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 a jeweled hilt. Those valuables were all in an arrow bag to which new riches were now added. “We’ll share it out later,” Hook decreed. “Now come on, get out of here! Bows!”
His bow had been undamaged by his fall. He took it in his left hand, slung the poleax on his shoulder, and laid an arrow on the cord. He climbed the pit’s side into a gray dawn streaked by dark smoke.
In front of him a battle raged around the sow and around the pit that held the King’s Daughter. The French had captured both, but the English had streamed from their camp and now outnumbered the raiding party, which was being forced inexorably back. Trumpets blew, the signal for the French to break off their fight and retreat to Harfleur. Flames licked at the sow’s heavy timbers and at the swinging screen sheltering the bombard. Men-at-arms were hacking at each other, blades flashing reflected light as they slashed and thrust. Hook looked for Sir John’s rampant lion banner and saw it to his left. He saw too that Sir John’s men were fighting across the main trench, driving back the large group of French who now formed the attackers’ left wing. “Bows!” Hook called.
He hauled the cord back, drawing it to his right ear. The French had been summoned back to the town, but they dared not turn and run for fear of the close English pursuit, and so they were fighting hard, trying to drive Sir John’s men back into the trench. They were half facing away from Hook and had no idea that he was on their flank. “Aim true,” Hook shouted, wanting none of his arrows to fall on Englishmen, then he released, took another bodkin and that new arrow was only half drawn as the first drove into an enemy’s back. Hook drew full again, saw a Frenchman turn toward the new threat, released, and the arrow slapped into the man’s face, and suddenly the enemy was running, defeated by the unexpected attack from their flank.
A crossbow bolt flashed in front of Hook. A springolt bolt, much larger, churned up a spout of earth as a gun fired from Harfleur’s wall. The stone banged into the ground just behind the archers as yet more bolts flickered through the smoke. The crossbow bolts made a fluttering noise and Hook reckoned their leather fledgings were twisted out of shape, perhaps because they had been badly stored. The bolts were not flying true, but they were still coming too close. Hook glanced at the barbican and saw the enemy crossbowmen taking aim from its summit. He turned and sped an arrow toward them, then called to his men. “Stop shooting! Get to the trench!”
The French were retreating fast now, but they had done what they had set out to do, which was to damage the siege-works. Three of the cannon, including the King’s Daughter, would never fire again, and all along the trenches parapets had been thrown down and men killed. And now, from the broken ramparts, the defenders jeered at the English as the returning raiding party negotiated the deep ditch in front of the broken barbican. Arrows still followed the French and some men were struck and slid into the ditch’s bottom, but the sally had been a success. The English works burned and the garrison’s insults stung.
“Bastards,” Sir John was saying repeatedly. “They caught us sleeping, the bastards!”
“The Savage isn’t touched,” Hook reported stoically, “but they broke the Redeemer.”
“We’ll break them, the goddam bastards!” Sir John said.
“And none of us was hurt,” Hook added.
“We’ll hurt them, by Christ,” Sir John vowed. His face was twisted by anger. The siege was already bogged down, but now the enemy had delivered another hard blow to the English hopes. Sir John shuddered as an enemy man-at-arms, taken prisoner, was ushered down the trench. For a heartbeat it looked as though Sir John would unleash his fury on the hapless man, but then he saw Melisande and released his frustration on her instead. “What in the name of suffering Christ is she doing here?” he demanded of Hook. “Jesus Christ on the cross, are you turd-witted? Can’t be without your woman for a goddamned minute?”
“It was not Nick!” Melisande called defiantly. She was holding the crossbow, though she had not shot with it. “It was not Nick,” she said again, “and he did tell me to go away.”
Sir John’s courtesy toward women overcame his anger. He grunted what might have been an apology, and then Melisande was explaining herself, talking in fast French, gesturing toward the camp, and as she spoke Sir John’s face showed a renewed anger. He turned on Hook. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what, Sir John?”
“That a bastard priest has threatened her?”
“I fight my own battles,” Hook said sullenly.
“No!” Sir John thrust a gauntleted hand to strike Hook’s shoulder. “You fight my battles, Hook,” he punched Hook’s shoulder again, “that’s what I pay you for. But if you fight mine, then I fight yours, you understand? We are a company!” Sir John shouted the last four words so loudly that men fifty yards down the trench turned to watch him. “We are a company! No one threatens any one of us without threatening all of us! Your girl should be able to walk naked through the whole army and not a man will dare touch her because she belongs to us! She belongs to our company! By Christ I’ll kill the holy bastard for this! I’ll rip the spine out of his goddam throat and feed his shriveled prick to the dogs! No one threatens us, no one!”
Sir John, with his real enemies safely back behind their smoke-rimmed ramparts, was looking for a fight. And Hook had just given him one.
Hook watched as Melisande spooned honey into Father Christopher’s mouth. The priest was sitting, his back supported by a barrel that had come from England filled with smoked herrings. He was skeletally thin, his face was pale and tired and he was plainly as weak as a fledgling, but he was alive.
“Cobbett’s dead,” Hook said, “and Robert Fletcher.”
“Poor Robert,” Father Christopher said, “how’s his brother?”
“Still alive,” Hook said, “but he’s sick.”
“Who else?”
“Pearson’s dead, Hull is, Borrow and John Taylor.”
“God have mercy on them all,” the priest said and made the sign of the cross. “The men-at-arms?”