With a tremendous creaking of wood, a hundred men pulled back the hempen strings on their powerful yew bows, leaned far back and loosed. Up, up, almost vertically, they climbed into the grey dawn sky, seeming to pause in the air for a moment at the top of their parabola, before plunging down, down, the shafts falling on to the gatehouse and into the bailey beyond it, and slamming deep into the logs of the building and into the men sheltering behind the wooden walls, driving down into their cowering bodies like a solid, killing rain.
Even from more than a hundred paces away, I could hear the cries of pain from the defenders as the lethal yards of ash wood, tipped with four-inch-long, needle-sharp bodkin points, cascaded down upon them, punching through the padded jerkins of the crossbowmen, and plunging deep into the mail-clad shoulders and chests of the enemy men-at-arms with awful force.
Robin’s archers waited a few moments to check their range, and then they hauled back their bows once more and loosed another storm of wood and steel up high in the sky to fall like the wrath of God upon the enemy. And then a third wave of death swept up, seemingly swallowed up by a pale and hungry sky, before being spat down venomously on the defenders below.
It was time to go.
I turned to look at the men behind me. I knew that I should find something to say to those frightened, familiar faces — Robin would have had said exactly the right thing, at that time, to put courage into their hearts. But I had nothing to offer. I pulled out my sword, raised it in the air and said: ‘Right, let’s go. Keep your shields high. For God and King Richard — forward!’ And I set off at a jog across the burnt strip of land towards the imposing bulk of the gatehouse, the soft ash puffing beneath my running feet.
For a moment, I feared that nobody would follow me; that I would be charging across that wasted strip of land on my own to certain death. But I was too proud to look behind me — and, eternal praise be to Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I soon heard the rattle and chink and thump of running men behind me. My heart soared. I was about to take my sword to a hated enemy, and I was charging into battle at the head of as brave a band of fighting men as had ever trod this earth.
We had crossed fifty yards of open ground before the first crossbow bolts began to fly: black streaks of death hissing from the battlements like a demonic swarm of hornets. I felt rather than saw a quarrel smash into the top right corner of my shield. I heard a cry behind me and turned my head. At least four of my men were down, just from the first crossbow volley. The ladder-man directly behind me had dropped his burden and was kneeling on the grey-black ground, coughing blood, a quarrel protruding from his neck. The bolts were whistling past me left and right, I stopped and took a step back towards him, and he looked at me with beseeching eyes. Men were falling all around me, quarrels were whipping past in long black blurs — the earth seemed to be moving beneath my feet; I had the strange sensation that I was in the midst of a wild gale on a storm-tossed sea. I sheathed my sword and held out my right hand to the ladder-man, but at the last minute hardened my heart and grabbed the first rung of his ladder instead. Keeping my shield arm up, I shouted: ‘Come on, come on; let’s get this over with quickly.’ And those of us who could still run stumbled forward again, the bolts hissing and cracking around us.
I heard Robin’s horn ring out three times, and was dimly aware that the deadly rain of our arrows had ceased. But I had no time to ponder what damage might have been done to the enemy by my lord’s arrow-storm: his barrage did not seem to have slowed their deadly crossbow work one jot. Men continued to fall all around me, skewered, punctured, plucked from this life by the wicked black bolts. I feared that there would be not one single man alive by the time we made it to the wall. By God’s mercy, I was mistaken.
In what seemed no more than a few moments, two score of us survivors were panting, sweating, cursing below the high wooden walls of the palisade and the four remaining ladders were sweeping up through the grey air in a great arc to thump on to the battlements. ‘Up, up!’ I shouted, but I might have saved my breath. The men — God bless them — were swarming up the frail ladders like monkeys up a ship’s rigging, and I began to climb too, awkwardly with one hand on the rungs and my shield held above me, behind a heavy-set man with bright red hair and a vicious-looking spiked axe in his right hand. The ladder bounced alarmingly under our combined weight, and I heard a cry above me and was nearly swept from the ladder as the red-head crashed into my shield, a long spear waggling from his chest, before crunching to the ground below me. I looked up and stared into the eyes of a terrified man, no more than two or three yards away, glaring down at me between two crenellations on the battlements. He leant forward to loose his crossbow at me and, by the grace of God, even at that close remove, he missed — and I swear I flew up the final rungs of the ladder and launched myself over the top. The man’s bow was now unloaded, but as my feet landed on the walkway behind the palisade, he swung it at me in a short, hard arc. If it had landed, it would have crushed my skull, but I caught it on my shield, batted it away and, using my kite-shaped protection like an axe, I hacked the edge into his jaw. He fell away, inside the walls, down into the outer bailey, screaming wordlessly, blood flying. I took a brief moment to draw my sword — a heartbeat, but I had no more time than that. A man hurled himself at me from my left and I smashed him away with my blade.
The walkway and the ground beneath it were littered with dead, victims of the arrow storm, but more men in strange red livery were running along the walkway at me from both sides, converging from all around the palisade on the gatehouse. A crossbow twanged and more by luck than judgement I managed to get my shield up in time; the bolt ricocheted off its curved surface and away. And then I was fighting by pure instinct. I went right towards the gatehouse to engage a swordsman who was cutting at me. He came on too fast, and I dodged his wild swing at my head, lunged and stabbed him deep in the stomach. The man behind him was more cautious: he feinted at my legs and then chopped at my neck and I had to block with the shield before dispatching him with a short, hard thrust under the chin. Suddenly, the blood was singing in my veins; all my earlier nervousness burnt away by the heat of battle. I was inside the walls of the castle, fighting for my lord and my King, and slaying their enemies with a righteous fury. And I was no longer alone. As I cut the legs from beneath a big crossbowman with a low, vicious sweep of my sword, I glimpsed more of my men behind me on the walkway of the palisade. There was Hanno, snarling and hacking at a mob of men-at-arms who had appeared from the south. And another two of our men came boiling over the wall. Three men, now four and five. They were tumbling over the top of the ladder and taking their swords with a deadly swiftness to the enemy. And my ladder was not the only one that had successfully surmounted the palisade — I could see two others further along the wall, and the men, my brave men, Robin’s wonderful fearless men, pouring over the top like the bursting of a dam.
I charged towards the gatehouse, skewering a man who was emerging from its cover straight through the cheek, mangling his face and ripping the blade free, running heedlessly past him as he dropped screaming to his knees, and now I was entering into the gloom of the narrow building. A tall knight, his face red with fury, ran at me out of the upper storey of the gatehouse, mace and sword whirling. I gave ground, two steps, three, until I was once again outside the structure, half stumbling over bodies as his berserk onslaught drove me backwards. There were flecks of white spittle at his lips, which were drawn back in a grimace of mindless rage. He lunged at me with his sword, and I stepped back and away to my right towards the palisade, dodging the blow. He swung at my head with the mace, screaming something at me, and lunged again with his blade. I parried the mace with my sword, and blocked the sword with my shield; for a moment we were locked together, faces only inches apart. Then I bullocked my head forward, smashing the steel rim of my helmet into his teeth, snapping several off at the root, and he stepped back, bloody-mouthed, in surprise — and into thin air.