A Flight of Arrows by A.J. MacKenzie (most recommended books txt) 📗

Doria had reloaded. He raised the crossbow again, aiming at Alençon, and squeezed the trigger. The bolt hit the count’s shield, splitting it in two. Ignoring the splintered shards hanging from his arm, Alençon raised his sword. Doria lifted the crossbow to ward off the blow, but Alençon smashed it out of his hands and raised the blade again. The second blow tore Doria’s face open and he fell to the ground, his head gouting blood.

Hailstones rattled off the armoured men around him; had the storm returned? No, by Christ, those were arrows; the English were shooting again. A horse fell, throwing its rider; another went down kicking and thrashing. Furious that mere peasants should be shooting at his men, Alençon rose in the saddle, waving his sword. ‘Come on!’ he shouted. ‘Kill the bastards! Montjoie Saint-Denis! Come on, come on!’

Shouting and screaming, the men-at-arms of the vanguard raced up the slope after him. The arrows lashed at them like furies, hundreds falling every second. Further up the slope came a blast of white smoke, and stone shot whirred in the air. Alençon’s horse screamed as an arrow scored across its neck, and he felt the repeated hammer blows on his armour, then a stab of pain as one found the gap between his cuisse and his knee guard. He tried to pull the shaft out of his leg, but was encumbered by his broken shield. Another arrow rammed into his shoulder, splitting his armour, and his arm went numb; he realised he had dropped his sword. He was disarmed, with the enemy only a hundred yards away. A wave of panic washed over him. He turned his head and yelled to Brus. ‘Christ, I’m hit! Get me out of here!’

Three arrows protruded from Brus’s shield. ‘You led us into this hell,’ the Norman said violently. ‘You get yourself out of it.’ He turned in the saddle, waving his sword. ‘Montjoie!’ he shouted to his men, ‘Montjoie!’ and he spurred his horse up the slope, the rest of the French swarming after him.

‘Halt, God damn you!’ Alençon shouted through a haze of pain. ‘Obey my orders!’ No one heard him. His horse was hit again, and came to a halt. He tried to spur the animal into motion but it would not budge, and then an arrow shot by an eighteen-year-old woman from Warwickshire smashed through his visor and the front of his skull and drove into his brain. By the time his body hit the ground, he was already dead.

Standing by the windmill, Tiphaine could see everything clearly in the rain-washed air: the blizzard of arrows, the clouds of pale smoke belching from Courcy’s cannon, the charging mass of French men-at-arms disintegrating steadily, men and horses going down every second. She saw too with dismay that there were too many of the enemy; even shooting fifteen arrows a minute, the archers could not kill enough to stop them. She saw the blue and gold colours of Alençon fall, and then another coat surged into the lead as the French raced up the slope, and she felt suddenly sick. It was the red saltire of Rollond de Brus.

She had to admit he had courage, not a virtue she had ever ascribed to him. The archers had marked him out; the air around him was thick with arrows, and she saw him hit twice, then again, but he never wavered. Behind him the arrows took their deadly toll, whittling his men away, but the rest forged on, dragged up the hill by his unflinching will. They were thirty yards from the English line when his horse was shot and foundered, throwing him to the ground. She had a brief glimpse of the red saltire moving feebly before the wave of armoured horsemen rolled over it. Then he was gone.

The rest of the French did not pause. Lowering their lances, they crashed up the slope and slammed into the English line like a battering ram.

The Welsh spearmen held the first line of French attackers, but as more and more of the enemy charged home, they began to give way. The line of battle disintegrated, French horsemen surging forward, the Welsh and English men-at-arms trying desperately to stop them. Merrivale saw Despenser and Mortimer fighting back-to-back, saw Gurney wrestling on the ground with an armoured French knight, Thomas Holland duelling desperately with two mounted men circling around him swiping at his head. Shouts and screams and the hammer of metal filled the air.

‘Come on!’ yelled the Prince of Wales, and he ran forward into the fray, followed by Fitz-Simon the standard-bearer. The French spotted his coat of arms at once, and Merrivale heard men shouting behind their bascinets, ‘Le Prince de Galles! Take him, take him!’ The prince paid no heed, slashing one of Holland’s assailants hard across the leg, plunging through to help Mortimer and Despenser, fighting with desperate enthusiasm.

‘Ware your back!’ Merrivale shouted, but he was too late. Another French man-at-arms rode up behind the prince and raised his sword. The blow crashed down onto the prince’s helm with a shower of sparks, and he fell hard to the ground. Fitz-Simon stood over his body, standard in one hand and sword in the other, slashing at the French who circled around him like hawks over a kill. The sword rose and fell again, and Fitz-Simon collapsed beside his master.

Merrivale ran forward and picked up the standard, ripping the fabric away from the wooden pole and gripping it like a quarterstaff. The horseman who had knocked the prince down rode up to him, armour dented, surcoat shredded by arrows, and pointed the tip of his bloody sword at Merrivale’s throat. ‘Do you yield?’ he asked.

Merrivale looked at him (three gold boules on a red fess, his herald’s mind told him; the Count of Aumale). ‘I am a herald,’ he said. ‘I am protected.’

He could hear the sneer behind the bascinet. ‘Then you should have stayed away from the