Defiant Unto Death

by David Gilman

  The track ahead, his way out beyond the clearing, was barred by six of the men, three behind three. The others’ formation had been determined by the space between the trees. He felt his horse’s muscled bulk fight against the rein, its hooves back-stepping, gathering energy, waiting for its rider’s command.

  To his right, beyond the men, the forest offered a tantalizing refuge, but by the time he could forge past the swordsmen and blunder through the low branches he would be more vulnerable than safe – and that was provided he could hack his way through sufficient numbers of the men.

  There was a better way. He would feint to the right, draw the men from the front rank off the track, and attack the three in the rear. These men rode poor quality mounts, rounceys and palfreys; his horse’s strength would give him the advantage of momentum. Those who encircled him would hesitate long enough for him to kill at least two of them and then the track ahead would be clear. He could outrun them.

  He gathered the reins, held Wolf Sword low, ready for a slashing cut to the unguarded neck of the first man’s horse. Blackstone followed a simple rule in battle: inflict the most violence on the enemy in the shortest time. Striking fear into opponents was as potent a weapon as a sword thrust.

  He gathered the horse’s strength below him.

  ‘We’ve spent many a cold night looking for you. We found the others by the river,’ one of the men to his front called.

  Blackstone made no answer.

  ‘You seek the man who ordered the slaughter at your manor?’ the man asked.

  Blackstone eased the pressure from his knees, the horse moving skittishly on the spot. He calmed it.

  ‘You were there?’ Blackstone demanded.

  ‘We were,’ the man answered, looking at the others, a decayed grin confirming the pleasure they’d had. ‘The peasants said you ruled them with fear. That they had no choice but to obey you on pain of death. Well, we gave them that. It made no difference. We weren’t interested in them. It was you or your family we wanted.’

  ‘And now you’ve found me.’ Blackstone waited. The men had not advanced, still cautious because of who he was. ‘You butchered them. Killing was not enough – was that King John’s command?’

  ‘King John wanted you dead, and his payment was generous, but Lord de Marcy is our master and he wanted to inflict a greater pain.’ The man hesitated; then his voice took on a meaner edge. ‘Your reputation rides ahead of you, Sir Thomas, and we think he would pay more if we took you alive and he had the pleasure of torturing you himself. He likes value for his money.’

  Routiers. Mercenaries. English, Germans, Gascons – men of various ranks, all ex-soldiers, all taking their pay from an experienced captain promising booty and rape. No different from half the scum Blackstone had paid when seizing citadels in the name of Edward, King of England, and in the name of Thomas Blackstone, except he would not allow the killing of women and children. It was a decree often enforced by brutal punishment of those who disobeyed.

  ‘So he could crucify me?’ Blackstone said.

  The man laughed. ‘Good sport was had with your old hunchback, my lord. He screamed like a pig when we castrated him. Your balls alone would be a prize worth having. What shall it be? A chance of life? A gelded stallion still has its use.’

  ‘Twenty men against one. I have no choice,’ Blackstone answered.

  He had manoeuvred his horse so that it angled against the block of six men. He would drive a wedge between them and this maggot-mouthed bastard would be the first to feel the agony of Wolf Sword’s bite.

  And then Blackstone realized he was trapped.

  He had a good view of the track. Arrow-straight it cut through the forest for five hundred yards but now in the distance he could see other men running forward, and behind them, a horseman. His escape route was blocked.

  The advancing men on the track did so at a fast pace and then stopped three hundred yards away. The men behind Blackstone rose up in their stirrups. One raised his sword arm in salute.

  ‘We have him!’ he cried.

  Blackstone watched the sky flicker as a dozen dark missiles curved against the clouds. He knew the whispering sigh would follow and that he dare not move. He was not the target. Those were English archers on the track. Eight men fell; horses screamed as arrows plunged into them. Confusion and disbelief broke the men’s ranks.

  Blackstone spurred his horse three strides forward and swept his blade across his antagonist’s thigh. The force of the blow and the sword’s sharpness cut through muscle and bone. It was a deliberate stroke to disable the man. He had information that Blackstone needed. The man fell heavily; his body spasmed as he clutched what remained of his leg with both hands. His screams drove rooks and crows from the branches into a cacophony of a devil’s choir.

  Blackstone barged his horse against another whose rider fell before he could deliver a blow; a third routier, panic spoiling his aim, caught Blackstone’s shoulder with the tip of his blade. Blackstone’s mail took the cut. He yanked his reins to face his assailant. Before another blow fell a yard-long arrow punched through the man’s chest. The men on the track had moved nearer. The unknown knight on the track galloped closer, his sword raised to kill one of Blackstone’s attackers whose horse had bolted into the path of the advancing men. The surviving routiers plunged into the forest to escape the arrows.

  Blackstone’s victim lay on the stained ground, shivering from loss of blood, desperately trying to tie off his half-severed leg and staunch the blood with his jerkin’s belt. He had vomited, but the stench and foulness made no impression on Blackstone, who dismounted and laid the blade against the man’s throat.

  ‘Where is de Marcy?’

  ‘Save me, Lord Blackstone. Seal the wound. Heat the blade and seal the wound. I beg you.’

  The horseman pulled up and watched Blackstone standing over the injured man. The knight’s visor was still closed, his weathered shield smothered in dents from years of battle obscuring even more of his coat of arms. Blackstone barely gave him a glance as the bowmen ran into the clearing. They, too, offered no threat to Blackstone.

  ‘Tell me where he is and I’ll have a fire lit and sear the wound. You’ll have a chance to live,’ he said to the gasping man.

  ‘Your word?’

  ‘You have my word.’

  ‘He rides with King John’s army. Close to the King himself.’

  Blackstone was unaware that the French army was already this far south.

  ‘How do I recognize him?’

  ‘He has a dead man’s face. His eyes black like fire pits, as black as his shield and pennon. Half a finger missing.’

  An incomplete memory flickered in Blackstone’s mind. When he was an archer, Caen had fallen and he searched the bloodied streets for his brother when he caught a priest who robbed the dead. Blackstone had pinned him to a church door, their faces close enough to smell the other’s breath. In the struggle he had severed one of the priest’s fingers. The same priest? The gods of war played cruel jests.

  ‘He’s a man of the cloth?’

  The man nodded. ‘Once. They call him “le Prêtre sanguinaire”.’

  Blackstone rammed the sword into the man’s throat.

  The horseman steadied his mount as the man writhed. ‘That’s what your word means, does it?’ he said.

  Blackstone pulled the sword free and grabbed the horse’s reins ready to face a possible challenge. ‘It depends who you give it to. Murderous scum deserve what they get.’

  The knight pushed up his visor. Blackstone took a pace back.

  ‘You’re a scar-faced, bull-pit mongrel, Thomas, and you fight like one. Sweet Jesus on the Cross! I never thought to see you again. You should have been dead years ago at Crécy,’ said Sir Gilbert Killbere and leapt down to embrace Blackstone.

  Killbere’s was a scouting group, looking for French forces. Prince Edward was desperate to know the direction of King John’s army’s approach, but Sir Gilbert had found only scattered pockets of
soldiers, who fled into the forests when they saw the archers. Once the bowmen had recovered their mounts Killbere led the group across country. It would take three hours to reach Prince Edward’s main force. Blackstone spoke briefly of his mission to reach the Prince, but made no mention of the message he had to deliver.

  ‘You don’t trust me?’ Killbere grunted with annoyance. ‘Me? Mother of God, Thomas, I took you under my wing!’

  ‘It’ll wait, my lord.’

  ‘My lord? Thomas, we’re equals now, man, at least address me by my name! Share your burden. What’s the message? If your horse stumbles and you break your neck I’ll need to know.’

  ‘This horse never stumbles, my lord.’ Blackstone smiled, pleased that after all these years he could ride by Killbere’s side in friendship as an equal, and annoy the old fighter without falling victim to a cuff across the head.

  ‘You’re as stubborn as you are broad!’ Killbere fumed. ‘A pig’s arse makes better conversation when it farts.’

  Blackstone settled the matter by telling Sir Gilbert of his own life’s events since Crécy and, mollified, the usually reticent Killbere recounted to Blackstone all he could not know of the previous ten years in England. Lord Marldon was dead, Chandler the overseer took Blackstone’s land as he had vowed, but months after Crécy was found, as Killbere had once predicted, outside a tavern with his throat cut.

  ‘Lord Marldon never forgot those who betrayed him, as Chandler had when he turned your brother in to the sheriff,’ Sir Gilbert told him.

  Blackstone shook his head. ‘I can barely remember any of it. I was a boy. We laughed a lot in those days.’

  ‘Laughter can still be had with tavern ale and a whore’s hand on your crotch. Sweet Jesus, who remembers anything any more? We fight for a King and the purse he offers. Life is simple, Thomas. I always said you think too much. A soldier needs luck when he fights. And you, you’ve God’s hand on your shoulder, you lucky bastard. Look at you!’

  Blackstone touched the silver medallion of his protector at his neck. ‘I’m being hunted. And my family. Jean de Harcourt and his friends went under the axe. They were betrayed.’

  ‘You know who?’

  Blackstone nodded. ‘I killed him.’

  ‘Then an Englishman’s sword is still God’s avenging angel.’

  ‘You’ve found religion?’

  ‘It found me. Underneath that damned war horse at Crécy. I challenged God to let me live with the promise that I’d kill all those who went against my divine King. It seemed a good bargain for the Lord and for me. Edward has plenty of enemies.’

  Blackstone remembered the blurred tumult of conflict and Sir Gilbert falling beneath a French knight’s war horse.

  ‘I always thought you had died that day.’

  ‘The rain and blood-soaked ground saved me,’ Sir Gilbert told him. ‘The French horses churned that field better than yoked oxen. I broke my leg and some ribs, but they dragged me unconscious from under the beast. I had two knights ransomed and the King bought them from me.’ He spat and swallowed wine from a skin. ‘How long can a man keep money in the world today? I bought a small estate close to Lord Marldon’s, but I got bored with beating peasants for not tilling my land. I’m no landowner, I’m a soldier. Besides, I lost it all gambling.’

  ‘The others?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Elfred lives. He made enough money from the plunder to buy his own men. Will Longdon’s with him. Elfred’s a captain now with a hundred archers under his command.’

  Blackstone’s memory of his old comrades who served as bowmen was rekindled. ‘Are they close by?’

  ‘He serves Prince Edward – has done since the raiding started here. I swear Edward’s more ferocious than his father. We’ve burned and pillaged every damned town and village in our path for almost a year. I wager he’d drag our arses around France for the next ten years if the King wanted it, but he can’t – not any longer. King John’s tail is up. He’s given chase. We’re on the run. Thank God Lancaster is coming.’

  Blackstone remained silent. An exhausted army needed hope and his message was about to rip that from them as surely as that bastard priest had torn the heart from his servant in Normandy. Blackstone’s past had caught up with him. There was no such thing as chance; it was destiny that had brought him back to the English. Now a creature from a brief moment in his past, who was then little more than a shadow on the streets of an embattled city, a common priest cutting fingers from men for their rings, had grown in stature and power and fed his cruelty a rich diet of inflicted pain. And he rode with the French.

  So be it. Blackstone would embrace his fate and wreak vengeance on a King who had butchered his friend and unleashed one of God’s fallen on his family. He would slay them both and put an end to destiny’s torment.

  27

  The English army sprawled across the landscape, exhausted from months of fighting and indiscriminate killing on their mighty chevauchée across France. They rested, short of water and with their food supplies dwindling, around the stone fortress outside the town of Montbazon. Prince Edward stood in the great hall with his most able commanders – the Earls of Suffolk, Warwick, Oxford and Salisbury – in attendance. The most able war leaders of King Edward’s kingdom looked as grubby and spent as the men they led. Prince Edward turned Father Niccolò’s ring in his fingers.

  ‘We know the provenance of this ring, Sir Thomas, as we know yours. Your name was often spoken in our father’s court. Blackstone the knight in France who took towns in his name, Blackstone the man who put to death those who opposed him, Blackstone … the boy archer we ennobled for the life you saved. We do not doubt your word, Thomas.’

  ‘Still, my lord, I am to tell you that it was given to the Italian at the chapel that bore the sign of St Peter,’ said Blackstone.

  ‘So it was. We remember.’ He handed the ring back to Blackstone. ‘You’ll see it is returned to its owner. It was given in generosity for service to the Crown.’

  ‘I will, my lord.’

  Prince Edward was agitated. ‘And you say Lancaster cannot come, and neither can the King.’

  ‘No, sire.’

  ‘The Italians are keen to see their investments safe; they don’t care about what we do to serve their debt.’

  ‘The King cares more for your safety,’ said Blackstone.

  Killbere was included in the group of commanders. ‘The routiers were keen to take him, sire. He could have stayed out of sight for his own safety and then his message would have come too late.’ Killbere looked to where three papal representatives were ushered into an antechamber. Their red hats flopped across their purple robes as they sat on looted gold-encrusted chairs provided for their comfort by the English Prince. ‘Those poisonous toadstools’d have us roll over like beaten dogs with our belly and balls for the whole of Christendom to see.’

  ‘And they may yet see them. King John’s army is less than ten miles behind us on our left flank,’ said the Prince. ‘Do you think we could make Bordeaux before the French catch us, Thomas?’

  There was a Roman road south-east of Poitiers, which ran across undulating pastures and woodland. If it could be reached in time it would allow the English to move more rapidly with their loaded wagons. It was also the route King John would take if Edward refused to surrender. The English would be caught in the open, running like hares from the hounds.

  ‘Do you know how many have answered the arrière-ban?’ Blackstone asked, ignoring the question as he tried to formulate an answer.

  The Earl of Suffolk flicked his head towards what lay unseen beyond the Périgord forests: ‘Our scouts counted over eighty banners. Sixteen to twenty thousand, perhaps fewer.’

  Prince Edward stood and paced the room. His original force had been increased with Gascon troops, but that was months ago. He looked out of a window that showed him the ragged state of his army sprawled below.

  ‘We’ve near enough six thousand,’ the Prince said, a worried frown suddenly creasing his f
ace.

  ‘The French’ll not leave the field, sire, not unless King John orders it. Father Niccolò has spies in the French court. Their nobles are obliged to see you defeated,’ Blackstone said and looked to the flanks where the archers gathered to eat what food they had left. ‘How many archers?’

  ‘Less than two thousand, and they have too few arrows. You’ll speak to them for us, Thomas. Hey, Oxford?’ he queried the man who would command elements of the English and Welsh bowmen.

  ‘Aye, let him speak to them, my lord, his presence will lift their spirits.’

  The men fell silent. Blackstone could see they were tense. Killbere could barely restrain himself from commenting on the lack of a decision. Blackstone was under no such restraint.

  ‘You wish to surrender, my lord?’

  Blackstone had done what no one else had dared: to question the Prince of Wales and with a tone that hinted of derision. And the Prince knew it.

  ‘Be mindful, Thomas,’ said Salisbury. ‘Mindful.’

  Blackstone stared at the Prince of Wales, the man who had elevated his status and who believed Thomas Blackstone had cut through a horde of French knights to save his life, nearly sacrificing his own. It was a debt that could never be forgotten, even by a prince. And the Prince would never know the truth.

  ‘They’ll surround us and starve us out. And then we have lost everything and I am ransomed,’ Edward answered.

  ‘Then make ready and fight,’ said Blackstone.

  The Prince’s voice rasped with irritation. ‘In the name of God! Can the army run far and fast enough? You know this place! Tell me!’