Warlord (Outlaw 4) (19 page)

Perhaps if we had immediately turned our horses’ heads and galloped back down the road, we might have escaped; perhaps. But it is hard for a fighting man to run without even having glimpsed his enemy. So we stayed there in the centre of the road for another twenty heartbeats – while I was rendered immobile with indecision. It was Hanno who broke the spell: ‘They are too many,’ he said. ‘We must go.’

And, at that moment, a mass of enemy cavalry, a
conroi
of perhaps twenty riders, came into view around a shallow bend in the road.

‘Come, Alan, we must go – now!’ said Hanno again, more urgently. The enemy knights were less than fifty paces away. They saw us, and at a gleeful shout from their leader, they began their charge.

Chapter Ten

Their horses were fresh, and ours were not. We were two men, they were a force of twenty. It was as simple as that. We ran. We put our heels into our horses’ sides and ran for our lives. But after a bare quarter of a mile at a full gallop, I knew that Ghost was tiring, and glancing over my shoulder I could see the enemy knights closing on us fast. I noticed one other strange thing too; all of the knights bore the same device as the man I had fought at the baggage train – a blue cross on a white field with a black border.

It was not the blazon of a northern French noble, of that I was reasonably certain – I was as familiar as most knights were with the great barons on either side of this conflict – but this blue cross was new to me. And yet there seemed to be so many men bearing these arms that they had to belong to a powerful man, an earl or count or even duke.

As Hanno and I pounded along that dusty road, leaning over our horses’ necks and trying to urge the maximum speed from our tired mounts, I could imagine the points of the knights’ lances almost tickling my back. I snatched a quick glance over my shoulder, and saw that the leading knight was only a few yards behind.
Hanno was slightly ahead of me, and I could sense Ghost beginning to founder, his smooth galloping gait suddenly changing, the horse stumbling with exhaustion for a pace or two, and then regaining its rhythm. He was a valiant beast, my Ghost, but I knew he was near the end of his strength. We were only a mile or two from the baggage train and I realized that I was leading this pack of galloping enemy knights straight to Robin’s men. Unhorsed, scattered, every man probably as drunk as a bishop by now – our troops would be easy prey. These mail-clad killers on my tail could cut the Locksley men to shreds if they came on them unexpectedly. By leading the knights directly to Robin’s force I would be responsible for the deaths of many of my friends.

That thought was unbearable; I had to warn them. I plucked the twisted horn from where it had been bouncing on the pommel of my saddle, managed to get it to my lips without slowing Ghost’s thundering pace, and sounded it, once – twice – three times. The leading knight of the blue cross was right on top of us by now; from the corner of my eye I saw him draw his lance for a strike, and lunge forward, the needle-pointed blade licking out towards my lower back on the left-hand side. I saw the strike coming over my shoulder, and swung in the saddle and dropped my shield to take the blow. I felt a jarring smack, and looked down in horror to see that the lance had been deflected by my shield – and had plunged deep into Ghost’s pale belly.

The knight had released the shaft of his spear, now wedged deep in my poor mount’s entrails, the shaft drooping and tangling with Ghost’s hind legs, and the next thing I knew I was sailing high in the air, over Ghost’s neck and head, and landing with a crash on my back in the ashy dust of the road.

Stunned, winded, but with, as far as I could tell, nothing broken, I lifted my head and saw that Hanno had halted his headlong flight and turned to protect me, God love him. He was engaging the leading blue cross knight with axe and sword. There was a
flurry of blows, a hack, a crunch, and the knight slumped, boneless, lolling in his saddle. Hanno turned again and was shouting something at me, but in my fuddled state I could not comprehend him. He leaned down in the saddle and reached out a hand to me, urging me to rise and mount up behind him. His mouth was moving; I could see his awful teeth and the lips curling to form sounds, and yet I could make nothing of his speech. I got to my knees and reached out an arm towards him and suddenly his horse lurched a step forward, struck by a massive blow, and I saw Hanno look behind him. There were knights all around, tall shadows in the sunlight, and horses too; kicked dust swirled in the air and the shouts of angry men flew above me – and Hanno was slipping off his horse as it collapsed under him, lanced in the belly like my poor Ghost; then he was beside me, lifting me, helping me to my feet, his face concerned. A knight on horseback loomed over us, I saw the glitter of his sword raised to strike, and Hanno was pushing me on my stumbling feet under the horse’s neck. The sword whistled down inches from my shoulder – and with a sudden rush my senses came back to me fully.

‘Into the trees, into the trees,’ I found myself shouting. I had lost my shield, as had Hanno, and we sprinted unencumbered the few yards into the thick woodland on the eastern side of the road – closely followed by a dozen or so eager horsemen. By God’s good grace, the woodland was ancient, thickly tangled with underbrush and low branches that much impeded the horsemen. We drew our swords and, by a combination of scurrying, ducking and slashing at the legs of the knights, Hanno and I somehow managed to dodge the questing lances of our enemies and squirm into the gloom of the forest. We survived to find ourselves fifty yards from the road, back to back, blades in our hands, panting and partially sheltered in a sort of dell formed by two huge fallen oak trees that formed the sign of the cross on the forest floor. The fallen trees guarded our rear, but the horsemen surrounded us. They could not easily
approach through the thick trees, scrubby thorns and bushes; but neither could we escape. There were perhaps a dozen of them by now on all sides around our pathetic wooden half-fortification, and they walked their horses closer all the time; and then things took a turn for the worse – they began to dismount. Hanno and I were dead men. On foot, these knights could close with us and then their numbers would tell and we would be finished in a few moments. The knights approached silently, their faces under their conical helmets grim and bearded – eyes showing no sign of mercy.

I stepped forward, away from the rudimentary cover of the oak-tree cross, and said in French in a loud carrying voice: ‘My name is Sir Alan Dale, a knight of Westbury in the English county of Nottinghamshire. You have killed our horses and we are at your mercy: under the laws of chivalry, I offer my surrender to you for ransom, on condition that you spare my life and also the life of my man-at-arms, here.’

The leading knight, a handsome man with a bushy blond beard, who was by now no more than half a dozen paces from me, paused and looked directly at me. I saw a brief glimmer of compassion in his eyes. Then he spoke: ‘Alas, Sir Alan, there can be no surrender for you today.’

I was puzzled: ‘Why not, sir?’ I asked. ‘I have told you who I am and I have offered to yield to you – will you not accept my surrender?’

The knight merely shook his head and repeated a little sadly: ‘There can be no surrender for you.’ Then he rushed forward, in three long-legged strides, lifting his sword two-handed and swinging it in a great downward blow at my head. I swept my own sword up and around in a circle to the right, my blade deflecting his blow; at the same time I stepped in close and punched my misericorde hard into his side, through his white surcoat and mail, and deep into his liver. He fell at my feet, shocked, dying, white surcoat reddening quickly, bearded mouth working silently.

Then the remaining knights of the blue cross all charged forward together, and Hanno and I found ourselves battling half a dozen knights apiece in a murderous blizzard of blades and blows, shouts and curses. A sword hacked at my face and I ducked just in time. A lance speared at my chest and I somehow managed to deflect it with my misericorde. One of the knights clambered up on to the dead trunk of the oak tree behind my shoulder. We were dead men. And then I heard a sound that made my heart bound with joy.

A horn.

A hunting horn blown with two short notes and one long one, repeated twice: ta-ta-taaaa; ta-ta-taaaa. And in an instant Hanno and I were no longer fighting alone.

Robin’s men came hurtling through the trees on foot – silent, deadly, their green cloaks merging into the gloom of the forest and making them all but invisible. I saw Robin’s lean face contorted in a snarl of rage as he sliced his sword into the back of a knight on the outskirts of the circle around Hanno and I. Much the miller’s son, a pace or two behind Robin, let out a roar as he carved a knight from shoulder to opposite hip with one blow of his long sword. And the Locksley men were swarming everywhere, tackling the knights, two or three to each enemy, hacking with sword and knife, lunging with spears. The wise knights fled deeper into the woods – and some escaped, though many were pursued and savagely cut down – the unwise knights died where they stood.

Robin stopped before me, breathing great heaving lungfuls of air, but smiling at me, his merry grey eyes dancing. ‘You are a childish, stubborn, high-minded prig, Alan Dale,’ he said, when he had caught his breath. ‘But I would not care to be without you. I’m glad at least that you had enough wit in you to summon us with your horn.’

The next day, shortly before noon, I poked my head inside Robin’s tent, and my lord cheerfully invited me to enter. I wanted to thank
him formally for saving my life. I had survived the encounter with the knights of the blue cross miraculously unscathed, except for a few bruises caused by falling from Ghost. I had recovered the body of my loyal animal friend and, although some of the Locksley men had sniggered at my sentimentality, Hanno, Thomas and I had dug a grave for Ghost and buried him at the side of the road, near the spot where he had died. I could not bear the thought of wild animals eating his carcass – or worse, hungry men of the lowest sort from King Richard’s army cutting bloody chunks off his noble frame. So we buried him deep, and I wept over his grave.

Hanno had been lightly wounded in the knights’ attack by the crossed oak trees, just before Robin’s men had arrived – a bloody score up his left forearm. But Elise, the Locksley wise woman, had washed the cut, packed it with cobwebs, stitched it and bandaged it neatly.

Robin was in a cheerful mood when I entered the tent: although the sound of my horn had forced him and two score or so of the more sober men to abandon their looting of the royal baggage train and come to my rescue, and the rest of the army, including Mercadier’s rapacious mercenaries, had come up while Robin was away, Little John had remained behind and had managed to secure a sizeable amount of loot for our company. And Robin had been praised by King Richard for having captured such a great prize; so my lord was quite content with the day.

When I entered it that hot July morning, Robin’s tent was taken up with a vast mound of scrolls, books and parchments, and half a dozen dusty clerks were on their knees by the pile, pulling out items, examining them and occasionally giving sharp little bird-cries of delight. One of the wagons of the baggage train had been found to contain the royal archives – letters and deeds, charters and correspondence, some of which stretched back to the beginning of King Philip’s reign fourteen years ago. And Robin had been asked by Richard to go through the correspondence and
discover which of the King’s vassals had secretly been corresponding with the French. Robin was enjoying himself enormously, I could see, and I watched him as I awaited his attention, sipping a cup of light wine on a stool in the corner of the tent.

‘Here’s another one, Alan,’ my master called out, waving a piece of parchment that one of the King’s clerks had handed him. ‘William de St-Hubert is offering to do homage to King Philip for all his lands in Normandy – the disloyal little weasel. He was having breakfast with our King this very morning, I believe. Lamb’s kidneys and eggs. This letter will make him squirm when Richard reads it, that’s for sure.’

I was glad to see Robin so happy; our quarrel of the day before over the looting of the royal train seemed to have been completely forgotten.

‘This one might be of interest to you,’ said Robin, and he lobbed a scroll overhand to me across the tent, narrowly missing the tonsured head of a clerk who was rummaging through the pile of parchments. I caught the scroll one-handed, and carefully untied the ribbon that secured it and unrolled the thick yellow cylinder. It contained a charter from His Royal Highness Philip Augustus, by the grace of God, King of France, and so on … to one Thibault, Seigneur d’Alle granting him the right to build a hotel on the Rue St-Denis in the Ville de Paris. The charter was dated just over a year ago. It took me a few heartbeats to recognize what this meant: my uncle Thibault, the man who had refused to help my father in his hour of need, was now favoured enough by the French King to be allowed to build a large town house in the centre of the royal capital.

‘I have to go to Paris,’ I said.

Robin frowned. ‘Why? Do you care so much for your French relative? You’ve never even met the man.’

‘Cardinal Heribert was murdered,’ I said, ‘and so was Jean the priest. The only two people that I know of who knew my father
– and who are still alive – are in Paris: my uncle Thibault d’Alle and Bishop Maurice de Sully.’

Robin was still frowning at me. ‘You are dimly aware, Alan, are you not, that we are in the middle of a war with the French?’ he asked in a mocking tone. ‘And that Paris is the capital of the French King – our sworn enemy?’

I didn’t deign to answer. So Robin continued: ‘This is madness, Alan. Your duty is to serve me and serve the King, and remain with the army. All this talk of exonerating your father is pure foolishness. He is dead, Alan, dead! He does not care whether you clear his name or blacken it. I urge you; I am in truth begging you – please stop this foolishness. No good can come of raking up the past like this. Leave it alone.’