The Kingdom Series Books 1 and 2: The Lion Wakes, The Lion At Bay. Robert Low
if he had bellowed it, neither John the Lamb nor Dand would have heard. Even if they had heard, they would not have obeyed, for they had harried and herded this meagre handful of black cows for miles and every time they looked at the green-streaked arse of one they saw roasted beef, dripping and savoury.
Yet it was death to them and everyone knew it. The rider with the six red martlets swept his sword up like a bar of light – then brought it down and a roar went up from the horde of throats behind him as they surged past on to the bridge.
‘Stand fast, lads,’ bawled Sim, switching back the cloak and sticking one foot in the crossbow stirrup. He hauled it up without using the belt-hook, stuck in a four-sided bolt and brought it up to his chest.
‘Dirige, Domine, Deus meus in conspecto tuo viam meam.’
Hal stared at Bangtail Hob as the man crossed himself. Direct my path, Lord my God, in your sight – he had not known that the likes of Hob knew the English, never mind the Latin. Life was full of surprises, even now.
‘Christ be praised,’ roared Sim.
‘For ever and ever,’ the men roared back.
‘Mither of God,’ whined Will Elliott, and Hal watched the bobbing wall of shields and spears and helms crush itself down the length of wooden bridge, while John the Lamb and Dand veered off, heading for the bank and throwing themselves off their horses; cattle scattered, bawling mournfully.
He saw, too, in a fixed instant that seared itself on his mind, the horseman in his great helm and shield of birds turn away from the bridge and the backs of his men, watched the bunched flank muscles of the powerful beast as he spurred it towards John and Dand.
‘Sim,’ he yelled and pointed. Cursing, Sim levelled the bow and shot; the bolt hissed past the hindquarters of the horse and Sim howled with frustration, frantically spanning the weapon again.
Furneval caught up with the fleeing Dand as he plootered and plunged through the tangling bushes and undergrowth, hearing the wet thunder behind him closing in and the whimper in him rising to a scream.
‘Jump, Dand, jump.’
He heard it, saw, out of the corner of his eye, John the Lamb spring up like the beast he was named for and spin in the air, a whirl of already sodden arms and legs that hit the black ripple of the water and exploded it to spray.
He was a step away. One step and a leap and his lungs burning …
Furneval gave the sword a little wrist flick, brought it back and then forward and up. The last third of blade caught Dand on the back of his head, exploding it into black blood and shards. His body stumbled on two, three steps, then fell, tumbled over and over, then slid in a tangle down the bank and slithered softly into the water.
Furneval reined round, knowing it had been a perfect stroke and hoping de Ridre had been watching. He reached up and hauled off the full-face helm, feeling the cool blast of damp wind on his sweating face, then half turned in the saddle, stiff-necked with maille, to see what his men were doing.
He heard a bellowing, as if there had been a bull among the cows – then the second bolt from the roaring fury that was Sim took him in the centre of his bascinet-framed face, a sudden huge hissing black approach that drove life from him in an instant and shot him sideways off the horse in a great whirl of pearl sky and wet bracken that dropped him into darkness.
Sim’s great bellow of triumph was swallowed in the crashing tide of men, four wide and infinitely deep, it seemed, who rolled up to the hedge of Jeddart staffs and clashed into it, so that it rocked and slid a little before bracing on all those bared right feet. Mindless as some beast, the ranks piled on, those in front unable to move or do much more than waggle their too-long lances.
Bangtail Hob and Hal stabbed and cut. Will Elliot and Red Cloak Thom slashed and hooked, while Sim spanned his bow and shot between their heads into the packed ranks, where he could not miss. Men screamed; curses went up and the front four men, the sense crushed out of them, lost the use of their limbs and suddenly vanished as if sucked under a bog. Four more were crushed forward; the wooden archway splintered and rocked.
Red Cloak Thom’s staff snapped and he threw it away with a curse and whipped out his bollock dagger. He parried a thrust that would have skewered him, missed another and took it in the throat, went over gurgling and drowning in his own blood. Hal leaped, shrieking, to Thom’s slumped, twisting, gasping corpse, heedless of the blindly stabbing lance points. A huge figure moved forward, as if wading into a hip-deep stream, and a man went backwards with the bolt of a crossbow in the face.
Hal felt a hand grip and pull him free, then he was staring up into Sim’s scowl.
‘No more of that, ye sou’s arse,’ he growled. ‘Yer father would take ill of it if I was to let ye be killed dead here.’
‘Never fash yourself,’ Hal managed and then grinned, ashamed at his stupidity and knowing Red Cloak was dead from the moment his throat had been opened.
‘I am a lad of parts, me’ he added. ‘Such bravery is auld cloots and gruel to the likes of me.’
The archway lurched and the bell clanged. Cries and grunts and shrieks splintered their conversation and Sim dropped the crossbow and dragged out his sword, the blade of it dark with old stains and notched as a wolf’s jaw, the end honed to a point thin enough to get between the slits of a barrelled heaume.
‘A Sientcler,’ he bellowed and leaped in long enough to stab and slash before losing his balance in the slither of it all and stumbling out again
‘The bell,’ said Hal, hearing it clang as the arch swayed. The English weight shoved the Scots back, their bared feet scoring ruts in the mud; they were almost at the sumpter cart now, almost pushed away from the narrow part of the bridge. Once that happened, the English would spill out right and left and numbers would do it.
The English sensed victory and the men in the rear ranks pushed relentlessly and started to sing, while the ones in front, crushed even of breath, lost consciousness and slid under the feet of the next rank.
Hal was aware of the sea of helmets and snarls, the great bristle of spears, as if some massive, maddened hedgepig was trying to crush itself under the arch – then he felt a hot burn in his calf, slipped to one knee and felt himself falling backwards, slashed wildly with the spear. Lying on the wet, smelling the fresh-turned earth like ploughland round Herdmanston, he saw the forest of straining legs and feet and the last splinters of wood uncurl slowly as the arch buckled.
Then the bell fell, smashing the front ranks of the battering English spearmen. The great, hollow boom of it drowned their screams.
There was a pause then, while thoughts and rain whirled with the dying echoes of the tolling bell. Hal, deafened and stunned like everyone else, felt himself hauled out and up, stared, mouth open, trying to make sense of the screaming and the dying, while the ranks of men washed away from where the bell had fallen.
Gloria, Hal saw and laughed like a grim wolf, for he knew what Bangtail Hob had seen – Gloria In Excelsis Deo, lovingly engraved along the slowly rocking bell’s rim, now fluted with rivulets of blood and crushed bone.
‘Deus lo vult!’
They all heard it and turned, fearing the worst. Up behind them came a rider, mailled top to toe, the pointed Templar cross blood-bright on a billowing white camilis, streaming behind him like a snow wind, another gracing the linen purity of the horse barding. Behind him came a handful of men on foot, grim in black tunics and hose and porridge-coloured, rust-streaked gambesons. Their rimmed iron hats were painted black, with white on the crown and the black cross of Christ on the front.
‘Deus lo vult!’ the knight bellowed, the words crushed and muffled inside the great, flat-topped barrel heaume. He thundered up past Hal and his pillar of Sim, while men scattered away from him. He circled his wrist with quick flick, so that the hammer in his armoured gauntlet, an elegance of gleaming steel with a fluted head and a pick on the other side, glittered