Conquest 03 - Knights of the Hawk

by James Aitcheson

  ‘What happened?’ Wace asked.

  Eudo let out a weary sigh. ‘She said that before I rode into battle, we ought first to be wed, as I’d vowed. That way if I happened to die today, at least our souls would find each other in heaven. She even went this morning to find a priest.’

  I understood. ‘But you couldn’t.’

  He shook his head sadly. ‘You were right. I’ve been a fool. She claims that I misled her with false promises, but it’s not true. I loved her, only not as much as I thought.’

  I rested a hand on his shoulder in sympathy, but only for a moment, since Robert’s vassals were almost all assembled, which meant that we were ready to ride. Among them I spied the ruddy-faced Guibert, who had spoken so loudly against the king in the hall at Brandune so long ago it seemed like months, though in fact it was only a week. Whatever ill feeling he might have held towards anyone as a result of that clash was now dissolved, or else buried deep. We could not afford to let petty quarrels divide us. Not now.

  Robert himself was the last of all to arrive, flanked by ten of his sworn swords and one of his stable-hands, who bore the banner I had grown to know almost as well as my own: the same banner beneath which for two whole years and more I had rallied, charged and served. It was divided into alternating stripes of black and yellow, and the yellow was shot through with threads of gold so that it would catch the light and be more clearly recognisable in the midst of battle.

  Robert passed his lance to one of his retainers, before dismounting and making towards me. His expression was solemn as he extended his arm in greeting. I gripped his wrist, and he mine, and then he embraced me, not as a lord might embrace a vassal of his but rather as if I were of his own kin.

  ‘I want you to know that you have my gratitude for all that you have done in my name and that of my family,’ he said. ‘I only pray this is not the last time we ride together.’

  ‘And I, lord,’ I replied. ‘A better lord I have never served.’

  The falsehood tasted sour upon my tongue as I remembered some of the grievances I’d uttered against him recently, but what else was I supposed to say?

  He attempted a smile, but it was a weak attempt and I knew his heart was not really in it. As nervous as I felt, he looked to me a dozen times worse. He was dressed like the rest of us, but somehow the helmet appeared to sit uneasily upon his head, as if it were too large for his brow, and the hauberk seemed to weigh heavily upon his shoulders. He had never looked entirely at ease in a warrior’s garb, and he looked even less comfortable then.

  ‘May God be with us, Tancred,’ he said, and with that he left me, mounting up and riding to the head of the conroi while I took my place with my knights. Everyone fell quiet as he unlaced his ventail, letting the flap of mail hang loose by his neck.

  ‘I’ve just had word that our foot-warriors have set out for the Isle,’ he said, raising his voice so that all could hear. ‘The moment we receive the signal that their attack is under way, we will begin crossing the bridge. From then on there will be no turning back.’ He paused to allow the import of that to settle, before continuing: ‘In all my years I have never known warriors more valiant than you. Regardless of what fate awaits us, I consider it the greatest honour to ride amongst you today, and to fight by your sides. May God and the saints bring us victory, and lend us the courage and the fortune to see this day through.’

  It wasn’t the most rousing battle-speech I had ever heard, but it was heartfelt, and powerful for that alone. In any case it would have to do, for the skies were quickly growing lighter, the stars fading, which meant that the time for words had passed. Robert led us from the shadow of the guardhouse, its high ramparts and the crowning palisade, down to the flat stretch of land beside the marsh, where dozens upon scores upon hundreds of horsemen were already gathered, their many-coloured banners and pennons barely fluttering in the still air, their horses tossing their heads and pawing restlessly at the turf. Their exact number I could not say, though it was probably close to a thousand, with more arriving still. These were some of the finest knights ever to ride in the name of Normandy.

  And we would be leading them all in the charge. Had someone told me when I was a youth and a warrior in training that such an honour would one day be mine, I wouldn’t have been able to stop laughing. Even now I scarcely believed it. Yet here I was.

  I half expected to find Atselin and his clerks overseeing the muster, tallying up knights on his wax tablet, but if he was there I could not spot him. It was hard to miss King Guillaume, though, surrounded as he was by his household guards, his helmet adorned with a tail formed from two scarlet strips of cloth that marked him out, lest anyone lose sight of him in the fray. Holding the banner bearing the lion of Normandy in one hand, he galloped up and down the ranks of horsemen, bellowing instructions, drawing the assembled host into ordered ranks and grouping smaller bands of four and five into larger conrois of twenty, thirty, forty. A few glanced up as we passed on our way to the front of the column, and someone must have recognised our banner, for I heard him call out Robert’s name, and then a cheer went up, and a hundred men and more were raising fists and weapons to the sky. Hearing the commotion, the king turned and watched us for a long while, though he did not speak. His mouth was set firm, his countenance betraying no feeling, and at that moment I glimpsed with my own eyes the iron resolve for which he was renowned. Never once had he failed in any task he took upon himself, and in the same way I understood that he would not fail now. For five years he had striven to defend his right to this kingdom. This would be the morning when he would finish what had begun with the slaying of the usurper at Hæstinges. This would be the morning of his victory. Whatever misgivings the rest of us had, he truly believed it.

  We took our positions at the head of the column. Behind us lay an army to wreak terror in the hearts of all but the most hardened of foes. Ahead lay only the fen, with the so-called bridge winding its way towards the Isle, with small pinpricks of light dotted along its length where watch-fires had been set to ward off any would-be attackers. Of the fleet of boats and punts carrying our foot-serjeants, or the opposite shore, the enemy behind their walls, I could see nothing.

  I turned to Robert, who was alongside me. ‘What now?’

  ‘Now we wait for the signal.’

  As a conroi we had rehearsed the sequence of events over and over the previous afternoon, committing it all to memory so that every man knew exactly what he was to do and when. We had been told what that signal would be, and what pace we would set across the bridge so that our host did not bunch together and at the same time did not become too stretched out. But sitting there in the saddle, waiting for the word to be given and the attack to begin, suddenly I wanted to hear it all again.

  Enough, I told myself. I knew what needed to be done. I closed my eyes, breathing slowly and deeply, as I imagined our charge upon the enemy battle-lines and how I would drive my lance-head home, how I would bring my sword-edge to bear, how we would drive them back and cut them down and turn the Isle’s earth crimson with their lifeblood.

  ‘There it is,’ said Robert suddenly, with something like excitement in his voice, and I opened my eyes in time to see a trail of flame shooting high up into the grey skies to the north, a mile or so away. A single fire-arrow: the sign that our spearmen and foot-serjeants were beginning their attack. It made a great arc above the marsh before plunging out of sight into the all-enshrouding mist, and at the same time the bellow of the rebels’ distant war-horns sounded out: two sharp blasts that were the usual signal to rally.

  And so it began.

  ‘Stay with me,’ Robert yelled for his whole conroi to hear. ‘Watch your flanks when we arrive upon the Isle. Remember who’s alongside you; don’t pull ahead and don’t fall behind!’ He kicked back, spurring his destrier onwards. ‘For St Ouen, for King Guillaume and Normandy! God aid us!’

  ‘God aid us,’ we all answered with one voice, and the chant echoed through the ranks: God aid us! God a
id us!

  We followed Robert out on to the bridge. Hooves clattered upon timber, and I whispered a prayer that the men who had built it had done their work well. We kept close rank, riding knee to knee, three abreast, for that was as many as the roadway would allow. To my right was Robert, while on his other flank was the captain of his household guard. Behind us were Pons, mounted upon a bay that Lord Robert had gifted him to replace the one killed by Hereward’s arrow, and alongside him Serlo. My sworn swords, the two of them had served me unfailingly these last two years, had followed me in every desperate charge, had given their all for my sake. Behind them were Wace and Eudo and their knights, then the rest of Robert’s hearth-troops and vassals, so that there were more than fifty of us in that leading conroi, all united under the Malet banner.

  I had fought in some desperate struggles in my time, but this would be one of the most desperate of all. This was the hour of our reckoning.

  We were knights of the black and gold, and we were riding to battle.

  Ten

  AS EXPECTED, THE first part of the crossing was the easiest. The marsh there was at its shallowest, the causeway its widest and sturdiest, and we made it without trouble.

  Before long we glimpsed the island where the watchtower with the mangonel stood, roughly halfway across the marsh-channel. The first glimmer of gold crept above the eastern horizon and I could suddenly see movement on the Isle. Hundreds upon hundreds of Englishmen with weapons glinting and pennons flying rushed in disarray from their ramparts towards the marsh’s edge, into a storm of missiles being loosed upon them by archers and crossbowmen and even a few small catapults that were positioned on punts and barges out on the fen. Other craft were bringing our spearmen and foot-serjeants in towards the shallows where they could scramble ashore, wade through the murky waters and form a shield-wall amidst the tall reeds to guard against the hordes bearing down upon them. But suitable landing places were few, while the channels leading to them were narrow and easily blocked, which meant that those in the boats to the rear were having to clamber forward from one to the next, all the while encumbered by their shields and heavy spears. War-horns blew; panicked shouts carried across the water as our foot-serjeants marshalled their men and tried to assemble them in some sort of order.

  Around a dozen Frenchmen were posted on the watchtower. All of them waved their arms as we approached. ‘Wait,’ they called. ‘Wait!’

  Robert slowed his pace and drew to a halt, raising a hand to those behind so that they passed the message on down the line. ‘What is it?’

  They were pointing out towards the far shore, and I saw at once the reason for their alarm. The final section of the floating boat-bridge hadn’t yet been secured; in fact several of the pontoons seemed to have drifted free altogether, and even now men were working to manoeuvre them back into position and to anchor them.

  I swore. This wasn’t what the king had planned. Unless the boat-bridge was in place, we had no way of reaching the Isle. Our attack would be over before it had even started, and the battle would be lost.

  Shouts of protest came from behind. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the rest of the column bunching up as our advance was brought to a halt. Men were berating those in front, trying to push their way forward despite the narrowness of the bridge.

  ‘Wait!’ I bellowed. ‘Hold position!’

  ‘Wait!’ Eudo repeated, and Wace behind him, and the next man, and the next, and I only hoped that our warnings were heeded. Of course those knights were impatient, as I was, to slake their thirst for enemy blood, but many would die if they didn’t keep to their ranks.

  ‘What do we do?’ Robert asked me, his brow furrowed, his eyes desperate. ‘Do we go on?’

  ‘We have to, lord,’ I said. ‘We can’t turn back now.’

  ‘But if the boat-bridge isn’t secure—’

  ‘If we delay any longer here, it won’t matter. We’ll be too late; the rebels will break our spearmen and then cut the pontoons loose, or burn them, and we’ll have no way of reaching the shore. We have to go now, and trust that the bridge will be ready in time. If we don’t, all our efforts will have been for nothing. It’s now or not at all, lord.’

  Robert didn’t look sure. I glanced over my shoulder, back along the column, and my gaze settled upon the golden lion upon a scarlet field, the age-old symbol of the Norman dukes, flying proudly in the rising wind. King Guillaume himself had given us this responsibility. If we refused it at this late hour our names would be forever tarnished. We would have cost him his best chance of capturing Elyg and wreaking his revenge upon the rebels who defied him. He would strip us of our lands and the few riches we had to our names, cast us into the deepest, darkest dungeon he could find and leave us there to rot. We could not fail him. Not now.

  My heartbeat resounded through my entire body, and I could hear the blood pounding in my skull. My fingers tightened around my shield-straps in one hand and my lance-haft in the other.

  And I knew what I had to do. If Robert refused to make the decision, then I would make it for him.

  ‘With me,’ I cried, raising my weapon aloft so that the steel glimmered in the light of dawn. ‘For Normandy!’

  I dug my spurs into Fyrheard’s flank and he reared up, teetering on his hind hooves for a moment, before falling back to earth.

  ‘Tancred—’ I heard Robert shout, and heard, too, the desperation in his voice, but then his words were drowned out by the cheer that rose up as one thousand voices together shouted out. A bolt of confidence surged through me, and as Fyrheard broke into a canter I found my limbs filled with fresh vigour, my mind with fresh purpose. I had no need to look behind to make sure that the rest of our host was behind me, for I could hear it in the thunder of hooves and the whooping as men revelled in the battle-joy.

  A flock of wading birds heard our approach and rose all at once with a clatter of wings and a chorus of alarmed shrieks. I kept a firm hand on Fyrheard’s reins, trusting in his sure-footedness to keep us both alive. The mud swirled and sucked at the foot of the earthen banks, and the marsh-waters lapped at the posts and revetments. A short distance to our right ran the course of the original causeway, the one that had collapsed all those weeks ago. I recognised it not just from the ruined timbers that littered the mud all about, but also from the scores of corpses of horses and men that had been left there to rot without Christian burial, their mail and helmets brown with rust, their flesh blackened and swollen, with what remained of their innards spilling out. They stared unseeing from empty eye sockets, their jaws fixed open as if even in death they were still crying out. Yellowed bone protruded where carrion beasts had picked away the skin and sinew. The stench of their rotting flesh filled my nose, more powerful than anything I had known, and I fought the urge to retch.

  I tore my eyes away, focusing on the way ahead and the rebels tumbling in their hundreds down towards the shore. A ragged mass of spears and scythes and hayforks and the long English knives they called seaxes, they charged upon the Norman battle-line, until at last there came a crash like thunder as limewood boards and steel bosses met, and then men on both sides were screaming, shouting, falling, dying. Thus the grim work of the shield-wall began. Behind the protection of their countrymen, the bridge-workers were still labouring to manoeuvre the final few pontoons into place, lashing them together with ropes and anchoring them to the marsh-bottom with stone weights attached to chains, but they did not have much time, for I saw even now that the enemy foot-warriors outnumbered our own, and already it seemed they were forcing them back towards the marsh.

  ‘On!’ I shouted above the din, trusting that Robert and Pons and Serlo and all the others were with me as I set out across the first of the pontoons, leaving the earthen dykes behind me. Iron clattered upon oak and I felt the planking bob beneath Fyrheard’s hooves, not by much, but enough to send a shiver of doubt through me. ‘On,’ I cried, trying to put those fears from my mind. ‘On, on!’

  That was when I heard Robert shou
ting.

  ‘It’s too short,’ he cried. ‘The bridge is too short!’

  For a moment I didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me, but as I stared at the shore and those Englishmen charging towards us, suddenly sickness gripped my stomach.

  He was right.

  The line of pontoons did not quite stretch all the way to the Isle’s shore, but came to an end around thirty or forty paces short, in the shallows rather than on dry land. Perhaps the recent rains had swelled the marsh-waters more than the king’s engineers had expected, or else the current had taken one or more of those floating platforms and carried them downstream. I didn’t know, and it hardly mattered. To reach the shore we would now have to fight our way through water that I reckoned would reach up to our mounts’ knees, if not even higher.

  ‘Keep going,’ I yelled. ‘We can make it!’

  I sounded more confident than in truth I felt, but only because I knew we had no choice. Everything depended on us. We couldn’t give up now.

  Barely three hundred paces ahead, the Norman shield-wall was beginning to break as the English ran amongst them, driving a wedge into their ranks, surging forward with shining blade-edges raised.

  ‘Faster!’ I yelled, knowing that if the enemy managed to rout our spearmen, they could hold the shore against us and drive us back into the marsh. With that in mind I spurred Fyrheard from a trot into a canter, which was as fast as I dared ride along those narrow platforms. ‘For Normandy!’