Stormbird

by Conn Iggulden

  When he had first encountered the king’s simple innocence, Warwick had wondered for a time if the man was gulling him, so perfectly did Henry play his part. Five years before, there had been tales of the young king returning from his sleeping state with something like a man’s vigour. Warwick shrugged at the thought. If it had been so once, it was not so any longer. As he stared, some noise caught the king’s attention. Henry gripped the earth in his hands and watched the bustle around him in fascination. Warwick knew if he approached, Henry would ask questions and appear to understand the answers, but no spark of will could make him rise from a spot once he was settled. He was a broken thing. Warwick might even have felt pity once, if that amiable child had not caused the death of his father. As it was, he knew only a cold scorn. The house of Lancaster did not deserve a throne, not if Henry was all they had to put on it.

  Warwick turned his horse with a gentle clicking in his cheek and a twitch of the reins. He had seen three figures riding along the edge of the camp and trotted to intercept them. Two of the group were his brother John and their uncle Fauconberg, Neville men wedded to the cause. The third was less of a rock than Warwick might have desired, though de Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, had done nothing to excite his suspicion. Still, the man outranked him and was his senior by a decade. It was true Norfolk had a Neville mother, but the same had been true for the Percy brothers – and they had chosen to support King Henry. Warwick sighed to himself. War made strange allies. For Norfolk’s rank and experience, Warwick had given him the prestigious right wing, standing slightly ahead of the rest of the army in the great staggered line of squares. Of course, it was a coincidence that Norfolk would meet the enemy first in the vanguard. If the duke planned anything like treachery, he would do least damage there and still allow Warwick to fight a desperate defence from further back.

  Warwick shook his head a fraction as the three men reined in. His father’s death had stolen some of the joy from the entire world, tainting things he had once taken for granted, without question. The old man’s absence was a hole in his life, a loss so great he had not done more than peer over the edges of it. Warwick looked at friends and allies, looked even at brothers and uncles – and saw only how they might betray him.

  He inclined his head courteously to William, Lord Fauconberg, but the man walked his horse closer, extending his arm until Warwick was forced to grip it and then drawing them together into a stiff embrace. It did not give Warwick pleasure to see aspects of his father’s face in his uncle. It made the man hard to look upon, and there was always a smouldering resentment when Fauconberg talked intimately of his older brother, almost claiming some ownership out of his much longer knowledge. In some effort to comfort the sons, Fauconberg had told many tales of their father’s childhood, but none of them trusted his versions without their father to confirm or deny the truth of them. In Warwick’s eyes, his uncle was the lesser man. The three sons all honoured him in public, but Fauconberg assumed a far greater love from his nephews than they felt themselves.

  Warwick could sense the man’s dark-eyed gaze on him at that moment, like a hand touching his face. He had not particularly minded Fauconberg before, but since his father’s death, wet-eyed Uncle William could drive him to rage with his mawkish pity and his damned touching.

  Seeing thunder gathering in Warwick, John Neville reached out and clapped Fauconberg roughly on the shoulder. The brothers had agreed the gesture as a signal of private irritation, to be made when one or the other could not bear their uncle’s pale reflection of their father any longer. Fauconberg took it all in good stead, of course, assuming he was being included in some manly gesture of family support. Between them, they had come close to knocking him out of his saddle more than once.

  Warwick smiled for John, though his eyes remained cold. At least, in Montagu, John Neville had the title he had long desired, falling on him at the moment of their father’s death. The Earldom of Salisbury had become Warwick’s inheritance, another few dozen manors, castles and great houses, including his childhood estate of Middleham, where his mother still lived and wore black. Warwick cared nothing for any of it, though he knew John envied him lands that made him the richest man in England. Not even the house of York could match him then. Yet it was all tin, at least while his father’s murderers lived and drank and whored and smiled. It was not right that the severed head of Salisbury should stare down from the walls of the city of York while his enemies prospered. Warwick dared not speak of that, though he felt it like an open wound. Any attempt to retrieve their father’s head would see them all killed. It had to stay there, in the wind and rain, while his sons laboured on.

  Warwick’s gaze turned again to the distant figure of King Henry, sitting and dreaming away the short winter’s day. John had called for his death, of course, the younger man seeing only an eye for an eye, a father for a father. Yet in Henry’s case, Warwick suspected the king was not much loved even among his own people. While he remained alive, Henry was a weakness in the queen and her loyal lords. Henry was the piece of fat in the wolf-trap, and his followers could not ignore such a fine and royal bait. Warwick knew the king’s death would simply set Queen Margaret free to raise the man’s son and try again.

  Wind gusted into Warwick like a tongue in his mouth, making him gasp. He looked up into the pale face of the Duke of Norfolk, realizing the man had been staring and weighing him without saying a word. They had come together while Warwick had been torn and raw with grief, and no man could say they were friends. Yet Norfolk had done him no wrong – and that counted for something after the treachery of so many.

  The duke was thickset, his head more square than round and shaved to stubble from his crown to the point of his jaw. At forty-five, he showed the marks and scars of old battles on his face – and no trace of weakness at all, just a cold assessment. Warwick knew the man was related by blood to both York and Lancaster. There were just too many cousins standing on opposite sides, he thought. Looking at the man’s powerful build as he sat so comfortably on his horse, Warwick gave thanks that Norfolk’s Neville blood had run true.

  ‘Well met, my lord,’ Warwick said to Norfolk.

  The older man dipped his head and smiled in response.

  ‘I thought it could not hurt to ride across to you, Richard,’ Norfolk said. ‘Your uncle worries about you.’

  There was a suggestion of a light in Norfolk’s eyes as Fauconberg nodded solemnly. Warwick snorted air from his nose. There was no malice in Fauconberg, he was certain. It was beneath Warwick to find honest pity so cloying, but it had somehow become the very focus of his anger. Perhaps Norfolk was not such a block after all, if he had noticed what had escaped Fauconberg.

  ‘Any reports from the scouts?’ Warwick said, his mouth quirking on one side as he breathed out.

  Norfolk shook his head, instantly stern at the business of the camp.

  ‘None. No word at all, beyond a trickle of the dispossessed coming south, with all their complaints.’ He saw Warwick open his mouth to speak and went on. ‘Yes, as you ordered, Richard. They are fed and made warm, given a small purse and sent south to London. Strong lads are made to remain and join our ranks, of course, but there are enough old men and children wending their way to London with tales of horror. The queen will not be welcome in the south as word spreads.’

  ‘No small thing,’ Warwick’s brother John added. ‘To have her seen as she truly is? I would the whole country could know her as we do. As an honourless, faithless whore.’

  Warwick winced slightly. It was not that he didn’t agree with every word, but his younger brother was as brash and bluff in his way as Edward of York. There were times when neither man seemed to understand subtlety, as if a loud voice and a strong right arm were all a man needed. Warwick thought then of Derry Brewer and wondered if he still lived.

  ‘John,’ Warwick said, then added the title for a formal matter, ‘Lord Montagu – perhaps you should oversee the hand-gun training for your men. There is a new batch of
eighty come in and I have no experts yet to teach the others. They are still too slow to load after a shot.’

  He saw his brother’s eyebrows rise in interest, the younger man intrigued by the extraordinary weapons coming out of the city. Warwick had spent silver in a vast torrent, with half the forges and foundries of London working all hours to supply his men. The results were still causing awe each morning as carts arrived by the dozen, often with some new contrivance of blades or black powder. Every day before dawn, ranks of his new ‘gunners’ trooped out with long weapons of iron and wood over their shoulders. They stood in ranks, pouring in heavy-grained powder, ramming home a ball, or pellets of lead, and then blocking the muzzle with a plug of wool to stop it all rolling back out. They were learning as they went, and God knew the weapons didn’t have anything like the range of a longbow. Warwick’s redcoat archers had been amongst the first to volunteer to try the guns, but by the end of the first day, to a man they had handed them all back and returned to their old weapons. It was the time between shots that had worried them, compared with stroking out arrows breath by breath. Yet Warwick had hopes for the guns as a defensive tool, to break a massed attack, say, or to unhorse a group of officers. He saw potential for them, used at exactly the right moment. The roar of sound they made was simply astonishing at close range. His first test-firing rank had dropped their own guns and bolted for cover at the thunder and fog. For that alone, he thought they might have a place on the field of war.

  John, Lord Montagu, touched his hand to his forelock. Warwick dipped his head in response, wishing he could feel the same excitement he saw in his brother. He had a stronger bond to John since their father’s death, that was undeniable. As affection for their uncle drained away, so the friendship between Richard, John and Bishop George Neville grew more firmly rooted. They had common cause, after all.

  Warwick and Norfolk turned almost together as a horn sounded behind them, high on the hill of St Albans. Norfolk twisted his head to favour a sharper ear, then stiffened as the bell of St Peter’s Church began to toll across the town.

  ‘What does that mean?’ John Neville asked his uncle, not yet experienced enough to understand the shock in the others. Fauconberg shook his head, speechless. It was Warwick who answered, crushing down his own panic to speak calmly.

  ‘It is an attack. The bell would not sound for anything else. John, your men are closest. Send a dozen knights and a hundred of your lads to check the town. I have just a few archers up by the abbey – wounded men, recovering from strains or broken bones. Go, John! The bell won’t have been rung for nothing. They’re coming. Until we know numbers and positions, I’m blind down here.’

  Warwick looked bleak for a moment as John raced away. He had spent a month building a great palisade of spikes and guns and men across the north road – and the bastards had come from behind him. He felt his face burn as Norfolk and his uncle waited for orders.

  ‘Gentlemen, return to your positions,’ Warwick said. ‘I’ll send word as I hear.’

  To his irritation, his uncle nudged his horse close and clapped him on the shoulder. There were tears in the older man’s eyes, gleaming.

  ‘For your father, Richard,’ Fauconberg said. ‘We won’t fail.’

  5

  The massed ranks of the queen’s army raced uphill towards the great abbey. Derry saw no hesitation in Somerset or Percy when it came to using the advantage his reports and spies had provided. The men were alive with excitement, shrugging off weariness at the chance to charge up behind an enemy army, to fall on them like a hawk stooping to crush some small animal into the ground. Many of them had punched another man without warning at some point in their lives, when some rogue or merchant had not been expecting a blow. There might have been little honour in it, but surprise was one of the great factors of war and counted almost as much as strength of arms. Derry found his own heart pounding as he rode Retribution along a street. He looked out on the rising sun and saw Warwick’s great camp below, in three huge squares across the north road.

  The men around him did not pause to take in the view. Their task was to tear out the heels of the rearmost battle of men, standing under the banners of Lord Montagu. Those soldiers would be the weakest in supplies and quality; every man there knew it. The left battle would often be the last to engage, if they fought at all. For the men streaming down towards them through the shocked and empty streets of St Albans, that body of soldiers looked like the limping stag left behind by the herd.

  Derry had no particular desire to follow them down. His work ended when the fighting began, as far as he was concerned. He had brought Somerset and Earl Percy to the right spot. It was up to them to drive the knife home. He considered making a sketch of the great squares of men stretching away from St Albans, at least the ditches and main groups, but thought better of it as panicky voices began roaring somewhere close, echoing back from the walls of the abbey.

  ‘Watch it there, you clumsy sod! There!’ Derry heard, turning his horse on a tight rein to listen and find the source. He did not know the voice.

  ‘Archers! ’Ware archers!’ another yelled, higher, more afraid.

  Derry swallowed nervously, suddenly sensing he was a nice target for any bowman who came across him. He hunched down in the saddle, ready to kick with his heels and risk bolting.

  A side door creaked open in the abbey, revealing a thick mop of dark hair and deathly white skin, darting out and looking around. The sight of Derry Brewer staring did not seem to worry the man and he gave a low whistle. As Derry watched, a dozen others came out, some hobbling and limping, but carrying unsheathed knives and strung yew bows. Each one had some part of him stitched or bound in blood-stained cloth. They looked feverish: red-faced and eye-bright beyond even strong emotion. When they looked up at Derry Brewer, he quailed. It was already too late to run, he realized. A man who ran from archers needed to start when he was half a mile away, not twenty yards or so.

  Derry understood that Abbot Whethamstede had allowed wounded men into the abbey for the monks to treat and heal. There were always accidents when men and fire and iron blades came together. With his mind spinning, Derry recalled how his old friend William de la Pole used to say that ‘Stupidity’ was the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse, from the Book of St John of Patmos. Without Latin or Greek, Derry had never been able to read the passage, to see if he’d been telling the truth. Under the gaze of enemy soldiers, he had the feeling he might be meeting that horseman, with its braying laughter. He shuddered.

  The group of injured men had come to an end, just thirteen of them, with eight archers, though one of those had lost an eye and surely much of his accuracy. Derry’s mind tended to focus on small things when he was afraid. The simple fact of it was that these men would kill him in a heartbeat if they knew which side he was on.

  ‘You lads are not to fight,’ he said suddenly. ‘You’ve been told to rest and heal. What good are you wounded?’

  ‘More good than killed in our beds,’ one of them snapped, suspicious. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Master Peter Ambrose. I am an aide to my lord Norfolk,’ Derry said indignantly. ‘I have some knowledge of the physic and I was sent to observe the Gentle Brothers in their work, perhaps to learn a balm or an unguent.’

  He stopped himself, knowing that liars ramble. His heart was trying to shrink in his chest as he realized he’d made himself useful to such men. Still, they would have no desire to see him dead if he might help with their wounds and dressings.

  ‘You’ll come with us, then, down the hill,’ the same man said, glowering at him.

  He carried a yew bow lightly in his right hand, rocking it at the balance point. The man’s thumb rubbed the wood back and forth and Derry could see a whiter patch there, from years of the same motion. The archer was ready for him to run, he was suddenly certain. To turn away would mean an arrow in his back. They stared at each other coldly.

  ‘Down, Brewer!’ came a voice from his right.

  Derry
dropped from the saddle, risking his neck by simply going limp and sliding off like a dead man. He heard Retribution snort and used the animal’s bulk as cover while he wormed swiftly away on his elbows, tense with expectation of an arrow pinning him to the earth. Thumps and cries diminished behind him, cut short in savagery. Derry kept going, head down, until he heard footsteps running up behind him, loping along with a young man’s easy balance.

  Unseen, Derry slid a dagger from his coat, drawing his legs under him and coming up ready to launch himself. He was slow, he could feel it. Movement that in his youth had been cat-fast had become clumsy, thick-bodied and just slow. For one who had once revelled in his strength and agility, the self-awareness was hugely depressing.

  The soldier who stood over him held up both hands, one with a bloodied hatchet in it. He was disgustingly young and visibly amused by Derry’s dusty, puffing anger.

  ‘Easy there, Master Brewer! We’re pax, or whatever you say. Same side.’

  Derry looked past him to where a heaped group of bodies wore new quills fletched in good white feathers. One or two still moved, their legs shifting on the flagstones as if they were trying to rise. Somerset’s archers were among them already, cutting out the shafts with ruthless efficiency. Each arrow had been the labour of an expert hand and was far too valuable to be left behind. Derry felt a twinge of regret for those wounded men. Sometimes, whether a man lived or died was down to luck. He did not know if that realization made him value his own life more or less. If death could come because you chose the wrong door leading out into the sun, perhaps there was no sense to any of it – just the fifth horseman. He shrugged to himself, putting such thoughts aside. One thing about his life that he did enjoy – there was always someone he wanted to die before him. No matter what else happened, Derry Brewer wanted to die last. That was the path to happiness, right there – to outlive every last one of the bastards.