Something Red (15 page)

Now no bandit could seize a bridle and turn a wagon off the track, into the forest, for with all brakes set each wagon acted as an anchor to the others. The ropes were too thick to cut easily. A few moments’ study of a clamp would show anyone how to free the rope, but in a battle, with Jack ranging at a fast limp around the wagons, carrying his skullsplitter war hammer, three heartbeats’ distraction meant death or maiming to an attacker.

Nemain sprang through the back door into the main wagon, closely followed by Hob. Nemain went right to the war hammer in its wooden clips on the wall and lifted it free with some effort. Hob threw open a chest and gathered up eight or nine arrows. He took a coiled spare bowstring and thrust it into his pouch. The coated linen bowstring left a slight residue of beeswax on his hand and through the tumult of excitement this foolish detail bothered him: he wiped his fingers on his shirt. He slammed the chest lid shut. The two squeezed past one another, Nemain to the back door to hand the hammer to Jack, and Hob to the front hatch, to bring Molly the clutch of arrows. On his way through the wagon he stopped before a group of three shields on the walls: round targes, two feet in diameter, the center boss bearing a spike. He snatched one from the wall and skimmed it toward the back of the wagon for Nemain to pass to Jack. He pulled down the other two and tossed these through the hatch onto the wagon seat and crawled through himself, the arrows in one hand.

The noise of the attack had been muted in the wagon and now the shouts and clangs burst about his head. He heard the
snap, snap
of Molly’s bow, the hum of Molly’s arrows, screams from the roadside brush. One targe had a strap in addition to the arm brackets: he slung this shield over his back, to protect himself; the other he skimmed up onto the roof. He began to climb one-handed, the clutch of arrows in his right hand. The rope rungs flexed and wobbled beneath his feet, but Hob was agile and blessed with an excellent sense of balance. In a moment he was head and shoulders above the roofline.

What came into view at that moment burned itself into his heart: many years later he could still bring it before his eyes, vivid as life. Past the targe he had just thrown onto the roof, past the swell and bunch of Molly’s muscular calf, white as baptismal-font marble, decorated with a little blue river and tributaries formed from broken veins, he could see a bandit, a ragged golden-bearded grim-faced man, nimbly climbing to the wagon roof, and she all unaware. One knee in its tattered green hose was braced on the roof edge, one grimy hand gripped the rope loop, and the other stretched toward Molly’s ankle to topple her from her perch.

With a shout Hob summoned all his force and stabbed downward with the bunch of arrows. One arrowhead penetrated the man just behind the wrist, between the long bones of the forearm, nailing the arm against the roof; another cut the web of skin between thumb and forefinger; the rest went wide, the sharp points stuck fast into the wood.

The brigand gave a bellow of pain, and then a moment later a shriek as he wrenched his arm free, the arrow still transfixing his forearm. Molly spun about and matter-of-factly swung a kick to his jaw with her heavy wooden-soled shoe—even above the din of fighting Hob could hear the thud—and the outlaw vanished over the side.

Hob looked up at Molly. Her expression was calm, distant, emotionless as a mask, or one of the carved saints in St. Germaine’s chapel. But she bent and gave Hob a slap of approval on the shoulder, seized the
cluster of arrows fast in the roof, and ripped them free. She thrust them into her quiver as she straightened; her head whipped from side to side, her narrowed eyes scanning the roadside trees and brush for sign of a crouching archer, for a new mark at which to shoot.

Hob scrambled the rest of the way onto the roof. The boy caught a glimpse of Gold-Beard as he reappeared, hunched over his wounded arm, scuttling for the cover of the roadside gorse bushes. Hob picked up the second shield and took station to Molly’s left and a little in front of her. He held with his hands to the brackets on the shield back that a grown man would slip his left arm through. He held the targe in such a way that Molly was at least partially covered, as he was himself. He had to be active and supple to maintain his position, for she turned about quickly every few moments, so to shoot to either side of the wagon.

From up here Hob could snatch glimpses of the fracas from all sides as he leaped about, ducking and bobbing, trying desperately to keep the shield before Molly, who swung this way and that, placing her shots with brisk efficiency, as calm and careful as though feathered death were not whistling past her at every moment.

Up forward he could see that the pilgrims had at last remembered Jack’s instruction, and bunched themselves in a loose ring with their staves held high and the women in the center. The whole group was shuffling back down the trail toward the protection of the wagons, moving in unison as Jack had showed them, a clumsy but effective way of preserving their formation while retreating.

The Carlisle tanners were no warriors, but they were well fed, and sturdy from their demanding work, while the wolf’s-heads were poorly armed and half-starved. The pilgrims rained blows on their nearest attackers with their staves and succeeded in keeping them at bay, at least for now; besides, most of the outlaw band was engaged in attempts to gain possession of the wagons, where the most wealth was to be found.

The mass of broad-brimmed hats, seen from the wagon roof,
reminded Hob of a patch of mushrooms, and he began to giggle a bit and forced himself to stop. He was too excited to be very afraid, but he felt a bit as he did when he drank too much barley beer: a little dizzy, a little light-headed.

Molly spun about, and Hob, following, was once more facing aft. Nemain was crouched inside the rear door, with a smaller version of Molly’s bow. She was not in his sight, but he could see black-tailed arrows, arrows that Molly had fletched with crow feathers, spit at an angle from the rear of the big wagon they stood upon. The shafts whirred away, first to this side of the road, then to the other. Nemain was watching the second and third wagons, and at the same time peppering the bushes, shooting to whichever side Jack was not guarding. There was less power in her bow than in Molly’s, but it was an effective harassment of the attackers, and she was there to raise the alarm if a bandit made for the rear wagons.

“Last and left!” Nemain’s high clear voice sang through the rumble of men shouting, and Jack, below, hitched the shield farther up his forearm so that his left hand was empty. He tossed the hammer from right hand to left and put his freed right hand on Mavourneen’s rump. He vaulted over the little beast and the drawshafts to land on the left side of the wagons, a prodigious leap, and made for the rear of the second wagon, moving swiftly, his limp barely noticeable. As he went he switched the hammer back to his right hand and shook the shield down his left arm; his left hand once more took a grip on one of the brackets.

Two men huddled at the back of the little wagon, fumbling with the clamp that held the mare’s lead rope in the notch. With a curse the shorter one drew a knife and began to saw at the thick rope, but by then Jack was upon them.

The war hammer swung up and over and down with a
whum,
ending in a dull thumping crack: the short bandit’s collarbone had snapped beneath the blunt face of the weapon. He yelped; his arm dropped limp and the knife fell at his feet. The second man abandoned the rope clamp
and whipped out a dagger. Hob, peering past the shield he held before Molly, saw the blade flash high, and drew a quick breath: he meant to shout warning to Jack. But an eyeblink later the hammer, sweeping in the wide lateral arc of its backstroke, singing in its passage through the air, irresistible, sank its crow-beak thirstily into the brigand’s throat. He collapsed without a groan; he thrashed upon the ground, choking on his own blood.

The first man stood hunched, his left hand holding his useless arm immobile against his side: the grating pain of a broken collarbone is not to be ignored, and he had lost all interest in the world outside his body. He began to shamble toward the woods, and Jack, with the practicality of the experienced soldier, did not waste another moment with him; he knew he would do no more mischief that day.

A
RROWS WERE SLEETING PAST THEM
, high on the roof, yet Hob was conscious of no fear, but only that his mouth was very dry, and he would have given anything to stop for a moment and drink water. He caught another glimpse of the pilgrims’ struggle, just as an outlaw scuttled in, stabbing with his heavy knife; the pilgrim he had attacked collapsed inward into the group. Cudgels rained blows about the bandit’s head and he ran backward a few steps to rejoin the ring of desperate men who encircled the pilgrim group. A couple of the Carlisle men took their fallen friend under the arms and dragged him along with them in their slow progress back to the shelter of the wagons.

The mare and the little donkey shifted and danced in their traces, their eyes showing white and their ears flicking backward and forward in an attempt to keep track of each menacing sound, but the dead weight of the braked wagons kept them from bolting. Milo, whatever his other shortcomings, was wonderfully stolid in the face of noise and confusion; his eyes rolled here and there as shapes sprang from the forest, his ears
turned to every scream and bang of combat, but he stood like a carved ox in his tracks, and waited for his Hob to return.

M
OLLY’S ARROWS
had taken effect: Hob could see forms slumped in the bare bushes and partially hidden by tree trunks, black-feathered arrows protruding from chest or throat, and the hail of arrows from the forest had all but stopped.

Hob looked over the side. Jack circled the wagons tirelessly. His limp was more pronounced, but still he moved with speed, rushing to meet any who dashed from the brush toward the wagons. The bandits ran by twos or threes toward the wagons as one or the other summoned the courage for an attack, but were so disorganized that they seemed unable to mount a concerted rush.

Jack was a franklin’s third son who had taken service first with this knight and then with that, learning his trade from his comrades as he marched and fought. Natural strength and agility had made him a seasoned and relentless combatant. Now he was a match for any but a belted knight. A member of a hereditary military aristocracy, trained ruthlessly from childhood in the care of equipment and horse, the use of weapons, riding, a thousand tricks of combat: a Norman knight could leap into the saddle with a half-hundredweight of chain mail on his body. One of these would surely make short work of Jack. But anyone else, anyone less formidable than one of those professional killers, stood little chance against Jack’s strength, Jack’s skill, Jack’s murderous hammer.

So it proved now. Three bandits came at him, backing him against the side of the wagon, ranging themselves in a rough semicircle. Jack launched himself at the one to his right, the shield on his left arm giving some protection against the two banditti on his left. He ran at the outlaw, who bore a short heavy falchion and a targe much like Jack’s own, but without a spike. Jack came up to him and swung the hammer high.
The bandit kept his eye on the hammerhead; he set his feet and shifted his targe to take the expected blow.

Jack stopped short, still holding the hammer aloft, and kicked savagely at the inside of the wolf’s-head’s knee. The bandit went down like a poleaxed steer, bellowing in pain from the torn joint, dropping his short curved sword and letting his shield sag. Now the hammer fell, and the bandit was defenseless before it, and was battered flat, and lay lifeless upon the ground.

In the instant after his hammer-blow landed, Jack sprang backward; he came to rest facing the remaining pair, his targe before his face. One of the men had a woodsman’s ax and from somewhere had procured a stolen shield, not the old-fashioned, body-sheltering, long teardrop shield, but the newer kite-shaped half-shield. He had scraped the paint from it, no doubt to conceal whose device had originally been on it, and it was down to the bare wood and the steel rim. The other had fastened a dagger to a two-foot length of ashwood, to make a crude kind of part-sword, and had a square shield of wicker, roughly constructed.

They were gathering themselves for a rush when Jack stepped in quickly, swinging the blunt end of the hammer down on the upraised kite shield. The shield held well enough, but the tremendous blow, delivered with all the power of Jack Brown’s body, damaged the bandit’s arm: it drooped, leaving his head and neck exposed. Jack leaped rightward, batting away the second man’s dagger-sword with his targe, and swung the hammer again at the wolf’s-head with the ax, but from the side. The crow-beak skimmed over the top of the drooping shield and caught the bandit in the temple, and he was dead before he dropped.

The last bandit backed against the little wagon with a thud, and Mavourneen looked around to see what had shaken the draw shafts. Jack closed in. The outlaw had passed that invisible interior boundary where all hope of prevailing has fled, and the combatant can see only the pain that advances upon him from his future. He pressed back against the
little wagon, his wicker shield up under his chin, covering his throat; he was making little grunting thrusts with the awkward makeshift sword. His lips pulled back suddenly in an awful unwitting grin, a doglike baring of teeth against his oncoming doom.

Jack danced a little to set his feet properly, advancing with his targe held toward his quarry, then whirled the hammer in a roundabout swing that dipped at the last moment; the blunt head smashed into the bandit’s ankles and swept his feet from under him. The outlaw screeched something Hob could not make out, his voice high and strangled with his fear, and as he lay on his back threw first the wicker shield and then the dagger-sword at his implacable foe. Jack Brown banged them away with the targe, one after the other, but the bandit had by then rolled under the wagon to the opposite side and scrambled on hands and knees for the cover of the trees, happy to escape.