Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [154]
The skill of a mounted charge was to start slow, the riders knee to knee, and to advance in that close formation so that the whole line of heavy horses struck the enemy together. Only at the last minute should a man kick his destrier into a gallop, but the plowland was so soft and the arrow fall so sudden that men spurred impulsively forward to escape both. No one had ordered the charge, rather it was the sting of the first arrow-storm that prompted it, and now, on both flanks, the horsemen charged as fast as their big horses could carry them. Three hundred horsemen attacked the English right wing, and even fewer assaulted the left. There were supposed to be a thousand horsemen on either flank, but the other riders were missing, still exercising their destriers.
And the archers drew and loosed.
Hook used broadheads. They were useless against armor, but they could pierce the padded cloths protecting the horses’ chests and, as the range shortened, so the arrows flew at a lower and lower trajectory, none wasting their force on the upper air, but searing straight into the charging animals, and for a moment Hook thought the arrows were having no effect, but then a horse stumbled and went down in a great flurry of mud, man, lance, and harness. The horse screamed and its rider, trapped by the rolling body, screamed with it and the horse behind struck the rolling beast in front and Hook saw the second rider being pitched forward over his horse’s head. He drew again, picking a big horse with shaggy fetlocks and drove an arrow into its side, just in front of the saddle’s girth and the horse swerved away, colliding with another, and Hook’s next arrow thumped into a padded chest to bury itself to the fledging and the world was hoofbeats and screams and the sound of bow cords and at least a dozen horses were on the ground, some struggling to get up, others splashing mud with frantic hooves as their lives drained away through sliced arteries. Will of the Dale put a bodkin into a rider’s throat and the man jerked back under the arrow’s strike, then rebounded forward from his saddle’s high cantle and his lance buried its point in a furrow and so lifted the man out of his saddle as his horse galloped on, eyes white and visible through the holes in its face armor, and the man was dragged along by the stirrup as the horse took an arrow in the eye and veered to one side and so brought down two more horses.
The archers were shooting fast. The horsemen did not have far to charge, but the ground slowed them and in the minute it took the three hundred to reach the archers on the English right they were the target of over four thousand arrows. Only the bowmen in the front two ranks were shooting at the horses, the other archers, their view of the charge obscured by those front ranks, were still hoisting arrows high so that they fell among the dismounted French.
A maddened horse, blood spurting from a ripped belly, twisted away and charged at the French men-at-arms in the field’s center. Others followed it. Some horsemen, balked by the corpses and by the dying horses to their front, pulled up, and then they were easy targets and the arrows whipped into them, each one striking a horse with the sound of a butcher’s cleaver, and the horses were screaming and men were trying to control them.
Yet still some horses reached the English line.
“Back!” centenars shouted, “back!”
The front ranks of archers stepped backward to leave their stakes facing the enemy. They still shot. Hook had taken a handful of bodkin arrows and he let one fly at less than twenty paces and saw the heavy, oak-weighted point glance off a manat-arm’s armor. He drew again, this time plunging the arrow into the horse’s chest.
Then the charge struck home.
But the riders had their visors down and could see nothing through the small slits or holes, while the horses, wearing their steel chamfrons, were almost as blinkered as the men. The charge struck home, but struck onto the stakes and a horse whimpered pitifully, a stake deep in its rib-shattered chest and blood