The noise from the camp in the field below me was enough by now to wake the dead from their slumbers. But above the yells, and the hellish music, I thought I could make out a lone woman’s voice, with a slight Norman-French accent, shouting in English over and over again: ‘It is the horse-demons, the steeds of Satan — run, run. They are coming; the horse-demons are coming to steal your souls.’
The wild horses, maddened by the fiery carts they could not escape, charged straight down the hill into Murdac’s camp sowing destruction in their flaming wakes. They charged into the outskirts of the camp, trampling tents and crushing half-sleeping men beneath their hooves and the wheels of the heavy wooden carts. Many tents and shelters of the men-at-arms were burning by now; flags and pavilions set alight, pyramids of stacked spears collapsed and snapped like twigs beneath the wheels. The camp was humming like a kicked ants’ nest, half-dressed men running hither and yon, screaming in rage and fear and confusion. And the lone Frenchwoman’s voice continued to shout: ‘The horses of the Devil are coming; the steeds of Satan; they are coming for your souls,’ adding her mad shrieks to the bounding chaos. And the wild, eerie Saracen music wailed, boomed and screeched on, its hideous sounds adding eldritch notes of terror to the night.
Then the arrows began to hiss out of the darkness.
Men silhouetted by the leaping firelight were spitted like red deer by unseen skilful hands as they stumbled out of their shelters, barely armed, fuddled by sleep, confused by the noise, the blaze and the hot winds of panic. One man appeared to be more in control of himself, a captain no doubt, but as he barked orders to the men running about his tent, three arrows smacked into him in less than half a heartbeat. I knew that Robin’s archers, scattered around the perimeter of the camp and shielded only by darkness, had orders to shoot down first any who appeared to be in command. And there were few who were still in possession of their faculties on this night of chaos and cacophony, as the archers plucked the lives of Murdac’s men from this world one by one.
The wild horses with their fiery burdens were in the centre of the camp now, galloping in screaming terror, and as I watched, the wheel of a cart struck a large iron cooking pot and careered over, spilling its flaming, roaring load over a swathe of the camp and starting a dozen fresh fires. The arrows whizzed through the darkness, thumping home into the bodies of terrified running men who had nowhere to hide. One brave figure appeared out of the darkness and shot dead a maddened pony, which was galloping past him, with a single, well-aimed crossbow bolt to the head. But while the poor horse stumbled and died, and the cart tumbled forward and tipped its burning load over the convulsing animal’s dying body, the crossbowman was in turn skewered through the neck by a yard-long arrow that flickered out of the darkness to leave him choking on his knees in a circle of burning straw and roasting horse blood.
A high, clear trumpet blast, easily heard even over the noise of the blaring Saracen horns, dragged my eyes up to the north, where a mass of strange cavalry had appeared. The heavily armed, mounted men, about thirty of them, seemed huge and menacing, draped as they were in long, dark cowled cloaks that swept over the horses’ rumps and swirled down by their boots. Their long sharp spears pricked the fire-lit night, and their painted shields portrayed a crude red figure of a horse, daubed in dried blood on a white background; but their faces — or the place where their faces should have been — were the most dreadful sight of all. Each man, though mounted on a steed, appeared himself to have the long head of a horse, with pointed ears, white eyes, and blood-red flaring nostrils. Even I felt a twinge of dread, and I knew full well that it was merely Robin’s men, masked with rolled discs of sheepskin, ears and eye holes cut out and the mask painted to look like the muzzle of a hellish beast. They appeared to be Satan’s steeds indeed, come to carry away men’s souls.
The devilish horsemen charged. The spear points descended to the horizontal as one and this steel-tipped mass came on like a great black thunder cloud, surging down the slope in a shallow V-shaped formation to bring death and destruction into the camp.
‘Alan, Alan, come on! Come on! It is time,’ shouted a voice below me. And I looked down to see Tuck, flanked by his two enormous dogs, Gog and Magog, holding the reins of a horse meant for me. It was time: and if Edwinstowe and his men refused to join us, there were still more than a few stout men-at-arms who owed their loyalty only to Robin and who would ride out with us this night to heap more terror on the enemies of their lord.
The gates were thrown open and we burst out of them in a pack, perhaps a dozen of us mounted, with myself in the lead, and a score of men on foot: Robin’s spearmen and bowmen, left behind while he was on the Great Pilgrimage, supplemented with a handful of the braver or perhaps just more loyal men from the surrounding lands. Led by Father Tuck, the foot soldiers ran behind the cavalry, screaming their war cries, each man wielding a long spear or short sword from the castle armoury. I noticed with admiration and a little trepidation, looking over my shoulder, that the lad Thomas had armed himself with a kindling axe and had joined the other local men running behind the horsemen. I had no time to tell him to return to the hall as we surged out into the night towards the enemy.
We horsemen cantered out of the gate which lay at the southeast of the castle and turned left, spurring ahead of the infantry to hurtle into the southern section of Murdac’s camp. My chest was thrumming with the black thrill of battle, the unparalleled feeling of having a well-trained horse between my legs, a stout shield on my arm and a long spear couched under my right elbow. I knew that our chances were slim, but I felt little fear that weird, wild night. We were riding to the charge; and battle, with all its mad-flecked, God-cursed, sky-soaring joy, was upon us.
A terrified picket, a sentry in red and black, turned to run back into the camp when he saw us coming out of the night: a mob of galloping horsemen screaming like devils and heading straight for him. As he turned to run, a grey and reddish blur streaked past me, one of Tuck’s enormous battle-trained wolf-hounds. The animal leapt at the running man, his giant jaws opening and snapping shut, crunching deep into the meat of his right leg, and then they were both rolling on the dark turf, a tangle of grey fur and flapping black surcoat, appalling screams for mercy and bone-grinding growls. And then I was past them, and there were sleep-shackled enemies blundering from between the tents to my front, only half visible in the blackness. I lined up the horse and galloped straight at a man-at-arms who was struggling into a leather-backed mail shirt, his arms up above his head, his face covered by the hauberk, and I screamed ‘Westbury!’ as I drove my right arm forward and plunged the lance-tip deep into his unprotected doughy belly.
He dropped immediately and seemed to curl like a snake around my spear. But I managed to twist my wrist and pull the point free of the man’s guts as I thundered past. I had only just levelled the spear again when I found I was facing another enemy, a mounted man-at-arms in a boiled-leather cuirasse and helmet, screaming hate and waving a heavy mace at me. I rose in the saddle and my lance jerked forward and punched through the stiff leather and into his chest, the blood-smeared point given its enormous killing power by my galloping horse. He was a dead man before he was even within range to strike a blow. Releasing my spear, leaving it bobbing madly from his torso, his blood greasing the front of his cuirasse, I hauled out my sword. I could hear battle-charged shouts behind me as our assorted footmen tore into the south end of the camp, hacking and howling, stamping and stabbing at their foes, wiping out all in their path like a wave of human fury crashing on to a beach. Leaving them to their bloody business, I was intent on reaching the centre of the sweep of tents where I knew Murdac’s shelter to be. I longed to face him, to take my sword to him in the joyous carnage of battle, and send him to Hell where he belonged. But as I urged the horse forward, slicing my sword down into the neck of a passing man-at-arms and batting a terrified crossbowman out of my path with the flat of the blade, I could see that Robin’s plan was already working. Scores of men-at-arms in black and red were streaming from the camp and away eastwards into the darkness, some crying out loud to God in their terror, others saving their breath to make good their escape.