by Dan Davis
And it was John that he held in his grasp. John was also without his helm and indeed his armour seemed to hang off him in tatters, with buckles and straps hanging down.
My friend and companion struggled to free himself but he was dripping with blood from injuries elsewhere on his body.
The black knight brought John’s neck to his mouth with a savage jerk and began drinking from what must have been a gaping wound. He pulled back, tearing a long strand of skin and flesh and blood with it. As he did so, John let out a terrible, mournful cry.
I rode blindly toward the knight, determined to destroy this monster, to smite him with a single mighty blow. The rage filled me.
Something hit me in the face.
Then I was falling, the flames and silhouetted figures twisting as I tumbled to the ground.
Even as I crashed into the compacted earth and the pain hit me, I had a dreadful realisation of what must have happened.
As if I was some impetuous young fool in his first campaign, I had left my visor up as I attacked.
And a crossbow bolt had hit me in the face.
The shaft jutted from my cheek and hot blood gushed into my throat and I was wracked by coughing. Crawling on all fours, I had to hang my head down to let the blood pour out of my face rather than fill my throat and drown me. My eyes streamed so that it was hard to see and I groaned, unable to speak. Still, I got to my feet and stepped forward into the blurred streaks of shadow and flame.
“Sir Richard!”
Friendly voices surrounded me and hands were on me.
I recognised the voice of Black Walter, the commoner who was not an immortal and who did not know anything about the existence of the Gift, or the Order. But he was strong and did not know hesitation.
“Walt? Pull this bolt from my face!” At least, so I tried to speak but instead it came out as a series of grunts and ended in wet coughing.
Frustrated, I grabbed the slippery bolt in my fist and began to draw it out.
“No, no, no!” Walt and my other men shouted at me and they seized my arms so that I could not pull it from my face.
I was strong but was held by half a dozen English archers who were as strong as mortals could be and they heaved my arm away from my face. I almost screamed in frustration because I knew that once I got the bolt out and I could consume a mortal’s blood, I would heal my wound and I could return to the fight.
“Leave him be!” Thomas shouted. “Move back, you fools. Spread out and stand guard. Catch your horses.”
He forced me to kneel, bade me hold still and muttered a prayer as he pulled the wooden shaft from my head. It was excruciating and I felt the shattered bones of my cheek crunching and grinding as the iron point of the bolt made its way back out. More blood and chunks fell into the back of my mouth and I shook as I held my breath and braced myself against Thomas, fighting the urge to jerk away from the source of the agony.
With a wet, sucking sound, he pulled it clear and held it up to the firelight. The barn and the farmhouse were both burning with enormously tall, bright flames and their heat washed over me in waves.
Holding a palm over the ruin of my face, I attempted to speak but Thomas hushed me.
“Blood. Yes, Richard, I know. Come.”
He guided me into the shadow of a chest-high stone wall, sat me down and dragged a dying French spearman into my lap. He was probably a locally raised levy, called to defend his homeland and his town from the invading English brutes. He had a deep laceration in his skull and his movements were weak and he was clearly dying from his wounds. Thomas said another prayer but mercifully for me did not wait until he was finished before slitting the spearman’s throat and holding the wound up to my face.
I drank down his blood, swallowing as much of my own as I did his.
And yet I felt it working in my belly before I had finished drinking. The strength of it filled me, lessened my pain. I felt or perhaps merely imagined the bones of my face knitting back together.
“John?” I asked, the moment I was able.
Thomas helped me to my feet and escorted me to him. Our company had already cleaned him up somewhat and bound his wounds even though he was dead.
And dead he was, with no hope of recovery. His head had been severed almost all the way through and his eyes stared lifelessly, reflecting the light from the fires that were already burning themselves out.
Hugh cradled the body of his brother, friend, and closest companion, weeping freely over him. They had been together, knight and squire, friend and brother, for over thirty years. And now Hugh was alone.
“Two of Rob’s archers also fell,” Thomas said, his voice flat. “Deryk Crookley and Paul Gipping.”
It was my fault that John was dead. And two of the best archers. I had sent them on ahead, alone, without considering that even an immortal knight like John might be vastly outmatched by the men he was pursuing.
Even at the last moment, when John was still alive, I could have stopped it if only I had pulled my visor into place.
Decades, I had been searching and waiting for the chance to find and face down one of William’s immortals and when it finally happened I was somehow unprepared and useless.
It was an irreparable personal failure.
“I could not stop them,” Thomas said, his voice flat with his own sense of failure. “And then when they fled, I lost them in the darkness.”
“As God is my witness,” I said, “I shall find the knight of the black banner and his men.”
“I swear it also,” Thomas said.
“And I,” Hugh said, wiping his eyes.
“I shall find them,” I continued, “and tear their God damned hearts out.”
5. Duty
“By God, sir!” Black Walt said in the pre-dawn murk the next morning. “Your face, sir. It is a miracle, sir.”
“Avert your eyes from my face, Walt,” I growled at him, for I was still in pain and had hardly slept as we lay by the smouldering ruins of that farmhouse. “Else it shall be a miracle if you live to see the sunrise this day.”
He ducked away in false obsequiousness but I could hear him muttering under his breath as he went.
It was dank but not cold and the sun would burn away the damp when it rose. Smoke drifted through the morning. Normally, blackbirds, warblers and song thrushes would be chorusing at that hour but all I could hear was the cawing of a hundred malicious crows off in the shadows, already feasting on the carcases of the fallen.
I hid my healed face behind my visor, hoping that my soldiers would assume my wound was shamefully hideous, and gathered my company. We had lost men due to my foolishness but those that remained seemed not to blame me. Indeed, they all wanted to take their own revenge for John and Deryk and Paul. Their bodies we wrapped up as best we could and brought them with us for proper burial later.
I knew we had little chance of finding our prey by that point but I also knew that our chances would dwindle to nought if we delayed much longer. We assumed that the French would withdraw but we did not know whether they would contest the field again that very day. Some battles ran over more than one day and I thought that perhaps the French, who undoubtedly outnumbered us, might have another crack of the whip.
“It may be that the black banner knight laid low in the darkness nearby and may yet be within our grasp,” I told my men. “We must get after them now, before they can get further away.”
My company was ready almost immediately for they had no camp to break and little equipment. We had not gone far and were picking our way through the pre-dawn gloom when a cry went up from Black Walter and Rob the archer.
“What is it?” I asked, approaching to where they had stopped, looking south. There was a slight rise in the land there, and a line of trees across the horizon forming a darker band of black beneath the lightening sky.
“Listen, sir,” Rob muttered. “Men marching. Hundreds.”
“Marching? Not riding?” I strained to hear anything through my helm as
Black Walter removed his own.
“Sounds like thousands to me.”
“Where?” I asked.
They both pondered it, heads tilted to one side, listening. Rob pointed and Walt nodded in agreement.
“Coming up from the south,” Rob said, “up the Abbeville road, I reckon.”
It seemed as though the French would contest the field once again and they were making an early start of it, hoping to catch us unprepared.
“God damned bastards,” I said, as Thomas came up beside me.
“The French have returned?” he asked, his visor open but his features lost in shadow. I detected a hint of pride in his voice, along with the frustration. “We must warn the King.”
“If we do, we will lose the black banner,” I replied. “Lose our chance to take revenge for John.”
“I wish to kill that black knight. I wish it with all my heart,” Thomas said. “Yet it is our duty to warn the King.”
“Other men will send word,” Walter said. “Perhaps word is sent already.”
“Or one of us can return,” I said, “bringing word of this fresh attack.”
Thomas turned to me and though I could not make out his features, I knew him so well that I could imagine precisely how they were set. “None of us would be heeded by the lords. None but you.”
“They would listen to you, Thomas. You are a knight.”
“I am French. And they know me as a squire in your service.”
“Very well,” I said, growing frustrated, “I will return to the King and you will continue the pursuit.”
“We ain’t going to leave you alone, Sir Richard,” Walt said, with his infuriating, base sense of honour. I ignored him.
“You know that I am not afraid of an honourable death,” Thomas said, “but I do not hope that we can best the men we pursue without you there.”
I almost growled at him. “What then would you have me do, sir?”
“It is our duty to return to our lines, raise the alarm, and join the battle.”
I grumbled but I knew he was right. My men were frustrated also and they had no wish to fight another battle after the exertion of the day before but they did as I commanded and returned with us.
“Where have you been?” the Earl of Northampton said to me when I reached the village of Crecy as the sun was almost up.
“In pursuit of our enemies.”
He scoffed as his men finished dressing him in the final pieces of his armour, most of which he had apparently slept in. “Did you even make an attempt on seizing Philip?”
I recalled how my men had killed Philip’s horses, twice, and had even put an arrow in him, driving him and his men from the field and confirming our victory for King Edward. Perhaps de Bohun saw something of the violence I felt bubbling up within me and he addressed me again in a more agreeable tone.
“We are grateful for your bringing us news of the French attack,” he said.
More and more men were coming in from the south, bringing word of the massing French troops.
“My lord!” one lightly-armoured squire on a fast horse cried, riding close and calling out. “They are two thousand strong. And, my lord, they are all levies and all are on foot.”
Northampton’s face lit up in joy and he turned to the other lords within hailing distance. “Suffolk! Warwick! Did you hear? Two thousand local levies!”
“It is a ruse,” Warwick said, confidently. “They are drawing us in for a counter attack.”
“Never, my lords,” I said. “The French are not sufficient in cunning to bait such a trap.”
Sir John Chandos mounted his horse. “Sir Richard is correct, my lords. Shall we slaughter them to a man and then return to break our fast?”
Our cavalry could not have been more thrilled at the opportunity to run down the enemy formations. It was the perfect situation for mounted men-at-arms to bring to bear the heavy cavalry charge and hundreds of us formed up in lines with remarkable ease and as the sun came up we thundered across the battlefield, already churned by yesterday’s struggle, and crashed into the front ranks of local levy troops.
They were astonished by our attack and they crumbled almost immediately.
When they turned to run, we forced ourselves in amongst them and cut them to pieces. I broke off quickly and returned to my company but the English pursued the fleeing commoners for miles as they scattered in all directions.
By the time I reached my men, the sun was fully up. The field was strewn with bodies and with men and horses wandering, dazed and wounded, singly and in groups.
It seemed that the dead were all French, or at least practically all of the men-at-arms were. Heralds from both sides picked their way through the field, checking bodies for identifying heraldry as clerks marked down lists of the deceased. There were hundreds of dead English archers and Welsh spearmen being prepared for burial.
“We may continue the pursuit of the knight of the black banner now,” I said to Thomas and the rest of my men. “But in which direction should we go?”
“South, sir,” Black Walt said. “Let us get back to the edge of Paris.”
“And what is your reasoning, Walt?”
“Good plunder, ain’t there.”
I ignored him. “Thomas? Rob?”
“I heard from some of the other lads that the French knights and lords ran on past Abbeville to Amiens, sir,” Rob said. “So they reckon.”
“If that is so,” Thomas replied, “it would be madness for us to ride that way. There must be ten thousand men-at-arms in that direction.”
“And yet if our quarry is there, we will go nonetheless,” I insisted. “Assuming the men will follow?” I looked at Rob and Walt.
Walt grinned. “Try and stop them, sir.”
Rob was more circumspect. He scratched his nose. “Might do it with a bit of encouragement, sir.”
I resolved to promise generous sums of prize money but a royal sergeant rode hard toward me and my heart sank. And it was as I feared.
“King Edward requests that you attend him at his quarters in the village of Crecy, Sir Richard,” the sergeant said. “Immediately, if you please.”
It seemed that God did not wish me to pursue the knight of the black banner. I cursed Him even though I knew it must have been punishment for some sin or other that I had committed. It was hard to know which it might be, as I committed so many.
Prince Edward was leaving the King’s tent on the edge of the village of Crecy as I approached. He was surrounded by a gaggle of young lords and he towered over almost all of them. Clad in his magnificent armour, he looked every bit the picture of the chosen prince, the hope of a new generation. The Prince had fought like a Greek hero. I knew looking at him that morning, serious and alert and paying his sycophantic knights like Sir Humphrey Ingham polite yet distant attention, that he would make a superb King of England, just like his father.
“Sir Richard!” he called, surprising me and startling his lords. “They caused you no trouble this morning, I take it?”
“It was like hunting sheep, Your Grace.”
He laughed. “And yet they say you do not enjoy hunting of any sort, sir.”
“I enjoy hunting well enough, Your Grace. It is simply that I prefer hunting the King’s enemies.”
Prince Edward nodded at his followers. “A very fine thing to say, sir. And you are in luck, for the King has need of your preferred kind of hunting. God be with you, Richard.”
I bowed. “God be with you, Your Grace.”
He moved off as if he had a specific task of his own to complete, and I am sure that he did for he was no paper prince but a useful lord and contributor to the campaign. Already at sixteen years of age he was a better man than most. His competence and rightness made us all feel hopeful and secure about the future of England.
His knights hurried after him like goslings after a goose. One of them, Sir Humphrey, turned to glare at me before he went. He had fought well on the field by the Prince’s side, bearin
g his banner, and yet it had been my company that had come to the rescue. No doubt he felt the glory that should have been all his had been stolen by me.
Ah well, I thought. Another enemy to add to the list.
“Richard, good. Tomorrow, we shall move northeast along the coast,” King Edward said without preamble as I ducked inside the open-sided tent.
All the lords surrounding the King turned to me also. A few of them scowled. I grinned back because I knew it would annoy them.
“We are heading for Wissant, Your Grace?” I asked, stepping forward. A couple of the lords begrudgingly moved aside. Wissant was a common landing place for those crossing from England. It made sense to me that we would want to take it when we disembarked for home.
“You want to leave France, Richard?” Edward asked, seeming to be cross with me. I suspected that he was feigning displeasure but it is hard to know where kings are concerned. Some of the sanest ones are still quite mad by ordinary standards.
“In fact, Your Grace, I would like to ride further into the country.”
“Oh? Do you have some heroic deeds in mind? Or are you simply looking for pillage?”
I considered requesting his leave for the pursuit of the knight of the black banner but I could not think of a reason good enough. Clearly, I could not say that he was a blood-drinking immortal so powerful that he and his men had easily slaughtered John, who was himself a blood-drinking immortal knight.
If I suggested that I wanted revenge for John’s death, he would dismiss my needs without a thought, for as far as anyone else would be concerned, I had lost a man on the battlefield. No crime had been committed. He may even explicitly forbid me from pursuing the French knight.
If on the other hand I said nothing, perhaps I could find time for my own purposes.
“As you say, Your Grace,” I replied.
He glanced at me but I kept my face expressionless and he continued.
“That is well, as I would have your men advance ahead of the vanguard. You shall start today and we shall start behind you tomorrow. Go no further than Calais. The French have withdrawn into their towns, stiffened the garrisons and are no doubt improving their defences but there may be some attempts to delay us or divert us. If you encounter any force who will not withdraw from you, fix them in position and send a man to Northampton who will come up to you in strength enough to drive them away. And ensure you go no further than twenty miles from the coast. Is that all clear, Richard?”