The Archer's Gold: Medieval Military fiction: A Novel about Wars, Knights, Pirates, and Crusaders in The Years of the Feudal Middle Ages of William Marshall ... (The Company of English Archers Book 7) (3 page)

        I’m not marching – I’m riding because I’m the five stripe senior sergeant in charge of what William and everyone else is now calling our “Horse Marines.”  It’s the special company of seventy or so Marine archers who have been learned to ride horses.  We're each so heavily armed with the very latest weapons that each of us needs a second horse to carry them and our supplies. 

       We can, of course, mount our riding and carrying horses if we have to get some place faster than we can run; but mostly we don’t - we lead them and trot alongside in order to keep them as fresh as possible.

       Actually leading his own carrying horse is what each of my Horse Marines does except me and my outriders.  Since I’m the senior sergeant I ride light and have my own carrying horse for my weapons and gear and a Horse Marine to lead him in addition to his own carrying horse.  That’s so I can go up and down the column and out to our outriders who are sometimes miles ahead of our main force.

       I got my command because years ago I was one of the few archers who knew how to ride a horse - I was an ostler’s apprentice and the second best archer in the parish with a short bow before I ran away when old Harry in number four company came to my village recruiting. 

       That was right after the squire whipped me and Ole, my father, just stood there and let it happen because he was only a humble serf and knew his place.  I was berthed and lived on Silverleaf farm all my life till then.  I’m told it’s in a land called Sussex.  Have you ever heard of it?

       All of my men are riding geldings because our mares are mostly used for breeding and our stallions are too much like my men and the other Marines - they want to jump on every female they come across.

       What our geldings carry is very much the same as what the walking Marines carry on their backs and the sea Marines have by their rowing bench – a long bow, the two parts of a very long Swiss pike with a blade and hook, a short stabbing sword, a shield, and a rain skin. 

       Where we differ from our brother Marines is that we carry many more arrows, a smaller shield, and our own food and water.  We’uns don’t have wagons and carts to carry our tents and extra arrows like the companies of walking Marines do; we each have our own second horse, a supply horse carrying our pikes and extra arrows and gear.

       Each of us having two horses is important - it means we can get off the roads and move really fast if we have to do.

       We’uns may be mounted on horses like Cornell’s knights and the light cavalry of the Arabs I saw in the Holy Land, but we don’t usually fight like them and that's a fact.  We fight dismounted as heavy infantry with one man in five told off to hold the horses in case we have to run. 

       Each of the horse holders also leads a second supply horse - either a horse carrying a tent into which me and eight to ten of my Horse Marines can squeeze or the supply carrying horse of one of the ten or so special men who are my outriders. 

        The very best of our riders are our outriders, the men who range out around our main column on our fastest horses to be our guides and far sentries. They have our best riding horses and don’t carry much so they can move fast if they have to follow an enemy force or gallop in to sound an alarm - only their long bows and a few arrows so they can shoot and scoot.

       Today, of course, we have some additional riders – about a dozen of Thomas’s older schoolboys what are learning to scribe and sum so they can read messages and write contracts and such when they grows up and takes over the archers. 

       The boys are likely lads who are being learned to be scribes and priests and such.  Each of them is on a riding horse with a short bow and a small quiver so he can pretend to be a real archer.  They’re being led by Bishop Thomas himself.  He’s the one what puts the learning on them.

       The boys don’t know it, of course, but three of my most reliable Horse Marines have also been chosen by Bishop Thomas to stay close to them at all times to keep them safe and out of trouble. 

       Bishop Thomas is one of Captain William's lieutenants and a fighting Marine too, that he is; killed many a man is what everyone says.  And I know it’s true for sure – I've been with him in the company ever since he was our company's priest and we was archers together under Lord Edmund, him what the heathen Moors killed years ago just before William became our captain.

@@@@@

       “Where did all the women and children come from?” 

       That’s the question I ask my priestly brother Thomas as we sit on our horses on the hillside pasture watching our Marines and boys assemble for our trip to London.

       “We’ve got a lot of healthy men here and many of them have good teeth with prospects to improve their fortunes.  Most Englishmen cannot improve their lot so the Marines are like honey and the women are like the flies it attracts.”

       Then my priestly older brother smiles and adds more to his explanation.

       “So far your very good rule about our women seems to be working - the one I thought up for you and announced a couple of years ago when you were off sailing around the Mediterranean somewhere – that every man or woman who wasn’t born in Cornwall has to be on the rolls of one of our companies or camps and every one of them has to work except pregnant women and mothers being milked by their babies.”

       “It’s the first time I’ve heard of
my
very good rule about women; is
my
very good rule really working?” I ask my priestly brother the question with a big smile and a heavy emphasis on the word ‘my.’

       “Oh I should think so.  We’ve always got many more men than women here and a lot of womanly things that need doing.  So we can always find something for a woman to do if she gets here and wants to stay - and if she isn’t willing to marry one of the men and work we put her on a ship and send her to London. 

       Not many have made the trip – just a thief and a couple of whores with the French pox.  Any women who comes this far usually wants to find a man and stay.  We probably should have topped the thief so she'd stay here forever, but we didn't and there you are.”

        “Well it sounds like it might be a good rule and I'm glad you told me it's my doing. Mmm yes." ...  "Well brother, it looks like the sergeants have gotten their men ready; it’s time for us to head off for Hathersage and London.”

       That’s what I tell my brother as I kick my brown mare in the ribs and she begins trotting forward.  As she jumps ahead and begins to move I pump my arm up and down with a closed fist to signal my horn blower and our marching drums to begin. 
Most of our riding horses are geldings but this mare is special so I gave myself permission to ride her; rank has its privileges don't you know.

       Raymond, the head of our Horse Marines and outriders, sees my arm pumping signal even before the drum starts and gives his own to the mounted Marines around him. 

       I can’t hear Raymond from over here, of course, but I can see his gestures in response to mine – and within seconds he and his outriders begin fanning out further and further ahead and to the sides of our column at a fast trot.  We’re on our way. 

      
Raymond may not be able to scribe and sum but he’s sharp as a Damascus blade and always on top of things.  A good and steady man he is and every archer knows Raymond who is Ole’s son.  He’s the one what brought his woman from some strange place across the water where no one’s ever been.

                          Chapter III

       It takes us four full days to cross this part of Cornwall and reach Launceston Castle.  We could have made it in a day of hard walking or half a day of riding but we don't.  Our progress is quite slow because of all the make believe fighting and marching Henry and I have the Marine archers doing along the way. 

       Henry, of course, is my lieutenant in charge of training our archers to fight on land.  In any event, after four days of pretending to fight we get to Launceston and are well received when we do.

      Randolph the archer commanding Launceston's garrison knows we are coming and has more than enough new ale and food for everyone when we arrive. 

       As you might imagine, the entire village turns out and the castle’s keep and its kitchen and courtyards are full and bustling by the time our last wagon clatters in across the first of the Launceston’s two draw bridges and into the outer courtyard where the visiting Marines will be camping.

       While the men are settling down to eat and drink and shite and take care of their horses, Thomas and I and all our lieutenants walk around with Randolph to inspect the castle’s on-going construction work. 

       There is quite a bit to see because we’re beginning to add another curtain wall, Launceston’s third, with a gate tower and eight flanking towers to cover it and another moat to surround it. 

      
Of course we're strengthening Launceston.  It sits astride the only road into Cornwall and to our training grounds and stronghold at Restormel Castle in the middle of the shire.

@@@@@

       Immediately upon arriving at Launceston, as every lieutenant and I always do on every visit, we all go down to inspect the security of the dungeons under the keep where the food reserves are kept and the shafts of the old tin mine provide their secret entrances. 
There is no sense going to the expense and trouble of strengthening the castle walls if attackers can get in through the old mine tunnels.

       It’s well known to everyone that we should pay particular attention to the old mine tunnels under the castle - they’re the ones we used ourselves a few years ago to empty the castle’s storeroom and force FitzCount’s French knights to come out and fight - and then fouled the river by throwing FitzCount and his child-killing knight bastards into it
.

       I never come here without thinking of that day and the French knights' desperate screams and pleas for mercy with great deal of satisfaction.  My only regret is that FitzCount and some of the dishonorable bastards were already dead of fighting with us before we threw them in the river to avenge Lord Edmund’s wife and children.

       “Well Peter, what do you think?  Brings back memories doesn’t it?  It was right over there where you took charge and you and your archers saved our arses when the bastards sortied.” 
And Thomas and I embarrassed ourselves by being in the village trying to get warm and got late to the fight.  Well, we got our revenge and I got a damn good lieutenant out of it and that’s for sure.

       “Aye Captain, that it does.  I still shiver when I think of how cold it was that night and all the good men we lost.  It’s a wonder our bow strings didn’t break for being frozen solid.”

@@@@@

       So far we’ve been marching over Cornwall lands that are quite familiar to all of us.  That's because our apprentice Marines do a lot of their learning and practicing along the well-traveled road between Restormel and along the River Tamar here at the edge of Cornwall. 

       Indeed, it would be safe to wager that every Marine on the march has practiced fighting in the fields and forests along our route.  That will change tomorrow morning, of course,  Everything will be new for many of our men once we wade across the nearby River Tamar ford and enter Devon.  Most of our men have never set foot in Devon. 

       According to Raymond’s outriders the water in the Tamar is still quite cold and rather low.  There must not have been much rain up in the hills this year. 

       Well, there’s no alternative but to get our feet cold and wet at the ford - we haven’t allowed boats and bridges back on the river ever since we chopped them up when Lord Cornell and his men tried to cross the river to get into the shire and take over our lands and keeps.

       Even so, it’s going to be a few days before we all move beyond the River Tamar and into Devon. 

       At first, Thomas, Henry, and I will stay on this side of the Tamar with one company of walking Marines, Raymond's Horse Marines, and Thomas's boys while the other company under the command of Peter moves across the ford and sets up a camp about five or six miles into Devon. 

       When they're ready, Peter's men will turn around and move back towards Cornwell as invaders - just as Cornell and his men did a few years back and whoever comes at us next is likely to do. 

       This is what we call a "jester's war" - the make believe invasions and wars we do every year in May and again in July as part of our summer training before our latest crop of newly trained Marine archers ships out for Cyprus and the Holy Land in the autumn.

       We do them because every one of our lieutenants and senior sergeants, and particularly George and Thomas's boys, needs to know how to defend the ford and everything up and down the river from it.  And so do Thomas and I – that’s why Peter and the company of Marines he's leading are going to pretend to invade Cornwall without telling us how they're going to do it.
 

       All of our make-believe battles are run this way so that no one knows what to expect. All we’ll know on this side of the river is that Peter and his men will probably be coming up the only road that runs into Cornwall from the rest of England.