by Smith, Skye
Raynar ran out of the cover to pick up a little girl who had fallen. Her brother was trying to pull her up, but he was too small, too weak, too exhausted, too frightened. It wasn't until Raynar was well out onto the open field that he looked around and saw a giant horse charging towards the children. The little boy ran but the tiny girl sobbing from exhaustion and fear, just stared at death as it rode towards her. The noble rider wasn't even going to make the effort to bend low in the saddle so that he could bloody his sword on her. Why would he when it was so much easier just to have his stallion trample her tiny body into a bloody pulp. Good training for a good battle horse.
While quick stepping away from the girl to draw the horse away from her, Raynar fingered his punting pole and tried to think clearly. The pole was all he had. He hadn't lashed his dagger to the end as Erik had, so it was just a long blunt staff. What filled his mind was the recent vision of how Erik had fought by standing tall and still until the last moment. Would he have the courage not to turn and run. The horse was frighteningly huge and moving fast.
The charging horse was on him before he had time to lose his courage. On him before he had time to do the stupid thing that most men did when being charged, and turn his back to the horse and try to run away. At the last second he took some quick side steps to the right, the other side from the riders sword. As he did so he instinctively raised his left arm to protect his face. Suddenly the horse planted his feet, and hopped to a jerky stop just short of trampling the child.
Of course. The kerchief tied to his left arm. It was splashed with Wolf's piss. He waved it at the horse, and the stallions eyes went wide and he reared his forelegs high ready to kick out or stomp on any wolf that approached. Dodging the huge hooves threw Raynar off balance, so he planted the pole to steady himself, but then the horse backed slightly and he lost his balance again and fell forward towards it.
He was saved from falling under the hooves by the punting pole. The top end of the pole had lodged itself against the saddle and the rider. Looking up he could see a fat man twisting around in his saddle so that he could bring his long sword across the saddle to hack at him with it. The armour was expensive, but the rider's enormous belly pushed it out of shape creating a gap between two of the shiny plates.
With a wave of his left arm, and the smelly kerchief, Raynar frightened the stallion into rearing again, and in an Erik move, he pressed the blunt pole into the gap in the man's armour. When the stallion came down, the full weight of the man folded his fat belly over and around the blunt end of the pole. For a second the man was held up and out of the saddle by the pole in his belly. Then the stallion backed away, causing the pole the flex, and then it cracked and broke in two under the weight of man and armour.
Though it would not have split the skin, the pole would have done tremendous internal damage to the man's gut. Painful damage, for even after the rider regained his seat, he seemed to wobble like he was losing consciousness. A weak hand reached up and flipped open the face visor. His face was puce red with pain, and he was gasping for air.
The two men stared at each others faces and the rider mouthed the same word that Raynar spoke so accusingly, "You!" but Raynar said more. "You have created hell on earth here in Mantes, William, and you will spend an eternity in your God's Hell for doing so."
The Conqueror was still trying to catch his breath. His sword hung from his wrist by a thong while he pressed that hand under his hurting gut, and with the other hand he urged the stallion to turn away from this fight. The stallion did not need much urging to get away from the scent of wolf, but did not do it by turning, but by walking sideways like a crab. The king found enough breath to call back, "Forgiveness will cost me a few new churches, nothing more."
Raynar stared after the man in disbelief. How could the man keep his saddle after such an injury, and with such a skittish horse. He ran, or rather limped because one of his legs was paining him, limped after him to ram his broken pole up the stallion's ass in hopes of causing it to buck, and buck the king off. He half heard a warning scream from a child's voice but it came too late. Out of a swirl of smoke came the thunder of hooves and a dark shape and he was charged by another horse.
Again it was the odiferous kerchief that saved his life. Again he had instinctively raised his left arm to protect his face, and in doing so pushed the kerchief under the horses nose. Raynar was knocked down, but the rider didn't or couldn't turn the horse to finish him. With pain shooting down his left arm and left side, and with the smoke so thick and hot as to make you not want to breath, it was all he could do to crawl towards the cover of the marsh and his punt.
It was the two little children who helped him into the boat. The brother, though small, was just able to push the punt off the bank, and together the girl and boy pulled at the reeds with their tiny hands to move the punt further and further away from the bank and out into the safety of the marsh. Through his daze and perhaps fits of unconsciousness, Raynar could hear the sounds of terror and pain all around him.
When he asked the why of the sounds, the little boy told him that the folk on the gravel bar were being killed by Norman soldiers. Of course. The cavalry couldn't reach them, but the infantry could. The bastards. He wept. They had fought so hard to save those folk from the cavalry, and for what. So the infantry could rape and beat and slaughter them.
An eternity later horns sounded, insistently, again and again, from every direction. The sounds of slaughter ceased, and was replaced by the crying of women and the moans of the injured. He was so thirsty but he couldn't lift his arm to reach his water skin. He was so thirsty.
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The Hoodsman - The Second Invasion by Skye Smith
Chapter 30 - The aftermath of Mantes in August 1087
The water was cool on his face. How long had he slept? It was still daylight. Who was pouring water on him? He opened his eyes. A horse ugly nun was telling him something. Her lips were moving but he couldn't understand the words. French, oh French. Think in French.
"You must drink more water," the nun said softly. "Do not fear. It is clean water."
He slurped the water greedily until she pulled it away from fears of choking him. "Please, more water."
"Oh," the Nun sat back on her haunches. "You can speak our language. Your friends just grunt at me."
"Where, my friends, where?" Raynar asked haltingly.
"They are off retrieving the bodies of your other men for burial."
"The Normans?"
"Have retreated. A miracle. They defeat us completely, and then instead of pressing on and taking Paris, they retreat. Well you just have a rest now while I take care of the others."
"What othe..." Raynar, after much effort and four tries, propped himself on the only arm that did not hurt and looked around him. He was in the courtyard of a monastery, but the actual monastery had lost its roof to fire and the walls had crumbled inwards. There seemed to be some order to the rows and rows of bodies lying there with him.
He guessed that the truly injured were under the make shift cloth roofs, and that those laid out beside the gate had already died. He was somewhere in between. He half crawled, half slid closer to the courtyard wall to be in the shade. All of these folk should be in the shade. This strong sun was bad for those with fevers, and all of the injured would have fevers.
He crawled all the way to the wall so he could prop him self up. Once sitting he regretted moving to the wall. The local dogs must have been pissing on it, because it reeked. Then he realized it was him that reeked. The kerchief. It was still around his left arm. It took him four tries to undo the knot because his fingers still weren't working properly. With great effort he used a stick to dig a shallow hole in the dry dust, and dropped the kerchief into it and covered it up. He immediately felt better.
"Watcha, Ray," a voice caused him to turn his head. It was Gord, and behind him Graham. "Yo," he replied. "What's happening?"
"Normans left, gone back alo
ng the Seine, last night."
"Last night? how long have I been asleep?"
"A full day, you lazy git. Left us to gather the bodies, didn't you then?"
"How many?" Raynar was almost afraid to ask.
"Just about all of them. They got Garth. I guess we're not the three G's anymore."
"Yeh, now we're the GeeGees," Graham interrupted with gallows humour.
"Where are they?"
"We've laid them out on one big funeral pyre, down by the marsh, you know, where they fought. Where they died. The burial details were going to throw them into a communal grave with the rest of the dead. Can you imagine. Put them underground and let them rot ugly. What kind of end is that for a warrior who died in battle?"
Gord mumbled, "Glad you're awake. We need to put the flames to the pyre, and soon. The heat you know. The bodies are already smelling."
"They were smelling before they died," replied Raynar trying to take heart. No one laughed. He felt a fool. "Here, help me up."
The GG's, one aside of him, helped him to stumble out of the gate and in fits and starts along the river towards the marsh and up to the funeral pyre. "Effing locals charged us good coin for the wood, and for piling it up for us," complained Graham. "And that after we saved their women and children."
"I wasn't there at the end. What happened. I heard the screaming."
"Effing infantry wanted to do the women, so they followed them out onto the gravel bar. Shame really. Most of us survived the cavalry charge, but we couldn't just let them have the women, now could we. Not after going to all the trouble of saving them. Most of us died on that gravel bar. When the trumpets blared to signal the recall, well that was what saved most of the women, and me, and Gord. Blew too late for Garth though."
"Erik?"
"Haven't found his body yet. There are a few still missing." Graham spun some silver coins towards the locals they had hired to keep watch on the pyre. "The gleaners got to some of them before us, so their purses were gone. We saved about ten purses, so we've got coins for the eyes, and then some."
There was a group of women and children, ragged, dirty, sitting in the shade of a large oak that had been too old and ornery to burn with the fruit trees around it. They stood and began to walk towards the pyre.
"Do the lads all have knives in their hands," Raynar whispered hoarsely while he stopped walking and waited for the pain in his side to subside.
"Most. We were short a few knives, but then, they were short a few hands."
Raynar took a breather until the women and children were closer to the pyre. "Each of these dead men," he called out to them while thinking fast to remember Christian myths about their demi-gods, "need to have a woman's knife in their hands when the they stand before the Archangel Michael, so that he will know that they died protecting women and children, and thereby they will gain heaven." He looked over the haggard dirty faces. "We don't have enough knives because so many of them died protecting you."
A few women looked at each other. One of them spoke. "We have no daggers worthy of warriors. Only kitchen knives."
"Kitchen knives are best," Raynar said. "Plain knives would be the best proof of their valour."
Gord walked between the women taking their knives until he thought he had enough, then he climbed onto the pyre and put a knife into each empty right hand, or left hand, or crook of an elbow, depend on how brutally each man had been butchered. When he was finished, he took out his flint and his own dagger, and began click them together to light some tinder.
"Hold," came a strong voice from behind them. Everyone swung around to see the source. A black robed priest was striding towards them with some well dressed French nobles trailing close behind him, and behind them, their guard. "Hold that fire. The Norman priests have complained that witchcraft was used on the battlefield. They complained that these men were turned into wolves, and could not be killed except by using silver blades."
Gord ignored the interruption and blew on his tinder to get a flame. Graham walked to the priest and grabbed him hurtfully by the ear and dragged him towards the pyre so that he could set his eyes on the bodies. "Do these men look like wolves. Do they look bewitched. Do they look like they could not be killed. Be gone fool before I throw you on the pyre with them."
Of course, he spoke in English so the priest understood none of it. Some of the guard ran forward to grab Graham and protect the priest, but a tall and handsome French noble spread his arms wide to hold them back. "Wait until I find a translator for those words," he told them, and they stepped back and sheathed their weapons.
Raynar limped towards the nobleman and translated Graham's words, and then motioned towards the growing crowd of women and children. "While the Mantes garrison was hiding in the fortress, these few men save all of those women and children from the finest of Norman cavalry and infantry. They did not use witchcraft, they used knives, and muscle, and brains."
There were yells of agreement from the women who had just given up their only knives, but the second nobleman spoke up, "Knives against mounted knights. The priest may be right. It sounds like witchcraft."
"And since when does Fulk the Rechin question the word of Raynar of the Peaks?"
Fulk of Anjou, the most dashing of French nobles as well as the most successful of generals, looked hard at the interpreter's face. "Raynar it is you. La Fleche, look at this man's face. He is Raynar, Gesa's English friend. The wolfshead who helped us at Montreuil, and then saved our king from assassins."
The priest looked up at the nobles, despite how much it hurt his ear to do so. The corpses smelled horribly of the worst latrine. "It was witchcraft. I can tell by the smell," he yelled out.
Fulk walked towards the priest, and while he walked he looked all around at the complete devastation that the Norman army had brought to this prosperous region of France. The town complete burned. The crops burned. The fruit and olive trees standing like blackened skeletons. The newly dug pits with piles of corpses beside them. The collapsed monastery. The piteous state of the few survivors.
He pushed his face into the face of the priest. "The Normans slaughter your folk, your monks, your nuns, and burn your town, your churches, your abbey, and instead of complaining about the bastard Normans, you complain about the men who defended you?
Priest, you are a fool. Since they are about to burn the bodies anyway, which is what your church does to witches, then why should you complain." He stepped back and looked at the wild looking man beside the priest and told him, "Light the pyre, and as far as I am concerned you can throw this priest onto it. Let him make his claim of witchcraft to the archangel himself."
Graham let go of the ear. The priest was pissing himself, and it was spraying all over his boots. Fulk said something to the guards, the ones who had originally leaped forward to defend the priest, and now instead they locked the priests arms behind him and marched him away for questioning. Meanwhile, the flames licked up the already half burned wood collected for the pyre, and with the flames came searing heat.
Raynar stepped forward from the rest and held up his own woman's knife, his fish filleting knife, his Valkyrie knife and called a prayer in Frisian to the half moon that was shimmering low and red on the smoky horizon. "Anske, they are yours now. Come to us and claim them. They all died protecting women from rape and torture. They are warriors deserving of Woden's hall and I wish to trade stories with them there, after you come to claim me."
"What is he saying?" La Fleche of Maine asked of Fulk of Anjou.
"A prayer to the Christ child to speed them to heaven," Fulk replied and got down on his knees and crossed himself for speaking such a lie in Christ's name. La Fleche dropped to he knees too, and so did their guard, and all of the women and children who had gathered. Everyone stayed on their knees until the sickly smell of burning flesh drove them away from the pyre. They left the three remaining warriors to stand vigil over their brothers in arms.
"Ray," Fulk called out softly, "When you are finishe
d here, I invite you to my table to eat."
"Do you have enough food if I bring a few guests?" Raynar asked without turning to face him.
Fulk looked at the other two warriors. They had a crazed look in their eyes that gave him the shivers, but that look must be respected after such a rout. He was France's champion general. Most of the men that followed him into battle at one time or another had that same crazed look. "Of course, I have an army's worth of food with me. We have been preparing to meet the Conqueror since we got your message from Flanders."
"Then I invite all the survivors of Mantes as my guests," Raynar called out without looking away from the pyre and the moon.
Fulk stared at Raynar's back, and chewed his words. The name Raynar was close enough to the French word for fox, as to make no difference. Well this fox was right, as usual. He had brought supplies for a campaign of at least two weeks for four thousand men. Four thousand that were now redundant.
"Deveraux," he called to one of his captains. "Make sure that all of the townsfolk are fed, and the injured taken care of, and do it now. Richeleu, I want scouts to trail the Norman army. I want to know if they are retreating or regrouping or disbanding. I want to know if they are now ranging to take the rest of the Vexin, and especially, I want to know immediately if they turn towards Paris or Brugge." The men jumped to his command.
"Their army is intact, but not their leadership," Raynar called out over his shoulder. "They have pulled back while noble sons and brothers squabble over honors."
Fulk looked at the back of the fox, and saw that he was about to speak again. "No Ray. Keep your words to yourself until you are wined at my table and away from the ears of others."