A rain of fire slashed down through the tinder-dry foliage of the wood wherein the freebooters milled, covering every quadrant and puncturing the skins of naphtha hanging in the canopy.
The blood-red glare of the exploding skins lit the landscape for dozens of miles. On the crest of a hill just north of Dol, Gorlon glanced back, his misaligned features awed as he gazed on the inferno. By his reckoning, almost the entirety of the free-companies had blundered headlong into the disaster. Even as he and his officers watched, frantic figures could be seen floundering in the white-hot heart of a conflagration which roared from the forest floor to a hundred feet above the tips of the tallest trees.
It was at first light, when the smog of smoke and morning mist had cleared, and Lancelot, Gawaine and their men-at-arms advanced on horseback through the ash and embers. Scenes of horror greeted them: scores of fallen men, more than they could count, lay huddled together, blackened, twisted, and melted into each other. A fortunate few were riddled with arrows and had probably died swiftly; some had perished on their own blades; others had been incinerated in attitudes of prayer, desperately seeking shrift before plunging into that even more terrible fire. The stench was nauseating, eye-watering.
“We couldn’t beat them in a straight fight,” Lancelot reminded Gawaine, who nodded grimly, for once every jest knocked out of him. “They were too many. They’d have killed our men as surely as the unarmed villagers they massacred so routinely.”
They assessed the town of Dol, to which only minor damage had been done, and rounded up the small groups of freebooters who had either crawled there with burns and arrow wounds, or had simply stayed behind to cower in sheds and stables. It did not take long to establish that those most responsible for the path of destruction had headed north. Gawaine was thus to take the infantry and escort Priamus across the border and northeast to Paris, while Lancelot mounted a pursuit.
By Lancelot’s estimation, the freebooters still in harness numbered between six and seven hundred. But they were easy enough to track — by the trail of items they discarded to lighten their load. Some even abandoned their loot.
But not Sir Turgeis of Coutrances.
The Jackal of the Southeast was master of a cavalcade of twenty wagons, each crammed to the brim with sacks of coin and silver plate. He would not release a single spoon, and so he and his party lagged dangerously behind the rest. Perhaps it was no surprise when, around mid-day, an arrow struck him in the back, pierced his habergeon and severed his spine. He fell from his horse, twisted and paralysed. His underlings, who saw this as a double opportunity — both to lighten their load and to enrich themselves — ignored him. He wept and pleaded until a wagon wheel passed across his body, crushing his ribcage.
Baroni Benevento, fearing more for his skin than his ill-accrued wealth, abandoned his haul altogether, and rode east, accompanied only by his most loyal bodyguards: eight raw-boned Danes who had never yet failed him. But like their master, these doughty fellows also had survival instincts. Hoping to curry favour with their pursuers, they tied the disgraced merchant to an alder tree, where they used him for axe-throwing practice. When a band of Lancelot’s mounted archers rode up it was all over for Benevento, and his former bodyguard willingly laid down their arms and went into custody.
The others, who had chosen to remain close to Gorlon, made it as far as the coast. It was believed that Mont St. Michel, the island stronghold, could be made defensible and that, as King Arthur and his army would soon have bigger fish to fry, they might, if they proved defiant enough, be left alone.
Not so.
When Gorlon crested the last rise, he found the strait between the coast of France and his island-home hosting several vessels, including one particularly large galleass, at whose prow and stern the timber castles were draped with flags bearing Arthur’s dragon standard. Smoke unfurled from the black barge that normally transported the ogre captain to and from his island, as it burned at its mooring.
Along the beach from both sides, knights and men-at-arms cantered with lances levelled. On the skyline at Gorlon’s back, Lancelot appeared with his men.
Close to the water’s edge, a royal pavilion had been pitched. Banners and shields hung alongside it. More squadrons of armoured horsemen were mounted to its rear. In front, there was a table at which was seated a man in full mail with burnished steel roundels at his joints and a handsome white and scarlet surcoat belted at his waist. He barely acknowledged Gorlon’s arrival as he dined on brisket, sweet-peas, onions and carrots. With his mail aventail pulled back and the sun embossing his light-brown hair, this could only be King Arthur himself. The two knights flanking him — Sir Bedivere and Sir Kay — were less relaxed, with visors down and longswords drawn.
Not that further fighting was in any way likely. With the forces of Albion circling them, the remaining freebooters could do nothing more than disarm themselves, though one — Darra O’Lug — attempted to break for it, galloping at a gap which briefly appeared in the enemy ranks. He made it through, but was pursued and caught easily from behind, a longsword cleaving his tonsured cranium at a single stroke.
At length the King stood and dabbed his mouth with a napkin. He approached Gorlon on foot. “They told us you were coming. We so hoped we hadn’t missed you.”
Gorlon twisted his tusked mouth into a hideous, sneering smile. He said nothing as he and his men were put in chains and led away.
“Prisoners?” Arthur asked, as Lancelot dismounted.
“A handful slipped through our fingers, but I’d say just short of two thousand.”
Arthur stroked his beard.
“Too many to hang,” Bedivere observed.
“I agree,” Arthur said. “I’ll settle for having them all castrated. But not our friend Gorlon. A real example must be made of him.”
The destruction of the free-companies was not the end of Arthur’s campaign in Brittany.
It was around this time that Emperor Lucius was victorious at Nantes. He finally persuaded the city to yield when, at great cost to himself both in time and money, he ordered the construction of thirty siege-towers, including a one-hundred-and-fifty-foot helepolis,24 each of its four levels armed with three catapults and three arbalest. With their ramparts broken, what remained of the garrison raised a white flag rather than face an onslaught of this magnitude. Emperor Lucius took the surrender in a grand ceremony, only to discover halfway through that King Hoel had escaped weeks earlier and, even now, was raising new forces.
The Emperor was so enraged that he failed to speak for the remainder of that day. Only the following morning had he regained his equilibrium. He emerged from his pavilion and issued orders that one-third of his forces were to advance into Brittany, two army-groups of thirty thousand each to invest the castles of Fougeres and Vitre, the rest to march through the centre of the kingdom, ultimately to attack Brest. All this time, of course, the bulk of King Arthur’s forces were coming ashore, not in Brittany but in France, north of Mont St. Michel, far beyond the range of Roman scouts.
It was therefore even more of a shock for Lucius, still quartered on the Loire, when his breakfast was interrupted by the news that his significantly reduced encampment was being approached — not from the west, as he’d expected, but from the north. When he enquired who by, he was speechless to learn that it was King Arthur and his entire host.