lances, their horses taking their first steps towards us.
Robin was shouting: ‘A Locksley, A Locksley!’ And I realized that if we did not disrupt the French cavalry charge before it began, the sheer weight of their numbers would overwhelm us and we would all be crushed to bloody pulp. To my left, the King was bellowing to his closest knights, urging them to form up for the attack, his sword pointed to the heavens, the sunlight flashing on his steel and gold-chased helm; he was laughing once again, madly, happily, his face suffused with reckless joy. The royal blade swung down, pointing like a spear at the advancing enemy ranks; he punched back his spurs and his stallion took off like a startled stag, hurtling his master straight towards the wall of enemies. I slapped my own heels into Shaitan’s flanks and, pointing Fidelity in a similar manner, charged in my sovereign’s wake towards the oncoming ranks of the French. I saw King Richard, alone, smash into the body of the enemy line causing instant confusion to the neat rows of horsemen, his sword arm flailing, the blood flying with every sweep of his blade. In three heartbeats, I was among them too, beside my King, protecting him, swinging wildly with Fidelity and trying to force back the press of enemies on his left flank. I felt a massive hammer-blow against my shield, but the enemy lance slid away and then I was deep in their midst, hacking at enemy faces, chopping at mailed limbs. I caught a glimpse of Richard battering at the crumpled tubular helmet of a knight, relentlessly, again and again; his household knights had caught up with us by then, and were forcing their way into the gap Richard had made. I saw one of his companions chop efficiently through a darting lance that might well have skewered the royal back. But I had no time for gawping: suddenly I found myself alone and surrounded by yelling foemen. I fended off a lance strike to my chest with my shield, and dispatched the attacking knight with a lateral sword blow to the face, severing his jaw. I hacked the right hand from another man, whose horse barged into Shaitan, leaving the Frenchman screaming with a blood-pissing stump. Shaitan lashed out his hind legs, cracking his iron horseshoes into the nose of a beast behind him, which reared and spilled its French rider. Something smashed across my backbone, winding me, but I turned and lunged desperately at this new attacker, a savage-faced knight in sky-blue wielding a long sword. Mostly by good fortune, my sword entered a gap in his ventail, piercing his neck through and through, and with a spray of crimson, I ripped the blade free, and he wheeled away dying. Two horsemen parted before me and I caught another sight of King Richard battling two enemy knights at the same time, chopping left and right, left and right, the mailed sleeve of his sword arm red up to the shoulder, then one enemy was down, and one of Richard’s household knights hacked the head from the other man.
We were so few, a handful of bold knights in a sea of French foes, and yet they feared us and seemed to hang back, melting away before our ferocity. I saw that Little John had joined the melee and was taking heads and lopping limbs from the saddle of his huge horse with great sweeps of his axe, and now the Locksley men in their dark green cloaks were fighting all about me like the heroes of old. Robin was beside me too, and I saw that we had miraculously come through the first ranks of attacking knights and were into a space behind them. The Earl shouted: ‘There, Alan, there — the King! It is Philip!’ and pointed with his gory sword. Fifty yards away, at the head of a slight rise, I could see another wall of knights, perhaps eighty men, bright in their surcoats, lances at the ready and mounted on snorting, pawing, battle-roused destriers, and above their heads the weakly fluttering white and gold of the French royal standard.
‘Come on,’ my lord shouted. ‘Come on!’ And threw back his head and howled: ‘A Locksley!’ I bawled ‘Westbury! Westbury!’ and together we charged up the incline towards that waiting line of shining death. We were not alone; I could sense rather than see the clustering of green-cloaked Locksley horsemen and some of my own red-decked men around Robin and myself; and the sound of royal bellowing from behind my right shoulder told me that Richard had fought his way through, had seen our prize and was coming with his surviving household knights to help us take it. I managed to snatch a glance at the King’s face as he raced towards Robin and myself: beneath the spattered blood and sweat of battle, framed by the gleaming metal of his helm and his golden beard, I saw that he was still smiling, a wide, easy smile of glorious satisfaction.
The French knights came down the hill to meet us; in a magnificently controlled charge, their front rank as straight as an arrow, they sliced into our men, emptying a dozen saddles in a single moment. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a green-clad man-at-arms hurled from his mount by an elegant lance strike. On the other side a Westbury man went down screaming. But I was too busy to take much notice of other men; a lance came at my face out of nowhere and almost tore my cheek open, but I managed to get my shield up just in the very nick of time and deflect the spear, the blade scraping over my domed helmet. And once again I was in the middle of a hellish melee, enemies all around, blows raining down from every quarter. I hacked and cut and swore, I lunged and killed, and my battered red shield took half a dozen blows that would have ended me. We were surely lost. We had attempted too much. Our reckless arrogance had been our downfall. I could see none of my friends. I found myself duelling with a knight, a big man full of desperate rage; I blocked a welter of massive overhand blows from his sword, and then saw an opening, and took it. I killed his horse with a single downward slice into its arched neck, and the poor beast dropped as if poleaxed. I left the man trapped and roaring on the churned earth of the field, his right leg pinned under the weight of the dead beast.
I drew back from the fray, circling Shaitan away from the enemy lines. We had so few men still in the saddle, and there was no sign of Robin. Green-clad bodies littered the weedy fallow field; forlorn horses nuzzling their dead owners. I saw, a dozen yards away, King Richard, also momentarily disengaged from the battle; he was leaning over his saddle, panting, a young knight on foot was speaking to him with a concerned expression. King Philip was still surrounded by a knot of a score or so knights; not a gleaming, multicoloured wall as before, more ragged, and smaller, their numbers fewer too, and milling about uneasily as the King’s closest personal knights watched the fight below them, restrained from joining it by their master. But they were still a formidable force.
For all our valour, we had failed to break through to the heart of the enemy position, and very soon the French King, safe behind his household knights, would rally his surviving men, summon his militia and his mercenaries to him, gather his full overwhelming strength and come down from that hill and destroy our remaining scattered, wounded men on their exhausted horses. Soon, all would be lost. Or so I believed then. Of course, Richard had known better. For at that very moment, William the Marshal, the knight ‘ sans peur et sans reproche ’ threw his fresh men into battle.
The Marshal had brought no more than forty knights with him, and yet they were some of the hardest fighting-men in our army. First, he attacked the southern portion of what had been the French line of march, slicing through a mass of militiamen on foot, a hundred spearmen at least, dispersing them like a pack of wolves descending on a flock of sheep. The militia broke apart and fled for their lives, but the Marshal’s men did not waste their time killing the fugitives; the knights quickly reformed again like the superb troops they were, making neat, close lines, many riders with unbroken lances, others holding their bright swords aloft, and on they came, trotting up the hill towards us.
King Richard had recovered himself, perhaps at the brave sight of the Marshal’s charge, and he was shouting to his knights, dispersed all over the field, urging them to come to him and reform. Then he saw me, and shouted: ‘To me, Sir Alan, to me. One more time, one more time and we shall have them. One last charge for victory!’
I turned my head and saw Thomas at my side; I was a little surprised for I had seen nothing of him in the battle and had feared that he might be among the fallen — but my squire was whole except for a long, shallow cut just below the ear and, and miracle of miracles, he was offering me a fresh lance. Beyond him I saw Ox-head and Kit, both apparently unwounded, and still looking eager for the fight, and another two Westbury men. I grinned at them all, wordless. And so the six of us trotted over to join the King.
There was no time to waste: William the Marshal was coming up fast, and the King had gathered some twenty knights and sergeants around him. ‘One more charge!’ the King kept repeating, he was laughing wildly again, white teeth gleaming in the gore-flecked gold of his beard, supremely happy in that moment. ‘We’ve got him, we’ve got the wretched thief!’ And then he bellowed: ‘For God and my right!’ and we charged up that incline together, all of us, King Richard, Robin, Little John, Thomas, a dozen living Locksley and Westbury men, a handful of household knights — with William the Marshal’s fresh troop of forty knights drumming the earth hard on our heels. We charged up that slope, filthy, bloody, our bodies wrenched by fatigue, we threw ourselves heedlessly once more into the milling, pristine ranks of the enemy.
And they fled.
Chapter Twenty-seven
