Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard - Страница 14
- Предыдущая
- 14/98
- Следующая
Hook had no armor except for an ancient helmet that Wilkinson had given him and which sat on his head like a bowl. He had a padded jacket that might stop a feeble sword swing, but that was his only protection. Other archers had short mail coats and close-fitting helmets, but they all wore Burgundy’s brief surcoat blazoned with the jagged red cross and Hook saw those liveries lining the new wall that was made of wicker baskets filled with earth. None of the archers was drawing a cord yet, instead they just looked toward the breach that flared with sudden light as Burgundian men-at-arms threw pitch-soaked torches into the gap of the gun-ravaged wall.
There were close to fifty men-at-arms at the new wall, but no enemy in the breach. Yet the bells still rang frantically to announce a French attack, and Hook swung around to see a glow in the sky above the city’s southern rooftops, a glow that flickered lurid on the cathedral’s tower as evidence that buildings burned somewhere near the Paris gate. Was that where the French attacked? The Paris gate was commanded by Sir Roger Pallaire and defended by the English men-at-arms and Hook wondered, not for the first time, why Sir Roger had not demanded that the English archers join that gate’s garrison.
Instead the archers waited by the western breach where still no enemy appeared. Smithson, the centenar, was nervous. He kept fingering the silver chain that denoted his rank and glancing toward the glow of the southern fires, then back to the breach. “Devil’s turd,” he said of no one in particular.
“What’s happening?” an archer demanded.
“How in God’s name would I know?” Smithson snarled.
“I think they’re already inside the city,” John Wilkinson said mildly. He had brought a dozen sheaves of spare arrows that he now dropped behind the archers. The sound of screams came from somewhere in the city and a troop of Burgundian crossbowmen ran past Hook, abandoning the breach and heading toward the Paris gate. Some of the men-at-arms followed them.
“If they’re inside the town,” Smithson said uncertainly, “then we should go to the church.”
“Not to the castle?” a man demanded.
“We go to the church, I think,” Smithson said, “as Sir Roger says. He’s gentry, isn’t he? He must know what he’s doing.”
“Aye, and the Pope lays eggs,” Wilkinson commented.
“Now?” a man asked, “we go now?” but Smithson said nothing. He just tugged at the silver chain and looked left and right.
Hook was staring at the breach. His heart was beating hard, his breathing was shallow and his right leg trembled. “Help me, God,” he prayed, “sweet Jesu protect me,” but he got no comfort from the prayer. All he could think of was that the enemy was in Soissons, or attacking Soissons and he did not know what was happening and he felt vulnerable and helpless. The bells banged inside his head, confusing him. The wide breach was dark except for the feeble flicker of dying flames from the torches, but slowly Hook became aware of other lights moving there, of shifting silver-gray lights, lights like smoke in moonlight or like the ghosts who came to earth on Allhallows Eve. The lights, Hook thought, were beautiful; they were filmy and vaporous in the darkness. He stared, wondering what the glowing shapes were, and then the silver-gray wraiths turned to red and he realized, with a start of fear, that the shifting shapes were men. He was seeing the light of the torches reflected from plate armor. “Sergeant!” he shouted.
“What is it?” Smithson snapped back.
“The bastards are here!” Hook called, and so they were. The bastards were coming through the breach. Their plate armor was scoured bright enough to reflect the firelight and they were advancing beneath a banner of blue on which golden lilies blossomed. Their visors were closed and their long swords flashed back the flame-light. They were no longer vaporous, now they resembled men of burning metal, phantoms from the dreams of hell, death coming through the dark to Soissons. Hook could not count them, they were so many.
“Oh my God’s shit,” Smithson said in panic, “stop them!”
Hook did what he was told. He stepped back to the barricade, plucked an arrow from the linen bag, and laid it on the bow’s stave. The fear was suddenly gone, or else had been pushed aside by the certain knowledge of what needed to be done. Hook needed to haul back the bow’s cord.
Most grown men in the prime of their strength could not pull a war bow’s cord back to the ear. Most men-at-arms, despite being toughened by war and hardened by constant sword exercises, could only draw the hemp cord halfway, but Hook made it look easy. His arm flowed back, his eyes sought a mark for the arrow’s bright head, and he did not even think as he released. He was already reaching for the second arrow as the first, a shaft-weighted bodkin, slapped through a breastplate of shining steel and threw the man back onto the French standard-bearer.
And Hook loosed again, not thinking, only knowing that he had been told to stop this attack. He loosed shaft after shaft. He drew the cord to his right ear and was not aware of the tiny shifts his left hand made to send the white-feathered arrows on their short journey from cord to victim. He was not aware of the deaths he caused or the injuries he gave or of the arrows that glanced off armor to spin uselessly away. Most were not useless. The long bodkin heads could easily punch through armor at this close range and Hook was stronger than most archers, who were stronger than most men, and his bow was heavy. John Wilkinson, when he had first met Hook, had drawn the younger man’s bow and failed to get the cord past his chin, and he had given Hook a glance of respect, and now that long, thick-bellied bow cut from the trunk of a yew in far-off Savoy, was sending death through the bell-ringing dark, except that Hook was only seeing the enemy who came across the breach where the guttering torches burned, and he did not notice the dark floods of men who surged at either edge of the wall’s gap and who were already tugging at the wicker baskets. Then part of the barricade collapsed and the noise made Hook turn to see that he was the only archer left at the defenses. The breach, despite the dead who lay there and the injured who crawled there, was filled with howling men. The night was lit by fire, flame red, riddled with smoke and loud with war-shouts. Hook realized then that John Wilkinson had shouted at him to run, but in the moment’s excitement, the warning had not lodged in Hook’s mind.
But now it did. He plucked up the arrow bag and ran.
Men howled behind him as the barricade fell and the French swarmed across its remnants and into the city.
Hook understood then how the deer felt when the hounds were in every thicket and men were beating the undergrowth and arrows were whickering through the leaves. He had often wondered if an animal could know what death was. They knew fear, and they knew defiance, but beyond fear and defiance came the gut-emptying panic, the last moments of life as the hunters close in and the heart races and the mind slithers frantically. Hook felt that panic and ran. At first he just ran. The bells were still crashing, dogs were howling, men were roaring war-shouts, and horns were calling. He ran into a small square, a space where leather merchants usually displayed their hides, and it was oddly deserted, but then he heard the sounds of bolts being shot and he understood that folk were hiding in their houses and barring their doors. Crashes announced where soldiers were kicking or beating those locked doors down. Go to the castle, he thought, and he ran that way, but turned a corner to see the wide space in front of the cathedral filled with men in unfamiliar liveries, their surcoats lit by the torches they carried, and he doubled back like a deer recoiling from hounds. He decided to go to Saint Antoine-le-Petit’s church and sprinted down an alley, twisted into another, ran across the open space in front of the city’s biggest nunnery, then turned down the street where the Goose tavern stood and saw still more men in their strange liveries, and those men blocked his way to the church. They spotted him and a growl sounded, and the growl turned into a triumphant howl as they ran toward him, and Hook, desperate as any doomed animal, bolted into an alley, leaped at the wall that blocked the end, sprawled over into a small yard that stank of sewage, scrambled across a second wall and then, surrounded by shouts and quivering with fear he sank into a dark corner and waited for the end.
- Предыдущая
- 14/98
- Следующая
