I asked him to join us. Philin repeated stubbornly. His son, his leg in a splint and with crude crutches cut from oak boughs beneath his shoulders, swung across to stand beside his father. Will you fight for him?' Destral asked. He was not as tall as Philin, but he was broad across the shoulders and had a squat brute strength. His face was flat with a broken nose and he had eyes like a mastiff; eyes that almost glowed with the thought of violence. His beard was matted, strung with dried spittle and scraps of food. He swung the axe so its head glittered in the dying light. Fight me. he said to Philin, his voice hungry.
I just want him to live. Philin said, unwilling to draw a sword on his mad-eyed leader, but the other coredors had smelt blood, plenty of it, and they were making a rough circle and egging Destral on. They grinned and shouted, wanting the fight, and Philin backed away until he could go no farther.
Fight!“ the men shouted. Fight!” Their women were screaming as well, shouting at Philin to be a man and face the axe. Those closest to Philin shoved him hard forward so that he had to jump aside to stop himself colliding with Destral who, scornful, slapped him in the face and then tugged his beard in insult. Fight me,“ Destral said, or else slice off the Englishman's fingers yourself.”
Thomas still did not know what was being said, but the unhappy look on Philin's face told him it was nothing good. Go on!“ Destral said. Cut off his fingers! Either that, Philin, or I'll cut off your fingers.”
Galdric, Philin's son, drew his own knife and pushed it towards his father. Do it. the boy said, and when his father would not take the knife he looked at Destral. I'll do it!“ the boy offered. Your father will do it,” Destral said, amused, and he'll do it with this.' He unlooped the wrist strap and offered the axe to Philin.
And Philin, too terrified to disobey, took the weapon and walked towards Thomas. I'm sorry,“ he spoke in French. For what?”
Because I have no choice.“ Philin looked miserable, a humili ated man, and he knew the other coredors were enjoying his shame. Put your hands on the tree,” he said, then repeated the order in his own language and the men holding Thomas forced his arms up until both his crooked hands were flat against the bark. They held Thomas by the forearms as Philin came close. I'm sorry,“ Philin said again. You must lose your fingers.” Thomas watched him. Saw how nervous he was. Understood that the axe blow, when it came, was as likely to chop him at the wrist instead of the fingers. Do it quickly,“ he said. No!” Genevieve shouted and the couple holding her laughed. Quickly,' Thomas said, and Philin drew the axe back. He paused, licked his lips, took one last anguished look into Thomas's eyes, then swung.
Thomas had let the men force him against the tree; he didn't try to pull away from them until the axe came. Only then did he use his huge strength to tear himself from their grasp. The two men, astonished by the power of an archer trained to use the long yew bow, flailed as Thomas snatched the axe out of the air and with a bellow of rage turned it on the man holding Genevieve. His first swing split that man's skull, the woman instinctively let go of Genevieve's other arm and Thomas wheeled back to beat down the men who had been holding his arms against the tree. He was screaming his war cry, the battle shout of England: Saint George!
Saint George!' and he lashed the heavy blade at the nearest man just as the horsemen came from the trees.
For a heartbeat the coredors were caught between the need to overwhelm Thomas and the danger of the horsemen, then they realized the riders were by far the more dangerous enemy and they did what all men instinctively did when faced by galloping men-at-arms. They ran for the trees and Guy Vexille's black-robed riders spurred among them, swinging swords and killing with brutal ease. Destral, oblivious of their threat, had run straight at Thomas and Thomas thrust the axehead into the squat man's face, shattering the bridge of his nose and hurling him backwards, then
Thomas let go of the clumsy weapon, seized his bow and arrow bag and snatched Genevieve's wrist.
They ran.
There was safety in the trees. The trunks and low branches stopped the horsemen running free in the wood, and the darkness was coming fast to obscure their view, but in the clearing the horsemen were wheeling, cutting, wheeling again, and the coredors who had failed to escape into the trees were dying like sheep savaged by wolves.
Philin was beside Thomas now, but his son, on his awkward crutches, was still in the clearing and a horseman saw the boy, turned and lined his sword. Galdric!' Philin shouted, and he started to run to save the boy, but Thomas tripped him, then put an arrow on the string.
The rider was holding the sword low, intending to jab the point into the small of Galdric's back. He touched his horse with his spurs and it accelerated just as the arrow whipped from the shadows to slice his throat open. The horse wheeled away, its rider spilling from the saddle in a stream of blood. Thomas shot a second arrow that flashed past the boy to spit Destral through one eye, then he looked for his cousin among the horsemen, but it was so dim now that he could not make out any faces.
Come!“ Genevieve urged him. Come!”
But Thomas, instead of running with her, dashed back into the clearing. He scooped up the empty grail box, looked for his bag of money, plucked up a sheaf of his arrows, then heard Genevieve's cry of warning as hooves came towards him and he swerved to one side, doubled back, then ran into the trees. The pursuing rider, confused by Thomas's quick evasions, spurred forward again, then veered away as Thomas ducked under a low branch. Other coredors were fleeing to the caves, but Thomas ignored that refuge and
struck south beside the crag. He led Genevieve by the hand while Philin carried Galdric on his shoulders. A handful of the braver horsemen made a brief effort to follow, but some of the surviving coredors had their crossbows and the bolts thumping out of the dark persuaded the riders to be content with their small victory. They had killed a score of bandits, captured as many more and, what was better, taken a dozen of their women. And in doing it they had lost only one man. They took the arrow from his throat, draped his body on his horse and, with their captives tied by strips of cloth, went back northwards.
While Thomas ran. He still had his mail coat, his bow, a bag of arrows and an empty box, but everything else was lost. And he was running in the dark.
To nowhere.
Failure was hard, and Guy Vexille knew he had failed. He had sent riders into the woods to beat any fugitives out to the open ground and instead they had become tangled in a bloody, one-sided brawl with coredors that had left one of his men dead. The body was taken down to Astarac where, early next morning, Guy Vexille buried the man. It was raining. The rain had begun at midnight, a steady downpour that flooded the grave, which had been scraped between the olive trees. The bodies of the captured coredors, all of them beheaded the previous night, were lying abandoned at the edge of the olive grove, but Vexille was determined his own man should have a grave. The body had been stripped of everything except his shirt and now the man was rolled into the shallow hole where his head flopped back into the rainwater to expose the wound in his neck. Why wasn't he wearing his gorget?' Vexille asked one of the men who had attacked the coredors. A gorget was a piece of plate covering the throat and Vexille remembered that the dead man had been proud of the piece of armour that he had scavenged from some forgotten battlefield.
He was.'
A lucky sword thrust then?“ Vexille asked. He was curious. All knowledge was useful, and few scraps of knowledge so useful as those that helped a man live in the chaos of battle. It wasn't a sword. the man said, he got an arrow.” Crossbow?'
Long arrow,“ the man said, went straight through the gorget. Must have hit plumb.” The man made the sign of the cross, praying that he would not suffer a similar fate. The archer got away,“ he went on. Ran into the woods.”
And that was when Vexille realized Thomas must have been among the coredors. It was possible that one of the bandits had been using a hunting bow, but not likely. He demanded to know where the arrow was, but it had been thrown away, no one knew where, so in the morning mist Vexille led his men up to the ridge and then south to the clearing where the bodies still lay. Rain pelted down, dripping from the horses“ trappers and finding its way beneath men's armour so that the metal and leather chafed chilled skins. Vexille's men grumbled, but Vexille himself seemed oblivious of the weather. Once at the clearing he looked at the scatter of corpses, then saw what he was looking for. A squat, bearded man had an arrow in his eye and Vexille dismounted to look at the shaft, which proved to be a long ash arrow fledged with goose feathers. Vexille pulled it free, tugging it from the dead man's
