Master of War (39 page)

Blackstone and his men held their sword blades on their right shoulders and kept their horses moving forward at the walk until they were a half-dozen horse lengths away from the brigands. The trick now was to make them manoeuvre so they would each hinder the other. Blackstone stopped his men at a slight curve in the road, a passing place for carts. If he could bring the enemy to him they had the better place to fight. He summoned the courage to find the words that might entice the men to fight. Bravado could carry the day.

‘Did your mother’s claws rip that face of yours when they pulled you from her belly?’ one of the brigands said, and who was obviously their leader.

‘It was given by a better man than you,’ Blackstone said, testing the man for provocation. ‘And I killed him for it.’

‘A boy like you?’ the man sneered.

‘An English archer like me,’ Blackstone answered and saw their expressions change into unconcealed hatred.

‘What’s this, then? You ride with a Norman lord’s men?’

‘I ride with those I choose. Your business lies elsewhere. Shouldn’t you be clearing shit pits for a monastery or does your stench out­weigh that of a monk’s bowels?’

The brigand’s face twisted. ‘You’re going no further on this road, you English scum,’ the man answered.

‘It’s an open highway, and we carry no coin,’ Blackstone said, buying as much time as he could until he thought his crossbowmen should be in position.

‘No matter, this is our road now, and we take what we want, when we want it. Where are the other two men?’ the man asked.

‘If you know there are other men, then you know we have a wounded man with us on a litter. They’re back down the road guarding him.’

The brigands’ leader thought about it for a moment and then grunted, satisfied at the explanation. ‘Then they’ll not put up a fight once you’ve surrendered your horses and weapons. Then you’ll be free to go.’ He was an ugly man with sagging skin, pit­ted with blackheads, and yellowing eyes from too much drink, but the broken nose and scarred hands told Blackstone that he was a fighter at best and a cold-hearted killer at worst. No man, woman or child’s death would touch him. No one spoke or moved, each man readying themselves for the fight. The brigands’ horses pressed against each other, forcing their riders to pull back and jostle for position.

‘You’re not a man to bargain, then?’ Blackstone said.

‘Bargain?’ The man laughed and looked to his men. ‘You have something to trade?’

One of those at his side pointed his sword at his leader. ‘Guescin here would rob and rape the Virgin Mary even if she bargained with the devil not to!’ The men laughed, murmuring their agreement, and waited smiling, as the Englishman in front of them held his place and his nerve.

Blackstone felt his leg wound tighten and the fear creep into his stomach. His mouth dried. He would be first to strike. What he did would determine the outcome of the confrontation.

‘Two of these men are better than all of your dog-shit routiers put together. Get off the damned road now before I set them on you,’ Blackstone said, hoping that his men behind him had not grimaced at the thought of leading the attack.

The mercenary sniffed the air. ‘Has one of you shat themselves? I can smell their fear from here. Come on, boy, let’s have you on the ground and on your knees and begging for your lives.’

‘I’ll trade your life for the road,’ Blackstone said. ‘Give way or I’m going to kill you first and then your men.’

The man’s face creased in uncertainty, as if working out a complex puzzle. It was the provocation Blackstone had wanted.

His thumb pressed into the sword’s corded grip.

His fear was gone.

The man yelled, spurring his horse forward. Those to his side were startled and their moment of hesitation gave Blackstone the advantage. He kicked back his heels and the animal surged. The brigand’s sword was halfway down its arc when Blackstone’s blade swept beneath it and took him across the throat. The momentum barged his horse into the brigand to his left, his shield blocking the man’s attack as the dead man’s horse veered, throwing its head to one side and blocking another of the men. Blackstone twisted, felt the blade turn in the shield, yanking the man forward as one of Blackstone’s escorts rammed his spear into the man’s exposed ribs. Then crossbow quarrels thudded into the two brigands at the rear, and as they fell they trapped the surviving men. One managed to turn his horse, but Meulon had pushed through the hedgerow and struck at him from the top of the bank, his blade slicing across the man’s skull, splitting it from ear to neck.

Blackstone was exposed on his right as a horseman pushed past his leader’s panicked horse and now positioned himself to attack. The man who was supposed to protect Blackstone on that side took two hefty blows despite his efforts to block any attack on Blackstone and was struck from the horse. As the soldier fell the brigand’s sword swept around ready to take Blackstone’s head. He threw himself across the horse’s mane, the flat edge of the blade skimming his shoulder, tearing his gambeson without cutting flesh. The man had turned with the stroke and Blackstone threw his weight forward, ramming Wolf Sword into the man’s liver and lungs. The force of the lunge held the blade and, as the man fell it was yanked from Blackstone’s hand and unbalanced him from the saddle. He went down among the hooves, his memory cursing him for not tying a blood knot from his sword’s crossguard. He curled into a protective ball, as men’s screams and cries of agony competed with the whinnying of the terrified horses. His leg felt as though molten lead had been poured into the wound, and a hoof caught his head. For a dizzying moment he felt the world swirling. Instinct forced him to push himself into the bank for protection and then someone was there between him and the horse.

‘Get up!’ Meulon shouted. ‘They’re all dead except one.’

Blackstone accepted the man’s extended arm and hauled himself up. Meulon looked at him questioningly as Blackstone pulled the hair back from his face and saw the smear of blood on his hand. He’d been lucky.

‘I’m all right,’ Blackstone told him.

‘It seems you know how to use this, Sir Thomas,’ Meulon said, acknowledging Blackstone’s rank for the first time as he handed back the recovered Wolf Sword.

Blackstone walked down the track to where one of the escorts guarded the surviving brigand. Another of de Harcourt’s men held the horses as the soldier who had been at Blackstone’s side sat, ashen-faced, against the bank.

‘Gaillard. He’s taken a cut through his mail, he’ll bleed a bit longer and then it’ll congeal. He’ll survive, though he deserves no sympathy for making such a piss-poor mess of it. God’s blood! He only had to ride at your side. I’ll make sure he loses pay and gets a flogging because of it.’ The injured man’s face hardened at the thought of more pain and of losing what little he earned.

‘He did well,’ Blackstone lied, ‘he slowed the man attacking me. Give him some wine and we’ll attend to his wound before we leave this place.’

The wounded man gritted his teeth and got to his feet. ‘My thanks, Sir Thomas.’

Meulon nodded. ‘You’re a lucky bastard, Gaillard, in more ways than one,’ he said, knowing full well that it was more usual for a man-at-arms to blame a common soldier for any misfortune that befell him, and that Blackstone had almost gone down under the routier’s sword.

The prisoner was on his knees in the mud, his hands tied behind his back. Greasy hair plastered his face from the sweat of the fight. Meulon yanked his head back, the man gasped, exposing the broken and blackened stumps that had once been teeth.

‘Who do you fight for?’ Blackstone asked him.

‘We serve no one,’ he answered, and then fell to Meulon’s kick.

‘Lying bastard. Half a dozen scum like you don’t survive on your own. There’s more of you. Where?’ Meulon demanded.

The man shook his head in denial, and earned another kick for his resistance.

Blackstone raised a hand. ‘That’s enough. Listen to me,’ he said, ‘I’m going to set you free.’

Meulon couldn’t believe what he’d heard. ‘We string this piece of shit up and leave his body as a warning to others who trespass on my lord’s territory!’

‘No, I do this my way,’ Blackstone answered. ‘Get him on his knees and untie him.’

Meulon stepped in front of Blackstone, his face close to the Englishman. ‘We make an example of him, as would my Lord de Harcourt.’

‘He’s not here,’ Blackstone said and tried to step aside, but Meulon positioned himself again.

‘We kill him,’ Meulon hissed. The other men couldn’t hide their disgust and murmured their agreement.

A fragment of memory shot into Blackstone’s mind of Killbere’s strength and authority, of the man who made the decisions without favour. ‘Do as I say and do it now,’ Blackstone told him without raising his voice. ‘I know what needs to be done.’

Once again Meulon hesitated, but Blackstone had not moved and showed no sign of changing his mind. Finally, Meulon obeyed and dragged the man by his hair onto his knees and cut free the bonds.

‘Now, tell me who you serve, and you’re free to go,’ Blackstone told him.

‘You’ll kill me anyway,’ the man said defiantly.

‘No. I will not kill you. I give you my word.’

‘And what’s that worth?’

‘My honour has been well earned,’ said Blackstone. ‘It means everything.’

The man hesitated. ‘I need a drink.’

‘No drink, only your freedom as I promised. Now who do you ride for?’

The man thought about it for a moment. What was there to lose? ‘Routiers hold Chaulion.’

Blackstone looked to Meulon to explain. ‘Eighty miles or more to the south. It controls one of the crossroads,’ Meulon told him.

‘Who’s there? How many?’ Blackstone demanded as Meulon’s fist was raised ready to punish.

The man flinched. ‘Germans, French, Gascons – all kinds. English deserters as well. More than sixty men, sometimes more. Saquet leads them. He’s their leader. Saquet,
le poigne de fer
.’

‘The “Iron Fist”. I’ve heard of him,’ Meulon said, ‘he’s a Breton, murdering bastards every last one of them, they’d sell their mothers for a jug of wine. He’s one of the worst. They call him that because he likes to kill a man on the ground by smashing his skull with his fist.’

Blackstone knew that de Harcourt’s men would gut and hang the man as a warning for others not to stray into their lord’s domain. They looked at him expectantly. Sometimes harsh actions were necessary. He faltered, trying to decide on what act would serve its purpose. Finding the lesser of the evils was what separated wanton torture and killing from exacting a harsh lesson on an enemy.

‘Bring him over here,’ he ordered.

Meulon dragged the man by his hair and beard across to a fallen tree. Blackstone raised his sword ready to strike. The man’s knees sagged beneath him; spittle and snot clung to his beard as he begged for his life.

‘No, no! You gave your honour!’

‘I always keep my word. I’ll give you your freedom. Meulon, his arm, there,’ Blackstone said, pointing to the tree stump. Meulon and another of de Harcourt’s men held the man down and forced his arm across the stump.

‘You tell this “Iron Fist” that he will not come again into this territory and that Sir Thomas Blackstone, sworn to his sovereign lord, the English King, will seek him out and kill him, and that this is fair warning.’

Blackstone’s blade severed the fingers cleanly from the man’s sword hand.

Blackstone had the brigand’s wound bound, but before they sent him on his way he was given another lesson: they gathered the slain men’s swords and spiked their bodies to the trees as a warning. Meulon and the others stayed silent once the work was done. Whatever doubts they had harboured about the Englishman seeped away like the blood spilled on the track.

Jean de Harcourt watched the blood-spattered escort return. Their arrival caused a flurry of activity in the courtyard as the injured men were helped. Blackstone briefly explained what had happened and that mercenaries held the town of Chaulion.

‘We knew it had been taken, but that they were raiding this far is worrying news,’ said de Harcourt.

‘Is the King testing those of us he doubts?’ Louis de Vitry asked.

‘There’s no saying they’re being paid by our King,’ Guy de Ruymont said, ‘they are as likely to be serving their own ends as that of his.’

‘My lord,’ said Blackstone, ‘the Englishman wears the livery of the King of England, and there was another man hanged in the village. I don’t know what they were doing so far south.’

‘What they were doing, young Blackstone, is telling Frenchmen that Edward would protect them if they swore allegiance,’ said de Mainemares, the noblemen’s elder statesman, who pushed his way through the group and tugged at the wounded man’s livery as he was being carried into the castle. ‘He’s sending out runners and without much success. Perhaps your King’s authority and influence is not what we believe it to be.’ He nodded for the litter bearers to take the man inside.

‘Put him next to Sir Thomas’s quarters,’ de Harcourt com­manded. ‘Thomas, stay with him and see what you can find out when he regains consciousness, you’re the only one who speaks the language.’

There had been no condemnation of Blackstone’s actions, but neither had there been praise for stopping the mercenaries. The gathered nobles stood aside as the young knight followed the litter through the castle doors.

William de Fossat pulled his fingers through his thatch of beard.

‘A good kill, Jean. It’ll teach those thieving bastards to keep their distance.

De Vitry agreed. ‘If they hold Chaulion, they control the trade that passes on those roads. We should burn them out before more skinners join them.’

Jean de Harcourt remained silent. Murmurs of agreement joined de Vitry and Fossat.

‘Meulon!’ de Harcourt called as the soldier attended to his injured man near the stables. ‘Inside. Now.’

De Harcourt turned on his heel, followed by the others. He needed to know whether Thomas Blackstone’s actions had been foolish and disturbed a hornet’s nest that could bring raiders onto his lands, or whether he had started a chain of events that would suit the Norman barons and their long-term plans.