by David Gilman
Will Longdon’s men now had a perfect killing zone. The French had crossed the halfway mark, well within range of his archers. They depressed their bow angle and shot into the skinners. There were too many. No matter how quickly they nocked and loosed they couldn’t kill enough of them. It was time for Blackstone’s men-at-arms to step forward. The archers had stopped the crossbowmen from covering the surging attack, which meant fewer men would reach their side of the river. For now.
‘Back, lads!’ Longdon shouted. He and those closest to him turned, but the soft ground gave way beneath their feet and they slid down the bank into the shoreline’s lapping water. They were suddenly defenceless as the snarling routiers pushed hard towards them, an easy kill only yards away. They scrambled to their feet, too late to nock another arrow. Left with no choice, they grabbed their archer’s knives, knowing a war bow and a misericord’s narrow blade was no defence against mace- and sword-wielding men-at-arms. Someone barged at Will with such force he was flung aside. Meulon had thrown him clear and led a dozen of his men into the shallows.
‘Get back, Will!’ he yelled without turning, and striking an attacker with such force his blade cut beneath the man’s neck into his chest, near enough severing his whole shoulder. The sudden violence from the men-at-arms made the attackers falter; they were at a disadvantage, knee-deep or worse in water, but these big men who came at them showed no concern for the stony riverbed or its current. Meulon’s men stopped an initial insurgency of a few men but more were storming across beyond them.
A flight of arrows overhead told Meulon that Will Longdon’s men had reached safety and were covering his withdrawal from the river. His men clambered over the rim and ran back into position.
‘Clumsy bastard!’ Meulon shouted at Longdon as he ran back with his men. The attack could not be stopped now no matter how many arrows were shot, and there were pitifully few of those left. Along the line archers kept shooting, but called out how many arrows remained.
‘Save them!’ Longdon yelled. They were down to the ten or twelve shafts gifted to each man by the Moors. He shoved them into his belt. All except one. He nocked it, drew back and thought of Najih bin Wālid and the man’s courage as he shot it into a routier’s chest.
‘Now, John!’ Blackstone said.
John Jacob strode forward and waved a pennon back and forth for all to see. Men ran from the ranks carrying burning torches to light the pyres. Now the enemy crossbowmen had been dealt with Blackstone stood less than ten yards from the riverbank’s edge. The flames crackled, whipped by the wind at their back, and as the kindling and heavier dry wood flared, trapped beneath the abandoned damp blankets, thick smoke billowed across the river. The French and their routiers would be attacking blind.
Blackstone’s men peered through the drifting smoke. Routiers attempted to shield their eyes as they tried to find their footing. Men cursed and bellowed in rage as Blackstone stood ready to kill the greed-driven mercenaries. He waited until the first stumbling men gained a foothold, eyes streaming, lungs heaving desperately for clean air, and then he killed four men in quick succession. On either side Killbere and John Jacob slashed and stabbed. The bodies fell back down the slope into the swell of men, who pulled aside the dead and scrambled over them. Blackstone’s men-at-arms’ line held until the dead began to fall before them. To kill their enemy efficiently, they stepped back a yard at a time as the bodies piled up. Dying men squirmed at their feet; blood soaked the defenders’ boots; wounded attackers vomited in grievous pain, whimpering as they died.
So many men were swarming across the river that routiers on the far side were slowed by those ahead who waded, fell, scrambled and fought. As dull as any church bell, a death knell of clashing steel resounded against the cliff face. On William Ashford’s flank, routiers found a way over bodies piled up in the shallow water. They stormed ahead, forcing Ashford’s men back, shields raised, to protect the archers. The King’s pavilion was overrun, but Beyard and his Gascons had snatched the King’s standard and carried it into the centre of Blackstone’s men. If the standard still flew, then it meant the King still lived and fought on.
Meulon and Renfred’s line of defence edged closer together as men fell from their ranks. A new sound whirled through the air as slings’ leather cords were whipped by the archers. At forty yards a hurled river pebble or ragged flint could stun a man, at twenty-five they smashed bones and killed. Will Longdon and Jack Halfpenny had stood their ground and waited until they could inflict the most damage at close quarters. A hailstorm lashed into the attackers, who’d thought themselves safe from archers since no arrow had been shot once Blackstone’s men approached to defend the riverbank. Routiers raised their arms yet still stones broke bones in hands, they blinded men; sword and mace were dropped; teeth shattered; cheekbones crushed. The wounded men’s courage drove them forward a few faltering steps where Meulon’s men hamstrung them and plunged swords into throats. The carnage was at its most desperate.
Blackstone, slathered with blood, turned, searching for Tom Brook, but he lay dead. Killbere heaved for breath, his shield almost in tatters from the strikes against it. He spat blood from a blow to the face, half turned and rammed his sword’s pommel into his attacker’s eye, and as the man recoiled, he twisted on his heel slashing the blade between the man’s ear and neck.
‘Thomas!’ he yelled. ‘It’s time!’
Blackstone’s men were being forced back despite the toll they were taking on du Guesclin’s men. ‘William! Tom’s dead.’
William Ashford took a pace back from his line of men. There was no need to question. He ran for the quarry.
‘De Hayle? You see his blazon?’ Blackstone said to Killbere, then rammed his shield against two men, braced his legs and forced them off balance; stepping forward, he kicked one fallen man in the face, snapping his neck, and lunged Wolf Sword into the other.
‘He’s not here, dammit!’ Killbere said. They were being pushed back further now.
Blackstone saw his ranks closing. The archers had bought more time and slowed the advance over the riverbank’s lip.
‘Fall back!’ Blackstone bellowed over the screaming horde. ‘Will! Now! Get back now! John, give the signal.’
John Jacob bled like every other man, but he raised the pennon again and signalled for the men to fall back against the cliff face. They knew where the traps had been dug and their withdrawal gave the French added strength but ten yards later the staggered holes concealed by Blackstone’s ranks snared their ankles. Stumbling headlong, they fell on defenders’ blades. It was a temporary respite as Blackstone’s shields came together, a half-circle of desperate men determined to fight to their last. The French and their routiers faltered. Exhaustion clawed at every fighter but the men who bore Blackstone’s blazon still glared over the rim of their shields. The routiers sucked air, drank heavily from their wineskins, biding their time, waiting for more of their fellow mercenaries to breach the fallen and gather in strength.
The sun had arced across the sky and put Blackstone’s men in the cliff’s shade. The cool air refreshed them. The blood-soaked ground bore witness to the day-long battle.
‘Be ready,’ Blackstone called to Will Longdon and Jack Halfpenny, whose archers now stood with their backs against the rock face. He saw they had lost half their numbers. ‘Will?’
‘Aye, Thomas, but no man has more than a dozen shafts.’
‘Then shoot as fast as the Moors. We’ll only drop the shields once.’
They waited. Beyond the river hundreds of wounded men had dragged themselves back from the battle. Would they come again? Blackstone’s resistance had defied everything they had thrown at the outnumbered men. French captains could be heard urging their troops to gather for one last effort to crush the beleaguered English. It boosted the mercenaries’ courage and, with a low murmur soon whipped into a roar, they gathered a hundred paces back from where Blackstone’s men huddled wearily behind their shields. The routiers chanted, beat swords against
shields, forcing blood into tired muscles and failing courage. And then they charged.
‘Wait,’ said Blackstone. The routiers pounded forward. Seventy-five yards. They raised swords, bared teeth in a snarling hatred for the Englishmen who refused to die. Fifty yards. The weight of their attack would flatten the shield wall. ‘Now!’ Blackstone said.
The shield bearers dropped to one knee, exposing the attacking mercenaries to Blackstone’s archers. The routiers died at thirty-five yards. Those behind stumbled but the archers shot again, and again. They loosed arrow shafts until they had no more. Blackstone’s men raised their shields. The unexpected violence slowed the French but there were still men further back on the top of the riverbank.
The ground shuddered as William Ashford led a dozen horsemen from the quarry entrance and swept around the steadfast Englishmen, pressing aching shoulders against shields, blood knots biting into wrists, soaked from sweat and their enemy’s gore. Ashford’s horsemen rode through the routiers. They had no fight left in them. The final attack was broken. The French turned and scrambled across the blood-soaked riverbank.
Blackstone stepped forward over the fallen and watched the remnants of the army determined to kill him scatter in disarray. The distant flags and pennons of the French lords and that of the Breton commander were also turning away. But then the lowering sun caught the glint of mail and spear tip as an army of shadows crept across the distant hillside and rallied them. The French raised their banners and turned to face Blackstone’s survivors once more. They would come again. The creeping darkness was Hugh Calveley and his thousand men, who swept across the broad expanse on the opposite bank. They formed up with Hugh Calveley at their head.
‘Well, lads, we’re done for now,’ said Will Longdon.
Meulon turned from where he stood with his men. Blood dribbled down his neck into his congealed beard from a head wound. ‘You must have left your brains in the shit pit, you fool. Did you think we would live through this?’
‘You were never going to die drunk in a whore’s bed with your hand on your cock trying to keep it up,’ said Killbere. He wiped blood from his face and spat the foul taste from his throat.
A murmur of humour ran through the men.
‘At least I would have had one to get my fist around. Now it’ll be fed to the crows,’ Longdon answered.
‘Crows look for a meal not a morsel,’ said Meulon.
They fell silent as Blackstone turned to face them. ‘See here, lads. Calveley rides forward. He’ll ask for our surrender. The Spanish and the French will have sport with us but if my head is to go on a spike outside Paris or Burgos then I reckon they must earn the right to take it.’
‘I’ve not fought these bastards over the years to end up in a cage and be torn limb from limb for the entertainment of a mob of pig-shagging peasants. I’ll not surrender to that,’ said Killbere.
A cry went around the survivors. ‘No surrender, Sir Thomas! No surrender!’
‘Then so be it,’ said Blackstone.
Hugh Calveley’s horse had picked its way through the dead and waited at the far side of the bridge. Despite his aching body and gnawing wounds, Blackstone stepped over and around the corpses bristling with arrows and strode towards him.
He stopped ten yards from the mounted veteran whose side he had fought alongside at other battles in another time.
‘Thomas, you should have taken my offer to join me after Auray.’
‘I had other matters to attend to,’ said Blackstone.
Hugh Calveley looked across the field of dead. ‘Your banner still stands but few men left around it. Henry of Trastámara is king; we came for Don Pedro.’
‘Then you’re too late.’
‘I thought as much. He’s not here, is he? It was doubtful you’d let him fight against such odds. You held the ground so he might escape and reach the Prince.’
Blackstone made no reply. Hugh Calveley was one of the best field commanders and knew what options Blackstone had faced. Calveley gave a slight nod of his head towards the men waiting behind him. ‘You caused Bertrand du Guesclin and the French heavy losses. But they want you, Thomas, more than anything in the world they want you, and now that we are here we can give them what they want.’
‘There will be no surrender, Hugh.’
‘And I would not ask it.’
‘Then we have said all that needs to be said.’
Calveley leaned forward on his saddle’s pommel. ‘The French and their skinners are grievously hurt and without my men they will have no more stomach to fight. Thomas, I did not come here to kill our King’s Master of War.’ He wheeled the horse away.
Blackstone’s exhaustion and relief threatened to put him on his knees. He faced his ragged handful of men, raised Wolf Sword above his head and heard their roar of victory.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
It took two weary days of travel for Blackstone’s men to reach Puebla de Sanabria where Don Pedro was waiting at the Iglesia de Santa María del Azogue. The town was spread across the top of a hillside within the bend of two rivers, a clear vantage point to observe any approaching enemy and a safe enough place for a fugitive King seeking refuge. They had carried their dead on horseback to the small town’s church for burial. The routiers abandoned their own dead, leaving them to rot. Blackstone’s losses were heavy. Twenty-seven archers had fallen and thirty-six men-at-arms. Their slow ride north took longer because of the men’s wounds and exhaustion; in reality it was little more than a funeral procession that brought tears to those whose friends had died.
Lázaro had prayed hard during the battle and vowed to the Mother of Christ that he would serve his Lord Beyard if she spared the Gascon captain’s life. Now on the journey, his prayers answered, he doubled his efforts to serve and attended Beyard and those of his Gascons who had survived. Aicart bore many small wounds, sword points’ jabs through mail, Loys a gash to the bone across a forearm. Any man who rode at Beyard’s side became the boy’s charge. Lázaro was tireless – preparing food, boiling water to wash bloodied bandages and helping men tend their injuries. When he finished his day’s work he attended to their horses, and when the moon was high he fuelled the fire and pushed his back against Beyard. Such comfort was the Holy Mother’s reward for his faith in her. And every night, when praying for those who had protected him, his final whispered invocation to the Almighty was for his dead Queen.
Don Pedro was not at Puebla de Sanabria. Álvaraz had left behind two of his men to explain that the distance between the battleground and the town meant the French and their mercenaries were too close. The King had gone deeper into Galicia, which remained loyal to him and where the enemy was unlikely to follow. He did not trust the priest at the church to uphold his sanctuary should the victorious French arrive.
‘There’s faith for you, Thomas,’ said Killbere.
‘He distrusts the Church,’ Blackstone answered. ‘And they know he’s been excommunicated.’
‘Not the Church, man, us. He had no faith that we could hold the bridge.’
‘He’s a king running for his life.’
‘An ex-king with his tail between his legs,’ said John Jacob.
‘We paid a high price for his escape. We rest here a few days and bury our dead. We’ll pay the priest to recite prayers for them for a month.’
They corralled their horses and found buildings to camp against whose walls faced the sun for much needed warmth in their muscles. Those townspeople who dared to venture from the safety of their homes brought food and wine once they realized these men were not there to cause them harm and paid for what meagre food they had. The women attended the wounded with skills learnt at their mother’s knee.
The ancient fortress next to the church was in a continuous state of repair and expansion. The town’s local lord was three days’ ride away and seldom seen, sending his reeve once a month to check on progress and then yearly to collect taxes. Blackstone ordered the men from their scaffolds and had them bury his dead.
Carpenters fashioned a cross for every man.
The priest told Blackstone that Don Pedro had taken their food stores without payment. He was their King and such a man did not recompense peasants, no matter that they swore loyalty to him.
‘We have payment for you and we will take only what we need,’ Blackstone assured him as he stood in the dank gloom of the old church. It was poorly lit, a single candle close to a crudely fashioned crucifix, hewn no doubt with reverence by a carpenter as poor as the man he sculpted. ‘You have a blacksmith?’
‘We have enough skilled men to sustain ourselves with the help and blessings of Lord Jesus,’ he said, crossing himself and glancing at the crucified figure.
‘Shoe my horses, sharpen our blades and tell us where we can find grazing.’
*
They took the horses back across the river where meadows were still rich with grass. The heavy rainfall in the area blessed the surrounding countryside with a plentiful supply of water and crops.
‘He should have stayed here,’ said John Jacob as he released his horse into the meadow.
‘Perhaps we should all stay here,’ Killbere said. ‘The town has deep wells and grain stores; it would be a good place to spend next winter.’
Blackstone looked at him, knowing the truth of the matter.
‘And the women have broad hips and are sturdy, not like city whores who spend their lives on their backs. These women can look after a man,’ Killbere added.
‘I leave you here long enough and what goodwill we have gained be gone in days. Their men work in stone and timber, they haul rocks from the valley, they’d be hard men to fight once you and Will Longdon’s lads invade their wives’ beds.’
Killbere shrugged. ‘I thought it a better proposal than chasing the shirt tails of a king on the run.’