Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [104]
A gust of the east wind swirled the smoke away from the barbican’s right-hand flank and Hook saw an opening there, a cave in the half-collapsed tower that had defended the seaward side. He slung the bow and took the poleax off his shoulder. He shouted incoherently as he ran, then as he jumped up the barbican’s face and scrabbled for a foothold in the steep rubble slope. He was at the right-hand edge of the broken fort and he could see down the southern face of Harfleur where the harbor lay. Defenders on the walls could also see him, and their crossbow bolts thumped into the barbican, but Hook had rolled into the cave that was a ledge of rubble sheltered by collapsed timbers. There was scarce room to move in the space that was little more than a wild dog’s den. Now what? Hook wondered. The crossbow bolts were hissing just beyond his shallow refuge. He could hear men shouting and it seemed to Hook that the French shouted louder, evidence they believed they were winning. He leaned slightly outward trying to get a glimpse of Sir John, but just then an eddy of wind blew a great gout of smoke to shroud Hook’s aerie.
Yet just to his right, toward the face of the barbican, he saw the metal hoops that strapped three great tree trunks together, and the hoops, he thought, made a ladder upward and the smoke was hiding him and so he leaped across and clung to the timbers with his left hand while his boots found a small foothold on another of the iron rings. He reached up with the poleax and hooked it over the top ring and hauled himself up, up, and he was nearly at the top and the French had not seen him because of the smoke and because they were watching the howling mass of Englishmen who were trying to clamber up the barbican’s center where the slope was the least precipitous. Bolts, stones, and broken timbers rained down on them, while the English arrows flitted through the smoke in answer.
“Hook!” a voice roared beneath him. “Hook, you bastard! Pull me up!”
It was Sir John Cornewaille. Hook lowered the poleax, let Sir John grip the hammer head, and then hauled him across to the timbers.
“You don’t get ahead of me, Hook,” Sir John growled, “and what in Christ’s name are you doing here? You’re meant to be shooting arrows.”
“I wanted to see what was on the other side of this ruin,” Hook said. Flames crept up the timbers, getting closer to Sir John’s feet.
“You wanted to see…” Sir John began, then gave a bark of laughter. “I’m getting goddam roasted. Pull me up more.” Hook again used the poleax to lift Sir John, this time to the top of the timbers. The two of them were like flies on a broken, burning pillar, perched just below the makeshift parapet, but still unseen by the defenders. “Sweet Jesus Christ and all his piss-drinking saints, but this seems a good enough place to die,” Sir John said, and slipped the sling of his battle-ax off his shoulder. “Are you going to die with me, Hook?”
“Looks like it, Sir John.”
“Good man. Push me up first, then join me, and let’s die well, Hook, let’s die very well.”
Hook took hold of the back of Sir John’s sword belt and, when he got the nod, heaved. Sir John vanished upward, tumbled over the wall, and gave his war-shout. “Harry and Saint George!” And for Harry, Saint George, and Saint Crispinian, Hook followed.
And screamed.
EIGHT
“You won’t die here,” Saint Crispinian said.
Hook hardly heard the voice because he was screaming a battle cry that was part terror and part exhilaration.
Hook and Sir John had reached the top of the barbican where the remnants of the fighting platform lay. The English bombardment had shattered the barbican’s face so that the earth and rubble filling had spilled out and what had once been the fighting platform was now a crude lumpy space. The rearward wall, looking toward the city’s Leure Gate, was much less