Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [109]
“That the attack failed,” the boy said.
“Sweet Jesus,” Hook said in disgust. So now, he reckoned, the king was waiting until his brother could mount another assault, and then the English would make one last effort, from both east and west, to overwhelm the stubborn defenders. And so Hook and his archers waited. If the king had sent new orders to his brother then they would take at least two hours to reach him, for the messenger had to ride far around the city’s north side and cross the flooded river by boat.
“What’s happening?” Sclate, the slow-witted laborer with a giant’s strength, asked.
“I don’t know,” Hook confessed. Sweat trickled down his face and stung his eyes. The air seemed to be filled with dust that coated his throat and made him thirsty again. The light, reflecting from the shattered chalk of the broken walls, was dazzling. He was tired. He unstrung the bow to take the tension from the stave.
“Are we attacking again?” Sclate asked.
“I reckon we attack when the duke assaults the far side,” Hook suggested. “Be a couple of hours yet.”
“They’ll be ready for us,” Sclate said gloomily.
The garrison would be ready. Ready with cannons and crossbows and springolts and boiling oil. That was what waited for the men wearing the red cross. The men-at-arms were sitting now, resting before they were ordered into the killing ground. The bright banners hung slack from their poles and a strange silence wrapped Harfleur. Waiting. Waiting.
“When we attack!” Sir John’s voice broke the silence. He was striding along the front of the sheltering archers, careless that he was fully exposed to the enemy, but the French crossbowmen, doubtless under orders to conserve their bolts, ignored him. “When we attack,” he called again, “you advance! You keep shooting! But you keep going forward! When we go over the wall I want archers with us! We’re going to have to hunt these bastards through their goddam streets! I want you all there! And good hunting! This is a day to kill our king’s enemies, so kill them!”
And when the killing was done, Hook wondered, how many English would be left? The army that had sailed from Southampton Water had been small enough, but now? Now, he reckoned, there would just be half an army, many of them sick men, crammed into the ruins of Harfleur as the French army at last stirred itself to fight. Rumors said that enemy army was vast, a horde of men eager to wipe out the impudent English invaders, though God seemed to be doing that already by sickness.
“Let’s get it over with,” Will of the Dale grumbled.
“Or let them keep the goddam town,” Tom Scarlet suggested, “it’s a shit-heap now.”
And what if the assault failed? Hook wondered. What if Harfleur did not fall? Then the remnants of Henry’s army would sail back to England, defeated. The campaign had begun so well, with all the panoply of banners and hope, and now it was blood and feces and despair.
Another trumpeter began playing the same mocking notes from the city. Sir John, stalking back past his archers, turned and snarled toward the defenders. “I want that prick-sucking bastard killed! I want him killed!” The last four words were screamed at the wall, loud enough for any Frenchmen to hear.
Then, unexpectedly, a man clambered onto the wall’s top. He was not the trumpeter, who still blew from his place behind the wall. The man on the wall was unarmed, and he stood and waved both hands at the English.
Archers stood, began to draw.
“No!” Sir John bellowed. “No! No! No! Bows down! Bows down! Bows down!”
The trumpet note wavered, faded and stopped.
The man on the wall held his empty hands high above his head.
And, miraculously, suddenly, astonishingly, it was all over.
The soldiers of Harfleur’s garrison did not want to surrender, but the townspeople had suffered enough. They were hungry. Their houses had been crushed and burned by English missiles, disease was spreading, they saw an inevitable defeat and