I didn’t think for a second about what I was to do; it was as if there was another boy controlling my body. As the enemy horseman sprawled on the ground, bareheaded, I swung the sword as hard as I could at his exposed neck and I felt the jar of the blade as it chopped into his spine at the base of his head. He screamed and his body gave a huge convulsive jerk. But my heart, my tender heart was singing. Here was vengeance, this was a blow struck for my father’s memory. The man convulsed again; there was a massive spurt of bright gore and then he lay still, face up, blood pooling underneath him, with my old sword half-severing his head from his body.
I saw his face clearly for the first time. He was no steel monster from a nightmare. His blue eyes stared at Heaven, his skin was milk-white and unblemished except for a wispy blond moustache on his upper lip, his jaw slack, red mouth open revealing perfect white teeth. He was, perhaps, only two or three years older than me. Then he breathed a last sigh, like a man taking his ease after a long day of labour, a long rattling huff of air as his soul left his body.
I looked down at the first man I had ever killed. I stared at him. My eyes were pricking with tears. And I reached forward to. . to touch him, to apologise, to beg his forgiveness for ending his young life — I don’t know what. I pulled my hand back, and looked up and away from him. I saw Robin above me, standing on the wagon, an arrow nocked at his bow, searching for a fresh victim. His eyes met mine. He nodded at me, and shouted; and above the screams of battle, I could hear his strong confident voice as clear as if he were next to me: ‘A fine kill, Alan. Neatly done. We’ll make a warrior of you yet.’ He smiled at me, a relaxed careless grin. I stared at him, my mind whirling. And then by some strange alchemy my mood changed, I became infected with his courage. Where I had felt sick and weak at having cut short a young life, I now felt a glorious surge of blood to my limbs. I looked down again at the dead boy at my feet and I found my hand reaching for my sword. I grasped its plain wooden handle and, with a great heave, I tugged it loose from the vice of his backbone. Then I stood straight, lifted my chin, steadied my shaking legs, and looked about for more enemies to kill.
Chapter Four
The battle was done. The surviving enemy men-at-arms, and there was not above a handful, had run, some on foot, some two or even three to a horse, back down the road in the direction they had come.
I looked around the field and my stomach turned to ice: it was scattered with dying horses, crawling, staggering blood-soaked men, the air filled with bubbling screams and groans, the ground covered with so much gore that the lush clearing was green no more: a stinking midden of blood and mud, horse shit and shattered bodies. The battle smell was sharp as salt: a metallic odour, coppery and blunt at the back of the nose; with notes of dung and piss, fresh sweat and crushed grass. But above all that, above the pain and death and horror and filth, I felt a great swooping, skylarking joy at merely being alive, joy that the enemy was beaten, and that we were victorious.
Robin’s ragged men and women were hurrying from body to body, cutting the throats of the enemy wounded, stifling screams and digging through their pouches and saddlebags. Only one enemy remained standing on the field. It was the knight, his helmet off, a bloody gash in his side, his chain mail clogged with blood, his left thigh pierced by an arrow, but still on his feet, sword and mace in hand, surrounded by a ring of Robin’s men, some freshly wounded, who were taunting him and pelting him with stones. The mocking outlaws stayed prudently out of reach of the knight’s sword and mace: I could see three bodies at his feet.
‘Come on, you cowards,’ the knight shouted. His English was unaccented, which was rare for a knight. ‘Step forward and die like men.’ A stone bounced off his chest. ‘You pack of lily-livered villeins, come forward and fight!’ And, in answer to his taunt, one rash outlaw, a big fellow armed with an axe, rushed at him from behind. The knight seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. He half turned to the right and blocked the man’s wild axe swing with his sword. Then he changed direction, his feet as neat as a dancer’s, and swinging his torso to the left, he neatly crushed the man’s skull with one blow of his spiked mace. The man crumpled, jerked once, lay still. The knight had done it so casually, a killing flick of such skill and grace, that his jeering enemies were silenced.
‘Come on then, who’s next?’ said the knight. ‘Let’s start a pile.’
An archer pushed his way through the ring until he was just five yards from the knight; he nocked an arrow to his bow, pulled back the hemp cord and was about to sink a yard of ash into the knight’s chest when Robin, arriving at a run, shouted in his iron battle voice: ‘Hold!’ And, pushing through the crowd around the knight, he said: ‘Sir, you have fought with courage. And now you are wounded. I am Robert Odo of Sherwood. Yield!’
The knight cocked his head on one side; he was a handsome man, about twenty-five, with a big black bushy beard and bright eyes. He replied: ‘You wish to yield? Very well, I accept.’ He was smiling, even in the face of death. Robin stared at him. The archer hauled back his bow cord the final inch. The knight lifted his chin, a heartbeat from his Maker. But Robin stuck out a commanding arm, palm toward the archer. And then my master began to laugh, amid the blood and death, the pain and fury, he laughed and laughed. And the knight, laughing also, dropped his mace, spun the sword in a glittering sweep in the air, caught it by the bloody tip in his mailed hand and offered the hilt to Robin. ‘I am Sir Richard at Lea,’ he said smiling, ‘and I am your prisoner.’ And, still smiling, he collapsed on the mud at Robin’s feet, unconscious.
We packed up the wagons with astonishing speed. In fact, Robin’s band did everything quickly, without fuss. The wounded were loaded with the baggage. The very badly wounded, only three men that I saw, after they had been given the last rites by Tuck, were dispatched with a swift dagger to the heart, administered by John. He did it with a strange gentleness, cradling their heads in his enormous hand and thrusting once, quickly, through the ribs to release a bright gout of heart’s blood. It seemed that this was the custom of Robin’s band. And nobody commented on the way these men were hurried on to Heaven, or the other place. Graves were dug, again with great speed, for our dead. Their dead — there were twenty-two corpses, and no wounded: all who had not run, except Sir Richard, had been executed by Robin’s men and women — were stripped of anything valuable: weapons, mail, boots, clothes, money, and lined up by the side of the road; their grubby chemises, these undershirts being the only item of clothing too dirty even for Robin’s men to steal, fluttered in the wind, grey, ragged flags to mark their passing to the next world. Tuck said a few brief words over the row of dead men, and I felt a pang as I caught sight of my victim’s blond, blood-smirched hair. They were the enemy, but they were also warriors and men. Tuck made the sign of the cross over the bodies and turned away; Hugh, mounted and at the head of the column, gave the cry: ‘Forward!’ and the whole lumbering train set off again down the forest road. I looked at the sun — only an hour had passed since we had been warned by the spy. I hitched my sword belt, turned my back on the bloody clearing and walked after the column, following my victorious outlaw lord.