Three Great English Victories: A 3-book Collection of Harlequin, 1356 and Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell
Читать онлайн книгу.
being plundered and another two, their holds already emptied, were burning fiercely. ‘But how do you get the bastard out of town?’ Skeat asked. ‘He’s not a complete fool.’
‘He is when it comes to the Countess.’
‘Ah!’ Skeat grinned. ‘And the Countess, she’s suddenly being nice to us all. So it’s you and her, is it?’
‘It is not her and me, no.’
‘Soon will be, though, won’t it?’ Skeat said.
‘I doubt it.’
‘Why? Because she’s a countess? Still a woman, boy. But I’d be careful of her.’
‘Careful?’
‘Hard bitch, that one. Looks lovely on the outside, but it’s all flint inside. She’ll break your heart, boy.’
Skeat had stopped on the wide stone quays where men were emptying warehouses of leather, grain, smoked fish, wine and bolts of cloth. Sir Simon was among them, shouting at his men to commandeer more wagons. The town was yielding a vast fortune. It was a much bigger place than La Roche-Derrien and, because it had successfully fought off the Earl of Northampton’s winter siege, it had been reckoned a safe place for Bretons to store their valuables. Now it was being gutted. A man staggered past Thomas with an armload of silver plate, another man was dragging a half-naked woman by the shreds of her nightdress. One group of archers had broken open a vat and were dipping their faces to drink the wine.
‘It was easy enough getting in here,’ Skeat said, ‘but it’ll be the devil’s own job to get these sodden bastards back out again.’
Sir Simon beat his sword on the backs of two drunks who were getting in the way of his men emptying a storehouse of its bolts of cloth. He saw Thomas and looked surprised, but he was too wary of Will Skeat to say anything. He just turned away.
‘Bastard must have paid off his debts by now,’ Skeat said, still staring at Sir Simon’s back. ‘War’s a good way to get rich, so long as you ain’t taken prisoner and ransomed. Not that they’d ransom you or me, boy. Slit our bellies and prick our eyes out, more like. Have you ever shot a crossbow?’
‘No.’
‘Ain’t quite as easy as it looks. Not as hard as shooting a real bow, of course, but it still takes practice. Goddamn things can pitch a bit high if you’re not used to them. Do Jake and Sam want to help you?’
‘They say so.’
‘Of course they do, evil bastards that they are.’ Skeat still stared at Sir Simon, who was wearing his new, shining armour. ‘I reckon the bastard will carry his cash with him.’
‘I would think so, yes.’
‘Half mine, Tom, and I’ll ask no questions come Saturday.’
‘Thanks, Will.’
‘But do it proper, Tom,’ Skeat said savagely, ‘do it proper. I don’t want to watch you hang. I don’t mind watching most fools doing the rope dance with the piss running down their legs, but it’d be a shame to watch you twitching your way to the devil.’
They went back to the walls. Neither man had collected any plunder, but they had already taken more than enough from their raids on the north Breton farms and it was now the turn of Totesham’s men to gorge themselves on a captured town.
One by one the houses were searched and the tavern barrels were drained. Richard Totesham wanted his force to leave Lannion at dawn, but there were too many captured carts waiting to get through the narrow eastern gate and not nearly enough horses to pull the carts, so men were harnessing themselves the shafts rather than leave their pickings behind. Other men were drunk and senseless, and Totesham’s men-at-arms scoured the town to find them, but it was fire that drove most of the drunks from their refuges. The townsfolk fled south as the English set the thatched roofs alight.
The smoke thickened into a vast dirty pillar that drifted south on the small sea wind. The pillar glowed a lurid red on its underside, and it must have been that sight which first told the approaching force from Guingamp that they had arrived too late to save the town. They had marched through the night, expecting to find some place where they could lay an ambush for Totesham’s men, but the damage was already done. Lannion was burning and its wealth was piled on carts that were still being manhandled through the gate. But if the hated English could not be ambushed on their way to the town, then they could be surprised as they left and so the enemy commanders swung their forces eastwards towards the road which led back to La Roche-Derrien.
Cross-eyed Jake saw the enemy first. He was gazing south through the pearly mist that lay over the flat land and he saw the shadows in the vapour. At first he thought it was a herd of cows, then he decided it had to be refugees from the town. But then he saw a banner and a lance and the dull grey of a mail coat, and he shouted to Skeat that there were horsemen in sight.
Skeat peered over the ramparts. ‘Can you see anything, Tom?’
It was just before dawn proper and the countryside was suffused with greyness and streaked with mist. Thomas stared. He could see a thick wood a mile or more to the south and a low ridge showing dark above the mist. Then he saw the banners and the grey mail in the grey light, and a thicket of lances.
‘Men-at-arms,’ he said, ‘a lot of the bastards.’
Skeat swore. Totesham’s men were either still in the town or else strung along the road to La Roche-Derrien, and strung so far that there could be no hope of pulling them back behind Lannion’s walls – though even if that had been possible it was not practical for the whole western side of the town was burning furiously and the flames were spreading fast. To retreat behind the walls was to risk being roasted alive, but Totesham’s men were hardly in a fit condition to fight: many were drunk and all were laden with plunder.
‘Hedgerow,’ Skeat said curtly, pointing to a ragged line of blackthorn and elder that ran parallel to the road where the carts rumbled. ‘Archers to the hedge, Tom. We’ll look after your horses. Christ knows how we’ll stop the bastards,’ he made the sign of the cross, ‘but we ain’t got much choice.’
Thomas bullied a passage at the crowded gate and led forty archers across a soggy pasture to the hedgerow that seemed a flimsy barrier against the enemy massing in the silvery mist. There were at least three hundred horsemen there. They were not advancing yet, but instead grouping themselves for a charge, and Thomas had only forty men to stop them.
‘Spread out!’ he shouted. ‘Spread out!’ He briefly went onto one knee and made the sign of the cross. St Sebastian, he prayed, be with us now. St Guinefort, protect me. He touched the desiccated dog’s paw, then made the sign of the cross again.
A dozen more archers joined his force, but it was still far too small. A score of pageboys, mounted on ponies and armed with toy swords, could have massacred the men on the road, for Thomas’s hedge did not provide a complete screen, but rather straggled into nothingness about half a mile from the town. The horsemen only had to ride round that open end and there would be nothing to stop them. Thomas could take his archers into the open ground, but fifty men could not stop three hundred. Archers were at their best when they were massed together so that their arrows made a hard, steel-tipped rain. Fifty men could make a shower, but they would still be overrun and massacred by the horsemen.
‘Crossbowmen,’ Jake grunted, and Thomas saw the men in green and red jackets emerging from the woods behind the enemy men-at-arms. The new dawn light reflected cold from mail, swords and helmets. ‘Bastards are taking their time,’ Jake said nervously. He had planted a dozen arrows in the base of the hedge, which was just thick enough to stop the horsemen, but not nearly dense enough to slow a crossbow bolt.
Will Skeat had gathered sixty of his men-at-arms beside the road, ready to countercharge the enemy whose numbers increased every minute. Duke Charles’s men and their French allies were riding eastwards now, looking to advance about the open end of the hedge where there was an inviting swathe of green and open land leading all the way to the road. Thomas