With a shout of joy I shinned down the tree as fast as I could, nearly breaking my neck as I fell the last few yards. It was indeed Tuck, and he was not alone. There were a dozen shadowy figures in the gloom of the forest behind him. I welcomed him with an embrace, crushing his strong squat body to mine and smelling once again the homely earth scents of his brown robe. My mind was bubbling with questions. But before I could get them out, Tuck held up a hand. ‘Answers later, Alan, we have work to do now.’ The drums were still booming, slapping the air with their ancient call to battle, and I saw that the forest was thick with people, scores, hundreds even. A woman approached through the trees; she was clad in a long dark blue robe decorated with stars and crescent moons. Her forehead was painted in what looked like dried blood with the Y symbol. In her hands she held a thick black staff of hawthorn. It was Brigid. In my happiness, I embraced her too. She smiled at me, but a little oddly, blankly, without the comforting brown warmth that she had displayed when healing my bites and burns. She seemed filled with a cold hatred, a black fury, only just contained within her body, and I instinctively recoiled from her as if repelled by an invisible force. Over her shoulder, I saw more comforting figures. Little Ket the Trow, in a leather breastplate, holding an enormous club almost as tall as he was; his brother Hob grinning at me through the leaves of a low-slung branch; and many more: outlaws who were not members of Robin’s band, travelling beggars, Sherwood villagers, wild men from the deep forest. . They had all come to battle. The drums were booming, battering the inside of my head and then Tuck said in a calm, cool voice, ‘Madam, I believe you must attack now, or it will be too late.’ Brigid nodded, she paused, took a deep breath and threw back her head. And, with a wild, ululating scream that set the hairs all over my body standing on end, she hurled herself past me and burst out of the treeline and on to the field of battle. Behind her streamed hundreds of men, and even a few women, screaming just as wildly, many with the pagan Y painted on their foreheads, just as many without, but all armed with whatever they had brought: clubs, rusty swords, axes, mattocks, scythes — I even saw one old man with a grain threshing flail — and all of them crazed with the blood-lust of battle.
It was the home-loving doves, you see. On the afternoon before that secret ride to rescue Marie-Anne, Robin had asked me to release three baskets of doves, each with his thin green ribbon attached. Those birds had flown high in the late afternoon sunshine, while everyone else was in a war meeting with Robin, and then the birds had headed back to their dovecotes, trailing Robin’s message:
This rag-tag horde of outcasts, madmen and religious fools charged out of the treeline like a host of avenging ghouls, screaming their war cries. And Brigid raced ahead of them battering Murdac’s men out of her path with the blackthorn staff that she wielded in both hands with savage, manic energy. Like twigs before a great river of humanity, all the black-clad troops before the charging horde were either swamped or swept away. In the forefront of that yelling, charging mass bounded Gog and Magog, silent and slavering. One of the great dogs leapt at an unfortunate man-at-arms in the rear ranks of the force surrounding the remains of the hedgehog, and with a snarl and a crunch had ripped off the lower part of his face. The man dropped his weapon and staggered back, hands groping at the bloody mash where his jaw had been. Then I saw a howling raggedy figure, stick thin, cut through both the man’s legs with a single blow of a scythe. The other huge dog, no less savage, was biting through padded aketon sleeves, crunching through the arm bones of Murdac’s men, crippling dozens in the course of that terrible onslaught. Brigid’s men and women attacked with an almost inhuman frenzy, striking down soldier after soldier with mattock or club, finishing them on the ground with knives, and then tearing at their clothes, almost before they were dead, seeking out coins and other valuables hidden about their persons. Brigid herself seemed to have the strength of ten men, felling armoured foes with mighty blows of her thick staff and screaming paeans to the forest gods and encouragement to her followers. The scrum of enemies around the hedgehog dissolved, Murdac’s troops, both horse and foot, wiped away by the ravaging army of raggedy pagans. Those who did not run immediately for their lives, were dragged down and slaughtered.
I followed the attack of the pagan horde in a more sedate manner, sword drawn nonetheless. But I encountered no enemies as I picked my way through the sea of corpses towards Robin. I could see clearly now the damage that the hedgehog had suffered; and it was a heart-rending sight. Great holes had been ripped in the once impenetrable circle of men and steel. More than half our men were down and those still in place were blood-spattered, weary beyond belief. I took my place beside Robin, silently waiting for orders, and surveyed the field that was, for the moment, ours.
Tuck had not charged with the pagans: he had gathered a score of bowmen, the remnants of Thomas’s men, I assumed, and they stood at the edge of the battlefield, by the treeline, calling targets to each other and shooting down the fleeing men-at-arms with dreadful accuracy. Murdac’s attacking force was in retreat, panicked men racing south to the tents and horse lines. But the battle was not won. To the south-west, near the line of the hills, I could see a formed unit of black horsemen, standing still, watching the field. Due south was a full battle of unused infantry, a hundred men standing in a black square in the hot summer sun. To the south-east, scores of red and green clad crossbowmen were streaming out of the treeline. Although pushed out of the woodland by our howling pagans, they were retreating in good order and forming up to the rear of Murdac’s line, beside the threatening box-like shape of the mangonel. I saw a group of dark horsemen, riding beneath a great black flag, cut deep with blood red chevrons, crossing to our front towards the Flemings. It was Murdac himself, his black head bare, and his closest companions; all still fresh, and completely untouched by the bloody hand of battle.
The enemy was not beaten. Far from it. To the crossbowmen’s right, Murdac and his picked knights stopped in front of yet another black square, another battle of marching spearmen, just coming into view from the far end of the valley, their weapons held aloft, spear points glittering in the bright sunlight. Sir Ralph checked his horse, circling in front of the marching men, shouting encouragement, and then he rode on to where the Flemings were straightening their ranks.
Robin, standing at the edge of his shattered formation, amid the dead and wounded of both sides, the ground a churned marsh of blood and mud, was watching the enemy as closely as I was. His shoulders were slumped, his face grey with fatigue. He had a cut on his cheekbone, but otherwise, to my relief, he appeared unharmed. Then he seemed to straighten up, to come to a decision, and I saw him reach to his belt with a bloody hand, tug at a strip of rawhide and release his horn. He stood straighter for a moment, took a big lungful of air, and blew. Three long blasts, and then again three. The notes echoing around the bloody field. It was retreat, the signal to return to the manor. ‘Help the wounded, Alan,’ he said to me in a toneless voice. Then with a final glance at the enemy lines, he turned, lifted a blood-drenched man to his feet, and the pair began to limp their way painfully back to Linden Lea.
We straggled back to the manor, hundreds of us, as the shadows lengthened and the sun grazed the top of the western hills: Hugh’s tired horsemen, very few in number; the bloodied surviving spearmen of the hedgehog; bowmen hobbling and using their stout yew staves to make better speed; blood-spattered pagans, who stopped frequently to rifle the corpses of the dead. And there were so many dead, the field was littered with corpses, and wounded crying for water and aid. Most of us made it back to the manor unharmed, the unwounded helping the wounded; but a few fell prey to Murdac’s circling horsemen; those men who had not heeded Robin’s horn in time, and were cut down with axe or sword. I carried a spearman with a huge gash in his side on my back all the way home. But when I got to the courtyard of the manor and rolled him as gently as I could on to a pile of straw, I saw that he was already dead. As the last few men stumbled through the gate, almost unable to walk from tiredness, we slammed the great oak bar down and looked to our wounds.
Marie-Anne and the men who had remained in the manor had been busy. Food had been prepared, once again on great trestle tables in the sunny courtyard, and the wounded were given great jugs of weak ale to slake their thirst. The badly wounded were placed in the hall itself and tended by Marie-Anne, Tuck, Brigid and the servants. There were scores of them, bloodied and exhausted, crippled by spear and gashed by sword; a few jovial, proud of what they had achieved, others pale and silent, plainly just waiting to die. The most grievously wounded were helped onwards to their eternal rest by Robin’s men. Robin himself went round the hall comforting
