‘I did not come on this quest in order to serve him – I came for you,’ said my friend, and I met his honest muddy-green eyes and saw that he spoke the truth. ‘I came because your dear wife is sick and I truly believe that the Grail might save her.’
He gave a shy laugh, and broke our gaze. ‘But that is not the whole truth, I must confess. I came because I was bored to death at home in Sussex, and I wanted, above all, to see the Grail. I wanted to behold the vessel that once held Our Saviour’s sacred blood…’
‘Are you talking about it?’ Father Tuck had suddenly appeared on Sir Nicholas’s flank and, although I knew that the wound in his side was still troubling him, his round face seemed to beam happiness like a tiny sun.
‘We are talking about the Grail, yes,’ I said, pleased that a difficult conversation with Sir Nicholas had been interrupted.
‘I imagine it very often before I go to sleep,’ Tuck said. ‘It is my most sinful pleasure. In my mind, I see it as a huge golden cup, ten feet tall, and shining more brilliantly than a thousand fires, studded with bright jewels, diamonds, rubies and sapphires, and filled with a strong wine that tastes of honey and sunlight.’
I laughed at Tuck’s words and I was relieved to see that even Sir Nicholas managed a smile.
We paused at midday and ate a simple meal of bread and cheese in the shade of a stand of pine trees. It was very warm; the big Languedoc sun seeming to think that it was a midsummer’s day rather than spring – perhaps that was because we were so far south. I was reminded of my travels in the Mediterranean, the hot sun and the noise of cicadas buzzing in the trees, although the scrubby hill country that we passed through was far more lush than the parched hills of Sicily.
By mid-afternoon, we had turned off the eastern road and were heading more or less south, still following the haunches of the guide’s mule. The track became thinner, less well trodden – indeed not much more than a footpath, and we began to climb. We were passing through a narrow valley between two great steep rocky hills when in a flurry of activity I saw Vim speaking urgently with Robin at the head of the column, and Robin turning in the saddle to shout something. That is when the noise hit me. A rumbling, rattling roar from my left, from the east, and I turned to see an avalanche of boulders, hundreds of them, some as big as houses, some the size of pigs, some no more than pebbles, sweeping down the mountainside towards us.
Robin was shouting ‘Back, back, get back down the valley…’ and gesturing with his left arm, urging us to retreat.
I wrenched my horse around – the animal was bucking and whinnying, clearly on the verge of panic – and urged it back the way we had come. And almost too late. A round boulder as big as a hay cart crashed across our path in a cloud of dust and as I laid my spurs in hard against my mount’s sides and charged blindly into the gritty fog, I could hear the awful screams of men and horses crushed by the giant stones. I had to leap over a bloody tangle of a fallen mercenary and his mount. Another rock, even bigger than the first leaped out of the dust on my right and skipped across our path and my horse lost his head. He bucked and screamed, twisted and reared up on his hind legs, throwing me sideways out of the saddle. I crashed to earth, landing painfully on my shoulder, but bounced up in time to see the horse disappear into the clouds of dirt heading south. I blundered after him, cursing, and a rock that seemed almost square rolled slowly past my boots. Then I was out of the choking dust, and running downhill, free and clear.
After a hundred yards, I skidded to a halt and looked back at the swath of destruction in the valley behind me – I could see at least three humped shapes of horses or men, crushed by the tumbling boulders. I looked up at the mountainside to the east and saw the forms of men – some mounted, some on foot – more than a hundred fighters in all, streaming down the hillside to attack us in our confusion.
I was relieved to see that Robin had survived unscathed, he was no more than thirty yards away and I saw that he had a hand on my escaped horse’s bridle and was shouting orders to the mercenaries to form a line in preparation of receiving the attack from the hillside. Thomas was unhurt too, and there was Roland drawing his sword – both of them still mounted. I ran to Robin and climbed back into the saddle, nodding thanks to my lord and trying to soothe the frightened animal with soft words and a gentling hand. But the beast was still skittish, prancing and crabbing under me.
And then the crossbow bolts began to fly – from behind us. A mercenary, trying to control his capering horse and get it into the battle line, gave a shout of pain and surprise, suddenly unstrung by a bolt in the spine. I saw that the quarrel had come from a small copse behind our loose crowd of frightened, milling, dust-streaked men, and out from the trees flitted more – black streaks in the sun-filled air. There must have been twenty crossbow men concealed in that small wood, invisible to us and undetected by the scouts as we rode past. The enemy were now emerging, their clothes merely brown and green rags, their faces smeared with mud and dust – but their weapons were clean and well-cared for. And deadly accurate. I saw another two mercenaries fall to their bolts, and a horse with a quarrel lodged in its haunch kicking out wildly as if to flick away the pain. We had enemies on both sides. The horsemen of the hillside were a scant fifty yards away, and I easily recognized them as the Knights of Our Lady by their flapping white surcoats. Behind them came a horde of shrieking foot men, bounding down the mountainside. And still the deadly quarrels flew from the little wood at the rear of our position. In our arrogance, we had walked straight into an elaborate trap – and it looked very much as if we would be swamped in a few heartbeats, crushed between the crossbowmen and the charging cavalry.
But Robin was nothing if not a superb battlefield commander. ‘Alan,’ he called out in his battle-voice, ‘take a couple of good men and sort out those crossbows, will you. Be as quick as you like about it.’ Then he turned away and I saw him marshalling the mercenaries into a rough line. I yelled, ‘Thomas!’ and was unsurprised to see that my squire was close at hand; he passed me his lance without a word and drew his sword.
‘You and you are with me.’ I pointed at two mercenaries within a few yards of me, one of whom was Olivier.
With Thomas on my left, and two mercenaries on my right, I lifted my shield, couched my lance, and we charged towards the clump of trees forty yards away and the cloud of grubby, ragged crossbowmen before it who were methodically loading their weapons and loosing, over and over again, their deadly bolts hissing and cracking into our disordered ranks.
Galloping into a hail of crossbow bolts is no merry task; but I did not allow myself time to think. I felt the wind of a bolt fan my cheek, another smashed against my shield, then the mercenary furthest from me gave a high wail like a smacked child, rose and slumped in his saddle, a quarrel jutting from his neck – and then we were on the enemy crossbowmen.
I took the first plumb on the point of my spear, driving the leaf-shaped blade in just below his sternum, and punching him back off his feet with the force of the impact. I released the spear and left it standing proud of his corpse but as I struggled to unsheathe Fidelity, my already terrified horse reared suddenly, its brown flank skimmed by the sharp iron tip of a passing quarrel, and I was almost unseated once again. Then there was a short, ugly crossbowman before me, his face one big battle snarl, his loaded weapon at his shoulder. As I stared at him helplessly, trying to cling on to my bucking horse with my knees and haul out my long sword at the same time, he raised the firing bar and loosed the bolt from a distance of less than five paces. A black blur, and the quarrel smashed into my chest like a strike from a stone-breaker’s long hammer; I was rocked back in my saddle, my lower back crashing painfully against the high cantle. I looked down at my chest and saw that foot-long bolt sticking straight out from my mail coat. For a moment I was astounded to be alive – and then I gave thanks to St Michael for the leather chest-and-back plate reinforced with iron strips that had evidently just saved me from certain death. I had Fidelity free by this point and t
he crossbowman was still standing there like a mutton-headed oaf, gawping at me in plain disbelief, as if he had just witnessed a miracle. I urged the frightened horse forward a mere step or two and sliced the sword down into his shoulder, and he dropped. Wheeling, I saw Thomas ride down and behead a running man, and Olivier drive his spear into another’s back. Half a dozen rag-clad corpses now littered the woodland floor. The crossbowmen were running, throwing away their big cumbersome T-shaped weapons and fleeing back into the safety of the deep woods. I pursued one, half-heartedly, clanging my sword tip against the top of his helmet as he ducked and scurried into the thick undergrowth. But we had performed our task; Robin’s rear would be menaced by these bowmen no more.
I lifted my eyes to see what had become of my lord and was just in time to see a brave sight. Robin’s thin line of mercenary cavalry had just charged the oncoming Knights of Our Lady. They were more numerous than we – perhaps fifty against our forty – and they had several score of infantry, spearmen mostly, in support who were coming down the hill at speed. But, as I watched, the two lines of horsemen smashed into each other with a tumult that I could clearly hear a hundred yards away: a screeching of metal scraped across metal, the sharp crack of wood and bone, the desperately yelled battle cries of ‘For the Virgin’ and ‘A Locksley!’ and the first horrible screams of stricken men.
‘Thomas, Olivier, we are not done here. Come on, we must aid our lord!’ I called my surviving comrades to my side and we spurred up the hill to join the fray.
Thomas, Olivier and I plunged into the wild mêlée on the mountainside. I cut down a Knight of Our Lady duelling with a mercenary with a huge sword blow from behind that snapped his spine. I exchanged cuts with another knight and killed him, I believe, with a savage chop from Fidelity into the back of his neck. Then I was defending myself desperately against a knight wielding a long lance. The spear drove towards my eyes, powered by all the man’s strength and skill, but I managed to flick the lance-point above my right shoulder with Fidelity, just in time. The momentum of his charge forced him on to me and, as our horses passed each other less than a foot apart, I smashed the silver pommel of Fidelity into the side of his helm and was rewarded with a yell of pain.
There were footmen all about my horse’s hooves by now and I slashed at them left and right, left and right, dealing out hideous wounds to faces and arms – sowing panic among them with the sheer momentum of blundering horse and snarling, hacking rider. A bearded foot soldier swung a long-handled axe at my horse’s flank and I dropped my arm and took the heavy blow on my shield, which crumpled at the impact but saved the poor beast a grievous hurt. I killed the axe man with a cross-body chop, hurled away the broken shield and plucked the flanged mace from my belt with my left hand.
I smashed and sliced and tore my steel into the enemy on that lovely, sunny afternoon – I felt the surging God-given rage of battle fill my limbs with strength, and I bellowed like a bullock in a shambles smelling the blood for the first time as I carved through horsemen and infantry alike, splashing scarlet with every sweep of sword or strike of mace. The horse seemed to have recovered its courage and responded to the pressure of my knees, submitting to my will as I killed and battered and howled curses at our foes. Until the poor beast was killed under me, disembowelled by some evil, bastard footman with a long knife – I saw the man out of the corner of my eye plunge his blade deep into my mount’s belly, and felt the animal’s death shiver. I screamed a battle curse and managed to kick both feet free of the brave floundering beast as it went down, and released my rage upon his cowardly killer with one mighty blow of Fidelity that rent his body from shoulder to waist, his torso flopping open obscenely like a sliced plum.
I was dimly aware of Little John, also unhorsed, and laying about himself with his double-headed axe, dropping enemies with every sweep, and Gavin in the lee of his friend’s shield, skewering foes one after the other with his war bow. And Sir Nicholas was killing, and killing again, with a stony efficiency from the back of his mount, his shield and sword working together smoothly like a device designed for the harvesting of souls. But I was deep in some blood-drenched madness all of my own, and I slew with both left and right hands, thudding mace and whirling, dripping sword, killing and maiming, cutting and crushing, calling my foes to their deaths, until the broken bodies, still and writhing in pain, lay as thick as cut timber on the turf and there were no living men around me in a wide circle.
I came back to my true senses, surfacing like a man coming out of deep, drugged sleep, and saw that the battle was nearly over. My voice was painfully hoarse, my arms were like lead. Many of the Knights of Our Lady were pulling back, turning their horses and heading up the slope and away from the torn valley; their foot soldiers too were running for the hills. Except for a struggling knot some thirty yards up the hill: three men-at-arms were assailing a squat, strong figure in black, who was defending himself vigorously with a staff and a sword. It was Tuck, surrounded by a scrum of enemies. As I watched, dumb with exhaustion, I saw him neatly break the skull of one of his foes with the staff, and at almost the same time receive a vicious sword lunge from one of the men-at-arms deep into his generous belly. His mouth formed an ‘O’ of surprise and he dropped to his knees.
And I was running towards him, my tiredness forgotten, hurling myself up that slope at my greatest speed, my boots slipping on the gory grass.
Before I could reach him a Knight of Our Lady, one of the last on the field, cantered up to him and slashed at his tonsured head before spurring on past, a glancing blow that sliced across the top of his sun-browned scalp, but it knocked the stricken priest from his knees on to his back on the turf. One of the two remaining footmen looked about him, recognized that the day was lost, dropped his sword and sprinted after the departing knight. But the other man ran in and hacked down with his axe into Tuck’s prone body, crunching the wide blade deep into his chest, then he too turned to flee…
Just as I reached him.
Fidelity cut through the air and slammed into the side of his neck, powering into the skin and through muscle, cartilage and sinew, severing interlocking bones and spinal cord, and flashing out the other side, splashing his life fluid through the clean air. His head jumped from his neck and thumped down on the turf beside my friend, and his body a few moments later, crumpled at the knees, folded and slid bonelessly to the earth.
I was on my knees beside Tuck by then, wiping the dribbling gore from his beloved face, pulling his robe together over his ripped body and calling his name over and over. He’d been badly wounded in head, chest and belly, but he heard me, praise God. His eyes fluttered, opened, looked into mine. And I gave thanks.
Tuck was not dead.
‘Sir Alan, Sir Alan – are you hale? Have you been wounded?’ A familiar voice broke into my thoughts, and I looked up and saw my Thomas, looking shaken and worried, peering down at me. I realized that I was slathered in blood, almost from head to foot. Other men’s blood.
I got to my feet and ordered Thomas to fetch Robin. ‘And water and bandages, too.’ But, for once, my faithful squire hesitated; he stared down at my right leg. My calf muscle had been throbbing with pain for some time but now when I, too, looked down, I saw that it had a short, broad-bladed knife embedded in the flesh just above my boot top. I must have taken the wound while fighting a-horse and failed to notice in my frenzy. And the crossbow bolt was still protruding from my chest. I bent down and picked up Fidelity and saw that, like me, my sword was covered in blood all along its length. I gave my blade over to my squire and said, ‘Fetch me Robin, Thomas, as quick as you can. Father Tuck has been gravely wounded and is likely to die.’ And, looking down, with a suddenly shaking right hand, I tugged ineffectually at the quarrel protruding from my chest.
‘Yes, Sir Alan, I will. But let me first attend to this,’ said my squire. He knelt down beside me and plucked the knife from my calf in one swift jerk – and I swear I hardly felt a thing as the weapon slid out of the grip of my fle
sh. But I found that my body was swaying with fatigue, and my head was whirling like a drunkard’s, as my squire stood and, with some difficulty, pulled the bolt from between the iron strips in my chest protector.
As Thomas jogged away, I slumped down on to the ground beside Tuck and took his big, soft hand in my blood-sticky one.
The enemy had all quit the battlefield, but they left a good number of their comrades behind – some forty foemen were dead or too badly wounded to run. Those wounded men did not live long. The surviving mercenaries paced among them, stooping down from time to time, relieving them permanently of their sufferings, and of any valuables on their persons.
I merely sat on the ground and held Tuck’s hand, and looked over the dismal field of victory. I could count fourteen Knights of Our Lady among the slain – including one well-bred young Norman who lay not five yards away and whose dead face, turned towards me, I suddenly recognized. We had been slightly acquainted in the wars against King Philip of France in the north and I remembered him as a gentle aristocrat with fine manners, and an enviable sword-fighting style. What had brought that young man of good family so far from his home to die in a pointless skirmish in these southern hills, fighting for a man such as the Master? I knew that I would never know the true answer. Had I been the one to kill him? I did not know the answer to that either.
From time to time, I checked that Tuck was still alive. He had closed his eyes, but blood still pulsed from under the flap of cut skin on his scalp. However, I knew, by the slow bloody bubbling of his chest, where the last man-at-arms had crushed his thorax with an axe, and the great slippery gash in his belly from his first wound, that he was not long for this world.
As I looked at him, his large shapeless body sprawled on the torn, bloody grass, his hand grasped tightly in mine, I felt my eyes begin to burn. I thought of all the kindnesses he had shown me from the very first days after I had joined Robin’s gang – long, long ago. I thought about his laughter, his courage – his vast love of food. I thought about how much I would miss his cheerful wisdom, his kindness and indomitable moral strength. The tears flowed like twin rivers down my cheeks.
Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) Page 29
