Ash: A Secret History (208 page)

“—fucking
arrows!
”

A hard impact knocked her head around to the right. Pain shot through her wrenched neck. A spear-blade shone in front of her eyes. The pole-hammer wouldn’t come up, caught on something – a steel-plated arm pushed in front of her, and the spear-point skidded off that vambrace and into her breastplate. The impact knocked her half-turned around. She dragged her weapon free. A woman screamed. A Visigoth spearman stumbled into her field of view, fell at her feet.

She slammed the top-spike down, punched it into his calf-muscle; a foot-knight in Lion livery smacked a mace into the Visigoth’s bare face. Bloodied teeth and bone-fragments spattered up her breastplate—

The flag-staff of the Lion Affronté cracked down hard on her right shoulder. An armoured man cannoned into her from behind; a Visigoth spearman, on his knees, clinging to the man’s belt and stabbing a dagger up into his groin. Blood sprayed.

They shouldn’t get this near to me
—

The whole mass of people pushed off to the right; she half-fell over the edge of the path. The banner-staff caught between her helmet and haut-piece, jutting forward over her shoulder, pressing her down.

“Keep – going—!”

With a great wrench she completed the turn, spinning as hard left as she could. The banner-pole jolted up over the haut-piece of her shoulder-armour and off.

Thomas Rochester grabbed for it with one hand.

All the men around him had white Visigoth livery, mail hauberks.

He opened his mouth, shouting at her.

A sword slammed against his face, hit the bottom of his sallet at jaw-height, skidded upwards along the metal edges, and his face disappeared in a spray of blood.

She grabbed her pole-hammer in both hands, rammed the butt-spike under the Visigoth’s upraised arm, punching through mail rings. The hard impact jolted back through her shoulder muscles. The shaft twisted as she tried to pull it free. A gout of blood spurted over her forearms. Men in red-and-blue livery thumped into her, pushing her back; it was all she could do to keep the shaft from being wrenched out of her hand and
Christ Jesus I’m facing the wrong way, I’m turned around, where’s the banner
—
?

“Get the fucking
banner
UP!”

Stay
visible,
keep
moving,
stay
alive
—!

Men behind slammed into her. She pushed back for a second, but the weight of them forced her forward. She staggered upright and on, stepping on bodies, treading on ragged mailed backs, bloodied breastplates; her ankle twisting as her footing skidded between bodies, in blood and fluid.

Shit I have no idea which way I’m facing
—

Slamming the sharp points of her corners back, elbowing for space, she turned around; the sky black with arrows. Sweat froze on her exposed face. A blue-and-yellow Lion’s-head banner lifting up—

“Boss!” Rickard’s adolescent, cracked voice shrieked beside her, over the noise; the Lion Azure banner’s shaft solid in his grip.

Two men slammed in beside her. Lion livery. Rochester’s men, her escort. Three more men.

“Keep going! Fuck it! Don’t lose momentum!”

She pushed herself forward, grabbed the staff above Rickard’s hand, pushed, bellowed, “
Move forward!
” She let go the banner and slammed the shaft of her pole-hammer horizontally across the backs in front of her, feet digging in, pushing with all her weight. Two men-at-arms slammed in beside her.

Ahead – over the mass of Burgundian helmets, Visigoth helmets; the glint of a legion eagle – the Lion standard went suddenly back and round in an eddy of movement.

Pressure sent her staggering back: three steps, hearing men shriek curses, armoured feet trampling, treading on men wounded on the ground. A thin spray of red speckled her gauntlet, vambrace and couter. Rickard thrust his sword once, awkwardly; she couldn’t see if it had an effect. Men ahead lifted up bill-shafts, punched them down.

The press in front of her gave way.

She dragged Rickard around, shoved him forward –
shit, where’s Robert!
– looked for Anselm; and stumbled back on to the hard-earth road.

A mass of Burgundian-liveried billmen –
Loyecte’s men!
– crowded back over her. She ducked her head down. An arrow glanced off the tail of her sallet; her head jerked back. Three or four men fell against her, one with his helmet ripped off and a Visigoth gripping his brown hair, face streaming blood. A man in livery soaked all red jabbed a bollock knife into the Visigoth’s groin, their bodies pressed up against Ash; she punched her left gauntlet plate into the Visigoth’s eye, felt the bone of his eye-socket snap, heard him scream through her muffling helmet and lining. Pressure eased; she got herself on to firm footing.

Christ, I miss being on a horse! I can’t see a fucking thing!

“Where’s my fucking command group!” She got no power into her voice. “Rickard!
Find the Lion standard.
We got to keep moving,
we’re dead if we stand still!
”

Her hands felt emptiness. She pushed her body forward into the middle of the men. Two sharp impacts on her backplate she ignored, thrusting with her arms like a man swimming. Ahead, bill-blades went up and down, rising and falling; and she shoved towards the irregular movement.

“
There!
”

Rickard swung off her left shoulder, bawling. She found herself with her sword in hand –
when did I draw that? Where’s my pole-hammer?
– staring across a space often or a dozen yards full of fighting men’s backs, all of them shoving forward; and beyond them a standard charged with a lion azure passant guardant.

She opened her mouth to yell, “Okay,
go!”,
and a blast of fire blacked out her vision.

Head ringing, arms numb, she clawed at what she could reach of her face under the front of her tilted sallet. The split-second’s dazzle passed; let her see that she was standing at the edge of a crowd—

On the earth in front of her, a swathe of men lay prone or supine, arms flung up over their faces. On each body, the line of red hose or bright steel cuisse or painted war-hat ended at charred black.

Smoke poured up off their bodies. It smelled wrenchingly of roast meat. Her mouth filled with water.

Two scorched, unrecognisable faces reared up in front of her, screaming.

Another hiss, water on a hot fire, magnified a hundred times. A foot kicked her behind the knee. She fell sprawling, hit the earth hard.
Down: defenceless!
Her bladder let go; she scratched in panic at the cold ground, scrabbling to get her feet back under her. Something fell or trod on her backplate: her helmet slammed against the earth; someone shrieked her name.

Whiteness flickered in the corner of her vision.

A wide-mouthed screaming Visigoth
nazir
crawled in front of her; not striking out, not even looking. His whole back was charred black and smoking.

She got to hands and knees. A man hurdled over her. She flinched back. Six, seven, or more: men in hose and jacks, Lion livery, steel war-hats flashing in the bright cold sunlight, all lifting weapons.

Over their heads, she saw a white stone ovoid: marble carved into the shape of a face. Brass glinted at its back. A low, chimney-flue roar; bodies fell down around her; heat scorched her face and she threw up her arm too late. Her skin stung; her eyes ran. Staggering up, she blinked her vision clear, saw the golem standing with the Greek Fire tank’s blackened nozzle in both hands, swinging it inexorably around—

Two men in Lion livery ducked low. Two swung weapons.
Mauls!
she saw,
heavy hammers;
and the stone right arm and left hand of the golem shattered and cracked off its body. The nozzle fell. The two men hit the golem from the side: a bill-shaft between them, across the bronze-jointed knees. She saw it fall over backwards, saw four other men strike hard, decisive hammer-blows; their leader bawled, “That one’s
down:
move on,
keep moving!
” Geraint’s voice.

“BOSS—”

Someone’s hands hauled her round. A man in armour, a head taller than she is. Lion livery: Anselm’s voice; Robert Anselm screaming, “This way! Over here!
This way!
”

Running, pounding, panting; stopping again in the thick of troops, foot-knights, and in the sky above and past Anselm, the Lion standard – not moving.

Not moving.

We’re shitted, we lost it, we’re bogged down.

Oh Jesus. Hundreds of them round us. It’s the finish.

Every muscle in her body knotted. For a second, in the din of fighting, she stopped dead, bent half double. Her thigh muscles ached; her shoulder joints jabbed her with pain, every spot under plate – collar-bone, hip, knee – swelled with bruises. Her head rang. Blood ran down into one eye, and she dabbed at her face; and saw that her ring-finger inside her right gauntlet was outside the strap, and folded across at a ninety-degree angle to the palm. She could not feel the break. Blood ran down from a gouge on the inside of her elbow; one tasset plate was gone; everything on her left-hand side – plackart, breastplate, poleyn, greave – had the scratches and dents of arrow-strikes not even felt.

Wish I’d gone for my brigandine; mobility. I can’t walk another fucking yard in this harness.

Can’t fight. I’m dead.

Anselm’s helmet-muffled voice bellowed, “Come
on,
girl!”

She made to move off. One half-pace, and she stopped again, the noise of screaming men beating at her ears through the helmet-lining. She felt her arms too heavy to lift, her legs too heavy to move.

The men closest to her were not fighting. The shouts and screams came from a few yards further off. A great noise went up – indistinguishable words.

“What the fuck—”

Over the heads of the men in front, something was passing – passing through many hands, towards the Lion Affronté banner – passed across and down to Robert Anselm – something he thrust out towards her.

She took it automatically: a Visigoth spear. Her hand gripped the shaft. Unbalanced, it fell, and she grabbed at it with her other hand, swearing at the pain, her dropped sword dangling off its lanyard, and she looked up into the blue sky to see what unbalanced the weapon.

A severed head.

The head’s weighted beard shook, braided with golden beads.

“
Gelimer’s dead!
” Robert Anselm bawled. He pointed up, steel arm bloodied past the elbow. “GELIMER’S DEAD!”

A great scream went up, over to the left.

“We have to stop this!” Ash shouted. She closed her other hand around the spear-shaft. “We got to—
do they know he’s dead?
”

“Banner went down!”

“WHAT?”

“His BANNER. Went DOWN!”

“Let me through.” She moved another step forward, towards the line of billmen – John Price’s old unit, that had been Carracci’s – ducking the ends of bill-shafts jabbing back. “Get me through to the fucking front of the line!
Fast!
”

Men’s backs shifted. She shouldered between burly bodies, both hands gripping the top-heavy spear, Robert Anselm and the banner at her back; felt herself shoved bodily into the second rank of billmen, and bill-shafts came down over her shoulders, dripping blades held out in front of her, a mass of hooks and spikes.

“Gelimer’s dead!” The pitch of her voice shredded her throat.

The bill unit backed up, bunching against her; weapons raised, but not striking. Beyond, spear-points caught sunlight. A line of Visigoth men in mail and coats-of-plates, bright reds and oranges and pinks, lower faces covered by aventails or black cloth; spears and swords extended—

She has a second to wonder
are they backing off
and realise she is already seeing trodden earth and bodies lying on their faces. She risked a glance, left and right, through a forest of bills and spears. A gap of several feet – still widening—

They’ve seen his banner go down—

She thrust the spear two-handed up into the blue sky.

Gelimer’s severed head bobbed high above the morass of bodies, face clearly distinct in the sun, his mouth gaping open, his roughly chopped-out spine hanging down in a tail of red and white bone.

“The King-Caliph’s dead!”

The bellow emptied her chest of air. She swayed. Billmen in jacks and war-hats beside her, red-faced, panting, tears running, took it up:

“
The King-Caliph’s dead!
”

Arrows still dropped out of the sky, on her left: men shouted over the clashing together of iron. Around her a chant grew, drowning that out.

“The King-Caliph’s dead! The King-Caliph’s dead!”

Arms shaking, she jabbed up the spear and its impaled head. You gotta
see
it!

Widening, now; undeniably widening – a gap between the fighting lines: a stretch of earth, canvas, tumbled cauldrons, bloodied bedding, and bodies with their heads buried in their arms. And bodies and separate heads. Fifteen feet in front of her she clearly saw one
nazir
, bewildered, shouting at his commander. The ’
arifs
gaze fixed on the spike, and the head of Gelimer.

The rise of the ground and the trampled-down camp let her see, as the spearmen edged back, the helmets of the hundreds of men beyond them – slave-spearmen, Visigoth dismounted knights, bowmen; rank on rank of men jammed shoulder to shoulder among the trashed tents and buildings, unit banners peppering the sky. Experience gave her a rapid assessment:
four and a
half, five thousand men.

A distant single rapid
b-bang!
split the air. Some gunner sweeping a match across all the touch-holes of an organ-gun at one go: eight barrels firing almost instantaneously – from the city wall.

I can
hear
that! They’ve stopped fighting
here
—

As instantly, screams shrieked up from her right: the roaring cough of Greek Fire sounded; black smoke rounded itself up on to the air.