Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [145]
Hook turned to stare at a mud-spattered, rusted and bedraggled army. His army. The center of the line was made of three battles, each of around three hundred men-at-arms. The central battle was commanded by the king, the one on the far right by Lord Camoys, while the left-hand battle was led by the Duke of York. Between the three battles were two small groups of archers, while on either flank were the much larger contingents of bowmen. Those two flanking groups, with their stakes, were angled ahead of the line’s center so that their arrows could fly in from the sides. “So what do the French do?” Sir John demanded.
“Attack,” Evelgold said dourly.
“Attack what and why?” Sir John asked harshly. None of the four archers answered, instead they gazed at their own small army and wondered what reply Sir John wanted. “Think!” Sir John growled, his bright blue eyes darting between his sergeants. “You’re a Frenchman! You live in some shit-spattered manor with rats in the damp walls and mice dancing in the roof. What do you want?”
“Money,” Hook suggested.
“So what do you attack?”
“The flags,” Thomas Evelgold said.
“Because that’s where the money is,” Sir John said. “The goddamned bastards are flying the oriflamme,” he went on, “but that means nothing. They want prisoners. They want rich prisoners. They want the king, the Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester, they want me, they want ransoms! There’s no profit in slaughtering archers, so the bastards will attack the men-at-arms. They’ll attack the flags, but some might come for you so drive them into the center with arrows. That’s what you do! Drive their flanks into the center. Because that’s where I can kill them.”
“If we’ve got enough arrows,” Evelgold said doubtfully.
“Save enough!” Sir John said forcibly, “because if you run out of arrows you’re going to have to fight them hand to hand and they’re trained to that, you’re not.”
“You trained us, Sir John,” Hook said, remembering the winter of practice with swords and axes.
“You’re half-trained, but the other archers?” Sir John asked derisively, and Hook, looking at the waiting men, knew they were no match for French men-at-arms. The archers were tailors and cordwainers, fullers and carpenters, millers and butchers. They were tradesmen who possessed a superb skill, the ability to draw the cord of a yew bow to their ear and send the arrow on its deathward journey. They were killers, but they were not men hardened to war by tournaments and trained from childhood in the discipline of blades. Many of them had no armor other than a padded jacket, and some did not even possess that small protection. “God keep the French from getting among them!” Sir John said.
None of the sergeants responded. They were thinking of what would happen when French men-at-arms, clad in steel, came to kill them. Hook shivered, then was distracted by the sight of five horsemen riding under the English royal banner toward the waiting French army. “What are they doing, Sir John?” Evelgold asked.
“The king has sent them to make an appeal for peace,” Sir John said, “they’ll demand that the French yield the crown to Henry, and then we’ll agree not to slaughter them.”
Evelgold just stared at Sir John as if he did not believe what he had heard. Hook suppressed a laugh and Sir John shrugged. “So they won’t accept the terms,” he said, “and that means we fight, but it doesn’t mean that they’ll attack us.”
“They won’t?” Magot asked.
“We have to get past them to reach Calais, so maybe we’ll have to cut our way through them.”
“Jesus,” Evelgold muttered.
“They want us to attack them, Sir John?” Magot asked.
“I would, if I were them!” Sir John turned to stare at the enemy. “They