A stir in the trench made Hook turn to see the king edging through the crowded ranks. He wore full battle armor, though he had yet to pull on his helmet. His breast and back plates were covered with a surcoat on which the royal arms were blazoned bright, crossed by the red of Saint George. The king carried a broad-bladed war-ax as well as his sheathed sword. He had no shield, but nor did any other knight or man-at-arms. Their plate armor was protection enough and iron-bound shields were a relic of olden days. The king nodded companionably to the archers. “Take the barbican,” he said as he walked along the trench, “and the city must surely fall. God be with you.” He repeated the phrases as he worked his way along the trench, followed by a squire and two men-at-arms. “I shall go with you,” he said as he neared Hook. “If God wants me to rule France then He will protect us! God be with you! And keep me company, fellows, as we take back what is rightfully ours!”
“String your bows,” Sir John Holland said when the king had gone past. “Won’t be long now!” Hook braced one end of his big bow against his right foot and bent it so that he could loop the string about the upper nock.
“Shoot high with the fire arrows!” Thomas Evelgold growled. “You can’t do a full draw or you’ll scorch your hand! So shoot high! And make sure the pitch is well alight before you loose!”
The gray light seeped brighter. Hook, gazing between two gabions of the battered parapet, could see that the barbican was a wreck. Its great iron-bound timbers that had once formed such a formidable wall had been broken and driven in by gunfire, yet the enemy had patched the gaps with more timbers so that the whole outlying fort now resembled an ugly hill studded with wooden balks. The summit, which had once stood close to forty feet high, was half that now, yet it was still a formidable obstacle. The face was steep, the ditch deep, and there was room at the top for forty or fifty crossbowmen and men-at-arms. Banners hung down the ruined face, displaying saints and coats of arms. Once in a while a helmeted face would peer past a timber as the men on the ragged top watched for the expected assault.
“You start shooting your fire arrows when the guns fire!” Sir John Cornewaille reminded his men. “That’s the signal!
Shoot steadily! If you see a man trying to extinguish the fires, kill the bastard!”
The coals in the nearest brazier shifted, provoking a spurt of light and a galaxy of sparks. A page crouched beside the iron basket with a handful of kindling that he would pile on the coals to make the flames to light the pitch-soaked arrows. Gulls wheeled and flocked above the salt marsh where the bodies of the dead were thrown into the tidal creeks. The gulls of Normandy were getting fat on English dead. The wafer was still stuck in Hook’s dry mouth.
“Any moment now,” Sir William Porter said as though that would be a comfort to the waiting men.
There was a creaking sound and Hook looked to his left to see men turning the windlass that lifted the tilting screen in front of the nearest gun. The French saw it too and a springolt bolt whipped from the ramparts to thump into the lifting screen. A gunner pulled a gabion away from the cannon’s black mouth.
And the gun fired.
The pitch that coated the stone had caught fire from the powder’s explosion so that the gun-stone looked like a sear of dull light as it whipped from the smoke to flash across the broken ground and crash into the barbican.
“Now!” Sir John Holland called and the page piled the kindling onto the coals so that bright flames burst from the brazier. “Don’t let the arrows touch each other,” Evelgold advised as the archers held the first missiles in the newly roused fire. More guns fired. A timber on the barbican shattered and a spill of earth scumbled down the steep face. Hook waited till his pitch bouquet was well alight, then placed the arrow on the string. He feared the ash shaft would burn through, so he hauled fast, winced as the flames burned his left hand, aimed high and released quickly. Other fire arrows were already arcing toward the barbican, their flight slow and awkward. His own arrow leaped off the string and trailed sparks as it fluttered. It fell short. Other arrows were thumping into the splintered timbers of the barbican. The cannon smoke drifted like a screen between the archers and their target.
“Keep shooting,” Sir John Holland called.
Hook took the rag he used to wax his bow from a pouch and wrapped it about his left hand to protect himself from the flames. His second arrow flew true, striking one of the broken balks of wood. The burning missiles curved through the early light in showers of fire, and the barbican was already dotted with small flames as more and more arrows fell. Hook saw defenders moving on the makeshift rampart and guessed they were pouring water or earth down the barbican’s face and so he took a broadhead and shot it fast and true. Then he loosed his last fire arrow and saw that the flames were spreading and smoke was writhing from the broken barbican in a hundred places. One of the banners was alight, its linen flaring sudden and bright. He loosed three more broadheads at the ramparts, and just then a trumpet called from a few yards down the trench and the men carrying the bundled faggots pushed past him, climbed the parapet, and ran forward.
“After them!” Sir John Holland shouted, “give them arrows!”
The archers and men-at-arms scrambled from the trench. Now Hook could shoot over the heads of the men in front, aiming at the crossbowmen who suddenly crowded the barbican’s smoke-wreathed parapet. “Arrows,” he bellowed, and a page brought him a fresh bag. He was shooting instinctively now, sending bodkin after bodkin at the defenders who were little more than shadows in the thickening smoke. There were shouts from the ditch’s edge. Men were dying there, but their faggots were filling the deep hole.
“For Harry and Saint George!” Sir John Cornewaille bellowed. “Standard-bearer!”
“I’m here!” a squire, given the task of carrying Sir John’s banner, called back.
“Forward!”
The men-at-arms went with Sir John, shouting as they advanced over the uneven, broken and scorched ground. The archers came behind. The trumpet still sounded. Other men were advancing to the left and right. The bowmen who had filled the ditch had run to either side and were now shooting arrows up at the rampart. Crossbow bolts smacked into men. One of Sir John’s men opened his mouth suddenly, clutched his belly and, without a sound, doubled over and fell. Another man-at-arms, the son of an earl, had blood dripping from his helmet and a bolt sticking from his open visor. He staggered, then fell to his knees. He shook off Hook’s helping hand and, with the bolt still in his shattered face, managed to stand and run forward again.
“Shout louder, you bastards!” Sir John called, and the attackers gave a ragged cry of Saint George. “Louder!”
A gun punched rancid smoke from the town’s walls and its stone slashed diagonally across the rough ground where the attackers advanced. A man-at-arms was struck on the thigh and he spun around, blood splashing high on his jupon, and the gun-stone kept going, disemboweling a page and still it flew, blood drops trailing, to vanish somewhere over the marshes. An archer’s bow snapped at the full draw and he cursed. “Don’t give the bastards time! Kill them!” Sir John Cornewaille bellowed as he jumped down onto the faggots that filled the ditch.
And now the shouting was constant as the first attackers staggered on the uneven faggots that did not entirely fill the moat. Crossbow bolts hissed down, and the defenders added stones and lengths of timber that they hurled from the barbican’s high rampart. Two more guns fired from the town walls, belching smoke, their stones slashing harmlessly behind the attackers. Trumpets were calling in Harfleur and the crossbows were shooting from the walls. So long as the attackers were close to the barbican they were safe from the missiles loosed from the town, but some men were trying to clamber up the bastion’s eroded flanks and there they were in full sight of Harfleur’s defenders.