Gate of the Dead

by David Gilman

  The men trembled from the exertion and fear of the fighting. Their death was moments away and no man, even barbaric mercenaries such as they, wished to die unshriven.

  Blackstone laid Wolf Sword’s blade tip against the insignia. ‘Who is this you serve?’ he said.

  The sharp point, although only laid gently on the cloth, caused it to tear. The man pushed himself back against the wall.

  ‘Werner von Lienhard,’ he answered.

  Blackstone said nothing; his men were waiting for him to push the blade through the man’s chest so they could be about their business of stripping whatever wealth could be found on the men they had killed.

  Then he spoke. ‘Your German lord. Where is he? North with Visconti’s other troops? Or with the column?’

  ‘Milan,’ the man said, his voice croaking from lack of water.

  ‘How many men in the column?’ Blackstone asked.

  The two men looked at each other and shrugged, shaking their heads with uncertainty.

  ‘A few hundred, lord.’

  ‘Their route home?’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Through Vani del Falco. We were to follow them.’ The man went down on one knee and his companion quickly followed. ‘Mercy, lord. We will do whatever you ask of us. Spare us and we will serve you.’

  Killbere’s sweat-streaked face glowered with impatience at Blackstone. ‘We have more to kill, Thomas. We can’t stand here all night talking to these vile bastards.’

  Blackstone lowered his sword. ‘I’ll spare them,’ he said. ‘But bind their arms and keep them safe.’

  ‘Bless you, lord! Bless you!’ the men blurted.

  Killbere fell in step beside Blackstone as he strode across the square. ‘You’ve a reason for this?’

  ‘It will be dawn soon. Those we didn’t kill will have run for the river. Organize the men, Gilbert. Find as many of the townspeople as you can.’

  ‘Thomas, you’re thinking up more trouble for us. Sweet suffering Christ. We’ve bled enough. We’ve lost men tonight.’

  Blackstone turned to face the man he respected more than any other. Killbere had fought for his King, had stepped in front of the English army and urged them to stand shoulder to shoulder against the French. And yet he had chosen to follow Blackstone into exile and serve him.

  ‘Gilbert, trust me.’

  The older man hesitated, and then nodded. Fatigue and exasperation were getting the better of him. He muttered something incoherently under his breath and turned away to do Blackstone’s bidding.

  2

  A harvest of white-fletched arrows stood proud from the bodies of those men who had tried to escape. Will Longdon’s archers had unleashed their shafts in a storm that would have brought terror and incomprehension to those attempting to evade Blackstone’s swordsmen in the town. The bowmen could bring down their target at three hundred paces; at two hundred, illuminated by the campfires, the retreating men simply ran into a curtain of arrows that fell from the night sky. The archers held their positions until Blackstone sent word for them to cross the river into the field of slaughter and protect his flank in case of any possible counter-attack. Longdon’s men gathered their bloodied arrows, their bodkin points easier to draw free from their victims’ punctured flesh than any broadhead. Arrows were a valuable resource, and these yard-length shafts fashioned from ash, as thick as a man’s middle finger and flighted with goose feathers, were difficult to replace in any quantity. Once the archers had gathered the arrows they scavenged food and drink from the campsite and then, content with their night’s work, they settled into their defensive positions and began to straighten and repair the fletchings. A decent arrow would repay its fletcher’s skill by killing more than once.

  Dawn brought with it the acrid stench of spilled blood as the breeze tugged at Blackstone’s banner that now fluttered from Santa Marina’s bell-tower. Villagers emerged from cellars and hiding places; others returned cautiously from the wooded hills and caves that surrounded the town. By nones they were gathering their dead, laying out the corpses in one of the small piazzas where donkey carts stood ready for them to be loaded for burial.

  ‘Thirty-two of Visconti’s men dead in the field, another thirty-seven here,’ reported Meulon to Blackstone.

  ‘Most of the bastards took fright when they saw you running out of the darkness,’ said Perinne, one of Blackstone’s longest-serving Frenchmen. ‘The sight of you and Gaillard could curdle a mother’s milk.’

  The weary men leaned against the church wall; some sat with their backs pressed against it, cleaning their weapons. They had found bread and cured meat and drank wine taken from the houses.

  ‘How many did we lose?’

  ‘Nine. Two won’t see out the day.’ John Jacob told him the names of each man lost in the night’s fighting. Blackstone knew them all, though some of the names could not be given a face. No matter. They had fought as expected and would be buried in Santa Marina’s graveyard with a prayer said over them by their priest.

  ‘Where was the priest hiding?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘The bell-tower,’ said Gaillard.

  ‘Should have had Jack Halfpenny bring down the black crow,’ said Killbere and spat.

  ‘Will’s a better bowman,’ said Gaillard.

  ‘Jesus, it doesn’t matter who, you Norman oaf! Any damned archer would have done!’ said Killbere. ‘Thomas, what’s next? Back home for a hot bath, some mulled wine and a soft-breasted woman? I’m in need of sustenance.’

  ‘Not yet, Gilbert. We’ve work still to do.’ Blackstone raised his arm and gestured to the soldiers across the square. The men herded the survivors forward. They stood on steps and walls and gathered in cobbled alleyways. Looking down at their dead they waited in silent obedience, not knowing what demands would be placed upon them by this new group of mercenaries. The priest was brought forward.

  He had spent thirty-eight of his sixty-one years being shunted from village to village. He was a troublesome priest who railed against levies imposed on the villani by bishops and landlords, but who, five years before, had found himself blessed by being sent to Santa Marina. Bypassed by the pestilence, they believed that God had given them life for a reason other than to have their labour abused by low payment from those who bought their food. It had been the priest who had encouraged the villagers to make a stand and demand better payment. It had been he, he reasoned, who had brought this act of retribution down upon them.

  ‘Your banner flies from my church,’ he said to Blackstone. ‘Défiant à la mort. I know enough of the language to understand it. The next time these men attack they will tear down the church stone by stone to reach it. But I will defy them. In God’s name and in the name of Sir Thomas Blackstone. These people of Santa Marina will offer prayers every day for you and your men.’

  Killbere hawked and spat, then sighed, arms folded across his chest, his lack of interest plain for the priest to see.

  ‘All of you,’ the emboldened priest said.

  ‘There will be no further attacks against you. My banner guarantees it,’ said Blackstone.

  ‘It’s better than a thousand armed men protecting you,’ said Killbere, wishing to add emphasis to Blackstone’s reputation.

  Blackstone turned the priest’s shoulders so he could face the townspeople. ‘How many people died here?’

  The old priest shook his head. ‘Three hundred, perhaps. I cannot yet say. We have not searched all the houses for their bodies.’

  ‘And those who live?’

  ‘The same number. I pray more.’

  ‘Listen to me, old man! Those who attacked you were only part of a column that is making its way back to the safety of their own territory. These villagers know the mountains. Will they fight?’

  Killbere and those within earshot looked momentarily startled, as did the priest, whose shock was more apparent. Townspeople or villagers did not fight armed men. No peasant ever raised a hand against professional soldiers. Words failed the old man; his jaw open
ed and closed, his eyes widened.

  ‘Will they fight?’ Blackstone said again. ‘My men and your people can ambush those who caused the slaughter here. An ambush will not kill them all, but we’ll take plunder, which will be shared with you. Horses, weapons, cloth, coin, supplies, carts and mules. It will provide some degree of recompense. We can isolate them and kill at least a third of them. As many of them as they slaughtered. You know these people. Speak to them. They say no, and my men and I return home within the hour.’

  He pushed the recalcitrant priest forward until his sandalled feet stood in pools of blood that had seeped from the bodies laid in the square. He fumbled his words, uncertain how to rouse the townsmen to strike back – and then a lifetime of preaching sermons came to his aid. His voice carried across the square, urging the people to join Blackstone and his men and smite down those who had brought such grief and sorrow to their town.

  ‘Thomas, you’ve a March hare for a brain at times. These peasants can barely wash their own arses,’ said Killbere.

  Blackstone looked at the men, who obviously shared Killbere’s doubts. The priest had come to a faltering stop. No voices were raised to join the fight. But they had not moved away. They were waiting for something more.

  ‘They know every hill and crooked mountain path; they can throw rocks and loosen boulders. They can snare hundreds of men in the ravines and fall on them with staves and pitchforks. We can kill even more, and if we do those bastards will not come this way again and these people will be free. They will be respected by those who would wish to treat them otherwise.’

  Killbere stood closer to Blackstone. He raised his mouth to Blackstone’s ear and in barely a whisper said, ‘Thomas, you are no longer a stonemason living in a village under Lord Marldon’s jurisdiction. You are more than that. You always have been. You cannot give them false hope for such freedom. They have not fought the wars you have endured,’ he said. He spoke the words in kindness.

  Blackstone placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘I will always be that stonemason, Gilbert. I’m a common man and that can never change. I can give them the fury to fight.’

  ‘How?’ said Killbere.

  Blackstone gestured to two of his men who stood guard at a doorway. They dragged out the two surviving mercenaries. Blackstone made his way into the square, the guards manhandling the frightened men to him.

  ‘You have a chance to reclaim your lives!’ he called out. ‘We came here because we are paid men! Condottieri! And you have seen that we can inflict a greater slaughter on them even though there were fewer of us! Come with us today and I, Thomas Blackstone, will give you revenge! Seize it!’

  He grabbed the two terrified men.

  ‘Sir Thomas, you said you would spare us!’ one of them begged.

  ‘I did,’ Blackstone answered. ‘Now it’s up to them.’

  He threw them into the square where they stumbled and fell over the corpses. The men slipped in the gore, then stood like wounded beasts surrounded by a pack of wolves. One raised his hands in supplication. Nothing happened. No one moved. The two men carefully tried to back away, stepping over the bodies of women and children. It seemed they had a chance to escape. And then a villager’s angry voice cried out. It was a shriek of agony so piercing it shocked the crows from the roofs. Another voice joined the cry. And another. A cacophony of pain rose up from the crowd. No words were spoken, no blasphemous curse, no threat issued. Just howling anguish that chilled the blood and held all those who were witness to it rigid with expectation.

  Then someone in the crowd threw a stone that struck one of the mercenaries. He went down on one knee, but staggered to his feet again. Both men tried to retreat, but the howl of anguish became a roar of hate. Another came forward with a stave as a woman pushed her way through from the other side of the square brandishing a fire iron; within moments others surged across the corpses of their own loved ones towards the helpless men, who tried to run. Their cries for mercy were drowned. They fought with their fists, but went down beneath the flailing attack. Soon the men were dead, battered beyond recognition.

  Thomas Blackstone had gifted the villagers with blood-lust.

  *

  The townspeople ran across tracks that were little more than scars in the hillside. They ran as if in a swarm – no single track confined them; instead they swamped the hill, picking their way along routes used since their ancestors first grazed goats high in the mountains.

  Blackstone kept up as best he could, but these sure-footed peasants were used to steep climbs and twisting tracks and he and his men were forced to stop, gasping for breath, by the time they had reached two-thirds of the way up the steep incline.

  The men’s heaving lungs were raw from exertion, but if they stopped too long their limbs would seize and make the final push to the summit more difficult.

  ‘They’re like fleas on a dog’s back,’ said Perrine. ‘We’re going to lose sight of those up front. God knows what sort of fuck-up they’ll make when they find the column.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Killbere. ‘Thomas, you should take the archers and some of the others to get up there with them. I’m too slow, so I’ll follow those breaking off to the right. It’s less of a climb and they must be working their way around the hilltop to flank the column.’

  The men hawked the phlegm from their lungs and throats, bent double to ease their pain.

  ‘I’ll take thirty men with Sir Gilbert,’ said John Jacob. ‘If you can get the higher ground with Will Longdon’s lads, then you’ll cause the Visconti’s men pain and give those mad bastard peasants a chance not to get themselves slaughtered.’

  ‘Virgin’s tears,’ said Longdon and then smiled. ‘You men-at-arms always expect us archers to do the hard grind.’

  ‘It’s a mark of our esteem for your killing skills,’ said Killbere sarcastically, ready to move on, determined to show the younger men that he was fit enough to lead the flanking assault.

  ‘Pick your men,’ said Blackstone and turned to run up the mountainside.

  Longdon gritted his teeth, settled his war bow into its linen bag across his back, and followed his sworn lord and friend. The archers clambered after them as Killbere and Jacob pointed to others, gesturing that they should join them. Talking took too much air from their lungs; air sorely needed for this last leg-punishing run uphill.

  It would have taken the better part of a day for a column of mounted men, laden with slow-moving carts and supplies, to reach the defile that ran between the curving passes. The men and women of Santa Marina took less than three hours using muscle-tearing shortcuts. Soaked in sweat, Blackstone pulled free his helm and pushed his head beneath a brook that tumbled cold water between the rocks.

  ‘Shit!’ said Jack Halfpenny as the archers sank to their haunches. ‘I’ve barely the strength to spit, never mind draw my bow.’

  ‘On your feet,’ ordered Longdon. He was hurting as much as the next man, but needed to have the archers ready for whatever Blackstone asked of them. There was little chance of controlling those townsmen bent on revenge; there was no one to lead them or to take command. ‘They’ve blood in their nostrils, Thomas. Like a crazed war horse. You’ll not stop them now.’

  ‘They’ll cause damage all right,’ said Blackstone. The townsmen were moving downhill across both sides of the road. They did so in silence; no cries echoed along the defile from them and the column had not yet looked up to see their approach. The column had split in two; its vanguard was already moving out of sight around the distant curve, but the main force lumbered along with the wagons. With most of the cavalry at the front they would be hard pressed to counter-attack.

  To his right Blackstone saw armed men appear from around the shoulder of the hillside. It was Killbere and John Jacob with the others, who were now a thousand yards away and on the far side of the road. Blackstone had to get his archers onto the left flank along the contour line.

  ‘There’s more to do, lads,’ he told them.

&nbs
p; ‘There always is, Sir Thomas,’ said Robert Thurgood. The archer was a newcomer, along with Jack Halfpenny. Neither was yet twenty years old. Lean and wiry, their size belied their ability to draw a powerful English war bow. Both men came from the same village and had tramped across France with the Prince of Wales during his great raid that ended in the slaughter at Poitiers. As children they had stood at the butts and watched the older boys practising archery. Of the two it was Halfpenny who first felt the strength of a bow in his hand and the squirming joy in his chest as the shaft loosed. Thurgood was more interested in shirking work on the lord’s estate and was known for an aggressive temper that had seen him punished on more than one occasion. Jack Halfpenny showed his friend how an accomplished archer earned respect and attracted village girls at a county fair. When they presented themselves to Blackstone’s captains, the scarred knight himself tested their skills and heard their testimony and Halfpenny convinced the legendary knight to allow them to join his company. Halfpenny had stood silently while Thurgood spoke of battle and killing; of how the English and Welsh archers were the greatest of men and the jewels in the King’s crown. Then Halfpenny spoke of the body of the yew bow in his hand and the waxed cord pulled to his cheek, of how the power of the loosed arrow gave flight to a part of him that he could not explain, but that he knew it was a gift from God. Those words gave the two friends the opportunity to join the renowned Thomas Blackstone. Like all fighting men they were hungry for booty if it was to be had, but Killbere was as hard a taskmaster as any they had served before Blackstone. ‘And best we get to it before Sir Gilbert thinks we’re no better than women gossiping at a bathhouse,’ Halfpenny gasped.

  The track that followed the contour was level enough for Blackstone and his fifty-three men to cover the distance and, once the lumbering wagons below reached the turn in the road, the villagers began hurling rocks from the slopes. The sudden assault caused chaos. Men who had been slumped half-asleep in the saddle from the dreary pace of pack mules and ox-drawn wagons were flung into panic.