Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [160]
He could see suddenly. He could see through the ragged hole torn by the arrow that he wrenched free with his left hand. He could not see much, but a sudden noise to his left made him turn to see a tall man pitch forward with blood bubbling from his visor’s holes, and then Lanferelle looked back to his front and the Duke of York was only a few paces away and so he dropped his left hand to brace the lance, took a deep breath, and shouted his war cry. He was still shouting as he charged, or rather as he churned his way through the last paces of muddy plowland. The shout mingled anger and elation. Anger at this impudent enemy and elation that he had survived the archers.
And he had come to the killing place.
Sir John Cornewaille was also angry.
Since the day the army had landed in France he had been one of the commanders of the vanguard. He had led the short march to Harfleur, been in the first rank of the men who had assaulted that stubborn city, and he had led the march north from the Seine to this muddy field in Picardy, yet now the king’s relative, the Duke of York, had been given command of the vanguard, and the pious duke, in Sir John’s view, was an uninspiring leader.
Yet the duke commanded and Sir John, a few places to the duke’s right, could only submit to the appointment, but that did not mean he could not tell the men of the right-hand battle what they should do when the French came. He was watching the enemy men-at-arms approach, and he was seeing how they struggled in the mud, and he was awed by the thickness of the arrow-storms that converged from left and right to pierce and wound and kill. Not one French visor was open, so they were half blinded by steel and almost crippled by the mud, and Sir John was waiting for them with lance, poleax, and sword. “Are you listening!” he shouted. Ostensibly he was calling to his own men-at-arms, but only a fool would not heed Sir John Cornewaille’s words when it came to a fight. “Listen!” he bellowed through his unvisored helmet. “When they reach us they’re going to rush the last few paces! They want to hit us hard! They want the fight over! When I give the word we all step back three paces. You hear me? We step back three paces!”
His own men, he knew, would obey him, as would Sir William Porter’s men-at-arms. Sir John had trained his men in the brief maneuver. The enemy would come at a rush and expect to lunge their shortened lances straight at English groins or faces, and if the English were suddenly to step back then those first energetic blows would be wasted on air. That was the moment Sir John would counterattack, when the enemy was off balance. “You wait for my command!” he shouted, and felt a brief moment of concern. Perhaps it was dangerous to step backward in such treacherous ground, but he reckoned the enemy was more likely to slip and fall than his own men. Those men were arrayed in three crude ranks that swelled to six where the Duke of York’s big company was arrayed around their lord. The duke, anxious face showing through his open helm, had not turned to look when Sir John shouted. Instead he had stared straight ahead while the tip of his sword, made of the best Bordeaux steel, rested lightly on the furrows. “When they come to strike!” Sir John bellowed, watching to see if the duke showed any response. “Cheat their blow! Step back! And when they falter, attack!” The duke did not acknowledge the advice, he still stared at the French horde that was losing its order. The flanks were crushing inward to escape the arrows, and the leading men were skewing what was left of the French formation by deliberately advancing on those places in the English line where the banners proclaimed the position of high nobility who might expect to pay extravagant ransoms. Yet, disorganized though the French were, this first battle was still a horde. It outnumbered the English men-at-arms by eight to one; it