Before his demise was noticed, Peter drew his great bow to his ear and loosed. His arrow hit the count’s charger and sank all the way to the fletchings in the horse’s side, and the great horse screamed and fell.
Swan’s arrow wobbled in the air as it arched. Swan didn’t watch the fall – he knew he’d missed his loose as soon as his fingers released the string.
Every head among the count’s men turned to the woods on the bluff.
Peter’s second arrow took a black-bearded man in full plate armour under his arm while he waved at the woods. He fell backward in a rattle of plate. His horse stood stock still in the road.
Peter’s third arrow plunged into the withers of a franc-archer’s horse. The horse bolted, ran a few steps, and fell in a spectacular crash, flinging his unlucky rider the length of a horse down the road.
Swan’s second arrow struck one of the count’s routiers in the helmet. The arrow sprang away, but the man slumped.
The count was demanding that another man-at-arms give him his horse. Three men turned and bolted, and the rest turned towards the wood and started to ride up the steep slope.
Giannis finished spanning and took careful aim. He muttered a prayer to the Virgin in Greek.
He loosed. His bolt took an armoured man full in the breastplate and flipped him out of his saddle.
Peter’s fourth arrow killed an archer’s horse. The count gave up demanding a horse and started to run for the trees, a hundred yards away.
Peter missed with his fifth arrow. Swan had just raised his eyes from fumbling for his third arrow, and he was having trouble nocking it. All of the non-archers were watching. Peter’s accuracy was remarkable. So when he missed, they all groaned.
The riders were close now.
Peter plucked his sixth arrow from the ground, whipped the nock on to the string, drew and loosed in a single long motion, and his bodkin point drove into a man’s unarmoured face.
Swan put his third arrow into a horse. The horse reared, its feet flailed at the air, and together horse and man fell to earth.
Peter plucked his seventh arrow and the remaining three riders were close enough to discover that there were too many men in the woods for them to defeat. Swan reached for his fourth arrow but Alessandro shook his head.
‘To horse. With me.’ He gestured.
Swan dropped his bow atop the arrows and got a foot in the nearside stirrup.
Peter and Giannis loosed together. By bad luck they both picked the same target, and a young squire died with two heavy arrows in his body.
‘Get them,’ Alessandro said. He and Swan were now mounted, and the two of them charged the survivors, Swan’s heart hammering away. The two men were turning to run. Their horses had galloped up the steep hill, and now they were blown.
Alessandro was like an arrow. His horse passed across the two fleeing opponents’ front, and he cut back into them. In his first pass, he killed the horse of the lead man with a flick of his sword and a dainty montante into the animal’s unprotected neck. He and the second man swaggered swords – heavy, downward cuts ringing together.
Swan rode up on the man’s left side and thrust under the arm while his full intention was on the Italian. He turned, mouth open to scream, and Alessandro ran him through the mouth. The blow cut away his jaw as he fell off the sword.
Alessandro gave Swan a short salute, hilt to his lips. Then he rode across the face of the hill and waved up at Giannis. ‘Make sure they are all dead,’ he called.
Giannis waved and aimed. And loosed. His quarrel hit the count, still running towards them. It knocked him down, but in a second he was up. His armour was good enough to turn a light crossbow.
Peter’s arrow struck him a few paces farther on. It bounced off his breastplate, leaving a dent visible to Swan on his horse, twenty paces away.
Swan, unarmoured, had no intention of engaging the count. His sword high, he swept wide of the armoured man, riding carefully to stay clear of the archer’s line of fire.
‘Face me!’ roared the count. ‘You sons of bitches!’ He had his visor open.
Another arrow hit him – missed his face by a handspan and struck full on his lifted visor, ripping it away from the helmet.
Swan angled towards him, trying to draw his attention away from Alessandro, who was coming up from behind the armoured man. But Alessandro caused him to turn – and then swept by to the right, his horse labouring on the hillside.
Giannis shot a bolt into the back of the man’s unprotected thigh at twenty yards.
The count screamed and went down.
Alessandro rode up and dismounted even as Swan dismounted himself. Alessandro handed the Englishman his reins. ‘I’ll do this,’ he said. He shrugged.
‘Arrhhh. Arrhhh!’ the count grunted. He was rolling back and forth, his left hand scrabbling at the quarrel that had penetrated his thigh, broken the bone and probably lodged against his thigh armour – in front. He was clearly in incredible pain. His head thrashed back and forth.
Alessandro walked over to him – and suddenly the man dropped the pretence and got to one knee, his sword sweeping low in an attempt to cut one of Alessandro’s legs.
Alessandro blocked some of it with a sweeping downward parry, but the cut was low and he had no leg armour, and he stumbled and went down.
‘Fuck you, you bitch!’ screamed the count. ‘I’ll kill every fucking one of you, you whores!’ He was on one knee.
He began to drag himself to Alessandro, who tried to roll away.
Swan had no armour, and he had a feeling that the count was far out of his league as an opponent. And he wasn’t sure he owed Alessandro anything.
He considered intervening, and thought, I don’t have to do this.
But he wanted to be a knight, and not a thief. He had a feeling – in a long moment between stillness and an explosive leap – that this was his moment to choose. As was so often the case, in one moment of decision, he dared himself.
I don’t have to do this.
I really don’t have to do this.
He leaped over the Italian.
The count cut down.
He caught the cut on his high guard, as his uncles had taught him. The count twisted, but he was on one knee and probably not as powerful as he was used to being, and their blades locked, the two keen edges biting into each other just a little.
Swan had the enormous advantage of being on his feet, armour or no armour. He lunged with his left foot and rotated his sword on the point where the two blades were locked, and punched his pommel into the count’s unprotected face.
He was very fast. People always underestimated his speed.
The count’s teeth exploded over his pommel, and the man fell back, and Swan, almost as surprised as the count by his own success, cut wildly, his point bouncing up from the count’s gorget and cutting across the man’s lips and left eye.
He stumbled back.
The count screamed a long, drawn-out scream. Swan had only ever heard such a scream from a woman in childbirth. He looked like some sort of nightmare monster.
The count got his good leg under him and powered himself to his feet, his scream now a roar.
Peter’s arrow struck his breastplate right over the heart. It didn’t penetrate. But it knocked the count back, and he unbalanced and fell down again, and the spell was broken.
Giannis was shouting in Italian, ‘Get out of the way! Get out of the way!’
But Swan stood between the monster in armour and Alessandro, who he wasn’t sure he liked.
Alessandro was staunching the flow of blood from his ankle. ‘You have to kill him,’ he said.
Swan walked over to the count, who was lying on his back with one leg cocked and the other flat on the ground. He was breathing as if he’d run a race.