bone crack beneath my steel. The blow overbalanced me and I felt myself sliding from the sweat-slippery haunches of Robin’s horse. Only with a quick twist of my body, and a large helping of luck, did I land on my feet in the middle of that maelstrom of barging destriers and grunting hacking fiends. I was dimly aware that the long white line of Templar knights had crashed into Murdac’s men, as the whole boiling melee gave a ripple at their impact. And from occasional glimpses through the crush of men, I could see that the white knights were doing great damage, plunging their lances deep into their enemies’ unguarded backs, but I was much more concerned with my own survival.
A horseman’s mace blow clanged off my helmet, stunning me momentarily, and the hooves of a war stallion slashed just past my face and then, thank God, I was out of the mass of whistling steel and whirling hooves. I drew my poniard with my left hand, sword gripped tight in my right, and prayed that I would live through the next quarter hour. Robin’s footmen had caught up with the cavalry and charged into the milling throng, yelling ‘Sherwood, Sherwood!’ I saw a grimy-faced spearman stabbing up at a black-clad warrior on horseback. To no avail. The rider turned and chopped down with his sword, splitting his helmet through the middle. And then a great white rider, in a brilliant surcoat with its blood-red cross on the shoulder, cantered past me and speared the enemy horseman in the side, the lance punching through the chain-mail and leaving the man spiked on twelve feet of ash and screaming hideously. The white rider, his face completely masked by his flat-topped cylindrical helmet, dropped his lance, leaving it protruding, flopping, out of the dying man’s side, and lifted a hand to me in salute before hauling out his great sword and wheeling away to rejoin the fray. As he galloped away in search of fresh prey, I heard his shouted, slightly muffled but familiar words drifting back to me: ‘Don’t forget to move your feeeeet. .’
And move them I did. Murdac’s infantry had joined the battle, too: a grim swordsman rushed at me with his weapon swinging. I blocked with my sword, stepped past him and back-cut with my long blade, slicing into his face just above the nose. He blundered away, blood spurting through his fingers as he clutched at his head. A man-at- arms ran at me, I parried with my sword without thinking, and stabbed my poniard down into the meat of his thigh. He screamed and hot blood sprayed my face and chest. I exchanged blows, sword and poniard against axe, with a man-at-arms in green and red. Our weapons locked together and I found my face only inches from his. I smashed my head forward, the brim of my steel helmet crashing into his nose, and he dropped at my feet. Another man charged in from my right waving a falchion, a heavy-bladed chopping sword, and I knelt under his clumsy swing and hacked my own blade deep into his waist, cutting through the padded coat he wore. He sank to his knees on the bloody grass before me, blood gushing from his side. I stepped back, twisting my steel free from the suck of the wound, and almost simultaneously fended off a weak axe blow to my head with the poniard in my left hand from the man whose nose I had smashed. I turned to face him, screaming a meaningless challenge, red blades in both hands, my face and body covered in other men’s gore. . and, to my astonishment, he dropped his axe, turned and fled from the field. I was too surprised to follow him, too tired as well. Suddenly there were no more enemies about me, and I saw that the victory was in our grasp.
The Templars were masters of the field. The white robed warriors trotted about as if they had not a care in the world. The black cavalry and the Flemish mercenaries were in full retreat, galloping south with Murdac’s standard in the fore. Robin, unhorsed, was five yards away from me fighting two men at once. His sword play was superb, almost too fast to see as he fended off blows from the two red-and-green men-at-arms. Then, before I could rush to his aid, he dispatched one man with a fast lunge to the throat, ducked a whistling haymaker from his other opponent and turned and stabbed him through his shoulder. I had been pleased with my own skills, but watching Robin, I was lost in admiration. That distraction nearly cost me my life.
A tall man charged into me from behind. I had no idea where he came from, but he took me completely unawares and I slipped in the muddy ground, churned by horses’ hooves and slicked by many a brave man’s blood. Before I knew it, I was on my back in the morass, half-blinded by sweat, blood and my helmet, which had been knocked forward; I had dropped my poniard and my sword was held unsteadily above me in a feeble attempt at self-protection, all my science gone, as I gasped breathless on the ground. Above me, the huge, grey-mailed swordsman was slashing at my arm — time slowed to a crawl, I could see the slow swing of his blade, I could see the expression of bitter rage on his face, I could feel the bite of the blade into the flesh of my right arm. And then, out of nowhere, came Robin’s blocking sword-stroke, almost too late, but stopping the blade from slicing in deeply. Robin threw off the man’s sword and, continuing the stroke, he ran his blade through his neck, into a gap between helmet and mail coat. The man reeled away, tottered a few steps and sank to his knees, coughing blood.
Blood was spurting from my wound, too, as I clutched at it, soaking the sleeve of my aketon, and there was Robin above me grinning and breathing heavily. He held out his right hand and pulled me to my shaky feet. The battle was over. Templar knights in blood-spattered robes, holding dripping swords, were rounding up prisoners at the point of their weapons; the last of Murdac’s mounted men were disappearing south towards Nottingham Castle and safety; his defeated foot soldiers were running for the forest. The dead and wounded were thick on the ground, fertilising the soil with their blood. I looked around me in amazement. Unbelievably, our last helter-skelter charge, combined with the superb skill of the Templars had turned the tide. But the price had been high. To my left, I saw Thomas, lying in the stinking mud, one hand clutching his belly which was a mass of dark blood. His other arm buried beneath his body. His ugly face was pale, strained with agony. I hurried over to him and tried to pull his arm away to look at his wound, but he fought me off with surprising strength. ‘Let me be, Joshua,’ he mumbled. ‘Just let me be.’ He pulled the other arm from under him and I saw with a crash of cold shock that the hand had been severed. Through the dark clot of drying blood, a white bone protruded. He seemed unaware of the injury and scratched at his oozing belly with the stump. He moaned once and I cradled his great lumpy head in my lap. I felt a burning sensation behind my eyes, and a great aching sadness inside me, but no tears would come. I stared down at his horrible-kindly face, dry-eyed, as he died. I sat there for a long time with the big man’s head on my thighs, my wounded arm like a line of fire, thinking of all the misery, pain and hatred in the world, as the blood dried to a thick crust on my hands.
It must have been mid-afternoon when Little John found me, hauled me bodily on to the back of a horse and walked me back the few hundred yards to the shattered ruins of the manor of Linden Lea. Sir Richard was there talking with Robin and I heard the Templar say as I rode through the battered gate on the back of a borrowed nag: ‘So you will keep your side of the bargain, then?’ And Robin saying in a weary voice: ‘Yes, I’ll keep it, as you kept yours.’ Sir Richard waved at me and then cantered away to rejoin his surviving men, who had formed up outside the manor and were waiting to pursue Sir Ralph on the road to Nottingham.
Robin came over to me and insisted on bandaging my cut himself. Although he was as gentle as he could be, he chuckled as I let out an involuntary squeal of pain, and his half healed face-cut from the day before cracked as he smiled, leaking a few drops of blood down his grimy cheek. When he had finished washing my cut in wine and wrapping it in a clean bandage, he said: ‘Between stealing pies, the Sherwood wolves and this inglorious shambles, it seems God really wants this hand, Alan. But I have denied it to him three times — and He shall never take it while I have strength.’ He slapped me on the shoulder and went to deal with other more badly wounded folk.
And in truth we were in very bad shape: there was hardly a man who was not wounded in some way. Hugh was limping from a lance wound in his right leg. John had a gash on his left arm that looked as if a sword point had scored up his naked forearm nearly to the bone. We had lost perhaps two score men in the final attack and their bodies were laid out in a neat row. The brothers Ket the Trow and Hob o’ the Hill were dead, too, their tiny corpses lying together a little apart from the rest as they would receive a pagan burial. Only Tuck, indomitable Tuck, was unwounded. He was sitting on a barrel of ale, eating a great piece of cheese, with his two great hounds Gog and Magog at his side, guarding a prisoner. It was Guy of Gisbourne.
The boy — the man — who had tortured me, humiliated me, stripped me of my pride in that foul Winchester dungeon was slumped dejectedly, hands bound, between the two massive dogs. He was facing the death of a renegade from Robin’s band with as much dignity as he could muster. One whole side of his face was swollen, I guessed from a great blow that must have rendered him unconscious, but before I could ponder his ill-luck in being captured rather than killed outright in battle, he caught sight of me, and with a cry of ‘Alan, help me!’ he tried to get to his feet. The two dogs growled, deep and terrible, like the vengeance of God, and Guy collapsed down again. I turned my back and walked away.
We washed ourselves and ate and drank and slept that hot afternoon at Linden Lea, and many of us, too many, died of our wounds. At dusk, Robin gathered together in the courtyard as many men as were able to walk. He stood over the forlorn figure of Guy of Gisbourne, who seemed to be trying to shrink into the earth at Robin’s
