Knights of the Hawk

Ten

As expected, the first part of the crossing was the easiest. The marsh there was at its shallowest, the causeway its widest and sturdiest, and we made it without trouble.

Before long we glimpsed the island where the watchtower with the mangonel stood, roughly halfway across the marsh-channel. The first glimmer of gold crept above the eastern horizon and I could suddenly see movement on the Isle. Hundreds upon hundreds of Englishmen with weapons glinting and pennons flying rushed in disarray from their ramparts towards the marsh’s edge, into a storm of missiles being loosed upon them by archers and crossbowmen and even a few small catapults that were positioned on punts and barges out on the fen. Other craft were bringing our spearmen and foot-serjeants in towards the shallows where they could scramble ashore, wade through the murky waters and form a shield-wall amidst the tall reeds to guard against the hordes bearing down upon them. But suitable landing places were few, while the channels leading to them were narrow and easily blocked, which meant that those in the boats to the rear were having to clamber forward from one to the next, all the while encumbered by their shields and heavy spears. War-horns blew; panicked shouts carried across the water as our foot-serjeants marshalled their men and tried to assemble them in some sort of order.

Around a dozen Frenchmen were posted on the watchtower. All of them waved their arms as we approached. ‘Wait,’ they called. ‘Wait!’

Robert slowed his pace and drew to a halt, raising a hand to those behind so that they passed the message on down the line. ‘What is it?’

They were pointing out towards the far shore, and I saw at once the reason for their alarm. The final section of the floating boat-bridge hadn’t yet been secured; in fact several of the pontoons seemed to have drifted free altogether, and even now men were working to manoeuvre them back into position and to anchor them.

I swore. This wasn’t what the king had planned. Unless the boat-bridge was in place, we had no way of reaching the Isle. Our attack would be over before it had even started, and the battle would be lost.

Shouts of protest came from behind. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the rest of the column bunching up as our advance was brought to a halt. Men were berating those in front, trying to push their way forward despite the narrowness of the bridge.

‘Wait!’ I bellowed. ‘Hold position!’

‘Wait!’ Eudo repeated, and Wace behind him, and the next man, and the next, and I only hoped that our warnings were heeded. Of course those knights were impatient, as I was, to slake their thirst for enemy blood, but many would die if they didn’t keep to their ranks.

‘What do we do?’ Robert asked me, his brow furrowed, his eyes desperate. ‘Do we go on?’

‘We have to, lord,’ I said. ‘We can’t turn back now.’

‘But if the boat-bridge isn’t secure-’

‘If we delay any longer here, it won’t matter. We’ll be too late; the rebels will break our spearmen and then cut the pontoons loose, or burn them, and we’ll have no way of reaching the shore. We have to go now, and trust that the bridge will be ready in time. If we don’t, all our efforts will have been for nothing. It’s now or not at all, lord.’

Robert didn’t look sure. I glanced over my shoulder, back along the column, and my gaze settled upon the golden lion upon a scarlet field, the age-old symbol of the Norman dukes, flying proudly in the rising wind. King Guillaume himself had given us this responsibility. If we refused it at this late hour our names would be forever tarnished. We would have cost him his best chance of capturing Elyg and wreaking his revenge upon the rebels who defied him. He would strip us of our lands and the few riches we had to our names, cast us into the deepest, darkest dungeon he could find and leave us there to rot. We could not fail him. Not now.

My heartbeat resounded through my entire body, and I could hear the blood pounding in my skull. My fingers tightened around my shield-straps in one hand and my lance-haft in the other.

And I knew what I had to do. If Robert refused to make the decision, then I would make it for him.

‘With me,’ I cried, raising my weapon aloft so that the steel glimmered in the light of dawn. ‘For Normandy!’

I dug my spurs into Fyrheard’s flank and he reared up, teetering on his hind hooves for a moment, before falling back to earth.

‘Tancred-’ I heard Robert shout, and heard, too, the desperation in his voice, but then his words were drowned out by the cheer that rose up as one thousand voices together shouted out. A bolt of confidence surged through me, and as Fyrheard broke into a canter I found my limbs filled with fresh vigour, my mind with fresh purpose. I had no need to look behind to make sure that the rest of our host was behind me, for I could hear it in the thunder of hooves and the whooping as men revelled in the battle-joy.

A flock of wading birds heard our approach and rose all at once with a clatter of wings and a chorus of alarmed shrieks. I kept a firm hand on Fyrheard’s reins, trusting in his sure-footedness to keep us both alive. The mud swirled and sucked at the foot of the earthen banks, and the marsh-waters lapped at the posts and revetments. A short distance to our right ran the course of the original causeway, the one that had collapsed all those weeks ago. I recognised it not just from the ruined timbers that littered the mud all about, but also from the scores of corpses of horses and men that had been left there to rot without Christian burial, their mail and helmets brown with rust, their flesh blackened and swollen, with what remained of their innards spilling out. They stared unseeing from empty eye sockets, their jaws fixed open as if even in death they were still crying out. Yellowed bone protruded where carrion beasts had picked away the skin and sinew. The stench of their rotting flesh filled my nose, more powerful than anything I had known, and I fought the urge to retch.

I tore my eyes away, focusing on the way ahead and the rebels tumbling in their hundreds down towards the shore. A ragged mass of spears and scythes and hayforks and the long English knives they called seaxes, they charged upon the Norman battle-line, until at last there came a crash like thunder as limewood boards and steel bosses met, and then men on both sides were screaming, shouting, falling, dying. Thus the grim work of the shield-wall began. Behind the protection of their countrymen, the bridge-workers were still labouring to manoeuvre the final few pontoons into place, lashing them together with ropes and anchoring them to the marsh-bottom with stone weights attached to chains, but they did not have much time, for I saw even now that the enemy foot-warriors outnumbered our own, and already it seemed they were forcing them back towards the marsh.

‘On!’ I shouted above the din, trusting that Robert and Pons and Serlo and all the others were with me as I set out across the first of the pontoons, leaving the earthen dykes behind me. Iron clattered upon oak and I felt the planking bob beneath Fyrheard’s hooves, not by much, but enough to send a shiver of doubt through me. ‘On,’ I cried, trying to put those fears from my mind. ‘On, on!’

That was when I heard Robert shouting.

‘It’s too short,’ he cried. ‘The bridge is too short!’

For a moment I didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me, but as I stared at the shore and those Englishmen charging towards us, suddenly sickness gripped my stomach.

He was right.

The line of pontoons did not quite stretch all the way to the Isle’s shore, but came to an end around thirty or forty paces short, in the shallows rather than on dry land. Perhaps the recent rains had swelled the marsh-waters more than the king’s engineers had expected, or else the current had taken one or more of those floating platforms and carried them downstream. I didn’t know, and it hardly mattered. To reach the shore we would now have to fight our way through water that I reckoned would reach up to our mounts’ knees, if not even higher.

‘Keep going,’ I yelled. ‘We can make it!’

I sounded more confident than in truth I felt, but only because I knew we had no choice. Everything depended on us. We couldn’t give up now.

Barely three hundred paces ahead, the Norman shield-wall was beginning to break as the English ran amongst them, driving a wedge into their ranks, surging forward with shining blade-edges raised.

‘Faster!’ I yelled, knowing that if the enemy managed to rout our spearmen, they could hold the shore against us and drive us back into the marsh. With that in mind I spurred Fyrheard from a trot into a canter, which was as fast as I dared ride along those narrow platforms. ‘For Normandy!’

Indeed one flank of the Norman shield-wall had already collapsed, and a group of rebels perhaps two score strong was now racing through the shallows towards the pontoons with axes in hand, having spotted our approach and recognised the danger.

‘Faster!’ I repeated. ‘Ride harder!’

The bridge shook beneath the weight of the charge, and the timbers creaked. At any moment, I thought, they would give way, splinters would fly, and we would all, knights and banner-bearers, destriers and palfreys, be plunged into the fen. Surely it could not fail now, not when we were so close. Fewer than one hundred paces stood between us and the Isle. No Frenchman had managed to come so close in three months on this campaign.

Let the bridge hold, I prayed. Let it hold.

I clenched my teeth. Reed-banks and gold-glistening meres flew past on both sides. The thunder of iron upon timber filled my ears as Fyrheard’s hooves thudded in rapid rhythm upon the oak planking, so loud that I could hear nothing else. Not the shouts of the enemy or my companions. Not the screams of the dying or the clash and scrape of steel on steel up ahead, or the jangle of my mail, or the blood pounding in my skull, or the clatter of the chains anchoring the pontoons, or the creaking of timbers, or the whistle of arrows being loosed by the bowmen in the punts out on the marsh. Only the unrelenting thunder reverberating through my skull.

I was dimly aware of those two score rebels rushing to meet us, crashing thigh-deep through the marsh-waters with steel in hand and the promise of death in their eyes. My attention was fixed upon the bridge’s end, which was growing nearer with every stride. Like any good destrier, Fyrheard was trained to water, so I didn’t expect him to falter or to panic, but nevertheless I felt my stomach lurch and my breath catch in my chest as we galloped along the last pontoon, the final dozen strides, and I saw the marshes looming. My fingers tightened around the haft of my lance and the straps of my shield-

As Fyrheard leapt.

All fell silent. For the briefest moment I had the sensation that we were flying. Beneath us was only air, but not for long, before Fyrheard’s hooves came down, and then suddenly there was water and mud all around. Showers of spray drenched my shoes and my braies and soaked through my mail to plaster my tunic against my arms and chest. Fyrheard was crashing on through the shallows, the marsh reaching as high as his forearm, but he didn’t seem to mind. On my flanks now were Serlo and Robert, and I wondered what had happened to the captain of his knights, whether his horse had stumbled or refused when it came to the water, but there was no time to dwell on that now. I couched my lance under my arm, levelling the point at the enemy. Seeing us charging through the marsh towards them, for the first time the rebels hesitated, unsure whether to attack or to flee.

In the end they failed to do either. I fixed my gaze upon the one who would be my first target, his beard sopping, his long hair clinging to the side of his face, and then it was just as if I were tilting at the quintain. He came to his senses and tried to get out of our path, but too late. Slowed by the water, he only managed to get a couple of paces before I was upon him, ramming my lance into his shoulder. It was only a glancing blow, but it was enough to knock him off balance and make him lose his footing. He sprawled forward into the water, falling under the surface, under Fyrheard’s hooves, and straightaway he was forgotten. Knee to knee, kicking up sheets of spray, we rode on, making space for those behind us to follow. In their desperation to reach the bridge, the enemy had abandoned their serried ranks and were now in disarray. We charged amongst them, filling the morning with the blade-song, freeing our weapon-arms, striking out to left and right as we carved a path through the shallows, making towards dry ground.

An Englishman came at my left flank, bringing his axe around in a wild swing that glanced off my shield-boss, denting the steel and sending a shudder through my arm all the way to my shoulder, only for Robert to ram his lance home into the man’s neck. Another, screaming in rage at the death of his friend, ran at my undefended right hand, aiming his seax at Fyrheard’s belly, but my weapon had the greater reach, and before he could come close enough to strike, I plunged my lance-head down, into his breast, twisting the weapon as it went in, until I felt the crack of ribs and knew I’d found his heart. I left the blade lodged in his breast and he collapsed with a splash, adding his corpse to all the others floating upon the surface. They bobbed on the waves, turning the surrounding waters a dirty crimson.

‘Normandy!’ I yelled, drawing my sword and raising it skywards, hoping to rally our spearmen, whose battle-line had been broken. With few places to go except back into the marsh, however, most of them were fighting on, albeit divided and surrounded. I only hoped that their doggedness would now be rewarded. The rest of Robert’s conroi was with us now, and others besides as rank upon rank of knights spilt from the bridge on to the Isle’s shore. They fanned out in pursuit of the kill, cutting down those who had broken from their shield-wall to come to challenge us, presenting the rebels with a decision: whether to throw themselves into the battle here, and try to drive us back into the marsh, or whether to return to the safety of their fortifications on the higher ground some three hundred paces or so to the north, where they could make a proper stand against us. Already some of their rearmost ranks had turned, preferring the latter, more sensible choice to death at our hands, and it looked as though the message was spreading to the others. They realised that the bridge was ours, that they’d lost that particular struggle, and so as one they were falling back.

At that sight I gave a roar of delight. The field was all but ours, because any moment now Morcar would show himself and give the word to his followers. They would turn on their countrymen, and then the real killing would begin. Against all expectations, we had done it. The bridge had held and we had led King Guillaume and his army to the Isle, and soon, if our luck held, to victory.

‘What’s Morcar’s device?’ I called to Pons and Serlo as we found ourselves briefly with space around us. They both looked back blankly. Glancing around, I found Robert not far off. His face was pale, his eyes wide, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was still alive.

‘Lord,’ I called, and repeated my question.

‘The white stag on a green field,’ he shouted in reply as his hearth-knights rallied around him.

I turned my attention back to the fleeing Englishmen ahead of us, some of whom were casting aside the shields and weapons encumbering them, others slowed by injury, hobbling on sprained ankles and wounded thighs, or bearing bright scarlet gashes to their chests and sides. The battle-joy surged through me, filling me with laughter as we raced from the shallows on to firmer ground, riding down our quarry. They looked back over their shoulders when they heard our hoofbeats upon the turf, closing in on them, and in the whites of their eyes I glimpsed their fear. But the ground was soft and uneven, with tussocks of tall grass everywhere, and bulges and dips and pools of stagnant water that were hard to spot from the saddle, all of which slowed us and meant that although we succeeded in killing a good few stragglers, most of the English were getting away, falling back towards their ramparts, which were now little more than a hundred paces away-

That was when I saw it. The white stag, that noble animal, flying proudly above those earthworks, along which were arrayed rows upon rows of spearmen in gleaming mail.

‘There he is,’ I cried, pointing in its direction, and felt a surge of joy for I knew at that moment that the day belonged to us. ‘It’s him! It’s Morcar!’

Except that his troops were not moving to cut off their countrymen’s retreat, as we’d been expecting. Instead they seemed to be merely holding position, watching, waiting.

‘What’s he doing?’ Serlo shouted. ‘Why isn’t he attacking?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, as an anxious feeling gripped my stomach. Once our first conroi had crossed the bridge, he would turn his spears against his countrymen. That was what he had told us. That was what he had promised. He had given us his own nephew as hostage, as proof of his good faith. We had fulfilled our side of the agreement. We had crossed the bridge and captured the shore. All that remained was for him to make good on his word. What, then, was he waiting for?

That was when I realised. He had never meant to aid us. The rat-turd had pledged his support only so that he could lure us into a trap. Why hadn’t I seen this before now? How could any of us have thought that he, who had broken so many oaths before, should keep to this one?

And a trap it was, for our only hope of withdrawal rested with the bridge and the punts, and neither of those offered a swift escape. While some might get away, others would be left to hold off the enemy at our backs, and we would probably lose almost as many men that way as if we fought the enemy in open battle.

‘He lied to us,’ I said. ‘He betrayed us!’

My grip tightened around my sword-hilt. Without Morcar’s help, we faced an almost impossible struggle. For he held the higher ground, and to have a hope of defeating him, we would have to assault their defences, or else somehow draw them out, and I did not see how we could do either. The king’s plan, so carefully crafted, lay in ruins, and all because of Morcar.

Perhaps it was because my mind was filled with all these thoughts that I didn’t see the danger ahead, or perhaps it would have made no difference. My blood was up and I was thinking only of killing as many of the rebels as I could before they escaped to the protection of their ramparts. Between the grass-heads I managed to glimpse a band of them half running and half stumbling away from us, across the tussocks and through shallow, murky pools.

‘Kill them,’ I yelled to Pons and Serlo, and all those others who were with me, as we charged through the grass after them. ‘Kill them! Kill-’

I was still shouting when a shriek filled my ears and I found myself falling. Fyrheard’s forelegs gave way and I clung to his neck until I could hold on no longer and was pitched sideways. The ground rushed up towards me and I met it hard. My head rattled inside my helmet as I tumbled into a gully, where I found myself looking at the sky, with blood and dirt in my mouth and all the breath knocked from my chest. I was trying to work out what had happened when there came a second shriek, and a third, and suddenly horses were falling all about. I ducked just in time as hooves lashed out barely an arm’s length above my head. Clods of earth and wet turf showered my face.

Panicked shouts filled the air, and then not far off I heard the English battle-cry: ‘Godemite!’

Blinking, I raised myself to my feet. My shield was still on my arm, having somehow survived the fall, but my sword had slipped from my grasp. My head still spinning, I looked around, searching for my blade amidst the mud, and in so doing nearly missed the bearded, leather-clad foeman rushing at me from the side with a seax in hand, a smirk upon his face and victory in his eyes. I raised my shield just in time to meet his strike. He feinted low before thrusting forward over the top edge of my shield towards my face, but I was too quick for him, turning to one side, grabbing his arm in my free hand and twisting hard so that he dropped his weapon. He staggered forwards, howling in pain, and as he did so I landed a kick upon his backside, sending him sprawling.

‘Tancred!’

I looked up to see Wace wheeling about my flank with a spear in each hand. He tossed me one and I caught it, and as the bearded one tried to rise I used both hands to sink it into his thigh, before tugging it free and turning it upwards, driving underneath his jerkin and into his groin. He bellowed out in agony, and I plunged the steel deeper and deeper still, twisting so that it went in all the further, until his cries trailed off and I was sure he was dead.

All was confusion. The rebels, who until a few moments ago had been fleeing, were suddenly turning upon their pursuers, reinforced by a line, three ranks deep, of helmeted and mailed spearmen, who must have been hiding in the long grass, for I could see nowhere else they could have come from. Horses screamed as a forest of blades sprang up towards their bellies; those that were not impaled reared up and kicked their hooves and tossed their heads in terror, only to turn and find themselves with nowhere to go, trapped between the English spears and the rest of the oncoming Normans. Into that chaos the enemy piled themselves. They buried their steel in the animals’ bellies and dragged knights from the saddle, setting upon them with knives and seaxes.

‘Fall back!’ Wace was shouting, though no one but me seemed to hear him.

I looked around for Fyrheard and saw him scrambling out of the gully, which was half as deep as a man was high, and thirty paces from end to end. The rebels had dug ditches amongst the tussocks so as to break up our charge, overlaying them with branches and reeds so as to disguise them, and into those same ditches we had ridden blindly, like fools.

From every direction came cries of alarm and of pain. I left the spear in the bearded Englishman’s groin, for I had at last spotted my sword, and recognised it for mine because of the turquoise stone that I’d had set into its pommel. I sheathed it, hauled myself from the ditch and ran to Fyrheard. His eyes were wide, and on seeing me approach he tensed, but then he recognised me. The fall had clearly shaken him, but he looked unhurt, and for that I thanked God as I glanced around and saw those that had been less lucky, flailing in the gullies and struggling to stand on broken legs. I rubbed the side of his neck in reassurance, but knew we could not tarry here. The stench of death was everywhere, and it was the stench not just of blood and spilt innards, but of piss and shit and vomit too. The corpses of our fallen countrymen and their steeds lay strewn across the field, along with many more who were not yet dead but whose end was near, desperately crying out for help in French and in English.

‘Withdraw,’ cried a familiar voice. The gold threads of the Malet banner glinted away to my right, and beneath it Robert was waving, trying to attract the attention not just of his conroi but everyone else who was with us. ‘Withdraw towards the shore, back towards the lion banner!’

Turning, he pointed his sword back in the direction of the bridge and spurred his steed into a gallop. Around a third of our horsemen, I reckoned, had made the crossing by then: some three hundred knights marshalling beneath the colours and devices of their lords. King Guillaume himself rode up and down the battle-line, bellowing exhortations to them and to those of our foot-warriors who still remained.

The enemy were swarming forward like carrion birds around a corpse, taking advantage of the confusion they had wrought. On either side of us Normans were fleeing on horseback and on foot, running, riding, limping, a few being helped along by their comrades. Doing their best to cover their retreat, around fifty paces away, were Serlo and Pons, Eudo and his knights, and I recognised them by the emblems on their shields, but even at a glance I could see they were outnumbered and close to being outflanked. For the conroi’s strength lies in its swiftness and in the weight of the charge, but once its force has been met and its drive is halted, it becomes vulnerable, and I knew that they couldn’t stand toe to toe for long against all those English spears.

Robert was already riding back to join the rest of our host, but Wace still lingered, along with his hearth-knights: the quiet-spoken Gascon whose name I still hadn’t learnt, and a dark-haired lad not much older than Godric but almost twice the size, who was known to everyone as Tor, which in the French tongue means Tower.

‘Wace,’ I yelled, and as soon as I had his attention: ‘We have to get to Eudo!’

He nodded breathlessly. His right cheek, I saw, was streaming with crimson where a fresh cut had been laid across it, to add to those he had taken at Hæstinges, although I wasn’t sure if he realised it.

Without further hesitation, I leapt up into the saddle and dug my heels in. Sweat rolled off my brow, stinging my eyes, and for a few moments all I could see was a watery blur, but still I pounded on. Already the enemy had surrounded Eudo and the others, and I knew we didn’t have much time. The ground had been trampled flat by the passage of so many feet and hooves, which meant that we could see the ditches easily now, and we swerved around them.

‘Normandy!’ I cried, hoping to catch the attention of some of those Englishmen, to draw them away, but my voice was hoarse from so much shouting, and they didn’t seem to hear me.

In fact it was probably a good thing that they didn’t, since it meant that they knew nothing of our charge until we were upon them. With weapons drawn and gleaming in the morning light we fell upon them, throwing our sword-edges and our lance-points into the fray, losing ourselves to the wills of our blades as we struck and struck again, laying about with sharpened steel, roaring as one, clearing a path through their lines, swearing death upon them all, smashing our shield-bosses into their brows, burying steel in their backs, piercing mail and cloth and flesh, riding them down so that their skulls and ribs were crushed beneath the charge, doing our best to drive them back.

Eudo risked a glance towards us, and I saw the desperation in his eyes. His shield was splintered and the hide, emblazoned with the tusked boar that was his device, had half fallen away from the limewood boards, rendering it all but useless.

‘Retreat!’ I yelled to him and Serlo and Pons and the dozen or so others who were with them, and hoped that they heard me above the clash of arms and the shouts and the screams.

‘Back to the lion banner!’ Wace was shouting.

For suddenly there was open space at our backs, offering a way out of that mêlée, and I knew we had to seize this opportunity while we could. Our charge was beginning to slow; the enemy were regrouping as warning shouts echoed through their ranks and they turned to face the new threat, and with every heartbeat their numbers were swelling. If we were to beat our retreat, now was the time.

‘With me,’ I said. ‘With me!’

I clattered the flat of my blade against an Englishman’s helmet and wheeled about, looking to escape the fray-

Too late.

Already the enemy had come around our flanks, and now they were closing upon us from front and rear, presenting their bright-painted shields and overlapping the iron rims with those of their neighbours so as to form a wall.

We were surrounded, and there was no way out.

Then from the ramparts to the north came a sound that was only too familiar, as hundreds upon hundreds of warriors struck their spear-hafts and axe-handles and swords and seaxes against the rims and the faces of their shields, keeping a steady rhythm. With each beat they roared a single word, over and over and over, like a pack of ravening wolves who had scented easy meat.

Ut. Ut. Ut.

The white stag was advancing, leaving behind it the defences the rebels had built. Under that banner bobbed a thousand shining spearpoints. Morcar’s confidence had overcome his caution, and he would wait no longer. He saw a chance to press his advantage, to drive us back into the marsh, to win glory and renown among his people and give his followers and Englishmen everywhere the victory they had long desired: one that they would sing of in their feasting-halls and that would be remembered down the ages. They would praise him as the defender of Elyg, the man who dared to stand against King Guillaume and who did what Harold and Eadgar Ætheling could not. Little would they realise that he was nothing but a worthless perjurer, a foul oath-breaker.

‘Tancred!’

I tore my gaze away from the stag banner just in time as the enemy surged forward and I found myself staring at more blades than I could count. Fyrheard lashed out with his hooves and my sword struck and struck again, but for each one I dispatched, it seemed that two more took his place.

‘Die, you bastards,’ Eudo was yelling as he heaved his blade around, backhanding the edge across an English throat. Blood gurgled forth, trickling down the man’s neck as he clutched at the wound and gasped vainly for breath. ‘Die!’

One thickset warrior clutched at the bottom edge of my kite shield, trying to tug it down and out of position, while another, gangly and with dark hair trailing from beneath his helmet-rim, grabbed hold of my spear-arm. I smashed my boss into the first’s temple, then jabbed my elbow into the second’s chin, sending both stumbling backwards and bringing me a moment’s respite, although it had to be only a matter of time before they overwhelmed us.

‘There are too many of them,’ Serlo shouted, as if I didn’t already know. ‘We can’t-’

‘Hold firm,’ I said, shouting him down. Whatever he had to say, I didn’t want to hear it. ‘Stay close and don’t let them through!’

My heart was hammering in my chest and my lungs were burning as I struggled to breathe. I was determined, though, not to give in. Not while I still had a sword in my hand and my head upon my shoulders. I would keep the battle-anger blazing in my veins as long as I could. If this was my fate, then the least I could do was take as many of the Devil-spawn with me as possible.

That was when the shouting began. Cries of surprise, of panic and of pain filled the air, together with howls of the wounded and the dying.

It took me a few moments to realise that those shouts weren’t in French but in English. That they weren’t coming from among my countrymen, but from the ranks of the enemy. I risked a glance towards the source of the screaming, and at first was convinced that my eyes were deceiving me. Surely I had to be imagining this. For what I saw seemed like a gift from God. My heart swelled with relief and joy, my limbs coursed with renewed strength, and suddenly I was laughing.

Laughing, because those men of the white stag weren’t marching to aid their countrymen. They were coming to kill them.

Morcar had held to his word after all. He had arrived not a moment too soon, and now the slaughter would begin.