‘Draw!’ called Sam Bibbo at my back. No one had named him master archer, but archers aren’t men-at-arms: they have strange, craftsmanlike notions of leadership. Sam was widely held to be the best bow, and that made him master archer.
When you see 2,000 war bows bent in earnest, it stops your heart. The white bows go down, swooping like hawks, then they rise as the archers bend them, like a great flock of birds turning and rising together, and at the top of their flight-
‘And loose!’
Two thousand shafts, loosed in the same breath.
They make a noise, like 100 nuns whispering at Mass.
‘Nock!’ Sam roared.
‘Draw! And loose!’
There were horses down all along the German ranks, and a few men. Germans don’t bard their horses like the French do.
Because unlike the French, they don’t fight us.
Horses scream.
‘Nock!’ Sam screamed. He was out of practice and his voice broke a little.
‘Draw! And loose!’ Another 500 pounds of steel and wood went off to meet the Germans. Every war arrow weighs almost a quarter of a London pound.
The trio of German officers were yelling at the top of their lungs — you could tell that from their posture. As I watched, one took a clothyard of ash under his arm, right through his body, and fell.
‘Nock!’ Sam called.
‘Draw!’ The only noise from the English was the muscular grunt of 2,000 men drawing their great bows together.
‘Loose!’
The Hungarians broke.
They turned and ran, their small, swift horses carrying them clear of the arrow fall. They were led by knights, who wavered longer, but the mounted archers were gone in as long as it takes to tell the story.
All 3,000 of them.
Sterz held up his baton.
Fingers reaching for shafts stopped, paused and reached instead for swords.
‘Forward!’ he called.
By the sweet and gentle Christ, my friends, and by all the saints, that water was cold. And it came to my hips. Ice water to your balls!
Every one of us gasped as we hit that water. It filled my sabatons, my greaves and my clothes.
But 8,000 men can break the force of any stream. It was six paces across, and our front was well dressed — that is, we were all level with each other. Back then, we never practised any such thing — then we were scrambing up the far bank. Men grabbed bushes and trees — it was a three-foot climb out of the icy torrent — men behind pushed.
Then we were up, and it felt as if I could reach out and touch the Germans.
Even then, I thought the Germans would charge and make a fight of it.
Konrad von Landau rode to the front and called something in German. I don’t know what he was saying, but he sounded like he was saying, ‘Stand! Stand!’
They were melting away.
We formed and we did it quickly — we’re not the Legions of Heaven, or Old Romans, but we were a company and we had spirit. Then we started forward, spears held two-handed. The closer we got to the Germans, the faster we were going. Men stumbled and fell — I remember that field, and it looked as smooth as a tile in a Flemish bath, but it was covered with fist-sized rocks, left by the glaciers, and if you got one under your heel, down you went.
As is often the way, everything suddenly happened at once.
The Germans nearest von Landau charged, but they’d waited far too long, and we were closer than twenty paces, and their horses were unsure from their first steps whether to face our spears or not. Others among the Germans were running, or sitting where they were.
I’m going to guess they didn’t trust the men to their right and left.
Fiore was three men to my left. I heard him say, quite distinctly, ‘But we won’t get to fight at all!’
The Germans came at us, but their horse flinched, and we charged into them rather than the other way round.
I hadn’t faced another man in combat for a year — almost to a day.
I punched my spear into the armpit of the first German I met. He raised his sword to cut at me, and down he went, over the cantle of his saddle. I had to push past his horse to go on — the horse just stood its ground like an equine statue; I’ve never seen the like.
I remember the next man because I took him for ransom. He had a lance, which he endeavoured to use against me with both hands. I slammed it to earth with my spear and returned his stroke with a blow to his aventail, rocked him in the saddle and stabbed him three times in as many heartbeats. Each blow turned by his breastplate, but I had practised this at the pell — my point was looking for a weak joint and he couldn’t shake me.
My fourth blow popped his visor and went into his helmet — by an odd twist of luck and armouring, it went over his head, between his head and the padding of his helmet. So instead of instant death, it stretched his spine and gaffed him from the saddle as his horse tried to turn, so that he was on his back. By ill luck, he hit one of the small stones and was knocked unconscious.
Or perhaps it was good luck. He lived.
My third German knight was trying to run. I killed his horse from behind, and left him for Robert or Arnaud. They took him.
I was now deep into the German lines and the battle was over. The Germans were running, except for a band of perhaps 100, gathered around their great knight, von Landau, and they were facing Sir John’s men — and mine. I left off pursuing stragglers and ran at the rear of von Landaus’s stand. Of course he didn’t want to be taken, and he was still calling on his men to stand and not run. The English no longer had any order — everyone was going in all directions, looking for men to take and ransom.
War between mercenaries can be formulaic, but battle is always chaos and death.
The knot around von Landau grew smaller and smaller; it was very like the end at Poitiers. I faced a Milanese knight in superb armour, and he beat my spear aside with his sword; I caught his sword on my spear haft, and he cut into it, once, twice, and then the spear broke. I threw the shards at his horse to make it shy and drew my longsword. He came at me again, the horse pressing against me, so I dropped and went under the horse — got a nasty knock from the beast — and came up under his stirrup. I cut into the unarmoured back of his thigh and he yelled. Kenneth, the Irishman, got his other leg and pulled him out of his stirrups. He screamed — that must have pulled every muscle in his hips — and then he was dead, with Seamus’s great axe through his head.
Waste of a ransom, in my opinion, but the Irish are mad.
I was one horse from von Landau. If I could kill him or take him, someone would knight me — I could feel it and it was all I wanted.
He was sword to sword with Fiore.
He hammered the man on foot, and Fiore covered himself, so that he seemed to live in a tent of steel — every blow fell like a hammer only to trail away. Some fell so hard on Fiore’s sword that sparks flew in broad daylight. Blow after blow.
It is not done, even among mercenaries, to interrupt a fair fight between peers. So even though von Landau was mounted and a famous name, no one came forward to gut his horse.
Landau urged his mount into the Italian.
I prepared to put him down. But I’d have to do it in single combat, and I didn’t want Fiore to die just so I could get my spurs.
Fiore’s sword took another hammer blow and snapped.
He ducked under Landau’s next blow, fell to one knee and picked up one of the fist-sized rocks.
As Landau’s sword went back, Fiore threw. The stone hit just above the mercenary captain’s open visor, and Landau fell as his horse reared.
He hit the ground stone dead.
Hah! True as the gospel, messieurs. It’s in Villani! The best swordsman who ever lived killed Konrad von Landau with a rock.
That night, we were in a clean inn in Romagnano — not in a camp or a muddy tent, nor lying on the ground. I rather liked war in Italy, so far.