The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [471]
His knights were overwhelmingly outnumbered. There were at least twenty attackers. William was astonished at the courage of the outlaws. Peasants would normally scatter like chickens before a band of knights, whether they outnumbered the knights by two to one or ten to one. But these people fought hard, and were not discouraged when one of their number fell. They seemed ready to die if necessary. Perhaps that was because they were going to die anyway, of starvation, unless they could steal this flour.
Louis was fighting two men at the same time when a third came up behind him and clubbed him with an ironheaded carpenter’s hammer. Louis fell down and stayed down. The man dropped the hammer and picked up Louis’s sword. Now there were two knights against twenty outlaws. But Walter was recovering from the blow to his head, and he now drew his sword and entered the melee. William raised his weapon and joined in.
The four of them made a formidable fighting team. The outlaws were driven back, desperately parrying the flashing swords with their clubs and axes. William began to think their morale might crack and they might flee in disorder. Then one of them shouted: “The rightful earl!”
It was some kind of rallying cry. Others took it up, and the outlaws fought more fiercely. The repeated cry, “The rightful earl—the rightful earl!,” struck a chill into William’s heart even as he was fighting for his life. It meant that whoever was commanding this army of outlaws had set his sights on William’s title. William fought harder, as if this skirmish might determine the future of the earldom.
Only half the outlaws were actually fighting the knights, William realized. The rest were moving the flour. The combat settled into a steady exchange of thrust and parry, swipe and dodge. Like soldiers who know that the retreat must be sounded soon, the outlaws had begun to fight in a cautious, defensive style.
Behind the fighting outlaws, the others were carrying the last of the flour sacks out of the mill. The outlaws began to retreat, backing through the doorway that led from the threshing floor into the house. William realized that whatever happened now, the outlaws had got away with most of the flour. In no time at all the whole county would know that they had stolen it from under his nose. He was going to be a laughingstock. The thought enraged him so much that he pressed a fierce attack on his opponent and stabbed the man through the heart with a classic thrust.
Then an outlaw caught Hugh with a lucky jab and stabbed his right shoulder, putting him out of action. Now there were two outlaws in the doorway holding off the three surviving knights. That in itself was humiliating enough; but then, with monumental arrogance, one of the outlaws waved the other away. The man disappeared, and the last outlaw stepped back a pace, into the single room of the miller’s house.
Only one of the knights could stand in the doorway and fight the outlaw. William pushed forward, shouldering Walter and Gervase aside: he wanted this man for himself. As their swords clashed, William realized immediately that this man was no dispossessed peasant: he was a hardened fighting man like William himself. For the first time he looked into the outlaw’s face; and the shock was so great he almost dropped his sword.
His opponent was Richard of Kingsbridge.
Richard’s face blazed with hatred. William could see the scar on his mutilated ear. The force of Richard’s rancor frightened William more than his flashing sword. William had thought he had crushed Richard finally, but now Richard was back, at the head of a ragamuffin army that had made a fool of William.
Richard came at William hard, taking advantage of his momentary shock. William sidestepped a thrust, raised his sword, parried a slash and stepped back. Richard pressed forward, but now William was partly shielded by the doorway, which restricted Richard’s attack to stabbing strokes. Nevertheless Richard drove William farther back, until William was on the threshing floor of the mill and Richard was in