Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard - Страница 44
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“We have our own demons waiting for them,” Sir John said. “We’re not abandoning this tunnel! We need it! We’ll fight the bastards underground. It will save us digging them graves, won’t it?”
The war bows were too long to use in the tunnel and so at midday Sir John brought a half-dozen crossbows. “If they break in,” he told Hook, “greet them with these. Then use your poleaxes.”
The scratching was louder, so loud that Dafydd ap Traharn decided there was no longer any purpose in trying to be silent and so his men began to swing their pickaxes, filling the tunnel’s end with noise and a fine choking dust. Every now and then a blade struck flint and a spark would fly fierce and bright across the gloomy shaft. The sparks looked like shooting stars and Hook remembered his grandmother crossing herself whenever she saw such a star, then she would say a prayer and she claimed such prayers, carried by the hurrying stars, were more effective. He closed his eyes when the sparks flew and prayed for Melisande and for Father Christopher and for his brother, Michael. Michael, at least, was in England, far from the Perrill brothers and their mad priest father. “Another day’s work,” Dafydd ap Traharn said, interrupting Hook’s thoughts of home, “and we can start making the cavern. Then we’ll bring down their tower like the walls of Jericho!”
The men-at-arms and the archers sat at the tunnel’s edge, drawing in their feet to let the laborers carry out the excavated spoil and bring in the new timbers to support the roof. They listened to the sounds of the French miners. Those noises were louder, inescapable and ominous. They came from the north where the enemy had to be driving a counter-mine to intercept the English work and, in the dust-shrouded light of the small flames, Hook constantly watched the far wall, expecting to see a great hole appear through which an armored enemy would erupt. Sir John spent much of the afternoon in the tunnel, his sword drawn and face shadowed. “We have to fight them back into their hole,” he said, “and then collapse their work. Jesus, it smells like a midden down here!”
“It is a midden,” Dafydd ap Traharn said. Some of the laborers had fallen ill and constantly fouled the wet slurry underfoot.
Sir John left late in the day and, an hour later, sent other men to relieve the mine’s guards. Those new men came stooping down the tunnel, their shadows flickering monstrously in the half darkness. “Christ on his cross,” a voice grumbled, “can’t breathe this air.”
“You have crossbows for us?” another voice demanded.
“We’ve got them,” Hook acknowledged, “and they’re cocked.”
“Leave them for us,” the man said, then peered at the archers he was relieving. “Hook? Is that you?”
“Sir Edward!” Hook said. He laid the crossbow on the floor and stood, smiling.
“It is you!” Sir Edward Derwent, Lord Slayton’s man who, in London, had saved Hook from the manor court and its inevitable punishment, was smiling back in the dirty light. “I heard you were here,” he said, “how are you?”
“Still alive, Sir Edward,” Hook said, grinning.
“God be praised for that, though God knows how anyone survives down here.” Sir Edward, his scar-ravaged face half hidden by his helmet, listened to the ominous noises. “They sound close!”
“We think they are,” Hook said.
“It’s deceptive,” Dafydd ap Traharn put in. “They could be ten paces away still. It’s hard to tell with sounds underground.”
“So they could be a hand’s breadth away?” Sir Edward inquired sourly.
“Oh, they could be!” the Welshman said dourly.
Sir Edward looked at the drawn crossbows. “And the idea is to welcome them with bolts?” he asked, “then kill the bastards?”
“The idea is to keep me alive,” Dafydd ap Traharn said, “and you’re blocking the tunnel, you are! There are too many of you! There’s work to be done.”
Sir John’s men-at-arms had already gone, and now Hook sent his archers after them. He lingered a moment. “I wish you a quiet night,” he said to Sir Edward.
“Dear God, I echo that prayer,” Sir Edward said. He grinned. “It’s good to see you, Hook.”
“A pleasure to see you, sir,” Hook said, “and thank you.”
“Go and rest, man,” Sir Edward said.
Hook nodded. He hefted his poleax and, with a farewell nod to Dafydd ap Traharn, edged past Sir Edward’s men, one of whom tried to trip him and Hook saw the lantern jaw and sunken eyes and, for a moment, in the half darkness, he thought it was Sir Martin, then realized it was the priest’s elder son, Tom Perrill. Both brothers were there, stooping under the beams, but Hook ignored them, knowing that neither would attack him while Sir Edward was present.
He trudged up the tunnel toward the fading daylight far ahead. He was thinking of Melisande, of the stew she would have ready, and of songs around the campfire when the world shattered.
Noise thudded about his ears. It started as a thunderous growl that billowed just behind him, then there was a rending noise as though the earth itself was splitting apart, and he turned to see dust boiling toward him, a dark cloud of dust rolling in the shaft’s dark light, and men like monstrous shadows were lumbering in that darkness. There was shouting, the sound of steel on armor, and a scream. The first scream.
The French had broken through.
Hook instinctively started back toward the fighting, then remembered the barrels and wondered if he should block the tunnel’s entrance. He hesitated. A man was screeching from the dark, a horrible noise, like the sound of a clumsily gelded beast. There was another rumbling and Hook had a glimpse of more men dropping from the tunnel’s roof, then more dust surged toward him, obliterating his sight, but in the dust a figure lurched toward him. It was a man-at-arms, sword drawn. His visor was closed, he held his sword two-handed, and somehow the dust and half-light made him look like some enormous earth-giant come from nightmare’s bowels. His plate armor was coated in chalk and earth, and Hook stared, petrified by the unnatural vision, but then the man bellowed and that sound startled Hook to reality just as the man-at-arms lunged the sword at his belly. Hook twisted to one side and rammed the poleax straight at the steel-shrouded face. The spear point slid off the pig-snouted visor, but the top edge of the heavy hammer cracked into the helmet, crushing the metal. Hook had used all his archer’s strength in that blow and the earth-giant reeled backward, blood welling from his visor’s holes, and Hook remembered all those lessons in Sir John’s meadows and closed on the man fast, getting inside the sword’s reach so the enemy could not swing the blade, and he rammed the poleax like a quarterstaff, driving the man down onto the floor. Hook had no room to swing the poleax, but strength made up for that and he slammed the ax blade onto the man’s sword elbow, breaking it, then slid the spear point into the gap between the enemy’s helmet and breastplate. The Frenchman wore an aventail, a mail hood, to protect that gap, but the steel spike ripped easily through the links and gouged into the man’s throat, and then more men were coming toward Hook as the earth-giant, shrunken to normal size now, writhed on the mine floor where his blood spilled into the chalk, black draining into white.
The men coming up the tunnel were fighting each other. Hook dragged the blade free of the dying earth-giant and rammed the spear point at a man in a strange surcoat. The blade glanced off plate armor, ripping the coat and the man turned, beast-faced visor pointing at Hook, and brought his sword around, but it caught on one of the mine’s timber supports and Hook lunged again with the poleax, this time hooking the ax blade around the man’s ankle and then pulling hard so that the Frenchman lost his balance. A Welsh miner staggered toward Hook, guts spilling from an opened belly. Hook shouldered him aside and pushed the spear point under the fallen man’s breastplate, the gap just visible through the torn linen. He pushed and twisted the long haft, trying to drive the blade up into the man’s stomach and chest, but something blocked the blade, and then another rush of men pushed him backward. They were Lord Slayton’s men, retreating from the French, though a handful of the enemy was among them. Men wrestled in the dark, tripped over the dead and the dying, and slipped in sewage. Two men-at-arms forced Hook back against the side of the tunnel and he again thrust the poleax like a quarterstaff, two-handed, but a rush of men pushed his enemies aside as archers and miners fled to the sow.
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