Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [182]
The tall man laughed. “Our Nick? Got a rich prisoner, has he? That will never do.” He lunged with the poleax, striking the point onto Lanferelle’s breastplate and Lanferelle staggered backward, but again was not tripped. He glanced around desperately, hoping to see a fallen weapon and the tall English archer grinned at the fear on the Frenchman’s bloodied face. The archer was wearing a haubergeon over a mail coat, and the padded jacket had been slashed so that the wool stuffing hung in tattered blood-crusted clumps. His red cross of Saint George had run in the rain so that his short surcoat, patterned with moon and stars, looked blood red. “We can’t have Nick Hook being rich,” the man said, and raised the poleax ready to bring it down on Lanferelle’s unprotected head.
And just then Lanferelle saw the sword. It was a short and clumsy sword, a cheap sword, and it was turning in the air and for a heartbeat he thought it had been thrown at him, then realized it was being thrown to him. The blade circled, came over the tall archer’s shoulder, and Lanferelle snatched at it and somehow caught the hilt, but the ax was already falling, driven with an archer’s huge strength and Lanferelle had no time to parry, only to throw himself forward, inside the blade’s swing, and he drove his armored weight into the archer’s chest to throw him backward. The ax shaft struck his left arm and Lanferelle brought up the sword, but with no strength in the cut that wasted itself on the man’s arrow bag. One of the other archers struck with a poleax, but Lanferelle had recovered now and threw the lunge off with his blade that he flicked back with his extraordinary speed to slash across the second man’s face. That man reeled away, blood flowing from a shattered nose and split cheek as Lanferelle stepped back again, sword ready for the tall man.
Three archers faced Lanferelle now, but two had no stomach for the fight, which left the tall man alone. He glanced around to see Hook approaching. “Bastard,” he spat at Hook, “you gave him that sword!”
“He’s my prisoner,” Hook said.
“And the king said to kill the prisoners!”
“Then kill him, Tom,” Hook said, amused. “Kill him!”
Tom Perrill looked back to the Frenchman. He saw the feral look in Lanferelle’s eyes, remembered the speed with which the man had evaded and parried and so he lowered the poleax. “You kill him, Hook,” he sneered.
“My lord,” Hook spoke to Lanferelle now, “this man was offered money to rape your daughter. He failed, but so long as he lives your Melisande is in danger.”
“Then kill him,” Lanferelle said.
“I promised God I wouldn’t.”
“But I made no promise to God,” Lanferelle said and flicked the cheap sword at Tom Perrill’s face, forcing the archer back. Perrill glanced wide-eyed at Hook, unable to hide his fear and astonishment, then turned back to Lanferelle, who was smiling. The Frenchman’s weapon was puny and cheap, far outranged by the poleax, but Lanferelle showed a blithe confidence as he stepped forward.
“Kill him!” Perrill shouted at his companions, but neither of them moved, and Perrill thrust the ax forward in a desperate stab at Lanferelle’s midriff and the Frenchman swept the blade aside with contemptuous ease, then simply raised the sword and gave one lunge.
The blade sliced into Perrill’s gullet, starting a gush of blood. The archer stared at his killer, his tongue slowly pushed out and blood ran from it to pour thick and silent down the sword to soak Lanferelle’s ungauntleted hand. For a heartbeat the two men were motionless, then Perrill dropped and Lanferelle wrenched the blade loose and tossed it to Hook.
“Enough! Enough!” A man-at-arms in royal livery was riding behind the line and shouting at the archers. “Enough! Stop the killing! Hold! Enough!”
Hook walked back to the English line.
He saw gray clouds covering the plowland of Agincourt.
And he saw, in front of the English army, a field of dead and dying men. More dead, Hook thought, than the number of men the king had led to this wet slaughteryard. They lay tangled and bloody, countless dead,