The castle wall loomed before them. Above the roar of the crowd Liam could hear raised voices from the wall. Perhaps they’d recognized the round helmets and long shields of their guard as king’s men and were preparing to open the gates for them. The crowd, though, looked unwilling as yet to part, despite the imposing form of Bob’s seven-foot frame.
A cluster of a dozen men — by the look of them, not townsfolk carrying little more than pitchforks and stones, but more like the brigands who had jumped them in the woods — squared up to Bob’s approach. Liam caught sight of the rusted glint of a sword’s blade swinging round at Bob’s head. He deftly ducked the blow and shouldered into the man with the force of a charging bull, knocking him back into the crowd and a dozen people off their feet.
One of the men took the opportunity, with Bob adjusting his balance, to lunge a pike at his stomach. The tip of it bit deep into his mail, breaking some chains, piercing his skin and going some way inside. Bob responded with a roundhouse sweep of his longsword that cleaved into the side of the man, cutting him completely in two, the momentum continuing into the shoulder of the man standing beside him. Both men collapsed as Bob jerked the pike’s blade clear of the torn tissue and shattered bone and prepared to swing it again in the other direction, but the rest of the men quickly pulled back.
Meanwhile, halted by the exchange in front, the cart and the guards were fending off the closing press of people either side. Missiles of all kinds clattered down on them: stones, sticks, chunks of broken masonry.
Something punched Liam’s shoulder. He screamed out in pain and grasped where he’d been hit. There was blood. Beside his legs Eddie’s shield clattered and clanged from the missiles raining down on them.
‘Sire!’ Eddie called up, jabbing the tip of his sword to ward off the nearest of the rioters. ‘Sire! We must keep moving!’
CHAPTER 37
1194, Nottingham
Ahead of them Bob had deftly spun the pike round so that the blood-wet tip and halberd blade were aimed towards the people. He began to swing its eight-foot length in a wide loop that clipped and gashed a thickset man who’d shuffled back too slowly.
The swooping pike’s blade did the job and created an arc of space in front of Bob as he resumed his steady stride towards the oak gates, now only a dozen yards in front of them. Cabot roughly kicked the rear of the left horse and it staggered forward, eyes rolling and snorting. The other followed suit and the cart was moving again. The guards kept pace, their shields produced a cacophony of metallic clangs, like hailstones descending on to a tin roof.
Liam felt the air by his cheek pulse as a stone or rock whistled by, far too close for comfort. He wrapped his arms round his head and ducked down low. ‘Jay-zus-an’-Mary-get-us-out-of-here!’ he screamed through gritted teeth.
Cabot held the reins in one hand and held his other arm up to shield his face.
The lethal sweeping pendulum of Bob’s pike had now cleared space all the way to the large oak gates. At their base, the beginnings of a pyre of bracken and firewood had been laid, but yet to be successfully set on fire. Several bodies littered the ground in front of the gates, the stubs of multiple crossbow bolts protruding from them.
Liam could see the bracken and branches were going to need to be cleared aside in order to allow the cart through the gates — if, that is, someone inside was prepared to open up for them. But Bob was simply too busy sweeping his pike in order to keep the rioters back to deal with that himself. As the cart rolled forward into the clearing created by him, the soldiers spread out from guarding the cart’s flanks and formed a semicircle guarding the space in front of the gates.
The rioters — and Liam had noted a fair number of them looked more like seasoned fighters, even mercenaries, than they did townsfolk — seemed unwilling to press forward and engage the soldiers or fall within the range of Bob’s swooping halberd blade. Instead they held back, jeering and cursing and continuing to rain down an endless barrage of missiles on them.
Liam jumped down off the cart and began pulling the small mound of branches and bracken away from the bottom of the gates.
‘Help me!’ he shouted to the nearest of the soldiers.
The soldier glanced quickly at Eddie, who nodded. ‘Go on, do as he says!’
He dropped his shield and sword and joined Liam dragging armfuls of tangled branches and twisted bracken aside. Between them they soon managed to clear a gap in the thick pyre when Liam suddenly felt a sharp searing pain in the small of his back; the impact of something sharp and hard. His legs buckled at the shock of it and he collapsed forward into the nest of branches and thorns, snagged and tangled like some hapless scarecrow on a loop of barbed wire. He gasped for air for a moment, winded, stunned.
Beside him he heard a loud ring of impact. He twisted, trying to untangle himself, feeling a searing pain between his shoulders, to see the soldier who’d been helping him clear the pyre, drop heavily to his knees then clatter forward on to the dirt and cobbles, wide, surprised eyes rolling uncontrollably. His helmet was caved in on one side and the stubby fletching of a crossbow bolt protruded. A river of dark, almost black blood cascaded from beneath the rim of his helmet down his face.
Oh, God help us, we’re all gonna die out here.
Cabot was suddenly beside Liam, reaching down and pulling him out of the nest of wood. He was shouting something at Liam, but above the roar of chanting voices and the hailstone rattle and clang on the shields of the soldiers, he couldn’t make out what the old man was saying.
Cabot looked back over his shoulder and quickly ducked an arcing lump of flint, that shattered and sparked on masonry nearby. He turned back to Liam and jabbed a finger past his head, shouting something again. Liam turned painfully, grimacing at the sudden twist of his spine, to see the oak gates behind him had been cracked ajar. No more than would allow a single man to squeeze through sideways.
Cabot shouted again, this time directly into his ear. ‘Forget the cart!’
Liam nodded as Cabot pulled him roughly to his feet. ‘Yeah … OK,’ he uttered to himself. Liam could see that Eddie and his remaining ten men could do little more than hunch down behind their battered and misshapen shields, several of which looked little more than twisted corners of foil paper.
Liam cupped his hands. ‘The gate is open!’
His words were lost amid the chanting from the rioters. He tried to make himself heard again. ‘THE GATE IS OPEN!’
This time Eddie heard, turned quickly and saw for himself. He snapped an order to his men and they immediately began to shuffle backwards towards the gates.
Liam looked for Bob. Over the top of the cart’s two horses he could see his round head protected by the swinging skirt of his chain-mail coif as he ducked and weaved, and the metallic blur of the pike’s head whizzing round like the blade of some vast propeller.
‘BOB!’ he bellowed.
The support unit paused, straightened up like a startled rabbit and looked round for Liam.
Liam waved his arms until Bob spotted him, then pointed to the gates. ‘IT’S OPEN!’
Bob nodded and then, with one last warning flourish of his pike and a deep bear-like roar that startled and hushed the rioting crowd for a few fleeting seconds, he bounded around the uneasy horses and the abandoned cart.
The soldiers had begun stepping through the tangle of branches quickly, one after the other, and through the narrow gap between the gates. Until all that remained of them was a rearguard of Eddie and two others.
‘You first!’ Eddie shouted at Cabot and Liam.
Liam pushed Cabot towards the gates. ‘I’ll wait for Bob!’