windlass of the trebuchet called Stonewhip that stood just beyond the Lord of Roncelets's tent. The man heard Thomas shouting and looked round, grinning. It was Beggar, all beard and rotted teeth, and he shoved Jeanette hard as she struggled to escape him.
'Hold her, Beggar!' Sir Geoffrey Carr shouted. 'Hold the bitch!'
'The pretty ain't going anywhere,' Beggar said, 'going nowhere, darling,' and he tried to haul up her coat of mail, but it was too heavy and awkward and Jeanette was struggling too frantically. The Lord of Roncelets, still without his sword, was sitting on Stonewhip's frame. He had a red mark on his face, suggesting he had been struck, and Sir Geoffrey Carr with five other men-at-arms was standing over him. The Scarecrow stared defiantly at Thomas. 'He's my prisoner!' he insisted.
'He belongs to us,' Thomas said, 'we took him.'
'Listen, boy,' the Scarecrow said, his voice still slurred by drink, 'I am a knight and you are a turd. You under-stand me?' He staggered slightly as he stepped towards Thomas. 'I am a knight,' he said again, louder, 'and you are nothing!' His red face, made lurid by the flames, was twisted in derision. 'You are nothing!' he shouted again, then whipped round to make sure that his men were guarding the Lord of Roncelets. Such a wealthy captive would solve all Sir Geoffrey's problems and he was determined to hold onto him and take the ransom for himself. 'She can't take a captive,' he said, pointing his sword at Jeanette, 'because she's got tits, and you can't take him because you're a turd. But I'm a knight! A knight!' He spat the word at Thomas who, goaded by the insults, drew his bow. The new string was slightly too long and he could feel the lack of power in the black stave because of it, but he reckoned there was enough strength for his purpose. 'Beggar!'
the Scarecrow shouted, 'if he looses that bow, kill the bitch.'
'Kill the pretty,' Beggar said. He was drooling spittle, which ran down his big beard as he stroked the mail rings above Jeanette's breasts. She still fought, but he had her bent painfully back across the windlass and she could hardly move. Thomas kept the bow drawn. The trebuchet's long beam, he saw, had been winched down to the ground though the engineers must have been interrupted be-fore they could load a stone because the great leather sling was empty. A heap of stones stood off to the right and a sudden movement there made Thomas see there was a wounded man leaning against the boulders. The man was trying to stand, but could not. There was blood on his face. 'Will?' Thomas asked.
'Tom!' Will Skeat tried to push himself upright again. 'It's you, Tom!'
'What happened?' Thomas asked.
'Not what I was, Torn,' Skeat said. The two townsmen who had been helping to guard the Lord of Roncelets were dead at Skeat's feet, and Skeat himself seemed to be dying. He was white-faced, feeble and every breath was a struggle. There were tears on his face.
'I tried to fight,' he said pitiably, 'I did try, but I'm not what I was.'
'Who attacked you?' Thomas asked, but Skeat seemed unable to answer.
'Will was just trying to protect me,' Jeanette shouted, then she screamed as Beggar thrust her back so hard that at last she was forced onto the top of the windlass and Beggar could push her mail skirts up. He gabbled excitedly just as Sir Geoffrey roared in anger.
'It's the Douglas bastard!'
Thomas loosed the cord. With a new bowcord he liked to shoot a couple of arrows to discover how the new hemp would behave, but he had no time for such niceties now, he just loosed the arrow and it sliced through the tangles of Beggar's beard to cut his throat, the broad arrow head slitting his gullet as cleanly as a butcher's knife, and Jeanette screamed as the blood spurted across her jupon and face. The Scarecrow bellowed in rage and ran at Thomas who rammed the horn-tipped howstave into the red face then let the weapon fall as he drew his sword. Robbie ran past him and thrust his uncle's sword at the Scarecrow's belly, but even drunk Sir Geoffrey was quick and he managed to parry the blow and strike back. Two of his men-at-arms were running to help – the others were guarding the Lord of Roncelets – and Thomas saw the two men coming. He went to his left, hoping to put the big frame of Stonewhip between himself and the men wearing Sir Geoffrey's badge of the black axe, but Sir Geoffrey almost cut him off and Thomas gave a desperate back-swing with his newly drawn sword that slammed against the Scarecrow's blade with a force that numbed Thomas's arm. The blow rocked the Scarecrow back, then he recovered and leaped forward and Thomas was desperately defending himself as the Scarecrow rained blows down on him. Thomas was no swordsman and he was being beaten down to his knees and Robbie could not help him because he was fending off Sir Geoffrey's two followers, and then there was an almighty crash, a bang that sounded as though the gates of hell had just opened, and the ground shook as the Scarecrow screamed in utter agony. His howl, trailing blood, seared into the sky. Jeanette had pulled the lever that released the long beam. Ten tons of counterweight had thumped to the ground and the thick metal pin that held the sling had jerked up between Sir Geoffrey's legs and torn a bloody hole from his crotch to his belly. He should have been hurled halfway to the town by the trebuchet's beam, but instead the pin had been trapped in his entrails and he was caught on the beam's end where he writhed in agony, his blood pouring down to the ground.
His men, seeing their master dying, stepped back. Why fight for a man who could offer no reward? Robbie gaped up as the Scarecrow twisted and jerked, and somehow the dying man managed to tear himself free of the great iron stake and he fell, trailing intestines and spraying blood. He hit the ground with a thump, bounced bloodily, yet still he lived. His eyes were twitching and his mouth was drawn back in a snarl. 'Goddamn Douglas,' he managed to gasp before Robbie stepped to him, lifted his uncle's sword, and rammed it down once, straight between the Scarecrow's eyes.
The Lord of Roncelets had watched it all happen with disbelief. Now Jeanette was holding a sword to his face, daring him to run away, and he dumbly shook his head to show that he had no intention of risking his life among the drunken, screaming, savage men who had come out of the night to destroy the greatest army the duchy of Brittany had ever raised.
Thomas crossed to Sir William Skeat, but his old friend was dead. He had been wounded in the neck and he had bled to death on the stone pile. He looked strangely peaceful. A first shaft of the new day's sun cut across the world's edge to light the bright blood at the top of Stonewhip's beam as Thomas closed his mentor's eyes. 'Who killed Will Skeat?' Thomas demanded of Sir Geoffrey's men and Dickon, the young one, pointed at the wreckage of mail, flesh, entrails and bone that had been the Scarecrow. Thomas inspected the dents in his sword. He must learn to use one, he thought, or else he would die by the sword, then he looked up at Sir Geoffrey's men. 'Go and help the attack on the next fort,' he told them. They stared at him. 'Go!' he snapped and, startled, they ran westwards.
Thomas pointed his sword at the Lord of Roncelets. 'Take him back to town,' he told Robbie, 'and guard him well.'
'What about you?' Robbie asked.
'I'm going to bury Will,' Thomas said. 'He was a friend.' He thought he must shed some tears for Will Skeat, but there were none. Not now, anyway. He sheathed the sword, then smiled at Robbie. 'You can go home, Robbie.'
'I can?' Robbie seemed puzzled.
'De Taillebourg's dead. Roncelets will pay your ran-som to Lord Outhwaite. You can go to Eskdale, go home, go back to killing Englishmen.'
Robbie shook his head. 'Guy Vexille lives.'
'He's mine to kill.'
'And mine,' Robbie said. 'You forget he killed my brother. I'm staying till he's dead.'
'If you can ever find him,' Jeanette said softly.
The sun was lighting the smoke of the burning encampments and casting long shadows across the ground where the last of Charles's army abandoned their earthworks and fled towards Rennes. They had come in their great splendour and now they scuttled away in abject defeat.
Thomas went to the engineers' tents and found a pickaxe, a mattock and a shovel. He dug a grave beside Stonewhip and tipped Skeat into the damp soil and tried to say a prayer, but he could not think of one, and then he remembered the coin for the ferryman and so he went to the Lord of Roncelets's tent and pulled the charred canvas away from the chest and took a piece of gold and went back to the grave. He jumped down beside his friend and put the coin under Skeat's tongue. The ferryman would find it and know from the gold that Sir William Skeat was a special man. 'God bless you, Will,' Thomas said, then he scrambled out of the grave and he filled it in, though he kept pausing in hope that Will's eyes would open, but of course they did not and Thomas at last wept as he shovelled earth onto his friend's pale face. The sun was up by the time he finished and women and children were
