Stormbird

by Conn Iggulden

  Warwick looked for the source, squinting into the distance. Edward’s central square had pushed deeply into the forces of Lancaster, becoming a wide, shallow spearpoint. Every step had been hard-won, but Warwick thought they had gained at least a few hundred yards over the bodies of enemies. It was impossible to know how well his uncle was holding the left wing, but Edward’s heart and violent action was driving on the centre, some eight thousand men taking their stance and their confidence from the armoured king roaring out defiance.

  Somewhere on Warwick’s left, he could hear horsemen where horses had no right to be. He swallowed drily, his throat so thick and raw he could barely croak a call.

  ‘Your Highness … Edward. The left wing!’

  His uncle Fauconberg would be somewhere over on that side with his brother John, though Warwick had seen nothing of either man since the arrows and alarms of that morning. He had learned to hate the snow for the blindness it brought, more even than the cold that made bruises worse and hands too numb to hold a hilt.

  He saw Edward turn and follow his pointing gauntlet over to their left. The young king’s mouth firmed and he looked around in cold assessment, judging what quality of men he could call.

  ‘Some sort of horsemen there, out of the woods,’ he shouted to Warwick.

  The noise that followed was brutal, a great crash of metal and cries of pain that echoed like a clap of thunder across the battlefield. Hundreds turned to see what was happening, losing their lives for the moment of inattention.

  ‘How many?’ Warwick shouted back. He wished then that he had not killed his horse, for all the goodwill it had brought him.

  ‘Too many,’ Edward replied. He cupped his hand around his mouth. ‘My horse here. Bring him up.’

  He allowed the front two ranks to march past him, swallowed in their number as he joined the third rank once again and waited for the great stallion that could bear his armoured weight. As Warwick understood what Edward was about, he sent his own runners to four nearby captains, telling them the king required their immediate aid and presence at his side. They began to close on Edward’s position.

  ‘You must press on with my centre, Warwick,’ Edward shouted. ‘These are my best men. They will not falter.’

  To Warwick’s surprise, Edward was grinning, lifted by some dark delight. His armour was spattered with mud and blood, his surcoat stained red over the royal lions. Yet in that moment, in his youth and grief and anger, Warwick knew Edward had never experienced such untrammelled joy. He was drunk on violence. The battlefield could break a man; Warwick knew that well enough. It also made a few, as they discovered a place where their strength and skill and fast hands mattered, with no other worries to distract them.

  Edward’s delight showed in his glare and his wildness. He shoved his knee into the hands of the knight who brought up his mount, finding the saddle with quick ease and then becoming a mounted warrior in a heartbeat, joining the animal so that his own strength and reach seemed to treble. The destrier kicked out suddenly, just missing a marching man behind.

  ‘Press the centre!’ Edward cried, for the benefit of those around, though he focused on Warwick. ‘These Lancaster men are just boys. They cannot stand.’

  The king trotted his mount across the square, interrupting ranks that stopped and cheered. His knights formed a phalanx around him, holding his banner poles high. With the four captains, hundreds pressed through with him, grinning like madmen to jog along in the wake of the king on his warhorse. They headed towards the tumult of fighting on the left wing, to answer whatever force had come out of the trees.

  Fauconberg swore as he fended off a spear with his sword’s hilt. The copse on his left shoulder had seemed too small to conceal all the horsemen who had come charging out of it. His leftmost ranks had been caught standing, their attention on the maw of the fighting ahead. Just forty yards from where he stood, Fauconberg’s foremost soldiers were still grinding bone and iron and shedding blood as captains and serjeants on both sides roared at each surge, each step gained. The lines swayed back and forth like bloody lips. Sudden lurches and a steady pressing force had gained Fauconberg some ground, but the cost had been high. The left wing was normally the weakest – the last to engage. Yet along with the snow, the sheer scale of the battle was rewriting the rules. If Norfolk’s right wing had been there, he should have gone in first, supported by Edward and Warwick in the centre, and then finally, perhaps not at all, Fauconberg’s left wing. Instead, the battle lines had been so wide that the centre and the left crashed in at the same time – and Norfolk had vanished into the snow.

  More and more were fed through to the front, where they stood until they were exhausted – and then fell, to be replaced once again. Fauconberg marched in the second or third rank, pulling men forward or back with two serjeants, trying to allow the mortally weary some respite, before their lives were torn out of them. He faced the strongest wing of Lancaster, with the banners of Somerset visible just a hundred yards away.

  Into that stalemate had come the ambush from the copse, two hundred heavy horse left hidden to attack his flank. They’d carried long lances or spears and they were already at full gallop when Fauconberg saw them appear out of the snow, just a blur and growing thunder, until entire ranks were shuffling back as a boy might step sharply out of the path of a wild dog.

  They had smashed right through the stolid marching men, waiting their turn at the battle mouth with patience and courage. Instead, they had been smacked down, broken on the instant by the armoured weight crashing into them or spitted through by iron and splintered wood. Shards exploded across the left wing as it bowed in, cringing away from the charge. The entire left square faltered, compressing marching lines so that they came to a stop, while others continued to push around the outskirts almost mindlessly. Some of them put up pikes in rows, as they had been taught to do against horsemen. They were too few and Fauconberg swallowed as he snapped orders, shoring up the lines, pulling the men clear to re-form. They left shrieking wounded and cooling dead behind.

  Fauconberg pulled off a gauntlet to wipe sweat from his face. The true enemy was panic, as it always was. Two hundred riders could not destroy an army or even one wing of it, not when that wing was eight thousand strong. But while the riders rode unchallenged and killed without answer, the ranks pulled back from them, waiting for someone else to respond to the threat. Fauconberg saw one of his men launch his pike like a spear and send one of the attackers tumbling right off his horse. The man darted then at the prone figure, but he was sent skidding back to the ranks by the rider’s companions as they galloped up. They had drawn swords, content to cut at the marching ranks. In fury and frustration, Fauconberg sent a boy racing to the rear, where his archers trudged along. Just a few hundred arrows would end the threat. They’d used the last of them hours before, but perhaps a few shafts yet remained. It was a vain hope, he knew it.

  A dozen of the riders rushed his flank yet again. Some of his serjeants called for pikes and the line bristled with them, though not before the horsemen wheeled out with new blood on their swords. They roared and jeered as they rode up and down, delighting in their power over the miserable lines marching past them.

  Fauconberg glanced to his right, looking for help. His heart seemed to swell in his chest as he saw Edward’s banners coming closer.

  ‘Yes!’ Fauconberg muttered. ‘Good lad. Good king.’

  He chuckled at his own words as Edward came in a rush. The great squares slowed as he crossed their path. Some men simply stopped to stare at him, while their officers yelled blue murder to get them moving again. For just a moment in the hours of struggle, soldiers on both sides watched Edward ride to shore up a broken wing.

  ‘Clear a path there!’ Fauconberg shouted to those around him. ‘Let the king through!’ He was beaming like a fool, he knew it, yet the banners raised his heart: the white rose, the falcon of York, the sun in flames, the royal lions.

  Those riders who had attacked the wing saw
Edward coming just as clearly. A few of them pointed back to the woods behind, choosing to preserve themselves. Others clearly indicated the king pressing through his own ranks to reach them. It was not hard to imagine the argument between them. If they brought Edward down, they could well turn the day for King Henry.

  Fauconberg felt his chest tighten, his skin seeming to grip his bones. King Edward passed him at no more than twenty yards, his huge warhorse trotting with easy grace. With him went a core of banners and, around them, billhook and pollaxe men, burly and fit, loping along at the king’s side.

  Edward and his knights sprang out of the flank at those horsemen who waited for them. In just moments, the king had downed the first two who stood against him. He was struck twice by spears skidding off his armour. A third was thrown by a man solidly in Edward’s path, with all his strength. It missed as Edward cantered into him, smashing him off his smaller horse with a thump of his shoulder. Fauconberg winced at the impact. It was like seeing a falcon strike a pigeon, leaving it crushed. Speed and weight mattered, but he could only imagine how hard it was to keep your nerve with Edward bearing down on you. The king did not swerve or hold back. He rode straight at anyone in his path and broke them, cutting with his sword or sending them tumbling with a blow. The king was more skilful and much faster than older men, feinting and sending them one way only to smash them from their seats as they turned. In the flower of his youth, he made some of them look like flailing children.

  Around the king, Edward’s billhook men were in their element. As the enemy horsemen milled and swarmed, holding the ground, hard men would step up and cut a horse’s leg right through or spear the riders from beneath so that they fell, blowing blood. Those who used billhooks with the most skill were butchers and smiths and tanners and brickmakers, well used to the work.

  It did not last long. Edward looked around at the corpses of men and the shrieking horses dying around him. It had been brutal work, but he found himself exulting, to the point where he wondered if he should hide the emotion as somehow obscene. He could not. Instead, he raised his sword and yelled his victory. Around him, hundreds smiled and cheered, the sound spreading to the entire left wing and beyond it to the centre, where Warwick was laughing as he fought on. It was one small action, but Edward had proven himself. His ride across the face of the army had been seen by almost all of them. If there had been doubts before, there were none then. They fought for a king of England, and in that knowledge, they found new strength.

  19

  The snow continued to fall, the wind gusting so that the fighting men had to squint against flecks of ice. Their skin and hair and the creases of cloth were all rimed with it, crackling and falling away with every step or swing of a blade. The day wore on with the two vast armies locked together, neither giving way unless it was over the dead bodies of their own. Pikes jabbed forward as captains charged into a gap, tearing holes in lines. All the while, pollaxes and billhooks rose and fell, with short falchion cleavers doing brutal work.

  Behind the fighting lines, ranks compressed themselves together for warmth, to get away from the wind whistling through them and stealing away their strength. They stamped their feet and blew on hands as they were drawn inexorably forward. They could not retreat, could barely even manoeuvre, as the dim light began to fade and shadows fell across tens of thousands standing on frozen earth, with wood and iron in their hands.

  There were moments when the snow was blown back and the battlefield was revealed. For those lords and men-at-arms who had come north with Edward, the sight was not one to inspire. The army of Lancaster was yet a host, a dark flock swarming like starlings on the white ground. Exhausted men from the south looked at each other and shook their heads. With the light leaving, it was hard to see such a sight and not quail, not feel some touch of despair, with bodies aching and stiff with cold.

  Boys still ran through the lines, carrying leather water bags with a pipe that could be sucked like a mother’s teat. The urchins allowed parched men to snatch a desperate mouthful, cursing and prodding them when they took too much or spilled the precious stuff down their beards. All the time, the fighting went on, lines heaving together, men crying out for friends and loved ones as they understood they would die in the dark, shrieking at the last or slipping down amidst the legs of those trudging past.

  When the sun went down, it took something vital. Seasoned fighters hunched their shoulders and dropped their heads, settling in for grim endurance in the darkness. No one called a halt, not the lords or their captains. They seemed to understand that they had come to that place in the service of two kings; they would leave serving only one. Horns and drums fell silent, no longer smothering a roar of men that built and sobbed away like waves crashing on shingle, nor the voices of the dying, calling like gulls.

  Men-at-arms who had fought for hours had reached a point of leaden weariness and confusion that only grew worse in the dark. They stumbled along with their mates and if they were caught by fresher enemies, they were cut down like wheat. The number of deaths grew and grew as the strong fell savagely on weakened men – and then became weak, to be cut down in turn.

  There was a sullen desperation growing in the York ranks. Even at the centre, where Edward stood and fought as if he could not tire, they had seen the extent of the Lancaster lines. The young king had not returned his horse to the rear. With a salute to Fauconberg, he had ridden over to Warwick, accepting the cheers of the centre as they welcomed him. There were no arrows or crossbow bolts flying by then, seeking out the fine target that he made. Without cannon on the field, Edward was near untouchable, as long as his strength remained. Knights who grew too weary could be knocked down and stabbed between plates, or have their helmets hammered in. Yet if a man of Edward’s size could keep fighting, it was hard to see how he could ever be stopped. It took a near perfect blow to pierce his armour – and as it was aimed, there he was, looking at the wielder with a wild grin, striking back before the blow reached him. He had finally lost count of all those who had fallen to him.

  The darkness was upon them when Edward saw movement on the right. Without the snow, he would not have noticed, but on white ground he saw a dark mass charging, appearing as the snow still swirled. From the height of his destrier, Edward had more warning than anyone else, though he only stared. Runners were already scrambling towards him, boys racing each other to take his orders, whatever they might be. Edward held up his hand to them, the fingers outstretched. He told them to wait as he waited, his heart thumping hard, so that he felt dizzy and sick. If the queen’s army had brought fresh reinforcements, he was looking at his death and the final dishonour of York. His men had been outnumbered from the first. The ranks coming in would break him.

  The hammer crashed against Lancaster’s left flank. Norfolk had found them, in the snow and the darkness, bringing Edward’s entire right wing against the weakest ranks of Lancaster. They struck at a run and they sent up a roar that echoed over the entire field. Norfolk’s banners flew to lead the way, and at the sight of them, Edward and Warwick found each other’s gaze and howled with the rest. It could not have been better judged – and if two hundred horsemen had almost broken Fauconberg’s wing earlier in the day, nine thousand fresh warriors shattered the Lancastrian wing, sundering the army and leaving thousands cut down. Norfolk’s men were surely weary from half a day spent pressing on in the snow, seeking out the battlefield. Yet they were fresh and full of life compared with the poor, half-dead wights who had fought for all that time.

  In the darkness, there was utter confusion in the Lancaster lines. A great attack had come, and men turned away from it in blind terror, trusting in the dark to hide any dishonour. As Norfolk pressed in, Edward and Warwick and Fauconberg felt the lines suddenly give way before them.

  Men who would have held for ever in daylight broke in the dark. They turned and ran, assailed on all sides by screaming men and clashing iron. They slipped and fell and got up, spreading panic as they pushed through lines
of men who still knew nothing of what was happening, who grabbed at them and shouted questions as they jerked away and staggered on. Hundreds broke, then thousands, letting fear close their throats and send them wild. They raced away down the sloping ground to the river, falling in armour and crashing over and over.

  Behind them, the ranks of Edward and Warwick had met those of Norfolk surging across their front. Together, they sent up a bellow of savage glee, chasing running men. Just moments before, they had been looking at an army at least their equal in size. That knowledge stayed with the army of York as they surged over the field. Two or three men would catch some unlucky knight, knocking him down with a sweep at his legs, or crashing a pollaxe against his back so that he stumbled and fell. Once down, someone would swing the axe-handles in a swift circle, bringing it on to a head or a neck. They would not stop then, made savage in their own fear. Blow after blow fell, until bones had been broken into pieces and bodies pierced a hundred times.

  Knights and noble lords called ‘Pax! Ransom!’ as they were brought down in the darkness, yelling at the top of their voices to men who could not see them well against the snow. No mercy was granted to them, and the billhooks thumped down.

  The butchery went on until the rising sun cast a dim light from a clear sky, with the snow all spent and covering humped bodies in all directions. Thousands of armoured men had drowned in the Cock Beck, held under or chopped by those chasing them as they struggled to cross. Scattered corpses spread for miles in all directions, cut down and set upon by men who had been lost for a time. As the dawn came, they would not meet each other’s eyes. The darkness had hidden horrors that would stir them from sweating dreams for years afterwards. York’s men had triumphed, but they were drained by it, exhausted without sleep, stained in blood and filth, their lips blue, their eyes tired.