The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic (51 page)

Thomas was twenty yards away, curled into the bloody belly of a dead horse and flinching every time another destrier trod near him. Noise overwhelmed him, but through the shrieks and hammering he could hear English voices still shouting defiance and he lifted his head to see Will Skeat with Father Hobbe, a handful of archers and two men-at-arms defending themselves against French horsemen. Thomas was tempted to stay in his blood-reeking haven, but he forced himself to scramble over the horse's body and run to Skeat's side. A French sword glanced off his
helmet,
he bounced off the rump of a horse, then stumbled into the small group.

'Still alive, lad?'
Skeat said.

'Jesus,' Thomas swore.

'He ain't interested. Come on, you bastard! Come on!' Skeat was calling to a Frenchman, but the enemy preferred to carry his unbroken lance towards the battle raging about the fallen standard. 'They're still coming,' Skeat said in tones of wonderment. 'No end to the goddamn bastards.'

An archer in the prince's green and white livery, without a helmet and bleeding from a deep shoulder wound, lurched towards Skeat's group. A Frenchman saw him, casually wheeled his horse and chopped down with a battle-axe.

'The bastard!'
Sam said, and, before Skeat could stop him, he ran from the group and leaped up onto the back of the Frenchman's horse. He put an arm round the knight's neck then simply fell backwards, dragging the man from the high saddle. Two enemy men-at-arms tried to intervene, but the victim's horse was in their way.

'Protect him!' Skeat shouted, and led his group to where Sam was beating fists at the Frenchman's armour. Skeat pushed Sam away, lifted the Frenchman's breastplate just enough to let a sword enter, then slid his blade into the man's chest. 'Bastard,' Skeat said.
'Got no right to kill archers.
Bastard.'
He twisted the sword, rammed it in further,
then
yanked it free.

Sam lifted the battle-axe and grinned. 'Proper weapon,' he said, then turned as the two would-be rescuers came riding in. 'Bastards, bastards,' Sam shouted as he chopped the axe at the nearer horse. Skeat and one of the men-at-arms were flailing swords at the other beast. Thomas tried to protect them with his shield as he stabbed up at the Frenchman and felt his sword deflected by shield or armour, then the two horses, both bleeding, wheeled away.

'Stay together,' Skeat said, 'stay together. Watch our backs, Tom.'

Thomas did not answer.

'Tom!' Skeat shouted.

But Thomas had seen the lance. There were thousands of lances on the field, but most of them were painted in spiralling colours, and this one was black, warped and feeble. It was the lance of St George that had hung in the cobwebs of his childhood nave and now it was being used as the pole of a standard and the flag that hung from the silver blade was red as blood and embroidered with a silver
yale
. His heart lurched. The lance was here! All the mysteries he had tried so hard to avoid were on this battlefield. The Vexilles were here. His father's killer was probably here.

'Tom!' Skeat shouted again.

Thomas just pointed at the flag. 'I have to kill them.'

'
Don't be a fool
, Tom,' Skeat said, then whipped back as a horseman crashed in from the lower slope. The man tried to veer away from the group of infantry, but Father Hobbe, the only man still carrying a bow, thrust the weapon into the horse's front legs, tangling them and snapping the bow. The horse collapsed with a crash by their side and Sam whacked the axe into the screaming knight's spine.

'Vexille!'
Thomas shouted as loud as he could.
'Vexille!'

'Lost his bloody head,' Skeat said to Father Hobbe.

'He hasn't,' the priest said. He was without a weapon now, but when Sam had finished chopping his new axe through mail and leather, the priest took the dead Frenchman's falchion that he hefted appreciatively.

'Vexille!
Vexille!'
Thomas screamed.

One of the knights about the
yale
standard heard the shout and turned his pig-snouted helmet. It seemed to Thomas that the man stared at him through the snout's eye-slits for a long time, though it could only have been for a heartbeat or two because the man was assailed by footmen. He was defending himself skilfully, his horse dancing the battle steps to keep
itself
from being hamstrung, but the rider beat down one Englishman's sword and slashed his left spur across the face of the other before turning the quick horse and killing the first man with a lunge of his sword. The second man reeled away and the pig-snouted knight turned and trotted straight at Thomas.

'Asking for bloody trouble,' Skeat growled, but went to Thomas's side. The knight swerved at the last moment and beat down with his sword. Thomas parried and was shocked by the force of the man's blow that stung his shield arm to his shoulder. The horse was gone, turned, came back and the knight beat at him again. Skeat lunged at the horse, but the destrier had a mail coat under its trapper and the sword slid away. Thomas parried again and was half beaten to his knees. Then the horseman was three paces away, the destrier was swivelling fast and the knight raised his sword hand and pushed up his pig-snout, and Thomas saw it was Sir Simon Jekyll.

Anger rose in Thomas like bile and, ignoring Skeat's warning shout, he ran forward, sword swinging. Sir Simon parried the blow with contemptuous ease, the trained horse sidestepped delicately and Sir Simon's blade was coming back fast. Thomas had to twist aside and even so, fast as he was, the blade clanged against his helmet with stunning force.

'This time you'll die,' Sir Simon said, and he lunged with the blade, thrusting with killing force on Thomas's mail-clad chest, but Thomas had tripped on a corpse and was already falling backwards. The lunge pushed him down faster and he sprawled on his back, his head spinning from the blow to his helmet. There was no one to help him any more, for he had dashed away from Skeat's group that was defending itself against a new rush of horsemen. Thomas tried to stand, but a pain ripped at his head and he was winded by the blow to his chest. Then Sir Simon was leaning down from his saddle and his long sword was seeking Thomas's unprotected face. 'Goddamn bastard,' Sir Simon said,
then
opened his mouth wide as though he was yawning. He stared at Thomas,
then
spewed a stream of blood that spattered Thomas's face. A lance had gone clean through Sir Simon's side and Thomas, shaking the blood from his eyes, saw that a Frenchman had thrust the blue and yellow lance.
A horseman?
Only the French were mounted, but Thomas had seen the horseman let go of the lance that was hanging from Sir Simon's side and now the Englishman, eyes rolling, was swaying in his saddle, choking and dying. Then Thomas saw the trappers of the horsemen who had swept past him. They showed yellow hawks on a blue field.

Thomas staggered to his feet. Sweet Christ, he thought, but he had to learn how to fight with a sword. A bow was not enough. Sir Guillaume's men were past him now, cutting into the Vexille conroi. Will Skeat shouted at Thomas to come back, but he stubbornly followed Sir Guillaume's men. Frenchman was fighting Frenchman! The Vexilles had almost broken the English line, but now they had to defend their backs while English men-at-arms tried to haul them from their saddles.

'Vexille!
Vexille!'
Sir Guillaume shouted, not knowing which visored man was his enemy. He beat again and again on a man's shield, bending him back in his saddle, then he chopped the sword down on the horse's neck and the beast dropped, and an Englishman, a priest, was slashing the fallen knight's head with a falchion.

A flash of rearing colour made Sir Guillaume look to his right. The Prince of Wales's banner had been rescued and raised. He looked back to find Vexille, but saw only a half-dozen horsemen with white crosses on their black shields. He spurred towards them, raised his own shield to fend off an axe blow and
lunged
his sword into a man's thigh, twisted it clear, felt a blow on his back, turned the horse with his knee and parried a high sword blow. Men were shouting at him, demanding to know why he fought his own side,
then
the Vexille's standard-bearer began to topple as his horse was hamstrung. Two archers were slashing at the beast's legs and the silver
yale
fell into the mêlée as Henry Colley let go of the old lance to draw his sword.

'Bastards!' he shouted at the men who had hamstrung his horse.
'Bastards!'
He slashed the blade down, hacking into a man's mailed shoulder,
then
a great roar made him turn to see a heavy man in plate and mail and with a crucifix about his neck, wielding a mace. Colley, still on his collapsing horse, swung at the bishop, who hammered the sword away with his shield and then slammed the mace down onto Colley's helmet. 'In the name of God!' the bishop roared as he dragged the spikes free of the mangled helmet. Colley was dead, his skull crushed, and the bishop swung the bloody mace at a horse with a yellow and blue trapper, but the rider swerved at the last instant.

Sir Guillaume never saw the bishop with his mace. Instead he had seen that one of the Vexille conroi had finer armour than the others and he raked back his spurs to reach that man, but felt his own horse faltering and he looked behind to glimpse, through the constricting slits in his visor, that Englishmen were hacking at his horse's rear legs. He beat the swords back, but the animal was sinking down and a huge voice was shouting, 'Clear my way! I want to kill the bastard.
In the name of Christ, out of the way!'
Sir Guillaume did not understand the words, but suddenly an arm was around his neck and he was being hauled out of the saddle. He shouted in anger, then had the breath driven from him as he thumped onto the ground. A man was holding him down and Sir Guillaume tried to hit him with his sword, but his wounded horse was thrashing beside him, threatening to roll on him and Sir Guillaume's assailant dragged him free,
then
twisted the Frenchman's sword away. 'Just lie there!' A voice shouted at Sir Guillaume.

'Is the goddamned bastard dead?' the bishop roared.

'He's dead!' Thomas shouted.

'Praise God!
On! On! Kill!'

'Thomas?' Sir Guillaume squirmed.

'Don't move!' Thomas said.

'I want Vexille!'

'They've gone!' Thomas shouted. 'They've gone! Lie still!'

Guy Vexille, assailed from two sides and with his red banner fallen, had pulled his three remaining men back, but only to join the last of the French horsemen. The King himself, with his friend the King of Bohemia, was entering the mêlée. Although John of Bohemia was blind, he had insisted on fighting and so his bodyguard had tied their horses' reins together and put the King's destrier in their centre so that he could not lose them. 'Prague!' They shouted their war cry. 'Prague!' The King's son, Prince Charles, was also tied into the group. 'Prague!' he shouted as the Bohemian knights led the last charge, except it was not a charge, but a blundering advance through a tangle of corpses and thrashing bodies and terrified horses.

The Prince of Wales still lived. The gold fillet had been half cut from his helmet and the top edge of his shield had been split in a half-dozen places, but now he led the countercharge and a hundred men went with him, snarling and screaming, wanting nothing else but to maul this last enemy who came in the dying light to the killing place where so many Frenchmen had died. The Earl of Northampton, who had been mustering the rearward ranks of the prince's battle to keep them in line, sensed that the battle had turned. The vast pressure against the English men-at-arms had weakened and though the French were trying again their best men were bloodied or dead, and the new ones were coming too slowly and so he shouted at his footmen to follow him.

'Just kill them!' he shouted. 'Just kill them!' Archers, men-at-arms, and even hobelars, who had come from their place inside the wagon circles that protected the guns on the flanks of the line, swarmed at the French. To Thomas, crouching beside Sir Guillaume, it was like the mindless rage at the bridge of Caen all over again. This was madness released, a blood-crazed madness, but the French would suffer for it. The English had endured deep into the long summer evening and they wanted revenge for the terror of watching the big horses come at them, and so they clawed and beat and slashed at the royal horsemen. The Prince of Wales led them, fighting beside archers and men-at-arms, hacking down horses and butchering their riders in a frenzy of blood. The King of Majorca died and the Count of St Pol and the Duke of Lorraine and the Count of Flanders. Then Bohemia's flag with its three white feathers fell, and the blind King was dragged down to be butchered by axes, maces and swords. A king's ransom died with the King, and his son bled to death on his father's body, as his bodyguard, hampered by the dead horses that were still tied to the living beasts, were slaughtered one after the other by Englishmen no longer shouting a war cry but screaming in a howling frenzy like lost souls. They were streaked with blood, stained and spattered and soaked in it, but the blood was French. The Prince of Wales cursed the dying Bohemians, blaming them for barring his approach to the French King, whose blue and gold banner still flew. Two English men-at-arms were hacking at the King's horse, the royal bodyguard was spurring to kill them, more men in English livery were running to bring Philip down and the Prince wanted to be there, to be the man who took the enemy King captive, but one of the Bohemian horses, dying, lurched on its side and the Prince was still wearing his spurs and one of them became caught in the dying horse's trapper. The Prince lurched, was trapped, and it was then that Guy Vexille saw the black armour and the royal surcoat and the broken fillet of gold and saw, too, that the Prince was unbalanced amidst the dying horses.

So Guy Vexille turned and charged.

Thomas saw Vexille turn. He could not reach the charging horseman with his sword, for that would mean clambering over the same horses where the Prince was trapped, but under his right hand was a black ash shaft tipped with silver, and he snatched up the lance and ran at the charging man. Skeat was there too, scrambling over the Bohemian horses with his old sword.