Our sleep is fitful complete with muttered curses, loud snores, and periodic farts. I’m not sure I really sleep but I must have done because once in the night I jerk awake from a dream - which I promptly cannot remember; except that it must have involved sex since my dingle is hard.
At some point the clouds part long enough for the moon to come out and the light causes me to jerk awake. Daybreak looks to be about an hour or two away. It’s time for Peter to lead us back to our position overlooking the river ford. He knows it well – he’s spent the better part of the last two weeks watching the ford and the wagon track leading up to it.
“All right. Everyone up. Rise and shine, you lot. No talking. Time to piss and shite. Then everyone grab a loaf from the bread wagon and assemble around the wagon pulled by the two grays.”
Five minutes later we follow Peter back to the ford. Daybreak arrives about an hour later. There is no doubt about it – the river is significantly lower. Not back to normal, mind you, but significantly lower. Actually not all the men come with us. I tell two of them to stay with Peter because they have loud and uncontrollable coughs.
No sense taking a chance on them being overheard.
Chapter Nine
The sun is barely up when Cornell’s men begin coming down to the river to look. At one point there must have been several hundred just standing around over there and talking and gesturing. I’ve never seen Cornell so I don’t know if he is one of them.
“Pass this on,” I say to the archers on either side of me.
“Stay down and no talking. The river is much lower today so they may try to cross. Don’t string your bows yet. I’ll give you plenty of warning when to string them and take out your arrows. Until then keep your strings dry under your caps. Pass it on. ”
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Something is happening. A rider on horseback is going to try to make a crossing - and here he comes. He makes it easily and we can hear lots of enthusiastic shouting back and forth. My men are uneasy – I can see them starting to move about; a couple of them can’t help themselves – they are raising their heads to look.
“Down. Everyone stay down and stay quiet. All they’ve done is sent a horse and rider across. Just one. I’ll hang any man who puts us in danger by showing himself to take a look.
I hope my men know I mean it for I surely will.”
The successful rider dismounts at the water’s edge which is now a little over a hundred feet in front of us at its closest point. And here comes another rider. This one doesn’t go quite as far upstream before he starts.
Ah, that’s why - he’s holding on to some kind of line. Of course, he’s going to try to bring a rope across for the men to hold on to when they cross on foot.
“Pass it on. Here comes another rider. This one’s carrying a line. It’s probably for the men on foot to hold to avoid getting swept away.”
I spend the next several hours continue constantly describing what I see and passing the information on to my men - so they’ll be less tempted to raise their heads to see for themselves. There is a lot to report.
First a dozen or so riders swim their horses across and two more lines are run from one riverbank to the other for a total of three. On the other side I can see that they are tied to trees above the waterline; on this side, however, the lines are being held by the men who come over because there are no suitable trees or rock close enough to the water.
Watching the men hold the end of the lines reminds me of feast days in the village when we would have tug of war contests between the men and the women and children.
Before rest of Cornell’s men start coming over, and after a great deal of effort, the men on this side start what are obviously intended to be warming fires. At first they use the wood the get from breaking up the ferrymen’s hovels on this side of the river. But even that wood is damp - and damp wood and wet flints are hard to work with no matter how much expertise one might have.
Once they get a couple of fires going they begin building more fires using some of the dead driftwood from a previous even greater flood that left it high up on our side of the river. When Cornell’ men begin climbing up towards us to get driftwood for their fires I whisper the order for everyone to start getting ready. That’s when we lie on our backs and begin to string our bows and lay out our arrows.
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Once the fires are going Cornell’s men begin crossing in earnest. What they are doing is quite ingenious - each man places his arms over two of the lines that have been placed across the river and uses them to keep from being swept away while he pulls himself along with the third.
I wonder where they learned to do that?
It takes a while but by early afternoon several hundred men are across the river and huddled around more and more warming fires. The lines across the river are full of men with many hundreds more gathered on the distant bank waiting to cross.
Once the crossing starts in earnest there are always several dozen men in the freezing water. They hold on to the ropes and cautiously pick their way across until they reach the middle of the river where the water is too deep to touch the river bottom. Then they hold on desperately and pull themselves forward hand over hand until their feet again touch bottom on our side of the river.
It does not always go well. Several times walkers somehow get shaken or pulled loose from the ropes and are lost amidst loud shouts and cries from the watchers on both banks.
Once a brave soul on horseback spurs into the river in a futile attempt to save someone and is himself also lost when he gets far enough downstream from the ford that he cannot get out of the river.
At least I think he is lost. I never saw him again after watching him and his horse being swept around the big bend almost a mile further on downstream.
Other disasters occur when the shields and weapons the walking men tie around their waists and necks come loose and sink or float away. The shields in particular seem to be giving them a lot of trouble. The water seems to catch them and pull the men off the ropes.
Throughout it all a large group of dismounted horsemen stands on the riverbank and watches the men who are crossing. There are lots of arm waving and periodic orders shouted so loud that we can hear them on this side of the river.
If the men about the horses are Cornell and his knights and lords, as I suspect, I would bet they are worrying about how they are going to ride their horses across wearing their armor or how they might somehow get their armor across if they don’t wear it.
And I still do not understand why Cornell does not wait for the river to be fordable. Surely someone in his camp must know that men and wagons can get across when the water is low. Or did they think that since there used to be a ferry that the ford would never be low enough for men to walk across? And what are they going to do with their tents and wagons and armor?
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We’re about to be discovered. One of the men gathering driftwood for the warming fires is climbing up towards us to get more wood. He looks like a farm laborer which is probably what he is.
Suddenly he realizes that he is looking at a row of archers stretched out side by side on the ground behind the fallen trees. He stands there gaping at us with an absolutely astonished look on his face for just an instant – and then he gets so excited as he turns and shouts his warning that he begins tumbling down the side of the riverbank towards the men holding the crossing lines and drying themselves around the fires below us.
I’ve already passed the word to the archers that someone is coming up to get more firewood and we’ll probably be seen this time. They already know what to do when they hear my order - they are to stand up and shoot “longs” at the men on the other side of the river. Their very first arrows are to go at the group of men standing around the horses, the ones I think might be Cornell and his knights even though they don’t appear to be wearing armor.
“Don’t start on the men on this side,” I whisper to the archers, “until there are no more good shots at th
e men on the other side.”
Then the firewood gatherer sees us and it’s time to act.
“Stand and launch to the other side of the river,” I scream as I climb to my feet and simultaneously draw my longbow.
“Get the knights standing around the horses. Pick your targets, Lads. Pick your targets. Launch”
“Launch.” I grunt the word again as I send off my first “long.”
The air is quickly filled with arrows and what unfolds in front of us is absolute chaos and confusion.
For the first few seconds Cornell’s men don’t fully understand what is happening. Many of them hear the shrill warning cry of the wood gatherer and those who hear it instinctively look to see where it’s coming from - but our ambush doesn’t really register in their minds and generate a reaction until every archer’s second or third shaft is in the air. And then it’s too late for some of them.
Hardest hit of all is the group of eight or nine men who appear to be Cornell’s knights and sergeants. They and the horses near them stagger and lurch and move every which way as our concentrated and totally unexpected shower of arrows suddenly descends on them.
With the horsemen and their horses quickly down or scattering our attention turns to the other men massed on the far bank. They’re juicy targets because they are somewhat packed together and not wearing armor or carrying shields.
Our veteran archers make the most of their targets while they last – which isn’t very long because, to a man, all those of Cornell’s men who can still move begin to run or stagger away from the river. Escaping from our arrows is the only thing on their minds.
A minute or more passes before we turn our attention and our arrows to the men immediately below us on this side of the river.
“Get the ones holding the rope” I shout unnecessarily with a grunt as I fly an arrow that catches a rope holder in the shoulder. All the others have already dropped their ropes and are running either upstream or downstream to escape.
Mainly downstream; they’re escaping downstream towards the ferry crossing and Launceston.
Men immediately below us who moments before had been drying off around the fires and shouting encouragement to the men in the river are now running in all directions as they desperately try to escape our arrows. A few very brave and very foolhardy men even grab up the weapons they’ve carried across and try to rush up the slope to engage us.
None of the men trying to climb the riverbank to get to us even comes close - if it’s one thing every veteran archer does instinctively, it is to concentrate the arrows he shoots at anyone charging directly at him with a sword in his hand and murder on his mind.
Interestingly enough, the charging men actually save some of the others by attracting the attention of multiple archers. I shoot at man coming up the slope and two other arrows appear in his chest before my shaft aimed at his middle hits him lower down in the crotch because he is already being knocked over backwards from the first two.
Other than the knights who receive our first arrows, the men who suffer most are those in the water in the process of crossing the river. Those who are just beginning to wade across the river scramble back the way they’ve come. Their backs make tempting targets because they are the closest and have the greatest distance to run before they can get far enough away from the river to be out of range. Many of them don’t make it.
A similar fate befalls those just coming out of the water below us. They are still desperately splashing their way to shore while those who still can move are running or staggering their way along the riverbank to get away. And many of the men already on this side of the river, perhaps as many as a hundred, do get away – at least many of those who are smart enough to start running downstream while we’re still shooting at the men on the other side of the river.
And not all of Cornell’s casualties come from our arrows – the loss of the men holding the now useless ropes leaves the men in the deepest part of the river desperately clinging to their now useless lifelines. They go under quickly. The next time I look they are all gone.
“Grab your arrows and follow me,” I shout to my archers when there are finally no more targets within our range.
Damn. I should have thought about where they might run.
I pick up a quiver that still has some arrows in it and begin running to my right in pursuit of the men escaping downriver along the riverbank below me. I can hear my men pounding along behind me as I catch up with the first of the escapers running in the shallow water along the edge of the river.
He’s wiry man with wet clothes and a bushy beard. He sees me stop and nock an arrow as he stops and throws up his hands in surrender. Too late; his hands are just starting to come up as my arrow enters his side and goes well into him. There is a splash and a cry as he staggers under the blow and falls over sideways into the water.
“Keep going. Take prisoners if you can.”
I scream my order to the archers who run past me when I stop for an instant to launch at the man who is now on his knees and struggling to stand up. He has a look of horror and disbelief on his face.
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Our pursuit of the men trying to escape by running along the bank on our side of the river goes on for some time. At least a dozen fall dead or seriously wounded and twice as many surrender before we finally turn back.
We ignore the dead and seriously wounded men we pass as we hurry back to our position overlooking the ford. They are not likely to have weapons or anything else of value.
Perhaps God or Cornell will save them; we don’t have time. Everyone else we’ll take as prisoners. I have a lot of questions I want to ask them about Cornell’s army.
Everything is surprisingly quiet when get back to our original position above the ford. There are a number of bodies on the riverbank and in the shallow water below us. Some of them are obviously wounded and playing dead; others are quite dead indeed.
A great mass of men is standing on the other side of the river watching us. They must think they are far enough away to be out of arrow range; but they’re not. They’ve obviously never faced longbows before.
For a moment I consider ordering our stronger archers to shoot at them. But I decide against it – we’d only get a few before they’d all back up to get out of range. Besides, if they don’t know how far we can shoot we may be able to surprise them when we have all of our archers and can cull many more.
“Rolph, take Giles and some of the men and go down to the river. Accept the surrenders of any who are faking or lightly wounded. Bring them up here to us. But leave those who are seriously wounded for their friends to care for and feed. Kill anyone who tries to run or fight.”
But then I have a thought.
“Rolph, when you are down next to the river checking the wounded I want you and Giles to shoot a couple of arrows towards that lot up there watching us. Use ‘longs” and deliberately shoot so your arrows fall at least one hundred paces short of the men standing over there.”
Rolph gives me a surprised look when he hears my order; so I explain with a smile and nod.
“I know you and Giles and the others have the strength to reach them from down there. But I don’t want them knowing how strong you are. To the contrary, I want you to gull them so they think they’re safely out of range.”
“If we’re lucky, perhaps the next time we meet, when we have all our archers, they’ll form up too close and we’ll get a good cull - so shoot a couple of longs so they fall well short; about one hundred paces if you can manage it.”
Ah. Rolph understands. I can tell from his knowing smile and nod. Rolph’s got a good head, doesn’t he?
An hour later and Peter and I are questioning our prisoners and some of our men are being given new assignments. My plan is to return to Restormel and for most of our archers, including all of our riders and their horses, to stay and hold the ford for as long as possible with Peter as their sergeant and Giles as his second.
The men who remain with Pet
er and Giles will watch over the ford and range up and down this side of the river on horseback to report on Cornell’s next effort to cross. Rolph will ride back with me to Restormel after I finish questioning the prisoners and decide what to do with them.
We’ll take two of the wagons with us and a dozen archers to guard the prisoners. The rest will stay here to guard the ford.
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The prisoners are very much what I expected – a few are villeins of Cornell and his relatives, farm serfs with little or no training or experience of any kind; a few others are Kerfuffle’s mercenaries who were just starting to cross when the fighting commenced; and the rest are churls, free men who have attached themselves to Cornell and his supporters as tenants and servants. All the churls brought weapons across the river, mostly swords, and several have extensive experience fighting in France.
Only one of our prisoners is a knight. He’s young and I think I recognize him despite his bedraggled and muddy appearance; he’s the first rider who crossed the river riding his horse. He took an arrow in the leg when he was running down the riverbank and then failed at playing dead.
He’s one of Cornell’s knights and obviously a brave and ambitious young man seeking recognition – and therefore quite likely to die before his time and potentially dangerous.
“I saw you ride across the river and I’m impressed at your skill and courage. Please tell me how you came to be in the service of Lord Cornell?”
My flattery and the offer of a loaf of bread are successful. The man’s name is Francis. His long dead father was a knight with the honor of a small manor near Calais. His family placed him as a page in Hathersage castle sometime before Henry died and Richard took the crown.
Francis only recently won his spurs. His only experience other than a couple of tournaments was in one of Richard’s battles against the Capetian dukes in France last year. At the time he was serving as a squire for one of Cornell’s knights. Cornell took them both to France when he went over to join Richard.
The Archer's War: Exciting good read - adventure fiction about fighting and combat during medieval times in feudal England with archers, longbows, knights, ... (The Company of English Archers Book 4) Page 10
