Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [179]
A cheer went up from the English line as the dead rider fell slowly from the saddle. He took a long time to fall, slipping gently sideways and then suddenly collapsing in a clatter of armor. “Get his horse,” Hook told Horrocks.
Hook went to the corpse. He tugged the arrow free from the ruined eye so he could pull the thick golden chain over the dead man’s head, and then his hand stopped because there was a pendant hanging from the chain. It was a thick pendant, carved from white ivory, and mounted on that silver-rimmed disc was an antelope cut from jet.
“You stupid little bastard,” Hook said, and he lifted off the boy’s helmet that was too big for him and looked down into the ruined face of Sir Philippe de Rouelles.
“He’s just a boy,” Horrocks said in surprise.
“A stupid little bastard is what he is,” Hook said.
“What was he doing?”
“He was being goddam brave,” Hook said. He pulled off the heavy golden chain and walked the few paces to where the boy had stared down at the heaped dead, and there, lying on top of two other men, was a corpse in a surcoat that was so soaked in blood that at first Hook had difficulty making out the badge, but then he saw the outline of two red axes in the redder cloth. The dead man’s helmet had come off and his throat had been cut to the spine. “He came to find his father,” Hook told Horrocks.
“How do you know that?”
“I just know,” Hook said, “the poor little bastard. He was just looking for his father.” He thrust the pendant into the arrow bag, picked up another bodkin, and turned toward the English line.
Where the king, wearing his scarred helmet and with his surcoat torn by enemy blades, had mounted his small white horse to see the enemy more clearly. He saw the survivors of the slaughter struggling north, and beyond them was the third battle with its raised lances and he knew his archers had few or no arrows.
Then a messenger arrived to say the French were in the baggage camp, and the king twisted in the saddle to see that hundreds of his men were now guarding French prisoners. God knows how many prisoners there were, but they far outnumbered his men-at-arms. He glanced left and right. He had started with nine hundred men-at-arms and now the line was much thinner because so many men had taken prisoners and were guarding them. The archers had done the same. A few were out in the field, collecting arrows, and the king approved of that, but knew they could never collect enough arrows to kill the horses of the third battle. He watched some foolish Frenchman charge the archers and grimaced when his men cheered the brave fool’s death, then looked again at his army.
It was disordered. Henry knew that the line would form again when the final French battle charged, but now there were hundreds of prisoners behind that line and those captured men could still fight. They had no helmets and their weapons had been taken, but they could still assault the rear of his line. Most had their hands tied, but not all, and the unpinioned men could free the others to throw themselves on the perilously thin English line. Then there was the threat of the Frenchmen pillaging his baggage, but that could wait. The vital thing now was to hold off the third French charge, and to do that he needed every blade in his small army. The advancing horses would be hampered by the hundreds of corpses, yet they would eventually get past those bodies and then the long lances would stab into his line. He needed men.
And men stared up at the king. They saw him close his eyes and knew he was praying to his stern God, the God who had spared his army so far this day, and Henry prayed that God’s mercy would continue and, as his lips moved in the prayer, so the answer came to him. The answer was so astonishing that for a moment he did nothing, then he told himself God had spoken to him and so he opened his eyes.
“Kill the prisoners,” he ordered.
One of his household men-at-arms stared up at him. He was not sure he had heard right. “Sire?”
“Kill the prisoners!”
That way the prisoners could not fight again and