Hook emptied his arrow bag at the men on the barbican’s summit, then looked around for a page with more arrows, but could see none. “Horrocks,” he shouted at his youngest archer, “go and find arrows!” He saw a wounded archer, not one of his men, sitting a few paces away and he took a handful of arrows from the man’s bag and trapped one between his thumb and the bowstave. The English banners were at the foot of the barbican and most of the men-at-arms were on its lower slopes, trying to climb between the flames that burned fiercely to blind the defenders with smoke. It was like trying to scramble up the face of a crumbling bluff, but a bluff in which fires burned and smoke writhed. The French were bellowing defiance. Their best weapons now were the stones they hurled down the face and Hook saw a man-at-arms tumble back, his helmet half crushed by a boulder. The king was there, or at least his standard was bright against the smoke and Hook wondered if the king had been the man he saw falling with a crushed helmet. What would happen if the king died? But at least he was there, in the fight, and Hook felt a surge of pride that England had a fighting king and not some half-mad monarch who circled his body with straps because he believed he was made of glass.
Sir John’s banner was on the right now, joined there by the three bells on Sir William Porter’s flag. Hook shouted at his men to follow as he ran to the ditch’s edge. He jumped in, landing on the corpse of a man in plate armor. A crossbow bolt had pierced the man’s aventail, spreading blood from his ravaged throat. Someone had already stripped the body of sword and helmet. Hook negotiated the uncertain faggots and hauled himself up the far side where the smoke was thick. He loosed three arrows, then put his last one across the bowstave. The flames were growing stronger as they fed on the barbican’s broken timbers and those fires, designed to blind the defenders, were now a barrier to the attackers. Arrows hissed overhead, evidence that the pages had found more and brought them to the archers, but Hook was too committed to the attack now to go back and replenish his arrow bag. He ran to his right, dodging bodies, unaware of the crossbow bolts that struck around him. He saw Sir John precariously perched on top of some iron-bound timbers from where he stared upward at the men who taunted the attackers. One of those defenders appeared briefly and hoisted a boulder over his head, ready to hurl it down at Sir John, and Hook paused, drew, released, and his arrow caught the man in his armpit so that he turned slowly and fell back out of sight.
A gust of the east wind swirled the smoke away from the barbican’s right-hand flank and Hook saw an opening there, a cave in the half-collapsed tower that had defended the seaward side. He slung the bow and took the poleax off his shoulder. He shouted incoherently as he ran, then as he jumped up the barbican’s face and scrabbled for a foothold in the steep rubble slope. He was at the right-hand edge of the broken fort and he could see down the southern face of Harfleur where the harbor lay. Defenders on the walls could also see him, and their crossbow bolts thumped into the barbican, but Hook had rolled into the cave that was a ledge of rubble sheltered by collapsed timbers. There was scarce room to move in the space that was little more than a wild dog’s den. Now what? Hook wondered. The crossbow bolts were hissing just beyond his shallow refuge. He could hear men shouting and it seemed to Hook that the French shouted louder, evidence they believed they were winning. He leaned slightly outward trying to get a glimpse of Sir John, but just then an eddy of wind blew a great gout of smoke to shroud Hook’s aerie.
Yet just to his right, toward the face of the barbican, he saw the metal hoops that strapped three great tree trunks together, and the hoops, he thought, made a ladder upward and the smoke was hiding him and so he leaped across and clung to the timbers with his left hand while his boots found a small foothold on another of the iron rings. He reached up with the poleax and hooked it over the top ring and hauled himself up, up, and he was nearly at the top and the French had not seen him because of the smoke and because they were watching the howling mass of Englishmen who were trying to clamber up the barbican’s center where the slope was the least precipitous. Bolts, stones, and broken timbers rained down on them, while the English arrows flitted through the smoke in answer.
“Hook!” a voice roared beneath him. “Hook, you bastard! Pull me up!”
It was Sir John Cornewaille. Hook lowered the poleax, let Sir John grip the hammer head, and then hauled him across to the timbers.
“You don’t get ahead of me, Hook,” Sir John growled, “and what in Christ’s name are you doing here? You’re meant to be shooting arrows.”
“I wanted to see what was on the other side of this ruin,” Hook said. Flames crept up the timbers, getting closer to Sir John’s feet.
“You wanted to see…” Sir John began, then gave a bark of laughter. “I’m getting goddam roasted. Pull me up more.” Hook again used the poleax to lift Sir John, this time to the top of the timbers. The two of them were like flies on a broken, burning pillar, perched just below the makeshift parapet, but still unseen by the defenders. “Sweet Jesus Christ and all his piss-drinking saints, but this seems a good enough place to die,” Sir John said, and slipped the sling of his battle-ax off his shoulder. “Are you going to die with me, Hook?”
“Looks like it, Sir John.”
“Good man. Push me up first, then join me, and let’s die well, Hook, let’s die very well.”
Hook took hold of the back of Sir John’s sword belt and, when he got the nod, heaved. Sir John vanished upward, tumbled over the wall, and gave his war-shout. “Harry and Saint George!” And for Harry, Saint George, and Saint Crispinian, Hook followed.
And screamed.
EIGHT
“You won’t die here,” Saint Crispinian said.
Hook hardly heard the voice because he was screaming a battle cry that was part terror and part exhilaration.
Hook and Sir John had reached the top of the barbican where the remnants of the fighting platform lay. The English bombardment had shattered the barbican’s face so that the earth and rubble filling had spilled out and what had once been the fighting platform was now a crude lumpy space. The rearward wall, looking toward the city’s Leure Gate, was much less damaged and served as a screen to hide what happened on the broken, rough summit from the defenders of Harfleur’s walls. That summit was now a treacherous heap of earth, stones, and burning timbers, which was crammed with crossbowmen and men-at-arms. Hook and Sir John had come from their left flank, and now Sir John attacked the enemy like the avenging angel.
He was fast. That was why he was the most feared tournament fighter in Christendom. In the time it took a man to strike a blow, Sir John gave two. Hook saw it because, once again, it seemed to him that time itself had slowed. He was moving to Sir John’s right, aware suddenly that Saint Crispinian had broken his silence and feeling a great surge of relief that the saint was still his patron. Hook lunged with his poleax as Sir John used his double-bladed battle-ax in short brutal strokes. The first smashed the roundel protecting a man-at-arms’s knee, the second, a rising slash, gutted a crossbowman, and the third felled the man-at-arms whose knee had been broken. Another man-at-arms turned to drive a sword at Sir John, but Hook’s poleax sliced into his side, piercing the edge of his breastplate and throwing him back on the men behind. Hook just kept ramming, driving the man back, crushing him into his comrades, and Sir John was making a whooping noise, a sound of pure joy. Hook was screaming, though he was not aware of it, and using his huge archer’s strength to push the enemy back while Sir John was taking advantage of their confusion to chop, wound, and kill.