1356 (Special Edition)

battle was three thousand men, but the one hundred and sixty had shattered the rear ranks of the French, who were now desperately running back towards the west. The front ranks, fighting beyond the hedge, heard the panic, and the whole battle moved backwards as the English line roared in triumph and moved forward. More horsemen appeared, this time from the southern end of the line, a more ragged charge of men coming to complete the panic. And the French had indeed panicked. They were fleeing, all of them, and the captal bellowed at his men to pull back.

A hundred and sixty men had broken an army, but they were still hugely outnumbered, and the French were realising it and forming lines to resist the horsemen. Three of them caught Pitt, the taciturn archer, and Thomas watched, horrified, as they cut his horse down with axes, dragged Pitt from the saddle and beat him to death with maces. Thomas rode at them, reaching them too late, but swinging the poleaxe wildly and slamming the blade into a man’s neck. ‘Bastards!’ he shouted, then twisted his horse fast away from their axe blows. He followed the captal north, just out of range of the French weapons. The prince’s men had come through the hedge and were falling on the French who again broke in panic. They fled, pursued by the dismounted men-at-arms coming in ever greater numbers through the hedge, and by the horsemen who had appeared to the south.

It was like shepherding a flock of sheep. The horsemen rode and threatened and the French made no effort to re-form, but kept going westwards. The oriflamme had vanished, but Thomas could see the blue and gold of the French royal standard still flying in the centre of the disorganised mass.

More and more of the English and Gascon men-at-arms had fetched their horses, and more and more came to join the pursuit. Down into the shallow valley they went, then up to the flat top of le Champ d’Alexandre from which the French had attacked that morning, and now it was the horsemen who attacked. Groups of men rode into the disorganised French, weapons swinging, horses snapping at men, and the French panic grew desperate as their ranks were split. Small groups stayed together and tried to defend themselves. The nobles were shouting that they were rich, that they surrendered. English archers, their bows discarded, were using their huge strength to wield axes, maces, and hammers. Men bellowed in bloodlust or in terror. All order had now vanished from the French, who were being broken into smaller and smaller groups assailed by battle-maddened men with sweaty faces and gritted teeth who only wanted to kill and kill. And so they did. A Frenchman fended off two archers, using his sword to foil their axes, then he stepped back and tripped on a fallen man and went down, and the archers jumped forward, axes swinging and the Frenchman screamed as a blade crashed into his shoulder; he tried to stand, fell back again and swung his sword in a great sweep that parried an axe. Thomas could see the man gritting his teeth, his whole face distorted with his desperate efforts. He parried another axe, then cried out as the second archer chopped into the meat of his thigh. He tried to lunge his sword at that man, spitting out teeth he had shattered because he had bitten down so hard, but his desperate lunge was parried, then an axe crunched down into his face and a poleaxe spike rammed into his belly and his whole body jerked in a great spasm as he died. For a moment his helmet’s open face filled with blood, then it drained away as the two archers knelt to search his body.

Keane had dismounted and was standing over a corpse whose belly had been split open by the Irishman’s poleaxe. The man’s guts had been trampled into the stubble, while next to the corpse, and wearing the same livery of yellow circles on a blue field, was an older man with a pale, lined face, grey hair, and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore plate armour with a golden crucifix blazoned on his breastplate. He looked terrified. He had plainly surrendered to Keane, because the Irishman was holding the man’s helmet that had a cross on its crest and a long blue plume trailing behind. ‘He says he’s the Archbishop of Sens!’ Keane said to Thomas.

‘Then you’re rich. Hold onto him! Make sure no one steals him from you.’

‘This fellow tried to protect him,’ Keane looked down at the disembowelled man. ‘Wasn’t a clever decision, really.’

There was a wild melee in the centre of the field and Thomas, looking that way, saw the French royal standard still flying. Men were hacking at the standard’s defenders, wild in their savagery as they tried to cut through to King Jean. Thomas ignored it, riding southwards to see men fleeing down the hill towards the Miosson, but the Earl of Warwick’s archers were waiting there and the Frenchmen were fleeing towards death.

A man hailed Thomas and he turned to see Jake, one of his archers, leading a prisoner on a horse. The man wore a jupon showing a clenched red fist against a field of orange and white stripes, and Thomas could not help but laugh. It was Joscelyn of Berat, the man sworn to retake Castillon d’Arbizon. ‘He says he’ll only surrender to you,’ Jake said, ‘on account that I’m not a gentleman.’

‘Nor am I,’ Thomas said, then spoke in French: ‘You are my prisoner,’ he told Joscelyn.

‘Fate,’ Joscelyn said resignedly.

‘Keane!’ Thomas bellowed. ‘Another one here to guard! Look after them both, they’re rich!’ Thomas looked back to Jake. ‘Guard them well!’ Men squabbled over the ownership of prisoners, but Thomas reckoned there were enough Hellequin to keep the archbishop and the Count of Berat from being poached by other men.

Thomas spurred northwards. More Frenchmen were fleeing that way, desperate to reach the safety of Poitiers. A few, very few, had managed to find their horses or else had taken a horse from an Englishman. Most ran, or rather stumbled, harried all the way by vengeful pursuers, but one man rode straight towards Thomas, who recognised the piebald destrier and then the red heart of Douglas, though the surcoat was so sodden with blood that for a moment Thomas thought it was coloured black. ‘Robbie!’ he called, glad to see his friend, then he saw that the rider was not Robbie, but Sculley.

‘He’s dead!’ Sculley shouted. ‘The traitor’s dead! And it’s your turn now.’ He was carrying la Malice, the blade looking pathetically rusted and weak, but it was also discoloured by blood. ‘It looks like shit,’ Sculley said, ‘but it’s a canny weapon.’ He had lost his helmet, and his long, lank hair rattled with bones. ‘I took wee Robbie’s head off,’ Sculley said. ‘One cut of the magic sword and wee Robbie went to hell. See?’ He grinned and pointed to his saddle where Thomas saw Robbie’s bloody head was hanging by its hair. ‘I like a wee keepsake from a fight, and the sight

of that will make his uncle happy.’ He laughed at Thomas’s expression. No one was attacking the Scotsman because any Englishman or Gascon assumed a horseman who was not fleeing northwards must be on their side even if, like Sculley, he did not wear a red cross of Saint George. Now Sculley curbed his stolen horse. ‘Would you rather just surrender to me?’ he asked, then suddenly rowelled his spurs so that the destrier charged straight at Thomas, who, taken by surprise, could only thrust his poleaxe at the Scotsman, who easily avoided the clumsy blow and swept the ancient blade hard at Thomas’s neck, trying to take his head as he had taken Robbie’s.

Thomas jerked the axe back and upwards and somehow managed to parry the blow. The two weapons met with violent force and Thomas thought the old sword must break, but la Malice was still in one piece and Sculley backswung it with malevolent speed. Thomas ducked. La Malice’s blade hit his bascinet and scraped across the crown, and Thomas instinctively wrenched his horse to the left and saw the sword coming back, snake-fast, in a cut aimed at his face. He somehow leaned out of the way, aware of the broad tip of the sword flashing perilously close. He tried to lunge the poleaxe’s spiked tip at the Scotsman, but Sculley just parried the heavy blade and struck again, this time slamming la Malice hard down, and the blade clashed onto Thomas’s helmet so fiercely that he was half stunned, his ears ringing, but the bascinet’s steel resisted the blade even though he was slumping in the saddle, grunting, trying to gather his wits and make room to swing his poleaxe.

‘Christ’s bowels, but you’re feeble,’ Sculley taunted. He grinned, prodded Thomas with the sword and laughed when Thomas swayed in the saddle. ‘Time to say hello to the devil, Englishman,’ Sculley said, and drew la Malice back for the killing blow, and Thomas dropped the axe, kicked his left foot free of the stirrup and lunged at the Scotsman. He threw his arms around Sculley’s chest and held on, gripping him, tearing Sculley out of the saddle so that they both thumped onto the ground, and Thomas was on top. He used his archer’s strength to punch Sculley in the face, his iron-clad gauntlet shattering a cheekbone and nose. He hit him again, and Sculley tried to bite him and Thomas drove his gauntlet down again, but this time with out-thrust rigid fingers that drove into Sculley’s left eyeball. The Scotsman gave a gurgling scream as the eye collapsed, then Thomas headbutted him with his helmet, and rolled off. He seized Sculley’s right arm and wrenched the sword free. ‘Bastard,’ he said, and he held the sword in both hands, left hand on the hilt, right on the backblade, and he drove the fore-edge into Sculley’s throat and sawed it hard so that he cut through gullet and blood vessels and sinew and muscle and Sculley still gurgled and blood jetted onto Thomas’s face and he went on pushing as the blood pulsed warm and the pulses slowly slackened and still Thomas sawed and pushed until the old blade met bone.

And Sculley was dead.