The King’s Assassin (33 page)

There were shout of anger on all sides. I heard Little John bellowing, ‘Aim straight, you silly buggers – are you blind or just stupid!’ and his words were met by a chorus of English complaint.

The enemy directly to our front, a company of spearmen in stiff leather jerkins and steel caps about two hundred men strong, jeered us and made obscene gestures. One man turned his back, lifted his tunic and showed us his naked arse.

On their right was another company of spearmen, but on their left was a company in mail covered by green-and-red surcoats, and bearing huge two-man shields. Robin’s men were not the only bowmen on this field.

‘Nock,’ shouted my lord. Then, ‘Draw and loose.’ But the second volley was little better than the first. A few men in the enemy ranks had dropped, skewered by our shafts, but once again the bulk of the arrows had missed their targets. Looking out under my shadowing hand, I could see that some of the enemy were laughing.

‘Enough, by God,’ shouted the Earl of Salisbury. ‘Trumpeter, sound the charge.’

The trumpet sounded, I spurred my horse blindly forward.

Longsword himself led the charge directly at the unbroken spearmen. And Robin, bringing his men forward at a run, managed to loose one last flat volley into their ranks before our horsemen crashed home. It was just enough. Two front-rank spearmen dropped in front of Salisbury’s horse, victims of Robin’s last desperate barrage. Longsword jumped his mount into the gap, his lance punching into the chest of the second-rank man behind. And we followed him into the breach. Twenty-five horsemen pouring into a gap two yards wide.

We smashed that spear company wide apart.

I slammed my lance into a standing man’s shield, knocking him down, hauled out Fidelity and began to lay about me. I chopped down and split the skull of a man on my left, turned and hacked at the shoulder of a fellow on my right – but in a few moments there was nothing but empty space around my horse. The nearest man to me was Miles, who galloped past hunting down a running Frenchman with his lance.

The spear company had melted like snow in sunshine under the cavalry charge and the surviving men-at-arms had almost all sprinted for the shelter of the nearest formation of spearmen, some thirty paces to their right, and been allowed to squeeze through the ranks and into safety.

They defied us there, from behind their bristling ranks of spearpoints, knowing that our blown horses would not charge home. We knew it too. I wondered if Salisbury would bring up the archers. And doubted it. I sheathed Fidelity. We had pushed that company of two hundred spearmen temporarily off the battlefield – and left a couple of dozen bodies on the turf – but we had not altered the balance of the battle in any significant way. And I had not had the merest sniff of a knight to capture.

To the south, I could see that the battle around King Philip had reached its frenzy. The German knights were now yards from the royal household guards, exchanging sword blows with some of the richest men in France. The Oriflamme still fluttered above the King’s head, although I could not see Philip himself. The crowd of fighting men convulsed and writhed; mailed men, sheeted in blood, fell or staggered away to the accompaniment of screams and shouts, the flash of steel, and the spray of gore; men dropped like ripe fruit from a shaken tree, yet fresh knights still plunged forward eagerly to join the fray. Suddenly I heard a great shout go up from the Germans, a roar of victory, and saw that the Oriflamme had fallen.

My God – was King Philip dead?

This is where we must fight, I thought, we should join the Germans with all our strength and smash through the centre to the bridge. Killing penniless spearmen over here was pointless, not when the King of France himself and his greatest nobles were faltering a few hundred yards away. I looked for Salisbury or Boulogne – determined to urge them to join the Germans in the centre. But to my surprise and horror, I heard the trumpeter by the Earl’s horse sound the retreat. Three jaunty notes, repeated.

‘Not now,’ I thought, ‘not now. God send me a knight. Any knight.’

Then I saw why. The crossbow company had formed up facing left, facing the empty space there the spear company had been and where we now casually walked our horses amid the bloody bodies. They had planted their huge shields and the bolts were beginning to fly. Evil black lines fizzed through the air about me. I saw a man, one of Robin’s cavalry who had helped me drive away my enemies at Westbury, take a quarrel under the ribs on his left-hand side. The foot-long black shaft punched through his mail and he screamed and slid from the saddle. One of Boulogne’s men was hit in the face, the bolt tearing off half of his right cheek and leaving him with a hanging flap and his teeth showing white against the welling red.

The trumpets were still sounding the recall. And still I lingered, hoping against hope for a noble foe to come against me. As I looked behind me I saw that Robin’s archers were already running from the field back to the safety of our square. It was no use. I turned my horse east. Most of the other horsemen were already heading in that direction. Hugh cantered past me. He shouted, ‘Sir Alan, it is the retreat. The Earl commands us to go back! We must retreat.’

I nodded vaguely at him, yet still I hesitated. I looked over my shoulder at the centre of the French line and saw that the Oriflamme once more flew bravely above the knot of French knights – and was that a flash of a golden royal coronet that I could make out in the middle of the throng? Perhaps Philip was not dead, nor even faltering. Indeed, his knights seemed to have found a new blast of courage. They were advancing, expanding like a flower at dawn from the tight bundle around the King, chopping into the foe, thrusting him back. The militia infantry too seemed to have found a renewed energy – they battered the enemy with their spears from behind, killing the horses first, then dealing with their riders as they fell. The German knights – those who yet lived – seemed to have been stopped in their tracks. Indeed, many were now retreating: I could see several tall men in fine mail and elaborate helms, slathered in blood and limping back east across the field using their two-handed longswords as staffs to help them hobble.

Otto’s cruel gamble had failed. Our left wing, to the south, Count Ferrand’s men, had been abandoned to their fate – and now that body of men no longer existed as a fighting force. In the centre, Otto’s attack had failed to break through to the King. On the right, we too were now all running back to the safety of our defensive square.

It was time to go. I was the last of our men on the field. I touched my spurs to my horse, and at that same instant, felt a jolt beside my knee like a blow from a quarterstaff. I looked down and saw the leather flights of a quarrel sticking two inches out from my horse’s loins. The animal took two steps forward and stopped – an awful broken whinnying sound coming from its throat. I looked around. My comrades were already halfway back to the square, out of range of the wicked bolts. Another missile slammed into the inside of my shield. And another, both punching through the wood and leather and narrowly missing my left arm. I realised that I was the favoured target for a company of two hundred crossbowmen only seventy yards away. A second quarrel slapped into my horse’s barrel, crunching through ribs and into the chest cavity – the beast kicked out and staggered, bellowing with pain; a black bolt slammed into her eye, burying itself into her brain, and she thumped to the ground, now mercifully beyond pain. I slipped from the saddle as the poor horse was collapsing, and hunkered down behind the bulk of her off-side, slipping off my shield as yet another black bolt cracked against the dome of my helmet. The entire company of crossbowmen seemed to be shooting at me, and only at me.

How I cursed my lack of haste. I had lingered on the field too long after the recall was sounded. And now, with only a dead horse between me and thousands of foes, I was paying the price. I could not run – I’d be dead before I took three strides. But if I stayed here the spearmen to my right would come out from behind their steel hedges and slaughter me. I was trapped. I was a dead man.

Worse, I had failed my son.

There have not been many times in my life when I have had impotently to suffer the wrath of bowmen, but as I lay there behind my dead horse, listening to the meaty thuds as quarrel after quarrel juddered into the huge corpse, I felt a rising sense of helpless fury. This could not be my death: marooned in the middle of an empty battlefield, stuck like a pin cushion beside a dead horse. I could not die here and leave Robert to die alone, between Boot’s powerful twisting hands, uncomprehending of his father’s fate. I risked a glance over the saddle, a crossbow bolt cracked past my right ear, an inch away, but I had seen what I dreaded: a dozen spearmen emerging from the ranks of their company and jogging towards me, grinning like apes.

I was not going to die without a fight, that was certain. I waited until the running spearmen came between me and the bulk of the crossbow company – it was easy to tell when this took place for the cracks and whines and thuds of the bolts suddenly stopped – and leapt to my feet and drew Fidelity. The spearmen were twenty paces away. It was one man against a dozen; a lone swordsman against a pack of men with spears: there was only one possible conclusion to this fight. This was it. I’d had a good life. I prayed to St Michael to give me strength to die well – and to Our Lord to have mercy on my son and shield Robert from the sheriff’s greed.

Time to fight.

I leapt over the dead horse and took my sword to the spearmen. I knocked the leading man’s thrusting spear-shaft out of the way with my left forearm, and chopped Fidelity into the corner of his neck where the head meets the shoulder an instant later. He went down like a dropped sack of wet sand. The next man fell to a wide, lateral cut from my sword that crunched into his back. I was in the midst of them by now, jabbing, cutting and dodging the spear-thrusts as best I could. And they were giving me space, spread out in a loose ring about me, dancing in and making short hard jabs at my body, but staying well away from Fidelity.

‘He’s one old man, for Christ’s sake, kill him now,’ growled a big fellow with a face burnt red by the sun. I made him pay for those words. He hurled his spear at me, I twisted sideways just in time and the shaft grazed my chest – and I was on him as he scrabbled for the short sword at his waist. I had a foot of Fidelity’s shining length in his guts before his own blade had cleared the scabbard. I ripped my sword loose, shouldering him to the ground as I passed and began running back towards our lines as fast as my legs would carry me. As the hollow phalanx was nearly two hundred yards away, I knew I would never make it. But I had to try. A spear flew over my shoulder. A crossbow bolt cracked off my helm. I could hear the pants and shouts of the men on my heels. Then, a beautiful sight. A lone knight in full armour, helmet down, lance couched, dark green cloak flying out behind him, was thundering towards me out from our lines. It was Robin, for sure. I could tell by the way he rode, by the lines of his body as he crouched over his horse’s neck.

The horseman hurtled past me and crashed straight into the group of running spearmen behind. I heard a scream as his lance went home, and another yell and the sharp sound of snapping bone. Then the pounding of hooves, and a young voice behind me: ‘Alan, take my arm and get up behind me. Come now. Quickly.’

A spear thumped into my back, high over the shoulder blade, I stumbled forward, but I knew the point had not penetrated deeply and I blessed the silver I had spent on decent mail. I slammed Fidelity into the scabbard, grasped Robin’s reaching hand and swung up behind his saddle. Glancing behind me I could see that only four spearmen were still on their feet; they were launching their spears wildly at us in their futile rage. We were moving fast by them, the horse carrying our combined weight with ease, and in a trice we were out of range. Safe.

It was not until we were back inside the square of pikes and poleaxes that I realised the true identity of my rescuer. As I slid off the back of the horse, I was astonished to see Robin striding over to me from the other side of the square, where he had been conferring with the Earl of Salisbury. I looked up at the young face on the horse above me and saw that it was Miles, ruddy, sweaty and grinning from the excitement. I stammered out my thanks but he dismissed it with a wave.

‘Rather enjoyed that, to be honest, Sir Alan,’ he chuckled. ‘We must do it again sometime!’

Robin slapped me on the back, relieved to see me safe. I winced as his hand caught the place that the spear had struck.

‘It’s looking bad, Alan, I must admit it. But I’m very glad to have you back. If you are fit – are you fit?’ I nodded.

He looked at his bloody hand.

‘Then I want you to take command of this section of the phalanx wall. You in command, Little John as your second, all right? Hugh has the next section along.’

I nodded again. And saw that the section he was indicating was the southern one, and it was packed with familiar faces. Little John found me a poleaxe, and I tried a few experimental sweeps and lunges, to get a feel for the weapon.

As I was familiarising myself with the heft of the poleaxe, Hugh came up to me from the section immediately to the east of mine.

‘You understand our role in the phalanx, Sir Alan, don’t you? We stand firm and keep the cavalry out with these things,’ he said, pointing at the poleaxe in my hands. ‘We don’t budge at all.’

I confess I did not like his tone. This was a boy who I had known since he was in napkins telling me how to conduct myself in war. ‘I think I have managed to grasp the tactics, thank you,’ I said with a certain edge in my voice.

‘Have you?’ asked Hugh. ‘Because there is no room for individual heroics in the phalanx wall. We all fight together, you know.’

‘How dare you lecture me on combat, you puppy!’

‘I dare, Sir Alan, because I have just seen you ignore a clear order for recall and very nearly get yourself killed. You risked your own life, which I suppose is your prerogative, but you also caused my brother Miles to risk his, in order to save yours. And that I will not accept.’