War Breaks Out” (The Soviet Union invades Germany and NATO fights)
“War in the East” (The West gets involved when China invades Russia)
“The Islamic–Israeli War” (An Islamic Coalition invades Israel and changes the Middle East.)
Sample Pages from Book One of the Archer Saga
“THE ARCHER”
Chapter One
“THE ARCHER AND THE BISHOP”
The weary men straggle out of the desert and into the port late in the morning. There are eighteen of them, all English archers, and most of them have walked every night for the past three days. The only exceptions are two wounded men on a makeshift litter being dragged behind a dusty camel and a brown robed priest riding on an exhausted horse and holding a sleeping young boy. The boy is wrapped in a dirty priest’s robe to protect him against the chill of the spring day.
The dirty and begrimed young man walking at the front of the column stops and waits until the priest reaches him.
“How’s George?”
He gestures with a tired wave of his arm towards the sleeping child as he asks.
“Your son is fine,” answers the priest as the horse stops.
The boy wakes up and twists around to get more comfortable in the Priest’s arms when the horse stops. Then he sits up straight and looks around.
“Put me down Uncle Thomas, I want to walk with my father and the men for a while. My arse is sore and I’m thirsty.”
And with that he wriggles out of the priest’s arms and slides off the horse. He is barefoot and wearing a rough brown shirt that hangs to his knees. Edward the tailor made it for him before he’d been
killed by the unlucky stone that had been catapulted over the wall by the Saracens and hit him in the head.
“Look Papa, what is that?”
The boy asks the question as he massages his rear with one hand and with the other points to the flat gray expanse of the Mediterranean that spreads out beyond stone houses and the ships in the harbor.
“That’s the big water I told you about, the one that is so salty you can’t drink it. And those things out there on top of the water are the big ships. They’re called cogs and they carry people across the big water just like the boats on a river can carry people across the river. The only difference is that those out there are much bigger.”
The boy is not convinced as he stands there studying the scene in front of us.
“They look little.”
“They’ll look bigger when we get closer.”
“Really?”
The boy looks back intensely at the scene in front of him. Then he shakes his head and looks back at his father questioningly.
“Your Uncle Thomas is right, George. All of us can fit on one of those cogs with room to spare. The big ones can carry as many as a hundred men or even more. That’s how your uncle Thomas and I and all the archers got here from England. Almost a hundred of us came on each boat. And that’s how we’ll go back – all together.”
Except we’ve got to get our pay so we can hire a boat and there will only be eighteen of us instead of the one hundred and ninety two that came out from England with King Richard seven years ago - and that’s if we can get the arrow out of Brian’s leg without it rotting and Athol the ox drover stops getting dizzy and falling down when he tries to walk.
What I don’t tell George is that we’ll have no way to hire a boat unless the bishop pays us all the money Lord Edmund contracted to pay us to defend his fief and villages two years ago. Well we’ll know soon enough.
The Archer's War: Exciting good read - adventure fiction about fighting and combat during medieval times in feudal England with archers, longbows, knights, ... (The Company of English Archers Book 4) Page 11