Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [146]
“Jesus,” Evelgold said again, and Hook tried to imagine the effort that would be needed to cross that half-mile of sucking, slippery, clinging mud. Let the French attack, he thought, and suddenly shivered violently. He was cold, he was hungry, he was tired. The fear came in waves and was turning his bowels to water. He was not the only one, lots of men were slipping into the woods to empty their bowels.
“I need to go to the woods,” he said.
“If you need to shit, do it here,” Sir John said harshly, then shouted at the massed archers. “No one’s to use the woods!” He feared that men, losing courage, would hide in the trees. “You’re to shit where you stand!”
“Shit and die,” Tom Evelgold said.
“And go to hell with fouled breeches,” Sir John snarled, “who cares?” He looked at each of his sergeants in turn, then spoke with a quiet intensity. “This battle’s not lost. Remember, we have archers, they don’t.”
“But we don’t have enough arrows,” Evelgold said.
“Then make each one count,” Sir John said, impatient with his centenar’s pessimism, then scowled at Hook. “Jesus, man, can’t you do that upwind of me?”
“Sorry, Sir John.”
Sir John grinned. “At least you can take a shit. Try doing that in full armor. I tell you, we’re not going to smell like lilies by the time we’ve finished our work today.” He gazed at the enemy, his bright eyes looking at the oriflamme. “And one last thing,” he said forcefully, “no one’s to start taking prisoners until we give the order that it’s safe to capture instead of kill.”
“You think we’ll take prisoners?” Evelgold asked with astonished disbelief.
“If men try to take prisoners too soon they weaken the line,” Sir John said, ignoring the question. “You have to fight and kill until the bastards can fight no more, and only then can you set about finding ransoms.” He clapped Evelgold on a mail-clad shoulder. “Tell your lads we’ll be feasting on captured French provisions tonight.”
Either that, Hook thought, or eating hell’s rations. He struggled back to his men who each stood by a stake. Those stakes, over two thousand of them on this right flank of the English army, made a dense thicket of sharpened points. Men could move among them easily enough, but no warhorse could maneuver about them.
“What did Sir John want?” Will of the Dale asked.
“To tell you that we’ll be eating French rations tonight.”
“He thinks they’ll take us prisoner?” Will asked skeptically.
“No, he thinks we’ll win.”
That prompted some bitter laughter. Hook ignored it and watched the enemy. The front rank of their dismounted men-at-arms stretched across the skyline, thick with the metal points of shortened lances. Still they did not move and still the English waited. French horsemen went on exercising their destriers and, because the horses disliked the thick furrows, many of the knights went to the grassy pastures beyond the woods. The sun climbed higher behind the thinning clouds. The king’s emissaries, sent to make an offer of peace, had met with a similar group of Frenchmen and now rode back across the plowland and, moments later, a rumor spread that the French had agreed to let the English pass, then the rumor was denied. “If they don’t want to fight,” Tom Scarlet said, “then perhaps they’ll just stand there all day!”
“We have to get past them, Tom.”
“Jesus, we could sneak off tonight! Go back to Harfleur.”
“The king won’t do that.”
“Why not for God’s sake? He wants to die?”
“He’s got God on his side,” Hook said.
Tom shivered. “God might have sent us a decent breakfast.”
Women brought what little food they had hoarded against this day. Melisande gave Hook an oatcake. “We share it,” Hook said.
“It’s for you,” she insisted. There was mold on the oats, but Hook ate half anyway and gave Melisande the other half. There was no ale, just water from a stream that Melisande brought in an old leather wine bottle. The water