The King’s Assassin (8 page)

But he was only one man.

Away from the giant and his gory sweeping axe, to the left and the right, iron mail shining in the orange light of the burning town, the French infantry came on, a hundred men at least in that one charge. They crashed into our wall, batting away our wavering spearpoints and hurling themselves at the line, lunging with swords over the top of the shield rims, stabbing at the faces of our terrified men. I saw Miles duck and take a sword thrust on his helmet, but his head came up swiftly and he killed the man with a beautiful overhand lunge that skewered the hollow of his neck below his Adam’s apple and pushed the blade a foot out the other side. Two of our men fell, faces gashed, at the weak join between the five-man plug and the left hand part of the wall, and once more our line was breached. I took two steps forward, shieldless, into the open space and hacked Fidelity double-handed into the shoulder of a mail-clad man-at-arms who was surging forward with an axe, and felt the jar of steel on bone all the way up my arms. He staggered, the mail split and bloody. I kicked him in the belly, shoving him off my sword and he dropped. I killed another behind him with a straight lunge to the chest; and lopped the left forearm off yet another fellow beside him, his shield hitting the cobbles with a clatter. But my desperate attack had taken me beyond the line of the wall now and there were enemies all around me. Indeed, such was the ferocity of the French charge that the wall was broken again – no more than a chain of knots of struggling men, French and English, shoving, slicing, hacking, slipping on the blood-slick cobbles, screaming and dying.

This was the mêlée, pure and simple, every man for himself. And with their superior numbers they must prevail.

‘Back,’ I shouted, ‘back to the bridge. John, John, get them back. Now!’

Over the heads of the struggling men, I saw more French footmen coming out of the fire-lit smoke, another two score, massing on the far side of the open space. John was heedless of me: he was surrounded by at least a dozen men-at-arms and he seemed to be fighting them all at once. I felt rather than saw Sir Thomas hurtle past me, and charge into the pack around the big man, reaping lives like a man possessed, and in two heartbeats I was there too, dodging a looping backswing from John’s axe and dropping the nearest French man-at-arms with a cut to the hamstrings.

‘John,’ I shouted. ‘We must get back! John!’

Instead we went forward. With Sir Thomas on his right and myself on the big man’s left, we waded into the enemy, three men against a multitude. Chopping, hacking, slashing – killing and killing again. We ploughed into the French infantry, cutting into their ranks like an axe through a rotten tree stump. But I remember little of the details: screaming faces, the slap of blood, the jar of steel sword against iron mail. Then suddenly the press around us had melted away, and I was left panting with Little John and Sir Thomas in an empty space. The enemy, by some miracle, was pulling back. My huge friend was covered in gore and filth from head to toe, his eyes were bright as pine torches and a white line of spittle lined his gaping mouth. But he finally seemed to recognise me and to grasp what I wanted him to do. Turning his broad back on his foes, now glaring at us over their shield rims thirty feet away, he helped Thomas and me herd our living men-at-arms back to the foot of the bridge.

The French were milling around the open ends of the streets that led into the square; summoning the courage for another charge or awaiting the order. And our bowmen were still killing them. A man or two dropping every few heartbeats.

We got our men back, about twenty survivors, to the foot of the bridge, and I formed them huddled in a jostling mass between the wooden railings, shields up, spears forward, our archers – as yet untouched – at the rear. We were packed in tight as fish in a net, but we still held the bridge.

The French were still denied the crossing.

The cobbles in the open space before the bridge were covered with dead, wounded and dying; French and English jumbled in the ultimate comradeship of pain and blood. The red carpet of agony writhed like a single beast, here and there an arm flailing towards the sky, or a man lurching upright and staggering a few yards before collapsing again. The unending screams and moans of beasts and men scoured the air. I felt a shaft of fear lance through my guts. But for the grace of God, that could well be me out there, sitting in a pool of my own filth, mewling for a swift merciful death. But I could not indulge my terrors while there was still a task at hand. The enemy had not departed the field and we still had a bridge to hold.

Indeed, the French were again massing in the shadows on the far side of the square – ghostly figures through the greasy fog, their ranks massively swelled to several hundred footmen at least, by my reckoning. The tall shapes of formed bodies of horsemen behind. They feared our arrows, for sure, but it was only a matter of time before they roused themselves to charge. Then we were finished.

Miles had a bleeding cut on his face, just below the cheekbone, but apart from that he appeared unscathed. His eyes shone blue and his whole body was thrumming with a violent, nervous energy. ‘We held them, Sir Alan, we held them.’ He was almost jabbering at me. ‘I killed him, I did it. I killed my man. He’s dead as a stone!’

‘Yes, lad, you did well, very well,’ I said kindly. But I could give him only half my attention. Mastin was beside me.

‘Well, that was most gratifying,’ he said, and grinned at me through his wiry beard, ‘but my lads are down to their last arrows. Thought you should know.’

I nodded dumbly. And my eye was caught by movement upstream, along the riverbank that led towards the great trading town of Bruges half a dozen miles away.

‘When the shafts are spent,’ Mastin was saying, ‘we’ll muck in with the rest, but our swordplay isn’t much and the boys have no armour to speak of…’

‘No, no,’ I said, still not looking at him. ‘You’ve done enough, Mastin. And I thank you. We’ve all done enough for today.’

My eyes were fixed on the riverbank a hundred yards downstream, where I could see a mass of knights and footmen, perhaps several hundreds, slipping into the river, some holding the tails of their swimming horses, others just taking the plunge and splashing their way across to the far side. On the bank, other men still in the saddle were urging horses down into the flow as well.

We were about to be flanked.

‘It’s time to go,’ I said. ‘Mastin, on my command, I want every arrow you have loosed at the enemy, then we’ll all go together fast as we can.’ I raised my voice: ‘You hear that, lads: we will be taking our leave very shortly. On the command, “Retreat”, you have my permission to run like greyhounds for the harbour.’

The cheer was more like a groan of exhaustion but I could see chins lifting with the thought of the harbour, ships and home.

Sir Thomas Blood was beside me. His face was a mask of splashed gore and his long-sword dripped. But he seemed unhurt. ‘You are to lead them, Thomas,’ I said. ‘Get them to the harbour when I give the word. Oh, and well done, by the way.’

The young man smiled. ‘Lady Luck was with us, Sir Alan – this time!’ he said and began to push his way through the archers to the rear of the bridge.

‘God’s great dangling ball-sack, Alan, surely we can hold them a little longer. I’ve hardly got into my stride…’ Little John actually looked aggrieved that we were going to quit this place of blood, suffering and death.

‘If we don’t go now, we will never get out alive,’ I said, and pointed upstream where a few sodden French men-at-arms were already on the north side of the river. ‘If they get behind us, we’re done for. And I’m not going to die for no reason. Robin said hold as long as we can. We’ve done that.’

‘I could take care of those half-drowned pip-squeaks all on my lonesome,’ said John, jerking his chin at the French across the river. ‘Just let me—’

‘No, John.’ I put my hand on his brawny forearm. ‘It’s time to go.’

‘Mastin,’ I said to the hairy bow-master, ‘give them a fond farewell … Now!’

The bows creaked one more time and the arrows flew and were swallowed by the smoke. But I could hear the chink of steel tips on iron mail, hear shouts of anger and pain and make out the shapes of men writhing and falling.

I gave the order. Sir Thomas led the men across the bridge, pell-mell, sixty or so surviving Englishmen only an inch away from panic, sprinting across the cobbles on the far side of the river, plunging into the maze of streets, heading north towards the sea. Little John and I were the last two men off the bridge.

And Miles.

Robin’s son was still consumed by the soaring triumph of his kill, and his white, grinning, bleeding face was close by my left shoulder. It was clear that he took my command for him to stay close to me seriously. As the last of our men disappeared into the smouldering town, the three of us took one final look at the French cavalry moving forward at last in the smoke-filled square and then we, too, turned our backs and sprinted over the bridge after our comrades.

We ran for our lives. I could clearly hear the shouting of the horsemen behind us, the rage of fighting men denied their revenge, and the terrifying clatter of horses’ hooves on the wooden slats of the bridge. For a moment, I thought we had left it too late and we would be ridden down. We flew down a wide street with tall timbered houses on either side, and shops, looted and abandoned, gaping open at street level.

A bald man in a bloody apron flew out of a doorway to my right, a butcher’s cleaver in his right hand, a snarl on his lips. God knows how long he had been hiding, awaiting his chance. I had no time for thought, Fidelity licked out and plunged straight into his belly. The man was brought up short, impaled on my weapon. His face twitched in surprise and pain. His cleaver rang out sharply as it hit the cobbles. But I did not stop; I tugged Fidelity free from his falling body even as we charged onwards. I could still hear the rattle of hooves behind, and that if nothing else gave our feet wings.

We dodged into a smaller street at right angles to the main thoroughfare, and immediately turned left into another even smaller lane, then bundled into the doorway of a large merchant’s house, and stood there, our backs pressed against the wood of the door, stifling our wild gasps for air to listen out for our pursuers. A short thunder of hooves from the lane, the sharp cries of men, and then silence.

It seemed we had lost them.

The inferno had crossed the river at some point in the last hour and here, too, the air was thick with smoke. It was difficult to see more than a dozen yards in any direction. I gave thanks to God, for that smoke would serve to shield us from enemy eyes. We ran past a church in a small square, where a priest and two young clerics in black robes stood at the door. The priest pointed and shouted angrily at us in French but we paid no heed and hurried onwards. Dead men lay on the cobbles, and a beautiful pure white horse stood miserably with its head drooping, slick red and purple entrails hanging from its belly, dangling to the earth. Clearly there had been hard fighting in this part of Damme, too. Now I saw that there were mailed men ahead of us – French, I had no doubt – although where they had come from I had no idea. We turned right into a street of fishmongers – although no living men could be seen, the stink of their wares was in the air and slim silver bodies were scattered across the cobbles like discarded ingots.

Fishmongers must be near the sea, I reasoned. They must be.

We turned again, darting into a narrow lane, following the sound of seagulls and my own instincts as to where the harbour must be – and after a hundred yards found ourselves at a dead end. The lane ended in a high house wall, plastered and whitewashed, but unpunctuated by door or window. We skidded to a halt, turned and began to retrace our steps, running back up the lane with a sense of dread ballooning in my gorge. I was right to feel the fear, for an instant later a knot of horsemen appeared like wraiths out the smoke at the mouth of the street. They blocked the road.

We were trapped.

One of the horsemen was decked in a blue surcoat, two in identical red and white; the three behind in black. The knights saw us, the blue horseman gave a shout in French: ‘We have you at last, you English rats! There is nowhere to scurry to now.’

I felt Little John bristling beside me, hefting his axe, rolling his shoulders to loosen the muscles. It was six horsemen against three men on foot: no contest.

Nevertheless, I hauled out Fidelity and took a stance beside John and a double grip on the hilt. We would go down fighting; take as many of them as we could.

The lances of the six knights came down as one. The blue knight shouted: ‘
Vive le Roi!
St Denis!
’ and the other five took up the cry. ‘
St Denis! St Denis!
’

They put back their spurs and charged.

‘Sir Alan, Sir Alan,’ Miles was shouting at me. I took my eyes off the oncoming foe for a mere instant and saw Robin’s son beckoning me with huge sweeps of his arm. He was standing beside a big square window set shoulder-high into the right-hand wall of the lane, opening into a house; the wooden shutter was wide open.

I shouted ‘John!’ sheathed Fidelity and took two quick steps to the wall. As I boosted Miles through the open window, I could hear the ominous clatter of hooves on stone behind me. I shouted to the big man again: ‘John, over here!’

Little John glanced over at me, irritation written all over his battered red face. He was readying himself to take on the six knights, who were even now bearing down on him a scant thirty yards away.

He was readying himself for death.

‘Come on, you great jackanape!’ I shouted behind me and, with the help of Miles’s reaching arms, I made an undignified scramble up the lime-washed wall through the open square and into a dim, low room. Once inside, I turned and looked out the window into the light at my huge friend – and I thought then, not for the first time, that John must harbour a death wish. For the blond giant still stood in the middle of the lane, axe cocked above his head, with the line of horsemen almost upon him.