by Wayne Grant
His instructions from the Sheriff of Yorkshire had been clear. Somewhere, a few miles outside of Newark, they would be challenged by a large band of ‘outlaws’. To insure there were no mistakes, the outlaw leader would produce the seal of Prince John as his bona fides. Faced with overwhelming odds, he was to surrender the wagons without a fight. His men would not be told that this outcome had been planned. The fewer who knew the truth, the better.
The orders were simple enough, but any transaction that involved an exchange of tons of silver was enough to give a man a case of the nerves. Still, they were a good half a day’s march from Newark, so he tried to relax. Just as he was beginning to calm himself, he looked up to see ten men on horseback blocking the road. He raised his arm to call a halt. This was supposed to happen much nearer to Newark, which was ten miles further along. Had he misunderstood his orders?
He had also expected a much larger force—one that would justify him surrendering the wagons in the eyes of his own men. Ten men were hardly overwhelming! Behind him, his mounted guards nervously laid their hands on the hilts of their swords. Upset at this unexpected deviation from the plan, he rode forward to meet the men blocking his path.
“Are you from the Sheriff of Nottingham?” he asked quietly, once he was out of earshot of his own men.
Sir Robin of Loxley nodded, then urged his horse forward and showed the man the seal of Prince John. Robin watched the man’s face. His woodcarver had laboured over this seal for three days. Would it pass inspection? The captain of the guard detail gave it a long look, then reached out to inspect it. Robin brought the flat of his sword down on the man’s wrist.
“Don’t you trust us?”
“You were supposed to bring enough men to make this believable!” the man hissed, rubbing feeling back into his numb wrist. “I can hardly surrender to ten men!”
“Of course not,” Robin said and raised his left hand. Like ghosts, a hundred men emerged from the woods on both sides of the road. Robin moved the point of his sword to under the man’s chin.
“Is this convincing enough?”
All along the column, the riders from York drew swords. From the trees, a dozen arrows struck the sides of the wagons. The message was clear—resist and die.
“Give the order, captain!”
The captain of the guard swallowed hard. This was more than convincing.
“Throw down your weapons!” he called over his shoulder.
***
Eight miles further down the road toward Newark, eighty men, dressed in peasant garb hid in the bushes and waited. They had been there since noon and had expected the wagons to arrive before sunset. But the shadows were growing long with no sign of the column from York. The Sheriff of Nottingham paced in a clearing near the road. Something did not feel right. He had placed a man with a fast horse at an inn in Tuxford, a mere twelve miles up the road. The rider had returned at noon to report that the column of wagons had passed by the place a little after first light.
They should be here by now.
As the light began to die he decided he could wait no longer. He called two of his men forward and ordered them to head northwest up the road toward Blythe and find the damned wagons. It was full night when his men returned. The story they told made the Sheriff of Nottingham sick to his stomach.
***
Deep in Sherwood Forest, men were breaking the seals on the heavy chests and loading the silver into bags. These were packed in smaller wagons drawn by horses and covered with a mound of hay and manure, carefully collected over the past three days from every farm within ten miles. It had been Tuck’s idea.
“You can be sure there will be a hue and cry from one end of the Midlands to the other when they learn of the theft,” he said. “Every man the Prince can spare will be looking for three ox carts. We wouldn’t make it out of Nottinghamshire with these beasts,” he said gesturing at the nearest ox that was bellowing loudly. “I brought our weapons from London in a wagon full of barnyard waste and no one troubled me the entire way.”
Robin had agreed, but insisted that the treasure not go entirely unguarded. There would be a dozen wagons, all taking different routes from Sherwood and rendezvousing on Ermine Street north of Stamford. Each would have a sole driver. But trailing well out of sight behind each would be five men or more on good horses—enough to see off any curious local constabulary. A wagon or two might be lost if it had the bad luck to fall into the hands of a curious searcher with enough force at his back, but most should get through.
As the last of the bags was covered in dung, Robin shook his head and turned once more to Tuck.
“Are you sure we can’t keep it?”
A Reckoning on Watling Street
As men rose in the cold predawn darkness to ready themselves for battle, the night sky was ablaze with stars. Out of old habit, Roland looked up and found the north star. It shimmered in the clear freezing air and made him think of Rolf Inness, the man who had first taught him how to find the seven points of the Plough and follow them up to the star that always told true north.
As he stamped his feet to get feeling in them, he wished that finding his way in life was as easy as following a single star. As a boy, his father had been that for him, but William de Ferrers had ended that. He looked across the valley and wondered if the Earl of Derby was over there—with the paid soldiers of a treasonous Prince. He prayed that he was. There was still his blood oath to fulfil.
Nearby, he saw Sir Roger climb to his feet. The big man moved slowly and stiffly. As he cleared his throat and began relieving himself in the grass, a small smile came to Roland’s lips. The first time he had seen the big Norman knight was on the road to York, where he had been doing the same thing. As Roland had learned during the crusade, Sir Roger never missed an opportunity to sleep, eat or piss.
“Never know when you’ll get another chance,” was his simple explanation of this rule.
As he watched, the big man finished his morning business and stretched his back. The arm he’d broken on the day he had fought his way into Chester was not fully healed and it had taken him weeks to feel strong enough for sword drill. There was no doubt that Roger de Laval showed the ill effects of three years of war and the trials of his journey home.
But then the big man leaned down, picked up his helmet with one hand and his great battleaxe with the other. He straightened up, took a few easy swings with the axe to limber up and shoved the helmet on his head. In that moment, he was no longer a convalescent. Everything about the man signalled danger.
With his father dead, Sir Roger had become the star Roland guided by. The big Norman had saved his life and given him a path to follow. That path had made him a knight and had led him to Millie. He took a last look at the heavens and the star that all the others circled around. For however long he had left in this life, Millicent de Laval would be the star he guided on. He prayed she slept safe in bed at this hour.
“Form up!”
The command came from somewhere to the front. Roland grasped his shield and pulled his steel helmet on. A few feet away, Declan yawned and buckled on his sword belt. They would join Sir Roger and Earl Ranulf at the centre of Marshall’s defence, where the one hundred men of the Invalid Company would anchor the line at the Roman road. These veterans, like all of the mounted men, had picketed their horses on the far side of the ridge.
The arrival of Ranulf gave Marshall a little over six hundred men, which he packed tightly into a line three deep that stretched from one wood line across the road and anchored itself in the trees opposite. In the centre of the line, the Invalid Company formed an inverted vee at the gap in the stakes where the stone road passed through.
Thirty yards behind this line, one hundred sixty Danish archers under Thorkell’s command formed up. If the men to their front, behind a few sharpened stakes, could hold back hundreds of heavy cavalry and over a thousand foot soldiers, the longbows of the Danes would make the mercenaries pay. If the lines broke—it would be a mass
acre.
During the siege of Chester, the Danes had not been idle. Roland sat often with Thorkell and Svein and talked of what they had learned in the long retreat from the mountains. Some of the lessons were not new—if infantry or cavalry closed on the archers, they would be slaughtered. The mercenary infantry had never been able to get to close quarters with the Danes who used every sheltered patch of woods to strike at their pursuers, leaving many a dead Fleming and Irishman in the fields of Cheshire.
But the heavy cavalry that caught them north of the River Weaver would have annihilated the bowmen, had Earl Ranulf and the Invalids not arrived in time. In that fight, the surprise appearance of friendly cavalry had kept the mercenary mounted troops at bay long enough for the Danes to wreak havoc on them.
In the small hours of the night, Roland sought Marshall out and told him what had happened during the Dane’s retreat from the mountains to Chester. The Earl listened carefully. He had never seen the longbow used in battle, though he had heard the Welsh used masses of them in their constant civil wars. If what this young knight told him was true, these eight score bowmen would be worth far more than their numbers.
It was still dark as the line of men finished sorting itself out. In the moments before a battle, men take special care to have trusted comrades to their left and right. After a few minutes, the ripple of movement quieted as men found their places. Marshall had positioned his own troops on either flank of the Invalids and was the only man on the ridgeline who remained mounted. He sat his horse just behind the centre of his line and looked into the valley.
There was mist in the low ground, but movement was visible in the enemy camp. Then a horn sounded three blasts. The mercenary army was forming up into attack formation. Above the ridgeline where Marshall’s men waited, the sky began to lighten.
***
“We should wait,” said Pieter Van Hese, the commander of the mercenary army. “If we go in at first light, the sun will be in our eyes.”
William de Ferrers clinched his fists.
“We cannot wait! The Prince has made it clear we must reach London in all haste. He will not appreciate us wasting half a day over a bit of glare from the sun!”
Van Hese stared at the Earl of Derby with his one good eye. The man was an ass and quite possibly a coward, but he paid their wages. He shrugged his shoulders. It looked to be a very uneven fight, regardless of the angle of the sun. He had noted that there were more men on the ridge than he had seen at sunset, but no more than five hundred were visible on the slope across the valley. He had four hundred heavy cavalry alone. They could put their sharpened sticks in the ground as they wished. It would not stop what he would throw at them.
“Very well, my lord.” He turned to one of his lieutenants.
“Have the skirmishers and the crossbowmen advance and engage.”
“Aye, my lord!” The man ran off to give the orders. De Ferrers nudged his horse forward and watched as a line of foot, mixed with two hundred Genoese crossbowmen, began moving forward. They marched in column until they crossed the shallow ford, then spread out on either side of the road.
“Infantry forward,” Van Hese ordered.
In the mercenary camp, a drum began a steady beat to mark the cadence of march as rank after rank of foot soldiers, some with lances and others with swords, moved toward the ford. De Ferrers turned in his saddle and saw that horsemen were already moving forward. As they rode past, the great warhorses snorted and stamped as they sensed a fight brewing.
Armoured cavalry had been the weapon de Ferrers’ Norman forbearers had used to conquer half of France, bits of Italy and all of England and he was eager to witness the carnage it would inflict on the thin line of men on the ridge. That it was Marshall who they would crush this day made the prospect all the sweeter.
“When will the cavalry attack?” he asked, excitement in his voice. Once more Van Hese had to bite back the urge to tell this meddler to shut up.
“My lord, after the crossbowmen wear down the men up there, and before I send the infantry to close on them, our cavalry will ford the stream. At my signal, the infantry will stand clear of the road and the cavalry will move forward. Once they form their line, we will sound the charge.” He pointed to his bugler standing nearby at the ready. “Do you wish to join them?”
De Ferrers blinked. He glanced across the valley as the line of crossbowmen mixed with skirmishers climbed up the slope. Thicker lines of infantry followed. Right in front of him, the cavalry was beginning to ford the stream. For a moment, he felt a strong urge to take up Van Hese’s challenge, to join these men who were about to smash through the enemy line and slaughter the men on the hill.
He looked back up the ridge and saw the morning sun reflecting dully off hundreds of steel spear points. Victory might be certain, but not without losses. Perhaps it was best to let the mercenaries ride up toward the men on the ridge with the sharp spear points. After all, that is what he was paying them for. What did he care what some paid cutthroat like Van Hese thought of him?
“It’s best I stay here, where I can better control events,” he said and stared at Van Hese. The Fleming looked back impassively.
“As you wish, my lord.”
***
With the morning sun at their backs, the men on the ridge watched as the mercenary host formed up and advanced to meet them.
“They’re sending in their crossbowmen,” Sir Roger said as they watched the Genoese professionals spread out at the foot of the slope.
“They don’t know we have the Danes with us,” said Roland. “Those men will never get close enough to touch us.”
Sir Roger nodded.
“If those lads can shoot as well as you, it will go badly for the Italians.”
Behind the line of infantry, they heard Thorkell’s voice bark.
“Make ready!”
The Genoese were three hundred yards from the stakes. Behind them, four thick formations of infantry had crossed the ford and were forming up for the assault. At the ford, the first horsemen were crossing, with hundreds on the far bank waiting to join them. The first rays of the sun now shone above the ridge, flashing off steel helmets, gleaming breastplates and polished mail. It was a daunting sight.
The Genoese reached two hundred paces from the stakes, urged on by the pounding of a drum somewhere near the river.
“Draw!” Thorkell ordered, his voice loud but calm.
The cadence of the drum grew faster and the crossbowmen surged forward.
“Loose!”
One hundred sixty arrows leapt across the distance in less time than it took to take and release a breath. Roland heard their buzz as they passed overhead, but did not look up. He was watching the men who were marching unawares into hell. The arrows struck with devastating accuracy. Skirmishers and crossbowmen alike fell in bunches onto the frozen ground.
Shocked, the Genoese loosed a ragged return volley, their quarrels falling harmlessly short of Marshall’s line. Sergeants screamed at them to advance and they did—into a second volley from the Danes. More men fell. A brave few ran forward and loosed their bolts. Four men along Marshall’s lines fell. The ranks closed up to fill the gaps.
As the third volley of arrows rained down on the Genoese, they began to break—first in ones and twos, then in a general rush to the rear. The infantry skirmishers followed them back down the hill. On the far side of the river Van Hese watched his first wave break and fall back in panic. He cursed under his breath.
“What’s happening?” De Ferrers called to him.
The Flemish commander had needed only a moment to recognize what had befallen his archers.
“I believe it’s your damned Danes, my lord! We chased them into Chester, but it seems they have followed us here. Those are longbows on that hill.”
The Danes!
De Ferrers felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He looked up toward the line of men on the hill.
And if they’ve come from Chester…
&n
bsp; Was Roland Inness up there? He felt his heart start to pound in his chest. He wanted to turn his horse around and ride away, but he stayed frozen to the spot, afraid to show his fear to Van Hese. Behind him, a trumpeter blew a blast and he saw the line of infantry part and edge away from the road. The magnificent heavy cavalry poured through the gap and spread out across the base of the slope.
De Ferrers felt his hopes rise. No force had stood against the mercenary army for over two years and these armoured horsemen were the mailed fist of that army. The trumpet blew again. He watched the riders start toward the hill, first at a walk, but slowly gathering speed.
***
Roland watched them come. He looked to his left. Sir Roger was there, his great axe dangling from a cord around his right wrist. He had no shield, as his left arm would not bear the weight. A little further on, Sergeant Billy and Patch flanked the Earl of Chester. Ranulf caught his eye and gave him a short salute, then lowered the visor on his dented helmet.
Looking back to the front, he saw the heavy cavalry cross the low land of the river bottom and gather speed as they started up the gradual slope. They came in two waves with lances held aloft and pennants waving. It was a sight to quicken the heart, had they not been coming to kill them.
Roland glanced to his right. Declan stood there, calm and ready. The Irishman gave him a wink and pointed his sword toward the approaching line of horsemen.
“A pretty sight—pity we have to kill them.”
He was about to reply when he heard a commanding voice from behind.
“Steady men!” It was Marshall, still sitting his horse right behind the centre of the line.
The cavalry had reached a canter and men were beginning to whip the flanks of their chargers, urging them toward a gallop. As they moved up the slope, great clumps of thawed ground were thrown up as the footing became softer. Roland heard a sound behind him and saw that Marshall had dismounted. The Lord of Striguil squeezed through the rear ranks and joined Ranulf in the centre of the road. He drew a long broadsword and waited.
