Stormbird

by Conn Iggulden

  A dark spot appeared over on his left-hand side, drawing his attention. It was no more than a smudge, but it stood out in the world of whiteness. Even the trees had lost their dark shapes in so heavy a fall. Clifford craned his neck, wiping the flakes from his face in a rough gesture to squint across the field.

  There, he saw movement and more than one shape. He could hear his heart and felt his throat dry. If those men were sentries from the royal camp, he was home and safe. If they were not, he was in mortal danger. He fretted, curling his hands into the reins. After a moment’s thought, he drew his sword and held it across his chest to obscure the red wyvern. Better to prepare to fight, though his instinct was to run.

  ‘Hello, the line!’ he called. ‘What banner?’

  Whoever the men were, they were trudging through the snow. Recruits then, common men with billhooks of iron and beech, like forest huntsmen. In the snow, they would not dare attack a mounted lord, in case he was one of their own. Clifford gave thanks that his red wyvern surcoat was painted on white cloth. He could get close before they identified him, and if they were of York, he would be off, galloping away. He placed his helmet on the saddle horn as he walked his horse across the line, angling in closer with every step, his panting breath coming hard.

  He heard them shout in reply, though their words could not be made out. Clifford cursed at the lack of banners in the marching line. They were forming out of the white by then, dark ranks appearing at the edges of his vision. He heard hoofbeats somewhere not far off and began to panic, suddenly aware that his mount was as weary as he was himself and could be overtaken. Yet it would be madness to run from the safety of the royal lines and he hung on, teeth chattering in the cold.

  ‘Ho, there! What banner?’ he called again, tightening his grip on the reins and his sword. He could see a pole in view and he blanched as he made out the same quarters of red diamonds and blue rearing lions that had driven him away from the River Aire. Fauconberg. As Clifford gaped in horror, he understood he had been turned around, that he had approached the men on his own trail. In a heartbeat, he saw the marching men were archers, hundreds of them. They had seen him, heard him calling in the muffling snow.

  Clifford began to wheel his horse, too late and too slow. A few dozen men had heard that lone voice and been searching for some sight of him. When they saw a rider in armour, they reacted as archers, fetching out arrows from the long quivers bumping on their hips, nocking and drawing as easily as they breathed, sending flat shots instinctively aimed, lost into the white, invisible the moment they left the bow.

  Clifford was struck hard in the side and back, rocked with his horse as it screamed and reared. Another shaft took the baron across the throat as he flailed away in blind panic, straining to get clear of the animal before it crushed him in the fall. He was dead before he struck the ground, his armour crumpling with metallic protests as the horse rolled over him, legs kicking.

  Those who had made the shots could not leave their position in the marching ranks, though they cheered and held up their bows, calling for others among their number to note the skill. A different part of the line reached Clifford’s broken corpse and identified the red wyvern on white with satisfaction. A serjeant halted three men around it and runners raced to take the news to Edward. Another was dispatched to Warwick and Fauconberg, so that they too trotted across to see.

  It did not take long for the leaders of the York army to reach that spot. Fauconberg was there first, looking down on Clifford’s broken figure with a grim expression. The news had already spread that Edward would not allow prize ransoms to be taken, causing some resentment. A common man could make a fortune on the battlefield with the right prisoner. Still, the billhook men waited in awe for Edward to arrive, dropping to one knee in the snow when he stood before them. Warwick and Fauconberg completed the same movement, giving Edward honour with the eyes of thousands on them.

  Edward’s gaze was on the corpse. He reached down and took a grip in Clifford’s hair, turning the head to get a good look at the stiffening face, already distorted from where it had lain.

  ‘This is the coward who killed Edmund?’

  Warwick nodded and Edward sighed to himself, letting the head fall back with a thump.

  ‘I wish it had been by my hand, but it matters more that he is dead. My brother can rest and this one can no longer crow like a cock on a dunghill. Very well. We go on, my lords, though I cannot see much further than I can spit. Has anyone laid eyes on Norfolk? I have not seen his banners for an age. No? This snow is poor stuff for a battle. Call out when you reach our enemy, or if you sight our missing wing.’ He breathed hard through his nose, controlling his irritation and nervousness. ‘The captured men say Tadcaster is the main camp. It will not be so far away now. March on and blow horns when you see them shaking and dropping their weapons in terror before you.’

  The gathered men chuckled as they turned away.

  ‘Your Highness,’ Fauconberg called. ‘I am still ahead of your centre square. I know it is the Duke of Norfolk’s wing that should brace them first, but I had a … thought about the snow. I have a thousand archers with me, Your Highness. I would use them to surprise and break the heads of those waiting for us, with your permission. Unless the Duke of Norfolk would take a slight by my so doing.’

  Edward turned back, hiding his worry under a grin. It had pleased him to have Warwick’s uncle use his royal title with ease, as if it had always been so.

  ‘Perhaps if my lord Norfolk were here, he would, but it seems my strongest wing has wandered further than I would like. Yes, you have my permission, Lord Fauconberg. I will send another thousand archers over to you, if you take a slow mile.’

  Seeing that Warwick remained, Edward smiled.

  ‘Will you hold the centre with me, Richard?’ he called.

  ‘I will, Your Highness,’ Warwick said, pleased. At such a moment, he could only shake his head in awe at the young king, formed from clay.

  Edward turned to the ranks watching him intently, their eyes bright with excitement. He sensed it and put aside his worries about Norfolk and eight thousand men vanishing into the snow when he needed them most.

  ‘Onward, lads. We’ll bring a king down today. This was just his dog.’

  They cheered him and resumed their march, stamping hard to bring back feeling to frozen feet. Around them all, the perfect stillness faded, replaced by a rushing wind that stung their bare faces and hands. The eerie silence had gone, but the cold was worse. The gale seemed to drive them forward, spitting fragments of ice against already numb skin. Many of the men looked left and right along their own line as they marched, always disappointed at how few of their ranks were revealed. The air was thick with flakes, whipping across them and driven into every fold and seam of their clothing. Made blind in the snow, shaking as they walked, all they could do was go on, with their heads bowed.

  William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, urged his great left square ahead of the king’s centre, pushing his captains hard over white fields. His scouts had vanished into the snow ahead and all he wanted was to close on the Lancaster formations as fast as possible. He and his men had already seen fighting that day, though it had been more in the nature of a slaughter, as three thousand fell upon Clifford’s four hundred – and half of those armed with nothing more than bowstaves and knives. The odds had not troubled his soldiers. If anything, the easy killing of exhausted enemies had settled and delighted them. A dozen times, Fauconberg had seen one of his lads battering away at a fallen man, landing four or six blows with a pollaxe to shatter bone and spread red drops on the snow. They were both savage and skilful with the tools they had been given. They were good fellows, he thought. They would do.

  For the moment, though, his mind was on his archers, still slogging along with full quivers of two dozen shafts to a man. Fauconberg looked up as he rode alongside them, feeling the wind increase and break across from the south-west, funnelled through snow into an icy blast. It gusted even harder an
d he could see darker patches in the whiteness, as bushes and lonely trees gave up their weight of snow and shook free, only to be touched once again by whispering flakes.

  Not far ahead lay the lines of King Henry and Queen Margaret, he was quietly certain. The few men he had captured that morning had told all they knew, babbling anything to save their lives. Fauconberg did not know if they had been spared or killed after that. What concerned him was the closeness of the Lancaster camp. His men had marched for half the morning, though their pace was necessarily slow as the drifts built. The land was never flat and they had passed isolated farms and darting, bleating sheep as they went. Without complaint, his men had trudged down hills and up escarpments, crossing entire valleys. He did not know if they marched for him or perhaps for some new-forged loyalty to King Edward of York. It did not matter, as Fauconberg saw it. He gave orders for his ranks of archers to move to a wide front, their precious bows wrapped in oiled leather to protect them. Without the long shafts of pikes, they would be vulnerable to horsemen, but Fauconberg accepted the risk on their behalf, as their commander. The wind was growing in strength behind them, pushing into the teeth of the enemy. It too could be of use.

  It was on a downward slope that two of his scouts finally found him. One of their horses had gone lame, limping visibly from being forced over rough ground. Yet risks had to be taken if they were to survive, that was simply the be-all and end-all of it. Fauconberg acknowledged the young man who dismounted before him, then his companion as he raced up and reined in, leaping down and staggering in his excitement. Both were pink-faced and freezing, pointing back along the route they had come. The simple gestures were made with good reason, as the snow had thickened, tossed and swirled in the wind, so that the entire world vanished into dancing mists of flakes.

  ‘Four or six hundred yards, my lord,’ one of them panted. ‘Flags of Lancaster. There they have chose to stand. And wait.’

  ‘I saw pikes, my lord,’ the other scout chipped in, not wanting to be overlooked. ‘Standing in a host, like a … like hog bristles. The snow hid many, though I went right close on my belly and crept up until I could hear them breathing, just waiting on us all.’

  Fauconberg shuddered. No one fought in winter, which meant no one knew what to expect or how best to use the extraordinary circumstance of two armies practically sitting on each other’s cloaks without knowing it. He had two thousand archers, with those Edward had marched up to aid him. He felt the young king’s trust as a weight on his shoulders, but not as a burden. He made the sign of the cross and kissed the family crest of his signet ring.

  ‘Now then, lads. Everything I would like to bring about depends on your skill. Finely judged distance will be the key to it. While I pass the orders, I’d like you to pace it out, separately, then bring me your tally. Get as close as you dare, but do not let them see you, or we will all be lost. We have a chance to spill their guts on this snow, if we do it right. Go!’

  The scouts raced off, leaving their mounts. Fauconberg whistled for his captains. The snow swallowed the sounds of them approaching, so that he had a sense of how the enemy must still be waiting, straining to hear, never knowing how deaf and blind they had become.

  Fauconberg passed on his orders and waited for the scouts to return, desperately afraid of the sudden shout and call to arms that would mean their presence had been discovered and reported.

  The two young men came back within moments of each other.

  ‘Five hundred and twenty,’ said the first.

  His colleague looked scornful.

  ‘Five hundred sixty,’ he said.

  ‘Very well, gentlemen,’ Fauconberg replied. ‘That will serve well enough. Rejoin your horses now and make ready.’

  He passed the word and the waiting captains and serjeants dropped pikes across the waists of their own men. It was impossible to halt so many with no sound at all, but the voices were muffled and dim, passed on and on until they were all standing still. Fauconberg’s archers moved slowly and quietly forward, away from the rest of his men. The gap widened until the entire force of two thousand had vanished into the white.

  The Duke of Somerset cantered along the lines, passing waiting men stretching off into the distance, snow settling on them. It was an impressive array. As well as pikes and bowmen, there were huge numbers with billhooks, pollaxes and swords. They waited on foot or in mud-spattered troops of mounted knights on either wing. With drummers and water-carriers, the camp followers of a dozen other trades moved between the ranks while the soldiers checked their weapons and equipment, touching and patting pouches and blades.

  The king and queen were safe in the city of York, eight or nine miles away. Somerset had command of the army, with Earl Percy in the centre, a dozen barons and scores of veteran captains. With news of a vast force approaching, Somerset had marched them out of camp and some way between the villages of Towton and Saxton, on bleak and frozen earth. On his order, they had drawn up on a featureless bit of scrubland, with the ground falling away before them to the south. Somerset shook his head in awe at the scale of it all. Just six years before, Warwick and Salisbury and York had challenged the king with a mere three thousand men at St Albans – and come close to winning. Somerset looked over three squares of at least twelve thousand each. He had found a good spot for them, with flanks protected on his left by marshes and on his right by the Cock Beck, the river running thick and fast with all the snow that had melted into its waters. It filled Somerset’s heart to see the fervour and stoic acceptance in the men. They would stand for King Henry. They were loyal.

  The weather was the one aspect that infuriated the young duke. Somerset wore polished plate armour, lined in leather and thick cloth, designed to soak up impacts that would otherwise kill a man. It was also proof against the freezing cold, much more so than the layers of wool and greasy linen his pikemen wore, with bagging hose and just a jerkin to protect them. None of them had experience of fighting in winter, that was the problem. Even his most senior captains were unsure if the soldiers were better off crouched or lying, whether they were more likely to freeze to death on the ground or standing still. It made sense to keep them moving around, though it wore at their strength and interfered with ranks and stations. Some of the old hands said sweat was a subtle enemy, that if a man grew too hot in the plunging cold, his sweat could freeze on the skin and whip the life right out of him. While they waited, the wind had risen in strength, doubling in gusts until it whipped stinging crystals of ice into their faces. Many of them stood with arms raised against it, eyes narrowed down to the thinnest of lines.

  Somerset shook his head like a twitch. He waited with the greatest army he had ever known – close on forty thousand men, with billhooks, bows and axes. More, he had the favour of the king and queen, especially Queen Margaret. Yet the frozen air and the snow made him doubt it all. The cold scratched at his confidence, as if he breathed it out in the plumes of mist that made drops run down the inside of his helmet. In truth, he knew he suffered less than older men. Some of his standing lines were red-faced townsmen in their forties or fifties. Men who had volunteered in hot blood had not expected to have it chilled in a vast silence, with just the wind’s whistle for company.

  ‘Come to halt!’ Somerset heard, somewhere out in the white. He looked up in sudden alarm. Somerset’s fear communicated itself to his horse, so that it skittered and danced. He could see his front ranks looking at each other, asking if they too had heard the voice.

  ‘Archers, nock and draw!’ came the same voice, almost on top of them. ‘Loose! Loose! And nock and draw! And nock and draw!’

  Somerset wrenched his horse back to face the shouts. He squinted into the snow, but there was nothing to be seen.

  ‘Cover!’ he shouted to his stupefied captains. ‘Shields and cover! Archers to the fore, here! Archers! Archers to answer!’

  None of his pikemen carried shields. The huge poles that worked so well against cavalry needed both hands to balance the weight
of the iron head. The billhook and axemen controlled their blades with two hands, like woodsmen hacking at saplings. They stood, dumbstruck, still. Then the terror of the archer surged across them, driving them to a frenzy as the whining, shrieking sound grew. The rushing breath of arrows in the air had men throwing themselves down with their hands over their heads, or crouching to make themselves small. Somerset’s captains bullied them back to their feet, bawling for them to stand like men.

  Somerset looked up into the whiteness, blind, though he could hear the shafts coming. It was the most terrifying moment of his life.

  When they struck, the arrows were moving too fast to see. They appeared out of the snow as a blur, then were suddenly visible in flesh and hard ground, quivering, or wrenched around by the agony of whoever had been hit. Somerset hunched as they battered at him, rattling off his shoulders. Every surface of his armour was rounded and polished to give arrows no purchase. He thanked God for it even as pain bloomed in his thigh and he looked down with a gasp to see white goose feathers. One shaft had struck him cleanly through the iron, pinning his leg to the thick leather and wood of his saddle. With a curse, he took a grip and just pulled, growling, until the red gave way to a black head, appearing in a spatter of blood. A bodkin tip, smooth and piercing. He breathed in relief that it had not been barbed. No one had heard his cries of pain, not over the screams and shouts and wails of hundreds more who died as he watched, their twitching bodies and jerking limbs slowing and becoming utterly still.