At the base of the staircase, the enemy could only come down one at a time, which was exactly how quickly Dawn could kill them. With every swing—the top of the head, the ribs, across the belly, clean through a leg, and then down straight into the neck—he paid the world back. For the mockery of his real name, for his sister’s rape, for Lorna who’d loved him but slept with a Guardsman anyway. For his parents for deserting him, for his uncle for that night, for the sickness that had taken Peat-Pete, for the dreams and feelings he still had that he wished he didn’t. Blood flew, muscle rent at his command, and he never really felt the blows that took him down, because they were too many. All he knew was that eventually his body stopped, he told his arms to swing again but they were limp at his sides and his lip was dangling open. This time the blood was his own, and the ground rose to meet him, and the world had its last fickle laugh at the Dawn Dog.
* * *
ROBERT SEIZED THE OPPORTUNITY and slid his epee back through his leather frog, that he had both his hands free to direct the men around him. “Grab those shields,” he pointed at the fallen cluster of attackers—Englishmen, though FitzOdo and his forces would never believe it—and ordered a few more men to follow.
“What are you doing?” Beneger asked from behind, lingering back to keep an eye on as much as possible.
“Trying to save some lives,” Robert answered. “If FitzOdo moves, follow him. I’ll catch up.”
Until they could corner FitzOdo, Robert could at least try to keep the casualties low. He’d left King Richard’s command tent yesterday with a promise to make things better, and here he was amongst the city’s defenders, fighting against some of the very men he’d shared that tent with.
“We need to stay on FitzOdo,” said the thin Guardsman, Peveril, while practically tugging on Robert’s cape. FitzOdo, to protect Arable. Arable, to finish Marion’s plan. Marion, for the promise he’d made her. But even still, Robert could not watch the bloodshed of so many innocent parties and do nothing.
“I’m right behind,” he assured Peveril, then returned to the men who were gathering up their shields. “Watch me, watch me!” he yelled, pushing their shoulders so that they overlapped, trying in the span of a few seconds to explain the strength of a shield wall to a bunch of terrified citizens. If they focused on defense, fewer people would die.
Robert tried to get his bearings. FitzOdo was still near, Beneger and Peveril waiting for him to rejoin them. Gilbert … Gilbert was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
KEEP CALM, LAURENCE REPEATED to himself. Don’t scream. Analyze. The soldiers around him were all lost to the frenzy and commotion, which is how they would get killed. Laurence was smarter than that, he’d studied under the Earl of Chester for years, and while he knew that his men found his youth to be a source of weakness, Laurence had proven himself with strategy. He walked carefully rather than ran, he controlled his breath that he would not exhaust himself in minutes. He had even pushed soft wax into his ears to keep the clamor from alarming him, outwitting his body’s natural instincts. The gate, that was his goal, and he would earn Earl Ranulph’s favor this day by opening the castle gates for the rest of the army. The great bailey on the inside of the curtain wall was filled with the castle’s defenders, but Laurence could tell at a glance that the front lines were full of civilian fodder, while the castle guard was gathered at the rear. Cowards, Laurence allowed himself a moment of judgment. It wasn’t enough that Prince John had declared war against his brother, but he meant to throw away as many innocent lives as he could for his own folly.
Laurence quickly calculated how many men he needed to push to the castle gatehouse—sadly, they would be overwhelmed if he tried to make that attempt now. He would not spread his men thin too early, not when every passing minute brought reinforcements over the ladders to help with the fighting in the bailey. A quick whistle and he commanded his men to form a perimeter and hold, making a line with their shields that the second rank could reach over for killing blows. The throng of civilians approached but was unsure how to attack, which was all the better as far as Laurence was concerned. This was his moment to flourish, and prove the quality of his character.
The man in front of him suddenly crumpled with a sickening crack. Laurence glanced up at the taller walls of the middle bailey on his right, and the glowing sky made a crystal silhouette of a half-dozen shapes—stones, thrown from the wall itself by defenders higher above—that filled the sky and rained down upon him.
* * *
“GOD’S TITS, WHAT ARE they waiting for?” Percy asked. He twisted to look at the back of the bailey, where the Nottingham gords were still waiting, some on horseback, for Christ’s sake, and had yet to join the fray.
“Well, Ginger,” Will Scarlet answered, still using his gang name from a gang that was all but dead, “they’re waiting for us to die first.”
“I should have fucking stayed in my cell,” Percy grumbled back. They could have all waited for this whole thing to be over underground. Those gords weren’t interested in fighting side by side, they were hanging back until every last baileyman was dead.
“We need to give them a reason to fight earlier,” Scarlet answered. “Come with me.”
* * *
JONAS SMASHED FORWARD WITH his shield, then sliced with the sword. And again. And again. They were making no ground, but giving it. Noise, screams, blood, the cobbles of Nottingham’s streets slick with gore. They’d killed enough of the French to amass a line of shields, and now they were an impenetrable wall. And the longer they lasted, the more people were drawn to help them, crawling back up onto the streets from their hiding places. Fighting back. Nottingham wouldn’t go down easily, not so long as there were men like Sir Robert FitzOdo to show them the way to victory.
Sword. Shield. Sword. It didn’t matter if he found flesh with each jab, it kept the French at bay, ducking behind their own shield wall. And while there was no surfeit to be found in staying smashed at each other endlessly, it gave the others a chance to get high. Sir Robert and his bowmen simply had to climb the nearest buildings and fire down into the French side, and their shield wall would crumple. There was nothing stronger than a shield wall, Jonas knew, but that was in an open field. Here in the streets, the advantage was elevation.
“Fall back!” came the shout, but from behind.
“No!” Jonas yelled instantly, nudging the man next to him with an elbow. “Stay in line!”
“Fall back!” it came again, and Jonas braved one second to glance back, where Sir Robert’s bald head was easily seen, his sword in the air. “Fall back!”
No, but Jonas could do nothing. Even the slightest hesitation and a gap in their wall broke, splintered. The men behind him retreated and he no longer had their weight to support him. The Frenchman before him shoved and he stumbled. It would be a rout if they ran. Jonas had seen this, in Normandy, he was older than FitzOdo, but he thought that—
* * *
JEFFEREY THE COBBER DIDN’T want to die like this, rolled into a ball as the French overran the barricade. Somehow his mind flushed with the song he’d been working on, and he felt the dangle of the lyrics he’d been missing to finish it with, but he couldn’t grab that thread, his hands over his face, boots smashing into them, he felt his skull crunch.
* * *
WHITE BLINDING AGONY, ALL down his spine, the rim of the shield had smashed through his teeth, Asher raised his own to defend himself, but his arm was too light, it wasn’t there, his arm was gone, missing from the elbow, the shield came back into his face a second time.
* * *
MATTHIAS TOOK TWO STEPS, staring at the holes in his chest, weeping blood. Weeping like Mary had wept, he closed his eyes and prayed but the Lord wasn’t there anymore, He had slipped from Matthias’s body through these new openings. Some spiked mace had opened him up, pumping blood, his hands couldn’t keep it back, and with a single startling clarity he knew there was no Lord to welcome him in heaven now. His lifetime of piety
had not been to any God that cared about him, no, it had been obedience to men who had sold him lies …
* * *
ROSLYN’S VISION WENT GREY as the soldier squeezed her neck, and she welcomed it. She had known she would not survive this, but she had little else to live for anyway. Rather than fight for air she spent her last few seconds driving her thumbs into her attacker’s skull, piercing his eyes, feeling them puncture and goop onto her hands, and she smiled as she felt the Lord’s hand lift her from her body and into the white, where her family lay waiting.
* * *
“THERE’S FIGHTING IN THE streets,” William de Ferrers commented, pointing back east to the open plaza of Market Square.
“No matter,” the Sheriff d’Albini answered. “Cheshire is over the walls, and the archers’ defense is falling back. We’ll have the whole of the bailey by the afternoon, I think.”
“You ought to be proud,” the King said, offering William a smug smile from atop his horse. “Your father tried to do this and failed. Here we’ve done it with nothing more than the better part of a morning.”
“As you say, Your Grace,” William answered the unkind compliment. “Though you also have the better part of the country’s army, while my father had only Derbyshire at his side.”
“Then that was his error,” Richard replied. “Or does it not occur to you that it is planning alone that decides the battle? Our planning was correct, so the castle will be ours. The bailey by the end of the day, I agree, Rutland. We’ll need machinery for the second bailey, though.”
“We’ll have mangonels and petraries by the morning,” came the Lord Simon de Senlis, whom Ferrers hardly thought prominent enough to answer the question. “I’ve set the entirety of my men on to help your architects.”
“Good,” the King clipped, and turned his horse. “Let me know any developments. Shall we lunch?”
* * *
AN AXEHEAD OPENED CLORINDA Rose’s stomach and everything but her love for the world spilt out.
* * *
CAPTAIN FULCHER DE GRENDON sent Henry Russell running, not sure if he had agreed to his own suicide. But everything the so-called baileyking had said made sense, or at least whatever sense was left to be made in a world as upside down as the hell they were currently living in.
“Lances, and grapples!” he commanded, urging his mount forward. There were a dozen wooden tourney lances still wrapped in linen that had been brought for the archery tournament and never used. They were shorter than full lances and had blunt tips, but most of the Nottingham Guard had little training in their use anyway, and so would be better served with their size. Outside the curtain wall, it was mostly French men-at-arms waiting to climb the ladders now. Fulch believed in Russell’s advice—a conroi erupting from the gates of the castle would cause terror in the front lines of the French army, who were in no way prepared for a mounted assault. Fulch could lead his men out and destroy a handful of the siege ladders and still get back within the gates before the French had any idea what to do with themselves. The battlements were being overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of soldiers flooding up onto the bulwark, and Worcester’s men were losing ground. They could no longer hoist ladders with the fulcrum arms from the inside. They could only send reinforcements via the infrequent stairs up to the walk, while the French were joining from any of a dozen ladder points. Eventually, the fighting in the bailey would come down to attrition. But if the Guard could destroy even a few more of those ladders from the other side, then Russell’s men could keep the soldiers controlled and bottlenecked at the stairs down from the wall—turning their disadvantage in offense into an advantage of defense.
It was risky, of course, because it meant opening the gates—the very thing the enemy was trying to do themselves. But it was also the exact reason the move might catch them by surprise.
“Stay by me!” Fulch ordered, then yelled up to the last pocket of longbowmen that were holding their ground on the battlements. “And give us cover!”
* * *
THE GUARDSMEN AT THE BARBICAN were sympathetic, they opened the portcullis with just a single, knowing nod. Nobody was supposed to pass through the baileys, but Simon FitzSimon had been denied his due for too long. Some vermin, some gang-scraping cunt had sold lies about Simon’s daughter to get her killed, and Nottingham’s limpwrist new captain had the audacity to protect that filth. Still in the captain’s quarters, living in practical luxury compared to the shit of the rest of the castle. Simon’s boys had tried to get to that piece of shit, Will Stutely, when this all began, but they were in the minority. That was a month ago, a month of injustice. Now, with the war raging, there was a clear path for Simon to smash in the captain’s door and shred the villain’s neck to sinew and bone.
Behind him, the sounds of war. He knew he should care. He knew he could never drink enough of Sir Richard’s small ale to make up for the lives being lost as he walked away from it. His boys were his boys, they could take care of themselves, he’d seen to that. But his girl was his girl. He could never do enough to protect Cait, precious little Cait, he’d never close his eyes without seeing her smiling eyes as a two-year-old, and also her body convulsing on the archery target. The captain’s office was up in the quarter keep. If Gisbourne were still alive, he would have delivered Stutely to Simon on a platter. No, it would have never happened in the first place. Gisbourne would have known better.
Men tried to stop him. The prince’s men. Simon didn’t stop. He moved one with his hands. He might have punched the other. Or thrown him? Didn’t matter. He never stopped looking forward. Up the stairs, into the quarter keep, up to the captain’s door. He didn’t check the lock. He kicked it once, it shuddered, didn’t open. Again, nothing. Locked, from the outside. To keep Stutely in.
But Simon knew where to find an axe.
* * *
“THIS IS NEEDLESSLY DANGEROUS,” Amon chastised Lady Marion, “and I implore you again to return to the camp.”
She didn’t respond. It had been King Richard’s prerogative to position his command post ludicrously close to the front lines, and Amon wondered if he would see his king killed this day for the price of his hubris. But it was not his charge to defend the King.
“I disagree.” Marion did not turn. “I know that you will do everything in your power to defend me, sir.” He felt the chill of the word sir, and how much it meant for her to refrain from using his name. She still held a divisive grudge for what he had done to her. “And so I choose to place myself here in the city, exactly so that the danger to you will be greater.”
At that she gave him the full icy force of her gaze, and some small piece of Amon’s heart broke. With time, as does all things, her bitterness would mend. It was a difficult thing to think she truly wished him bodily harm, but here they were at the King’s side, in full view of the castle’s wall and the grotesque display of the day’s carnage. Surrounded on all sides by the allied companies, he had every reason to expect their safety. But there were pockets of civil resistance throughout the city, and it was not unthinkable that they might quickly find themselves in such an ambush.
“I hope you understand that, given the circumstances, I would consider it my duty—once again—to take you forcibly from this building, to return to a place I can guarantee your safety.”
“You would abduct me again.” Marion’s voice was cruel, she closed her cloak as she watched the melee unfold from the second-story balcony of the inn. “Well go on, then, why don’t you try?”
“Because I respect your slightest opinion,” he answered, in sincerity, “more than my gravest fact.”
If that had any sway over her, it was lost to a new din. A roar went up from the front lines, and Amon watched with some surprise that the front gates of the lower bailey were lurching open. He had not expected Richard’s armies to claim that prize so early in the day, and it was clear that the men-at-arms around it were equally unprepared. They broke into random clumps, abandoning their previous posts to fly at t
he widening maw, opportunists seizing the chance at a fresh kill. It was equally shocking to watch those men smashed aside as a cavalry charge burst out of the gates, lances dropping low and shattering against shields, flattening a dozen men to the earth in a heartbeat, and a dozen more a moment later. “They’re leading a sortie,” he marveled. “Against the entire army.”
And it wasn’t just the horses. The moment the cavalry was clear of the gates, a mob followed them. Men on foot, not in uniform, screaming a wild bestial noise, set loose upon the nearest ranks like a pack of wolves.
* * *
SKINNY PINK SCREAMED BLOODY murder and charged with the rest of them. The gate was open! There was finally an escape from the bailey, all they had to do was fight their way out. They were a raging stampede, the swell drew him toward the enemy … carried like a wave in the ocean. His mother had told him not to get involved with those gang boys. She’d begged him. She’d threatened to kill herself if ever he got hurt. A spear thrust into the gap between the two men in front of him, its blade snagging his shoulder, he begged his mother for forgiveness, for help.
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