“Course there are men,” Hook said, and sliced off a limb the size of a man’s arm with a one-handed stroke of the ax. “We’re all over the place.”
“Men-at-arms,” Melisande hissed, “chevaliers!”
“Probably our fellows,” Hook said. Mounted men-at-arms patrolled the surrounding countryside every day, looking for supplies and watching for the French army that everyone expected would come to Harfleur’s relief.
“They are French!” Melisande hissed.
Hook doubted it, but he swung the ax to bury its blade in the fallen trunk, then jumped down and took her arm. “Let’s have a look.”
There were indeed men. There were horsemen in a fern-thick gully that twisted through the high wood. Hook could see a dozen of them in single file, following a track through the trees, but he sensed there were more riders behind them. And he saw, too, that Melisande was right. The horsemen were not wearing the cross of Saint George. They had surcoats, but none of the badges was familiar, and the riders were armored in plate and all wore helmets. They had their visors raised and Hook could see the leading horseman’s eyes glitter in the steel’s shadow. The man held up his hand to check the column, then stared intently up the slope, trying to discover exactly where the sound of ax blows came from, and as he stared, so more horsemen appeared from the far trees.
“French,” Melisande whispered.
“They are,” Hook said softly. Most of the horsemen carried drawn swords.
“What do you do?” Melisande asked, still whispering, “hide?”
“No,” Hook said, because he knew what he must do. The knowledge was instinctive and he did not doubt it, nor did he hesitate. He led her back to the felled tree, snatched up the cocked crossbow, then ran along the ridge. “The French!” he shouted. “They’re coming! Get back to the wagons! Fast!” He shouted it over and over. “Back to the wagons!” He first ran to his right, away from the wagons, to find Tom Scarlet and Will of the Dale standing and staring. “Will,” Hook said, “use Sir John’s voice. Tell them the French are here, and get everyone back to the wagons.”
Will of the Dale just gaped at him.
“Use Sir John’s voice!” Hook said harshly, shaking the carpenter by the shoulders. “The goddam French are coming! Now go! Where’s Matt?” he asked the last question of Tom Scarlet, who mutely pointed southward.
Will of the Dale was obeying Hook. He was hurrying back along the crest and using his imitation of Sir John’s harsh voice to pull the archers back to where the big wagons waited on the road. Peter Goddington, confused by the mimicry, searched for Sir John and found Hook, Melisande, and Tom Scarlet instead. “What in God’s name is happening?” Goddington demanded angrily.
“French, sergeant,” Hook said, pointing down the western slope.
“Don’t be daft, Hook,” Goddington said, “there are no goddam French here.”
“I saw them,” Hook said. “Men-at-arms. They’re in armor and carrying swords.”
“They were our men, you fool,” Goddington insisted. “Probably a forage party.”
The centenar was so sure of himself that Hook was beginning to doubt what he had seen, and his uncertainty was increased because the horsemen, though they must have heard the shouting on the crest, had not reacted. He had expected the men-at-arms to spur up the slope and burst through the trees, but none had appeared. Yet he stuck to his story. “There were about twenty of them,” he told Goddington, “armored, and with strange livery. Melisande saw them too.”
The sergeant glanced at Melisande and decided her opinion was worthless. “I’ll have a look,” he said grudgingly. “Where did you say they were?”
“In the trees down that slope,” Hook said, pointing. “They’re not on the road. They’re in the trees, like they didn’t want to be seen.”
“You’d better not be dreaming,” the centenar grumbled and went down the slope.
“Where’s Matt?” Hook asked Tom Scarlet again.
“He went to look at the sea,” Tom Scarlet answered.
“Matt!” Hook bellowed, cupping his hands.
There was no answer. The warm wind sighed in the branches and chaffinches made a busy noise somewhere down the eastern slope. A gun sounded from the siege lines, the echo rumbling in the bowl of the hills and melding with the crash of the stone’s impact. Hook could not hear the clink of bridles or the thump of hooves and he wondered if he had imagined the horsemen. The shouting on the crest had ended, suggesting that the bemused archers must have assembled back at the wagons.
“We’d never seen the sea before,” Tom Scarlet said nervously, “not before we sailed here. Matt wanted to look again.”
“Matt!” Hook shouted again, but again there was no answer.
Peter Goddington had vanished over the crest’s lip. Hook gave the crossbow to Melisande and then uncased his bow, strung it, and put an arrow across the stave. He walked to the gully’s lip and gazed down into the ferns. Peter Goddington was alone in the gully. There was not a horseman in sight and the centenar looked up and gave Hook a glance of pure disgust. “Nothing here, you fool,” he shouted, and just then Hook saw the two horsemen come from the trees on the right.
“Behind you!” he shouted, and Goddington began to run up the slope as Hook raised the bow, hauled the cord back and loosed just as the man-at-arms nearest the centenar swerved left. The arrow, a bodkin, glanced off the espalier that armored the man’s shoulder. The sword chopped down and Hook, as he pulled another arrow from the bag, saw blood bright and sudden in the glowing green woodland, he saw Peter Goddington’s head turn red, saw him stumble as the second Frenchman, his sword held rigid as a lance, took the centenar in the back. Goddington fell.
Hook loosed again. The white feathers streaked through shadow and sunlight and the bodkin head, shafted with oak, slammed through the second man’s breastplate and hurled him back in his tall saddle. More horsemen were coming now, spurring from the thick trees to put their horses at the slope, and Tom Scarlet was tugging at Hook’s arm. “Nick! Nick!”
And suddenly it was panic because there were more riders to their left, between them and the sea, and Hook seized Melisande’s sleeve and dragged her back. He had not seen that southernmost column, and Hook realized the French had come in at least two parties and he had seen only one, and he ran desperately, hearing the hooves loud and getting louder, and he dragged Melisande fast to one side, dodging like a hare pursued by hounds, but then a horseman galloped in front of him and slewed about in a slithering flurry of leaf mold. Hook twisted to his left to find refuge by the bole of a great hollow oak. It was really no refuge at all, because he was cornered now, and still more horsemen came and a rider laughed from his saddle as the men-at-arms surrounded Melisande and the two archers.
“Matt!” Tom said, and Hook saw that Matthew Scarlet was already a prisoner. A Frenchman in blue and green livery had him by his jacket’s collar, dragging him alongside his horse.
“Archers,” a horseman said. The word was the same in French and English, and there was no mistaking the pleasure with which the man spoke.
“Père!” Melisande gasped. “Père?”