‘De Clare,’ he bellowed. ‘The Van, to me.’
There was a surge, like a sluice gate opening; Thweng fought to control Garm as the knights surged past him and Buchan, reining in, turned and pirouetted his horse, his entire demeanour a question. Wearily, Thweng let Garm have his head and the joyous horse bounded after the others; he found himself, briefly, alongside Hereford, the Earl helmetless and dazed, jouncing like a half-filled sack and carried along by the plunging madness of his own warhorse into the whip of trees.
Addaf felt them before he heard them, saw the acorn and twigs at his feet tremble and knew, from old, what that meant; the blood rushed up in him and he roared like a bull.
‘Scatter — scatter. The mochyn saesneg are coming.’
The pig English ploughed through the fleeing Welsh archers like maddened boar; Addaf ducked round a tree, saw another that was thicker and made for it, ran into the shoulder of a yellow-toothed, snapping horse and bounced to the leaf-littered roots.
He rolled and scambled up, saw Crach Thomas vanish with a despairing scream under the great steel hooves of a knot of riders, saw a knight in green and white skewer young Ithel Mawr like a skinned rabbit on a spit, and then he ran, blind with panic.
The Scots heard the screams, felt the tremble and those who knew warned the others to brace, brace.
‘Hold to the line,’ screamed Gilbert de la Haye and, since he was commander here, the King’s bodyguard planted themselves like the trees in front of them and braced, the armoured front rank bent at one knee, the second rank, equally mailled, shouldering their long spears and planting one foot firmly on the spear butt dug into the ground in front of them.
A man ran out of the trees, looking frantically behind him and carrying a bow; he turned to see where he was running, spotted the massed ranks of spears and skidded to a halt, screaming. There was a pause, and then he hurled himself at the feet of the astonished front ranks and started to wriggle between the forest of legs, until one of the lurking knifemen in the dark of that sweating thicket grabbed him by his hair and cut the Welsh shrieks from his throat.
They were still echoing when the first elements of the English horse plunged out of the trees, chasing panicked Welshmen out of the dim and into the sunlight. Blinded by the transition, horses and riders balked and wavered, but the next wave was thundering on after them and horses collided, screaming and snapping.
Forced forwards, eyes scarred by light, the leading horses rode up to the ranks of spearmen at no better than a trot, with half of them trying to veer right and left, banging shoulder to shoulder with others. The ones at the fringes discovered the Scots archers on the flanks of the spearwall and the first to find them was Gloucester.
An arrow hit him on the placket, a reeling clang on his breastbone that drove the wind from him, made him jerk the rein and tear his horse’s head back. Half-blind, half-mad and totally confused, the animal veered sideways and ran on to a knot of sharp points and glaive blades, worked by furious-elbowed men with screaming mouths and desperate eyes.
The horse’s shriek was even louder and the young Earl felt it go, felt the sickening plunge of dying animal and tried to kick free. He only half succeeded — the horse fell and rolled, kicking and shrieking, tangling itself in the long, golden tippets trailing from its rider’s helm.
Gloucester rolled free — was snatched up short, as if grabbed by his hair, and collapsed back choking as the helmet thongs dug under his chin. Frantically, howling with frustration and anguish, he wrenched at the great helm, as if the padded gryphon was a living beast which had seized him in its claws.
He saw the adder-tongue flick of spears kill the horse, saw the horror of how close he was to the spear ranks: the legs like a tangled copse; mailled braies, leather shoes, bare horny feet and filthy calves. Scuttling from the dark, fetid depths of them came the dirk men on all fours, moving like mad-grinning spiders to finish him.
He bellowed and tugged, but the helm stayed on and the treacherous tippets chained him to the dead horse; he fumbled frantically for his sword.
Thweng saw it in the instant he broke from cover, saw the dead horse, the shackle of tippets, the frantic struggles of the man, the dark vengeance scrambling out towards him. He bawled at Badenoch and waved his sword in case he could not be heard and plunged forward into the haze of dust and grass motes chewed up from the dry earth by hundreds of hooves.
The darting little figures scampered back under the protective hedge of spears, which started to stab at this new warhorse. Thweng let Garm rear and strike, the neck stretching like a snake as he snapped and squealed; Sir Marmaduke felt the impact of the spears on the padded barding and saw the straw wisp out from the ruin of it, then he threw his lance into the grimace of faces and hauled out his sword.
He slashed once, twice, and the Earl staggered as the tippets parted and freed him. Then, as Badenoch and others rode forward, pressing and cavorting against the wicked hedge which stabbed and slashed at them, Thweng flung one leg over the front cantle of the saddle and slid to the ground, feeling the jolt on his knees. Too old for this, he thought …
He cut backwards and forward with his sword, keeping the spears away from him — though one clattered and skidded off his shield as he grabbed the Earl and flung him towards the plunging Garm who remained, obedient and blowing, near his master.
Dazed, fevered, frantic, the Earl knew what Thweng was doing and clambered up into the saddle, sobbing with relief. Thweng flung him the rein, slapped Garm on the neck and the pair of them were suddenly gone from him.
A figure launched from the undergrowth of the spearwall, naked dirk stabbing for Thweng’s helmet slit; he stepped into it, shouldered the man to the ground with the shield and cut the throat from him as easy as parting cheese rind. A hooked bill caught his surcote and tore it, pulling him further forward and off balance, so that he half fell at the feet of the Scots.
Another figure came at him and Thweng had time to see that he was bare-headed and part-bald so that the hair left to him stuck up in tufts like a moulting owl. The man collided with him, trying to wrestle him to the ground and thrust the narrow-bladed dirk inside the great helm, but Thweng got his shield in the way and heaved.
The man flew over Thweng, landing on the Earl’s dead horse with a thump that drove the air out of both of them with a great farting groan; before he could recover one of the Shadows stabbed him repeatedly with his lance until it stuck and he had to let it go.
Thweng staggered back from the spearwall just as Badenoch forced himself between them, throwing his lance. He would, Thweng was sure, have hauled off his helm and hurled that, too, save that arrows were flicking at him.
Then he heard a horn blast; Hereford had recovered himself and was ordering the Van to break off the attack. Sir Marmaduke trudged away, seemingly contemptuous of the enemy at his back but, in reality, too staggeringly weary to care. He saw Badenoch canter up, salute with his sword and then remain a little way away as a polite escort; Thweng was grateful and made a vow to thank the little Scots lord personally.
A little way into the forest he saw two knots of sweating knights, half dragging, half carrying the bodies of Henry de Bohun and his squire and he wondered how many lives had been lost to achieve that. Yet he knew it was something rescued from the stunning disaster of a knight’s death. It was an almost unheard-of event, even in war, for a knight of such high degree to be slain.
The stun of it was already being felt, Thweng thought, seeing the trembling horses and the sweat-soaked, disbelieving riders trail back through the trees, chased by the flickering shadows and the arrows and the jeers of the men they had failed to best.