Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [92]
“Come to me! Come to me!” Sir John was shouting beside the largest campfire. The archers were gathering quickly, but the men-at-arms, who needed more time to buckle on their plate armor, were slower to arrive. Sir John had chosen to forgo his expensive plate armor and was dressed like the archers in mail coat and jupon. “Evelgold! Hook! Magot! Candeler! Brutte!” Sir John called. Walter Magot, Piers Candeler, and Thomas Brutte were the other three ventenars.
“Here, Sir John!” Evelgold responded.
“Bastards have made a sally,” Sir John said urgently. That explained the shouting and the sound of steel clashing with steel that came from the forward trenches. Harfleur’s garrison had sallied out to attack the sow and gun-pits. “We have to kill the bastards,” Sir John said. “We’re going to attack straight down to the sow. Some of us are, but not you, Hook! You know the Savage?”
“Yes, Sir John,” Hook said, adjusting the buckle of his sword belt. The Savage was a catapult, a great wooden beast that hurled stones into Harfleur and, of all the siege engines, it lay closest to the sea at the right-hand end of the English lines.
“Take your men there,” Sir John said, “and work your way in toward the sow, got that?”
“Yes, Sir John,” Hook said again. He strung the bow by bracing one end on the ground and looping the cord over the upper nock.
“Then go! Go now!” Sir John snarled, “and kill the bastards!” He turned. “Where’s my banner! I want my banner! Bring me my goddamned banner!”
Hook led sixteen men now. It should have been twenty-three, but seven were either dead or ill. He wondered how seventeen men were supposed to fight their way along trenches and gun-pits swarming with an enemy who had sallied from the Leure Gate. It was evident the French had captured large stretches of the siege-works because, as Hook led his men down the southward track, he could see more fires springing up in the English gun-pits and the shapes of men scurrying in front of those flames. Groups of men-at-arms and archers crossed Hook’s path, all going toward the fighting. Hook could hear the clash of blades now.
“What do we do, Nick?” Will of the Dale asked.
“You heard Sir John. Start at the Savage, work our way in,” Hook said, and was surprised that he sounded confident. Sir John’s orders had been vague and given hurriedly, and Hook had simply obeyed by leading his men toward the Savage, but only now was he trying to work out what he was supposed to do. Sir John was assembling his men-at-arms and had kept most of the archers, presumably for an attack on the sow that seemed to have fallen into the enemy’s possession, but why detach Hook? Because, Hook decided, Sir John needed flank protection. Sir John and his men were the beaters and they would drive the game across Hook’s front where the archers could cut them down. Hook, recognizing the plan’s simplicity, felt a surge of pride. Sir John could have sent his centenar Tom Evelgold or any of the other ventenars, all of whom were older and more senior, but Sir John had chosen Hook.
Fires burned at the Savage, but they had not been set by the French. They were the campfires of the men who guarded the pit in which the catapult sat, and their flames lit the monstrously gaunt beams of the giant engine. A dozen archers, the sentries who guarded the machine through the night, waited with strung bows and, as they saw men coming down the slope, turned those bows toward Hook. “Saint George!” Hook bellowed, “Saint George!”
The bows dropped. The sentries were nervous. “What’s happening?” one of them demanded of Hook.
“French are out.”
“I know, but what’s happening?”
“I don’t know!” Hook snapped, then turned to count his men. He did it in the old way of the country, like a shepherd counting