“The devil?”
Sir John shook his head. “No, Raoul de Gaucourt. He commands the garrison.” Sir John nodded toward Harfleur. “He’s a gentleman, Hook, but he’s also a fighter. And he’s no fool. And if I were Raoul de Gaucourt I’d kick the shit out of us right now.”
And next day Raoul de Gaucourt did.
SEVEN
“Wake up, Nick!” It was Thomas Evelgold bellowing at him. The centenar slapped Hook’s shelter, shaking it so hard that scraps of dead leaves and pieces of turf fell onto Hook and Melisande. “God damn you, wake up!” Evelgold shouted again.
Hook opened his eyes to darkness. “Tom?” he called, but Evelgold had already moved on to wake other archers.
A second voice was shouting for the men to assemble. “Armor! Weapons! Hurry! Goddam now! I want you all here, now! Now!”
“What is it?” Melisande asked.
“Don’t know,” Hook said. He fumbled to find his mail coat. The stink of the leather lining was overpowering as pulled it over his head. He forced the unwieldy garment down his chest. “Sword belt?”
“Here,” Melisande was kneeling. The campfires were being revived and their flames reflected red from her wide open eyes.
Hook put on the short surcoat with its cross of Saint George, the badge that every man was required to wear in the siege-works. He pulled on his boots, the once good boots that he had bought in Soissons but which were now coming apart at the seams. He strapped on his belt, slid the bow from its cover, and snatched up an arrow bag. He had tied a long leather strap to the poleax and he slung that over his shoulder, then ducked into the night. “I’ll be back,” he called to Melisande.
“Casque!” she shouted after him. “Casque!” He reached back and took the helmet from her. He felt a sudden urge to tell her he loved her, but Melisande had disappeared back into the shelter and Hook said nothing. He sensed the night was ending. The stars were pale, which meant dawn would soon stain the sky above the obstinate city, but ahead of him there was tumult. The flames in the siege-works leaped higher, casting grotesque shadows across the broken ground.
“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 his flock, just as his father had taught him. Yain, tain, eddero, he counted and got to bumfit, which was fifteen, and looked for the extra man and saw two. Tain-o-bumfit? Then he saw that the seventeenth man was short and slight and carried a crossbow. “For God’s sake, girl, go back,” he called, and then he forgot Melisande because Tom Scarlet shouted a warning and Hook whipped around to see a band of men running toward the Savage down the wide trench that snaked to the catapult from the nearest gun-pit. Some of the approaching men carried torches that streamed sparks and the bright flames reflected from helmets, swords, and axes.
“No crosses!” Tom Scarlet warned, meaning that none of the men in the trench was wearing the cross of Saint George. They were French and, seeing the archers outlined by the fires burning in the Savage’s pit, they began shouting their challenge. “Saint Denis! Harfleur!”
“Bows!” Hook shouted, and his men instinctively spread out. “Kill them!” he shouted.
The range was short, less than fifty paces, and the attackers made themselves into an easy target because they were constricted by the trench’s walls. The first arrows drilled into them and the thuds of the heads striking home instantly silenced the enemy’s shouting. The sound of the bows was sharp, each release of the string followed by the briefest fluttering rush as the feathers caught the air. In the darkness those feathers made small white flickers that stopped abruptly as the arrows slapped home. To Hook it seemed as if time had slowed. He was plucking arrows from his bag, laying them over the stave, bringing up the bow, hauling the cord, releasing, and he felt no excitement, no fear, and no exhilaration. He knew exactly where each arrow would go before he even pulled it from the bag. He aimed at the approaching men’s bellies and, in the flame-light, he saw those men doubling over as his arrows struck.
The enemy’s charge ended as surely as though they had run into a stone wall. The trench was wide enough for six men to walk abreast and all the leading Frenchmen were on the ground, spitted by arrows, and the men behind tripped on them and, in their turn, were hit by arrows. Some glanced off plate armor, but others sliced straight through the metal, and even an arrow that failed to pierce the plate had sufficient force to knock a man backward. If the enemy could have spread out they might have reached the Savage, but the trench walls constricted them and the feathered bodkins ripped in from the dark and so the attacking party turned and ran back, leaving a dark mass behind, not all of it motionless. “Denton! Furnays! Cobbold!” Hook called, “make sure those bastards are dead ’uns. The rest of you, after me!”