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By Root 1275 0

burning lance. He was holding a sword. His visor was raised and his eyes reflected the small flames of the fallen torches and Hook saw fear in those eyes, and Hook felt no pity because of that fear. Kill or be killed, Sir John always said, and Hook ran at the man, poleax leveled, the haft held in both his hands, and he ignored the feeble defensive sword-swing the man offered and lunged the spear point at the Frenchman’s midriff. The blade scraped off the bottom rim of the breastplate and jarred on the faulds, the plate strips worn on a leather skirt designed to stop a sword thrust into the lower belly. But no fauld could resist a poleax thrust and Hook saw the man’s terrified eyes open wide, and saw his mouth make a great hole as the spear point ripped through steel, leather, mail undershirt, skin, muscle, and guts to ram against the Frenchman’s spine. The man made a mewing noise and Hook was bellowing a challenge as the thrust pushed his victim back against the gun-pit’s face. Hook hauled the poleax back, and the flailing man came with it, his flesh trapping the point, and Hook put his boot into the mess of blood and armor, braced his leg and tugged till the blade came free. He lunged it forward again, but checked the blow as the man fell to his knees. Hook whipped around, ready to defend himself, but the fight was already over. There had only been eight men in the pit. They must have been left there by the larger French party advancing toward the Savage and, when that party had been thrown back by arrows, these eight had been forgotten. Their job had been to wreck the cannon, a job they had been trying to do with a huge ax that lay abandoned beside the windlass that tilted the heavy protective screen on its massive axle. They had managed to chop the windlass into splinters, but now all but one of them was dead.

“Can’t hurt a cannon with an ax!” Tom Scarlet said derisively. The one living Frenchman moaned.

“Anyone hurt?” Hook demanded.

“I twisted my ankle,” Horrocks said. He was panting and his eyes were wide with astonishment or fear.

“You’ll mend,” Hook said abruptly. “Are we all here?” His men were all present, and Will of the Dale was running up the trench with Melisande and his six archers. The wounded Frenchman whimpered and drew his legs up. He had been wearing no armor except a padded haubergeon and Will Sclate had driven an ax deep into his chest so that the linen padding had spilled out and was now soaked with blood. Hook could see a mess of lungs and splintered ribs. Blood bubbled black from the man’s mouth as he moaned again. “Put him out of his misery,” Hook demanded, but his archers just stared at him. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Hook said. He stepped over a corpse, put the poleax’s spike at the man’s neck, lunged once, and so did the job himself.

Will of the Dale stared at the carnage in the pit. “Last time the silly bastards do that!” he said. He tried to speak lightly, imitating Sir John, but there was a squawk in his voice and horror in his eyes.

Melisande was close behind Will. She stared dumbly at the dead Frenchmen, next at the blood dripping thick from Hook’s poleax, then up into his eyes. “You shouldn’t be here,” he told her harshly.

“I can’t stay in the camp,” she said, “that priest might come.”

“We’ll look after her, Nick,” Will of the Dale said, his voice still strained. He took a step forward and lifted one of the fallen torches, though there was enough light in the east now to make the flames unnecessary. “Look what they did,” he said.

The Frenchmen had used their big ax to chop through the iron bands that hooped the Redeemer’s barrel. Hook had not noticed the damage before, but now he saw that two of the metal rings had been hacked clean through, which meant the gun was probably useless because, if it was fired, the barrel would expand, split, and kill every man in the pit. That was none of Hook’s business. “Search the bastards,” he ordered his men. The three archers who had plundered the bodies of the first French casualties had found silver chains, coins, brooches, and a dagger with