• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1319 0

the soft ground. He glanced at the enemy, saw that they were still not moving, and so unslung his poleax and gave the stake’s sharpened tip three hard blows that blunted the wood even as it drove the stake deeper into the ground. He used his knife to shave away the crushed wood and thus sharpen the replanted stake, and then, at last, he uncased the bow from its horsehide sheath. All around him archers were fixing stakes or stringing bows. Hook braced his bow against the stake’s lower end and bent the yew to slip the cord’s noose over the upper nock. He took both arrow bags from his shoulder. He pulled the arrows free and pushed them point down into the soil, bodkins to the left and the half-dozen broadheads to the right. He kissed the bow’s belly, where the dark wood met the light. Dear God, he prayed, and then he prayed to Saint Crispinian, and his heart felt like a trapped bird and his mouth was dry and his right leg shivered, and still the French were motionless and Saint Crispinian made no answer to Hook’s prayer.

The archers were spread out. Their stakes did not make a solid line facing the French, but instead were sunk in scattered lines, filling a space as wide and deep as the marketplace where Henry had burned and hanged the Lollards. There were a couple of paces between stakes, space enough for a man to move, but too tight for any horse to maneuver freely. The archers’ crude ranks stretched back so that the men in the rear could not see the enemy because of the archers in front of them, but that did not matter yet because at two hundred paces they would need to shoot high in the air if their arrows were to reach the French. Hook was in the foremost rank and he turned to see Thomas Perrill hammering in his stake some paces behind and to his right. There was no sign of Sir Martin and Hook wondered if the priest had gone back to the camp. That thought made him shiver for Melisande’s safety, but there was no time to worry about that because Tom Evelgold was shouting at his men to face front.

Hook thought the enemy was at last advancing, but the French were not stirring. Their center was a long thick line of dismounted men-at-arms in bright surcoats and polished armor, while their flanks were two masses of horsemen armed with lances. The flags were silken-bright against the gray sky and, in the very center of the French line, where the banners were thickest, the oriflamme was a red streak of wind-driven ripples telling the English that the enemy would show them no mercy.

Hook tried to find the Sire de Lanferelle in the enemy ranks, but could not see him. Instead he saw the weapons. He saw swords, lances, poleaxes, falcon-beaks, mauls, battleaxes, and maces. Some of the maces had spiked heads. He laid a broadhead across the bow’s thick-bellied stave and suddenly wanted to empty his bowels again. He closed his eyes for an instant and said another fervent prayer to Saint Crispinian, then planted his bare feet in the slimy earth. He braced himself.

“Sweet Jesus Christ,” Thomas Scarlet said.

“Oh God, oh God,” Will of the Dale muttered.

Sir Thomas Erpingham, gray-haired and bareheaded, had mounted his small horse and ridden a few paces ahead of the English line. The horse picked its feet high, unhappy with the sticky soil. Behind Sir Thomas the English men-at-arms waited. The nine hundred were arrayed four deep, with the king, resplendent in shining armor and with a jeweled crown of gold ringing his battle-helm, standing in their center. Sir Thomas, in a green surcoat blazoned with the red cross of Saint George, turned the horse so that his back was toward the French. He waited a few heartbeats.

“Be with me now,” Hook prayed aloud to Saint Crispinian.

He wished the saint would talk to him, but Crispinian was still silent.

“Draw!” Thomas Evelgold ordered in a low voice.

Hook lifted the bow. He drew the hemp-string all the way to his ear and felt the savage power in the bent wood. He aimed at a horse directly ahead of him, but knew it would be luck if the arrow struck where he aimed. If the French had been fifty paces