From the corner of his eye, Thomas could glimpse silver armour surging towards him. He knew they would be coming fast, lances lowered to take him off his feet. He set his legs, standing in balance, placing his shots, sending them out. More men fell and Highbury was reacting, using the gift he’d been given to bellow orders to his remaining men. One of the French knights galloped towards Highbury with a studded mace raised to smash the nobleman’s bare head. Thomas took him with a snap shot, hardly aiming. The arrow sank in under the knight’s raised arm and the mace fell from suddenly nerveless fingers. Highbury brought his sword across, smashing the man’s neck with ferocious glee.
From the height of his saddle, Highbury could see the lonely figure standing on the green grass, with just a few shafts remaining. Though Thomas looked small at a distance, for an instant Highbury had the sense of facing that grim archer himself. He swallowed drily. Just one man had taken a terrible toll, but Highbury could see a line of knights thundering towards the archer. They hated English bowmen, hated them like the devil. They despised the fact that common men could wield such weapons of power and dared to use them without honour on the battlefield. More than any other group, the French had long memories for those thumping bows that had slaughtered them on different battlefields. Some of them even pulled away from Highbury’s knights in their rage and desire to murder the archer first.
Highbury turned his horse with a jerk on the reins, suddenly feeling the wounds and bruises that had been hidden to him before. The treeline was up the hill and he dug in his spurs, making fresh blood run down his horse’s flanks.
‘Back, lads! Back to the trees now!’ he shouted.
He went hard up the hill, trying to look back, to witness the end of it. His men came with him, panting and wild, lolling in their armour. Some of them were too tired, too slow. They were surrounded by the French and they could not defend themselves against so many. The maces hammered their armour into great dents, breaking bones beneath. Axes left puckered slots running red in the metal, lives pouring out over the steaming horses.
Away across the green, Thomas reached for an arrow and his fingers twitched on empty air. He looked up to see two French knights galloping at him, their lances aimed at his chest. He did not know if he’d done enough. He raised his head in sullen anger, trying to swallow fear as the sound of their thunder poured over him and filled the world.
The sun seemed to brighten as he stood there, so that he could see every detail of the horses and men coming so very fast to kill him. He considered throwing his bow at the first one to reach him, perhaps making the horse rear and turn. His hand refused to let go of the weapon and he stood there in the open, knowing that whether he ran or stayed, it was all the same.
Rowan stood alone in the shadow of oaks, watching the scene unfold below him. The others had gone, but he was still there, staring through the green leaves at distant, struggling men. Rowan had seen bleak acceptance in his father’s eyes and he couldn’t leave, nor look away. He watched with fierce pride as his father dropped half a dozen knights, striking them down. Fear swelled in him then as he saw them spot the lone archer and begin to wheel away to butcher him. Rowan breathed hard as he saw his father shoot the last of his arrows, using them to save Highbury rather than himself.
‘Run now, Dad!’ he said.
His father just stood there as they accelerated towards him and the lance tips began to come down.
Rowan raised his right fist, counting widths down from the horizontal by turning it over three times. He shook his head, trying to remember how he was meant to adjust for a dropping shot. In desperation, he bent his bow. The other archers had passed him just one shaft each until he had a dozen. Wishing him luck, they’d gone running off over the hill, leaving him alone with the sound of his breath just a little louder than the crashes and yells below.
The range was more than four hundred paces, somewhere less than five. It was longer than Rowan had shot before, that much was certain. There was a light breeze, enough for him to adjust a fraction as the goose-feathered shaft tickled his cheek and the power of the bow coiled in his chest and shoulder. He leaned back from the waist, adding the width of two hands to the angle.
He almost lost the arrow straight up in the air when he heard running footsteps coming closer. Easing off the draw, Rowan turned, his stomach and bladder clenching at the thought of confronting armed pikemen. He sagged when he saw it was the same group of archers, chuckling as they saw the terror they had caused in him. The first one to reach him clapped Rowan on the shoulder and peered down into the valley.
‘We have a couple of dozen shafts between us and then we’re done. Bert here has only one.’
There was no time to thank them for risking their lives one more time when they could be sprinting clear. Rowan bent his bow again, his hands steady.
‘Four hundred and fifty yards, or thereabouts. Three hands of falling ground.’
As he spoke, he sent the first shaft soaring, knowing as soon as it went that it would miss. They all watched the flight with the eyes of experienced men.
In the months before, Thomas had tried to explain triangles and falling shots to Highbury’s archers. Rowan’s father had learned his trade from an army instructor with an interest in mathematics. In the evening camps, Thomas had drawn shapes in the dirt to pass on his knowledge: curves and lines and angles with Greek letters. Highbury’s archers had been polite enough, but only a few listened closely. They were all men in their prime, carefully chosen to accompany the baron. They’d shot bows every day including Sundays, for two or even three decades. Their skill and power had been shaped past competence or calculation, back to something like a child’s ability to point at a fast-flying bird. Rowan loosed his second shaft and they drew their bows to match him, so that ten or twelve arrows soared out a fraction of a second later.
Rowan had to adjust quickly to get the feel of it. His second arrow felt wrong, but he sent four more that flew close to the path he could see in his head. Highbury’s archers shot their second dozen and Rowan stroked out each shaft as fast as he could, feeling his aim improve. On flat ground, he could not have reached the men charging at his father. On dropping ground, he could aim higher, reach them and snatch them down. As his last shaft went, he watched it fly, suddenly helpless.
‘Now run, Dad! Just run,’ he whispered, staring.
Thomas heard the arrows before he saw them. They hummed in the air, the shafts vibrating as they whirred in. He glanced up out of instinct, in time to see a group of them coming down as a dark streak.
With thumps, the first two sank to the feathers in the ground in front of the knights charging at him. The following group was well placed at that range, glancing off an armoured shoulder and hitting one horse, so that it stood stiffly from the animal’s haunch. In a few heartbeats, three more landed. One struck a saddle horn and ricocheted clear, while the final two struck horseflesh, dropping almost straight down on to them. The heavy steel heads sank deep, making the animals squeal and stagger. Thomas saw a spray of fine red mist as one horse reared, its lungs torn.
Two of the knights coming at him reined in sharply, staring up at the trees. The cold feeling of peace was torn away as Thomas came to himself. He took a quick glance around and his heart pounded.
‘Sod this!’ he shouted. He was off, jinking as he ran up the slope. He expected to feel the agony of a lance between his shoulders at any moment, but when he looked back the French knights had drawn up and were looking balefully after him. They thought it was another ambush, he realized gleefully, with himself as bait. He had no breath left to laugh as he ran on.