The battle-crazed knight fell fifteen foot on to the hard-packed earth of the outer bailey. I could hear the crack of his neck from the walkway, and he twitched only once before he lay still.
With the knight’s death, the defence of the gatehouse and our section of the palisade came to an end. The surviving crossbowmen were running. Hurrying, stumbling, jumping down the wooden steps that led to the ground, and streaming away from the gatehouse, back towards the castle. And we ran after them — jubilant, hearts pounding, muscles glowing. Our men were hoarsely cheering themselves and their achievement — but we had no time for celebrations. ‘The gate!’ I shouted. ‘Get to the gate. We must open the gate.’
And I led more than a score of men, fizzing with victory, to the huge wooden door of Nottingham Castle, where another fight was already reaching its climax. Little John, like some giant Saxon war god of old, his yellow braids swinging in time with the sweeps of his double-headed axe, was cutting his way methodic ally through a gaggle of terrified enemy men-at-arms, but I could see that his assault on the north side of the barbican had been even bloodier than ours. There were very few men in Robin’s dark green livery fighting beside him — perhaps a mere two dozen of the hundred that had set out such a short time ago.
We men of the southern attack charged into the fray, yelling our war cries and brandishing weapons — and the enemy melted away before us, deserting the gate in panic and retreating a hundred yards or so to where a dozen knights on foot were rallying the fleeing troops and preparing for a counter-attack. We had only a very little time, for there were so few of us — fewer than fifty men still on their feet, the mingled remnants of both attacking parties — and if we did not get the gate open swiftly, the enemy would mass in their hundreds and easily overwhelm us.
Two of Little John’s men were fiddling with the cross-bar that held the swinging sections of the great door together. There was some kind of locking mechanism, a bar-and-lever combination, and the men, it seemed, could not fathom how it might work.
The enemy knights had stopped roughly forty fleeing crossbowmen, and I could see them reassembling, calmer now, under orders again, loading their weapons, using the hook on their belts and a foot in the stirrup at the end of the bow to haul the drawstring back.
Worse, a large crowd of men-at-arms — perhaps a hundred or more in Murdac’s black surcoats with the red chevrons — was pouring out from the barbican in the middle bailey. Reinforcements. Things were about to get very, very bad.
‘Hurry!’ I snapped to the men pushing and pulling at the cross-bar on the gatehouse door. ‘They are coming. We have only a few moments before they attack.’
‘Get out of my way,’ boomed a deep confident voice that I knew so well. And I saw Little John shove the men aside and swing his blood-soaked axe double-handed at the oaken beam that barred the door.
Thunk!
But even Little John’s mighty blow only chipped out a slim bright brown-yellow splinter of wood an inch thick from the cross-bar. The wood was old oak and tough, and the bar a foot wide. We didn’t have time for John’s rough carpentry.
‘Form a line here,’ I shouted. And with one eye on the mass of black-and-red enemy a hundred yards away, I pushed and pulled Robin’s men into two ranks, the front rank kneeling, the second rank standing, shields to the fore.
Thunk!
Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Little John was beginning to lay into the crossbar with a slow but steady rhythm. Then Hanno was by his side, following John’s blow immediately with one of his own from a smaller, lighter, single-bladed war axe.
Thunk! Think!
The two axe blows made strikingly different sounds.
‘Stay tight, and keep your shields up,’ I shouted to our raggedy wall of forty or so men. But the men needed no urging, for the crossbowmen had reloaded and soon, as everyone could plainly see, their wicked bolts would begin to fly again.
Thunk! Think!
I looked behind me to the east and saw that the sun was fully up by now. It was going to be a lovely spring day.
‘Here they come!’ I shouted. The crossbowmen had divided into two groups of about twenty men each and were advancing on either side of the main body of a hundred or so of Murdac’s men-at-arms. At seventy yards they began to loose their quarrels. Not as a volley but individually: two or three men shooting, then stopping to reload while the others advanced. These were clearly first-class troops, well disciplined and brave. They kept up a nearly constant rain of missiles on our thin, weak shield wall, forcing our men to cower behind their flimsy protection to avoid being spitted like hares.
Thunk! Think!
A man standing beside me on the edge of our double line screamed suddenly and fell backwards, a black bolt thrusting from his eye.
‘Keep those shields up!’ I shouted, and crouched down myself in the front rank beside the men, trying to keep my body as much as possible behind my kite-shaped shield.
The two groups of crossbowmen were now so close that they could hardly miss. And between them the men-at-arms were advancing in a purposeful manner, swords drawn, some armed with short spears or cut-down lances. I knew that at about twenty yards away they would launch into a run and smash through my thin line of exhausted, battered men. We had, by my reckoning, only a few moments before we were overrun by the enemy. The crossbow bolts were rattling against the shield wall, occasionally finding a gap and giving rise to a yelp or scream.
Thunk! Think!
‘God’s bulging bollocks!’ shouted a great voice, clearly in pain. And I turned to look back at Little John, who was peering over his own shoulder at a black quarrel sticking out from his huge right buttock; his green hose were glistening black, soaked with blood. But he merely shrugged the pain away, leaving the evil-looking bolt in place, and turned back to his task.
Thunk! Think!
I heard Hanno yell something but could not make it out. The enemy men-at-arms were only forty paces away now.
Thwick! A different sound. I risked another quick look behind me and saw that John had finally chopped his way through the bar. Limping more than a little, he was helping Hanno to swing the heavy wooden portal open. I looked out of the gap between the slowly opening doors of the gatehouse and saw a sight beyond it that made my heart leap with joy.
Horsemen.
A great mass of armoured horsemen, led by a tall knight in brightly polished, gold-chased helm riding a magnificent destrier beneath a red-and-gold standard. And beside him was another familiar figure, faceless in his flat-topped tubular helmet but wearing a deep green surcoat with a black-and-grey wolf’s mask depicted on the chest. The horsemen came on at the trot. They were only thirty yards away. The lead horseman lowered his lance, and all his companions — at least three-score knights — followed his example in a wave of white wood and glittering steel. A trumpet sounded and the cavalry came up to the canter. It was Richard, my King, coming to the rescue. And my liege lord, the Earl of Locksley, was riding at his side.
Another trumpet rang out. The horsemen charged.
‘Down!’ I shouted. ‘Everybody down. Lie down. Lie still, lie absolutely still if you want to live.’ And as one the men in the shield wall dropped to the muddy ground. I could feel the wet earth vibrate under my cheek, and hear the rumble of massive hooves, and I dared not look up as the household cavalry of Richard Plantagenet, by the Grace of God, King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou and Maine, a company of some of the finest and bravest knights in Christendom, poured over our prone bodies like a rushing equine waterfall, jumping cleanly over the cowering bodies of forty prostrate men in a welter of pounding hooves and flying mud, before spurring on to smash straight into the advancing line of black-and-red men-at-arms, lances couched, a battle cry roaring from every mounted warrior’s throat.
When I finally lifted my head I saw a scene of utter carnage. King Richard’s cavalry had crashed into Murdac’s men-at-arms like a mighty tempest blowing through a field of stacked wheat, the twelve-foot razor-tipped lances
