Callum appeared at David’s side. “Your horse is ready, my lord.”
David glanced quickly at him, surprised by Callum’s formality with only his mother present. Callum gave a rueful smile and tipped his head towards the horse, which was waiting near the company of men who would accompany David into battle. David turned back to his mother to tell her that he had to go and found her eyes swimming with tears.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” She flung her arms around him. “I know I’m not supposed to do this!”
David handed his binoculars to Callum, bent, and wrapped his arms around his mom in a fully body hug. “It’s going to be okay.” He gave her a quick squeeze. “We’ve got this.”
Mom gripped him tightly for another second, and then she stepped back, wiping at her cheeks with the fingers of both hands. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Twenty-four wasn’t fourteen or even eighteen. At one time, while David wouldn’t necessarily have underplayed her concerns, he wouldn’t have entirely understood them either. Now, however, he too was a parent, and though his sons were still small people, he knew how much of himself was wrapped up in them. Because of who he was, he could surround his boys with people to watch them and pretend to himself that he had some control over whether they lived or died. His mom, on the other hand, had just knowingly sent her son into battle. Necessity or not, Mom was never going to do that without tears and an aching nausea that wouldn’t go away until he stood before her, whole and alive, again.
Still, she put a brave face on it, waving and smiling as he rode away. David waved one last time and then turned to face front. Callum nodded, all business too. “I didn’t see a change in their order of battle. Did you?”
“No.” As David had just observed through his binoculars, the enemy cavalry occupied the vanguard—those front and center of the combined force that faced them. If the cavalry were placed behind the spearmen and needed to charge, they would run right over their own men. “Comyn and Cusack occupy the center, Valence is on the right, and various and sundry others are on the left, including MacMurrough.”
“So, what’s the trick?”
David shook his head. “I don’t know. The scouts don’t report reinforcements anywhere?”
“No.”
Once everyone had decided to stand together, the talk had turned to strategy. On one hand, David still preferred to negotiate rather than fight. Today, however, even if he was so inclined, negotiation wasn’t an option. They were going to fight. The key was to win.
“How’s the terrain?” David said when they reached the command tent where the captains were gathered.
“Wet, my lord.” That was James Stewart, who’d arrived with the Verdun boys.
“It’s hardly better than a bog, so it be,” Gilla O’Reilly stated flatly. “We should have chosen better ground.”
“Given the rain, better ground isn’t to be had,” James said. “I’ve ridden across half of Ireland this week, and every field in the country is like this.”
David motioned with one hand to stop the argument. “We discussed this already. The ground is just as I wanted it.”
“Pardon, my lord.” O’Reilly remained unconvinced. “This field is too narrow.”
“It’s perfect for our purposes.”
While David had been speaking to O’Reilly, Dad had entered the tent, accompanied by a soldier wearing Comyn’s colors. David held up his hand to silence everyone and then moved to the doorway to confront the newcomer. “What is this?”
The man bowed stiffly. “My lord Comyn asks that you meet him to speak of peace.”
“Really?” David swung around to look at the men who surrounded him. Most had a stubborn set to their chins that told him they weren’t willing to talk. He wasn’t either. David turned back to the messenger. “Why?”
The man looked taken aback. “Why what?”
“Why negotiate? You have us outnumbered.” David gestured to indicate the world outside the pavilion. “Your scouts must have told you that we have three thousand men. You have four thousand.”
“Five.” It was boastful of the messenger to correct David, which only showed how secure Comyn and Cusack were feeling. But then the messenger cleared his throat, finally answering David’s question. “My lords are feeling merciful.”
The men at David’s back didn’t like that. Nor did David.
“He seeks to delay us,” Hugh O’Connor said in an undertone. “He hopes that some of us will defect to his side. Or perhaps he hopes to give more armies time to reach him.”
David nodded. Men were going to die, and David was going to let them rather than allow Comyn and Cusack to delay. He tilted his head to look at the messenger, with the implication that he was a bug in a jar. “Tell your master that while we appreciate his benevolence, we will continue as we are.”
The messenger blinked, and David flicked out his fingers, indicating that the man was dismissed. Callum took him away, and David turned back to the assembled men. Placing both hands on the table, he leaned heavily on them. “Gentlemen, we are committed.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Near Tara
19 March 1294
Christopher
For better or for worse, Christopher had chosen to fight among the O’Connors rather than the O’Reillys. But as Hugh O’Connor’s soldiers were currently standing next to Gilla O’Reilly’s, and Christopher and William had somehow been maneuvered next to their sons, in the end the decision hadn’t amounted to much.
Still, it felt important to Christopher. Gilla O’Reilly had conveniently forgotten that, only a few days before, his men had given Christopher a concussion, abducted him, and hauled him twenty miles hanging over a horse’s withers. Even with David’s campaign of peace, love, and unity among the factions supporting him, Christopher hadn’t forgotten that. He’d kind of been holding out for a sorry. Maybe even a thank you for getting Aine out of Drumconrath. One hadn’t been forthcoming yet, however, and now he was thinking that one never would.
“It’s okay to be afraid,” William said from beside him. “I am.”
Christopher turned to look at his friend, astonished that he’d been so honest. It made it easy for Christopher to be honest too. “I think everyone is.”
They stood in what looked like the rearguard, but was actually going to become the vanguard soon enough. David had placed a solid block of five hundred foot soldiers in the front of the army, standing shoulder to shoulder with their shields locked together. Behind them stood six phalanxes of archers, arranged in wedges, with the point of the triangle aimed at the enemy.
Ten more wedges were arrayed on the left and right flanks (five on each side), near the base of the treed hills that formed something of a bowl around the valley. Those archers had carefully planted a forest of tall stakes in front of them to protect them from Cusack’s cavalry and ensure that the enemy horses, when they charged, would swerve away, towards the center of the field. To use stakes for stationary archers was a standard Welsh tactic, but according to Aunt Meg, it hadn’t become typical for the English army until the battle of Agincourt a hundred years from now.
According to her too, when Strongbow had come to Ireland, his Welsh bowmen had mown through the ranks of the lightly armored Irish like a medieval version of a machine gun. These bowmen hadn’t stayed in Ireland, however, being discriminated against by the English as a matter of course. And while a few archers continued to be deployed both within and without the Pale, neither the English nor the Irish were devotees of archery to the degree the Welsh were.
Cavalry (dismounted to disguise their numbers) were placed in three blocks between and slightly behind each of the central wedges of bowmen, so that if or when they mounted and charged forward, they wouldn’t run over their own archers. To the left and right, behind the archers and the cavalry, Irish spearmen waited.
David had expressed concern that, with no tradition of fighting on horseback and too few of them wearing
armor, if the enemy cavalry tried to flank the main body of the army, they might not be enough to stop them. But the O’Neills and their O’Donnell allies were proud and insisted that they would stand their ground. Privately, David had said to Callum (in a conversation Christopher had overheard) that he wasn’t worried about them standing. It was them falling.
For the moment, it was all Christopher could do to stand his own ground and stay in line. He gripped his horse’s bridle, telling himself that he was ready for this. Then a hand came down on his shoulder, and he turned to see Huw standing between him and William. “No one in Ireland has ever seen Welsh bowmen go up against a cavalry charge before—and neither has Comyn or Cusack. We will stand our ground until our arrows run out.”
“That is a lesson my forefathers learned to their detriment.” William eyed Huw. “It’s good to know that you’re among them.”
“As I am glad to know your sword will ride.” His hands gripping their shoulders, Huw shook them both. “I must return to my line.”
William watched him go. “He had my back.”
“That surprises you?” Christopher said.
“No, but we have not been natural friends.” William paused. “Thank you for bringing Aine back safely.”
Christopher almost laughed that the thanks he’d been seeking had come from William rather than Gilla. “I had very little to do with it.” He tipped his head. “But you’re welcome.”
Their conversation had taken Christopher’s mind off the battle, but now a trumpet sounded, signaling that the foot soldiers should start forward. They were to march until Cusack’s army responded. This was the trickiest part—the trick, in fact—and if it didn’t work, then this battle might be over way more quickly than David wanted—and not end in his favor.
Hundreds of men began to march forward down the slight slope they’d set up on, heading towards the center of the field. Comyn and Cusack had put their cavalry in the front of their force and, as David hoped, the sight of those locked shields coming towards them was too much to resist. They knew that there was no way five hundred foot soldiers armed with spear and shield could withstand a comparable number of cavalry pounding toward them. They knew it.
Someone gave the order to charge. The roar of excitement—of battle engaged—echoed throughout the field. Meanwhile, the foot soldiers marched on. As they were much slower, not being mounted, the first rank of cavalry was a third of the way across the field before the foot soldiers reached the bottom of their own slope.
Because he was in the front row of David’s cavalry, Christopher had a good view of what happened next, and it was the most terrifying thing he’d ever seen: the foot soldiers broke ranks and ran like hell. They shouted and screamed, threw down their shields, and all in all sold their panic really well. They almost had Christopher thinking they were terrified—and he had been in on the trick.
More importantly, it looked like utter panic to their enemies, and a great cheer went up from Cusack’s men. They thought they’d won the battle after only five minutes. All that waiting, all that expectation, and they were going rout their enemies before lunch. Five hundred cavalry became fifteen hundred men and horses, charging directly towards Christopher.
But David had set a trap. He, Aunt Meg, and Callum had cooked up this formation and until this morning hadn’t told anyone else what was going to happen, out of fear that a traitor in their ranks would inform the opposing army what they were up to. According to David, once the foot soldiers ran, the rest of the plan came straight out of the battle of Agincourt, one of the greatest English victories ever, where Henry V had been outnumbered ten to one. It was unfair, really, that David had thousands of years of history to draw upon—or it would have been unfair if it wasn’t so important that he win.
Because, of course, the foot soldiers hadn’t actually run away. Instead, they’d made for the sides of the field, racing for gaps deliberately left open between the last rank of archers in the central body of the army and the first rank of archers on the flank. And it was those archers who started shooting first.
Uncle Llywelyn called to the cavalry, and the word went among the riders: mount your horses, but wait for the signal to charge.
Christopher scrambled into the saddle, his heart pounding furiously. But the signal wasn’t given, and instead of joining the fray, he gaped at the carnage. He hadn’t ever been in a battle before, so what he was seeing was all new to him, and from the looks on the faces of Felimid and Matha, it was new to them too.
As David had promised everyone they would, the Welsh archers had gone to work with brutal efficiency. Christopher had been told over and over again that a good archer could fire six arrows a minute—and a great one more like eight to ten. Well, David’s archers were the best, handpicked and experienced, and led by a grizzled man named Morgan whose brown arms were so similar in color to the bow he held that it looked like the bow was growing out of his hands.
His voice could be heard bellowing above the screams of men and horses, counting out the beats in Welsh, which sounded to Christopher like Een! Die! Tree! Over and over again.
There were only two hundred archers, but in one minute they’d fired nearly two thousand arrows. Purportedly, Cusack had brought archers too, but if so, they’d been posted at the back, and couldn’t fire at David’s army without hitting their own cavalry anyway.
The death was ungodly. Wave after wave of cavalry went down under the barrage of arrows. So far, none of David’s own men had set foot on the field, but the enemy cavalry was mired in mud, and with each man and horse that fell, it became harder and harder for those living to escape. It had rained all night, and the field was as wet as Gilla O’Reilly had told them it was. Worse for the cavalry, the fake panic among David’s foot soldiers had emboldened more cavalry to enter the field in hopes of participating in the rout, and they’d been followed by hundreds of Cusack’s foot soldiers.
Thus, the cavalry in the front were struggling over their fallen comrades, while many in the back were trying to retreat. But by now their way was blocked by their own men, who had no idea what was happening ahead of them and continued to push forward, even as they were being run over by their own men and horses.
That put the next phase of David’s plan into effect—namely the return of the lightly armored foot soldiers, who were less likely to sink into the mud than horses, men-at-arms, and knights in armor. They raced back into battle, their numbers nearly tripled by men who’d been held back behind Christopher in the far rearguard. The Irish fought predominantly on foot, and Hugh O’Connor led one of these groups, as did Magnus Godfridson, the mayor of Oxmantown.
“We need to move! We need to move now! They’re flanking us!” Callum reined his horse between two blocks of cavalry.
“What about them?” Christopher pointed ahead to the fight in front of him.
“Don’t worry about them. Nobody’s getting through that. It’s the ones behind us I’m worried about.”
As one, four hundred cavalry swung around to look, and what Christopher saw made his breath seize in his throat. Fifty yards away, David was standing in the stirrups twirling his sword above his head. A football field beyond him, enemy riders were pouring towards them from the left, having circled around the entire field and the woods to come at David’s army from behind. The O’Neills were supposed to have stopped them, but they hadn’t.
“Follow me!” David spurred his horse directly at the lead riders, typically miles ahead of any of his men.
Blindly obeying and infected by the urgency of the moment, Christopher followed in the midst of all the others. He could hardly run away at this point, and he was thankful he’d devoted so much time to riding these last nine months. He might never have swung his sword in battle, but at least he wasn’t going to fall off.
No archers could help them in this direction, since they would be shooting into the backs of their own cavalry. Christopher felt lightheaded, sweating and cold at the same time, and he clenched his jaw a
nd told himself to focus. He could have mentioned to David at any time in the last day that he thought he was concussed and that his head still hurt, but somehow the conversation had never happened. Christopher hadn’t wanted to fight, but he’d felt like he needed to, and if David had known about the concussion, he would have stopped him.
The opposing sides of cavalry hit like they were two semi-trucks playing chicken, except nobody swerved. Christopher’s helmet prevented him from seeing anything but what was directly in front of him. All he was trying to do was stay on his horse and not kill any of his own men as he flailed about with his sword at anyone who came close. He was trying to live.
The only sounds he could hear were his own breathing and the thudding of his heart. He was literally seeing red, as if he’d burst all the blood vessels in his eyes and they were pulsing at him like a cheap neon sign. He slashed his sword at some poor schmuck wearing Comyn’s colors—not red as they ought to be, but three sheaves of wheat on blue—who subsequently fell off his horse. Christopher was pretty sure he’d killed him, but he didn’t have time to make sure before he had to slash at someone else.
Twenty seconds later, someone on the ground stabbed upward at Christopher’s horse, who stumbled, and Christopher only just managed to clear his feet from the stirrups before the horse went down. Sweat poured into Christopher’s eyes. Terrified that he was going to be struck down from behind, he flung off his helmet so he could see better, but when he turned, his sword out, desperate to keep all comers at bay, he found himself forming a defensive triangle with William and Felimid. The Irishman was singing—actually singing—in Gaelic at the top of his lungs, which had the added benefit of letting Christopher know at all times exactly where he was.
Before the charge, Christopher had had some sense of what was going on. He’d seen that first cavalry charge and the lines of men fall to the archers’ arrows. Now, having participated in a charge for the first time himself, he understood why the initial assault had gone down as it had. He had no sense of anything happening outside a ten-foot radius. He was standing on a sloping grassy field, fighting for his life, and the battle could be all but over twenty yards away, and he wouldn’t know it.
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