Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [167]
And the English line held. In places it had been driven back by the weight of attacking men-at-arms, but the line did not break, and now it was protected by ramparts of dead and wounded Frenchmen, and in places the line bulged forward as the English counterattacked into the French formation. And the French, unable to march straight ahead, began to spread to their flanks.
Where the archers had no arrows.
“You can die, or you can fight.” The voice was distant and amused, as though the speaker did not care what Nicholas Hook’s fate would be.
“God’s holy shit, Nick, they’re coming for us,” Tom Scarlet said nervously. The archers had pulled back behind the foremost stakes and then watched the French men-at-arms crash into the English line. There had been loud cheers from the archers when that perilously thin line stopped the enemy, but now that enemy was spreading toward the stakes.
“We can fight or die,” Hook said. He threw down his bow. It was useless without arrows, and there were no arrows.
“So fight,” the voice spoke again, and Hook knew it was Saint Crispin, the harsher saint, who was talking to him.
“You’re here!” he said aloud in relief and wonderment.
“I’m here, Nick,” Scarlet said, “don’t want to be, but I am.”
“Of course we’re here!” Saint Crispin said harshly. “We’re here to get revenge! So fight them, you bastard! What are you waiting for?”
Hook had paused to watch the French. He sensed they were not trying to outflank the English men-at-arms, but rather to escape the killing that was so loud to his left, but soon, he thought, some Frenchman would decide to attack the lightly armored archers and thus reach the rear of the king’s line.
“What are you waiting for?” the saint again demanded angrily. “Do God’s work, for Christ’s sake! Just kill the goddamned bastards!”
Hook felt a tremor of fear. A Frenchman staggered closer to the stakes. His left arm was hanging limply from his shoulder where an espalier was split and bloody.
“What do we do, Nick?” Scarlet asked.
Hook took the poleax from his shoulder. “Kill them!” he roared. “Kill the goddamned bastards! Saint Crispin! Kill!”
The shout released the archers, who suddenly gave a great shout of defiance and streamed between their stakes to attack the French flank. The bowmen were armed with poleaxes, swords, or mallets. Most were barefoot, none had leg armor and few could afford a breastplate, but in the mud they could move much faster than the French. “Kill them!” Evelgold bellowed, and still more archers took up the shout. There was a wildness in the gray air, a sudden and savage desire to kill the men who had promised to chop off archers’ fingers, and so Welshmen and Englishmen, their arms hardened by years of archery, went to massacre the gentry of France.
Hook ignored the wounded man and instead attacked a giant in a bright red surcoat. His first blow was a wild swing that would have earned Sir John’s scorn had he seen it, and the Frenchman swayed back to make it miss and then lunged with his shortened lance, but Hook’s momentum had carried him past the man and, as the tall Frenchman turned to follow Hook, so Will of the Dale hammered the back of the man’s helmet with a mallet and the enemy toppled into the mud. Geoffrey Horrocks knelt on him, lifted the visor,