Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (32 page)

Walter is screaming with delight.

‘They’ve turned! Ruthyn’s men have turned. Come on, you fuckers! Let’s get at ’em!’

They scramble across the rough bridges, Thomas helped by the outstretched hand of one of Ruthyn’s men, and then they are in the camp. Underfoot it is foul with mud, river water, blood and shit. There is a pile of corpses to one side, stuck with broken arrows; already one of Fauconberg’s archers is going through them. Thomas tries to push through the crowd of men, to get back towards the river, towards Riven’s flag.

But the fight isn’t over yet. In the camp trumpets sound, drums beat, and orders are shouted. The rage of the recently betrayed lends the King’s men an unstoppable savagery. They tear into Ruthyn’s troops, men who only moments before had been their comrades in arms, and begin driving them back.

For a moment it looks as if they’ll be cut down or thrown back into the ditch to drown, but as more of Fauconberg’s men-at-arms join them, the balance begins to tip against the King’s army, who have relied on the guns instead of archers, and on the strength of their wall instead of numbers of men. Now both have let them down. They are outnumbered and outflanked. There are only two things they can do: run and be killed, or fight and be killed.

They choose to fight.

One knight in black and red livery blocks Thomas’s way. His plume of exotic feathers bobs and sways as he clears a circle around him with a long hammer, as if cutting hay. Bodies of every hue are piled around. He stands on dead men and knocks a billman’s glaive to the ground, steps forward and despatches him with a backhanded chop that passes through his teeth. He is inhuman, sealed in his blood-glazed armour, wheeling and stabbing. Nothing can touch him.

This is no place for a man without even the meanest armour, but Fauconberg’s men are crowding forward. Thomas is caught in the crush, his arms pinned to his sides, shunted towards the knight. Nor is the knight alone. His household men are together holding back the blue and white liveried tide.

Thomas pushes and shoves; he tries to slip away, but men push back. The din of steel on steel is louder than in any smithy; iron thunders against iron. He can’t get through. He is face to face with one of Fauconberg’s men, snarling, but his opponent is stuck too. Thomas turns to find himself facing the man in harness. He drops his bow and swings his pollaxe up. The man lunges at him. Thomas throws himself back. The crowd behind gives. The man in armour slips on a dead body and Thomas catches his dagger with the butt of his axe. The knight is committed, pulled off balance for a moment, and a man on the ground grips his bill in both bloody hands and hooks the knight behind his knee. The knight staggers, tries to right himself, isn’t quick enough.

Another of Fauconberg’s men-at-arms hammers his halberd down on the knight’s shoulder. The knight buckles, rears back again, but his armour is jammed. He can’t move his arm. Another billman, smaller, like a ferret, darts forward and smashes the knight’s visor up while a third plunges a long spike into his mouth. The knight’s retainers have been too slow, and now they turn and run, or try to. But their path is blocked and Fauconberg’s men cut them down from behind, hacking at their hamstrings. It is so easy.

Now Thomas can move. He forces his way towards the river, scrambling between two carts. Some archers have discovered the King’s ale and are busy trying to drink themselves stupid. Dead bodies lie everywhere in the mud. Wounded men blink at him. Thomas ducks left, down a path between the rows of tents, shoddy canvas bivouacs for the common soldiery, finer for the nobility, his boots sliding under him.

There is another surging cheer from the main field and the percussive ripple of arms as Warwick’s men engage, and now the King’s men begin streaming back through the camp, ripping off their armour as they come, casting weapons aside. A billman, wild-eyed, half his clothing missing, bounces off Thomas, flinching when he sees the axe, and hurtles away through the tents towards the river. Another’s clothes are smoking.

Thomas follows the path and comes to a clearing. Dafydd and Owen and Henry are there before him, crouching pale-faced over a body in white livery. Dafydd is trying to unscrew a ring from the dead man’s finger. Unarmed men flash past, right to left. Henry nocks an arrow and follows a man just as a huntsman might follow a bird. He shoots straight through the man’s chest and sends him bowling. He laughs.

Dafydd glances up, sees where Thomas is going.

‘You don’t want to go up there just yet,’ he calls. ‘A bit hot for the likes of us. Come and have a drink.’

Owen holds up a flask. Thomas shakes his head, carries on.

‘Bloody hell!’ Dafydd shouts. He drops the dead man’s hand, slings his bow and pulls Owen after him. Henry follows. He is out of arrows anyway. Along the path they can see the King’s tent, a coat of arms on the canopy, banner flags drooping from both poles. In the clearing before it, over the ashes of last night’s watch fire, a crowd of Fauconberg’s billmen are gathered around five or six knights in harness, hacking and chopping at them, wearing them down as dogs bait bears.

These are the lords, the dukes and the earls, those too well known to need to bother with livery coats, and they are differentiated only by the decoration on the crowns of their helmets. They have been deserted by their retainers, or perhaps they are all that are left alive of their household men, and their billmen – in red and black livery coats – are being beaten back by Fauconberg’s men. Behind them, watching with pale faces that remind Thomas of the monks at the priory, are the royal heralds in their quartered tabards.

And then there is Riven.

He is unmistakable, even in his ornate harness, a long black hand-and-a-half sword in both hands, parrying, twisting, feinting, ducking the thrusts of the billmen with well-practised moves. Thomas is rooted for a moment, watching. Riven steps aside to let a bill glance off his thigh, then grabs it, pulls the billman forward on to the point of his sword and then thrusts him backwards to die on the ground with blood frothing at his throat. Riven never looks at the man again, but hurls the butt of the bill at another one of Fauconberg’s men, distracting him for the moment it takes one of the other knights to reach forward and smash his mace into the man’s face.

‘Christ on His cross,’ Dafydd mutters. ‘I’m not having anything to do with that.’

But Thomas takes his place in front of Riven. He stares into the dark slits of Riven’s helmet. He expects some sort of reaction. He gets it in the form of a lunge. The tip of the sword, flat and round like a tongue, hums past his eyes as he throws himself back. He rolls away and gets to his feet. Then he moves in again and ducks and swipes the pollaxe at Riven’s right side.

Riven steps aside, dodging the blow, but the axe’s spike catches and runs down his side, rippling over the buckles of his cuirass. It breaks the bottom leather strap and the cuirass sags. Riven feels the change and pats it with his steel-ringed fingers. There is nothing he can do about it.

He waits. Ash rises around his feet. Dafydd is on Thomas’s shoulder, Henry sliding around to the left. He’s picked up a bill from a dead man. Thomas feints with the pollaxe. Riven lunges. Dafydd steps in with his sword, takes Riven’s blade on his buckler, staggers under the force, and slashes at Riven, but his sword bangs uselessly on Riven’s vambrace. He skips away with a yelp, clutching his hand. Riven smashes his quillon at Dafydd’s head. It hits his helmet and Dafydd staggers back, blood streaming into his eyes. Riven turns, faster than ever, and slices his blade at Henry, aiming for his legs.

Henry takes the blow on his squeaking greave and swings the bill short-armed at Riven. Riven steps inside and crashes his elbow into Henry’s face. Now Henry sags, two spurts of blood on his lips. Riven steps over him and lifts the sword. Thomas steps in, jabs at him, the point of the pole ringing on Riven’s cuirass, sending him staggering, breaking another of the leather straps.

Henry forgotten, Riven rounds on Thomas, who ducks and runs. Five paces: he turns and comes back. He chops at Riven. Riven blocks, then cuts back. Thomas drops back. One nick of that sword and it will all be over. He comes again, and once more Riven sends him scurrying away. His blade is so quick it defies the eye to follow it.

But the knight next to Riven is floundering. His sooted armour is crimped from some earlier blow, and he is finding it difficult to move. He is staggering as the other billmen lash their pikes at him. He’s being beaten down. He doesn’t have long to live. Riven is tiring too. Thomas slashes at him again, the point of the axe scraping a weal down the side of his visor, nearly unpinning it. Riven dances aside; his sword flashes and slices through the meat on Thomas’s shoulder. It feels as if it has been burned and he gasps with the pain.

Henry has recovered, but his legs are sloppy, and his chin and chest are covered in blood. He comes at Riven from the other side. Riven forms a triangle, back to back with the two knights still standing. There are dead billmen lying in the ashes under their feet. Many more are wounded enough to want no further part in this.

A moment later the third knight goes down under a flurry of blows from the other billmen, but as they move in to finish him off, one of the billmen loses his wrist to the second knight’s axe. Blood sprays over their feet in the ash as the billman slides away.

Thomas goes back at Riven and for the next minute they trade blows with blocks and near misses. Riven keeps him and Henry away with sudden feints, swapping his sword from one hand to the other, but after Henry breaks the final leather strap on his cuirass, he begins to move more stiffly. The plates of armour gape, showing a sliver of vulnerability.

Again Thomas attacks, sweat and blood and rainwater in his eyes, his joints vibrating from the blows; but Riven is moving sluggishly now, an almost different creature from before. Each time Thomas attacks him, Riven’s sword gives an inch or two. Thomas starts to land blows on his body as well, and Riven’s armour is dented. He is still strong enough though: he knocks the bill from Henry’s hands. Henry trips over a wounded man.

But now the second knight has killed the last billman. He stands over him with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. Then he stands and labours around towards Henry, but before attacking he stops for a moment and raises his visor. His face is streaming with sweat, scarlet with exertion, and even his eyes are red. He holds up his hand for a stay.

‘A moment, for the love of God!’ he gasps.

Henry is on his feet. He has an axe from somewhere and steps in. He chops the knight across the face, knocking him back on his heels, and the man falls screaming into the sky and clasping his pulpy face with both hands. Henry steps over him and crashes the axe down into him like a woodsman splitting a log.

Afterwards he can only move the axe by standing on the man’s neck and levering it free.

Riven turns to kill Henry while the axe is stuck, but Thomas lunges. Riven parries, tries to catch him with the pommel, and then a long thin dagger appears in his hand. Thomas feels it pass his ear as he ducks away.

It is Riven’s last desperate move, and this time there is no mistake. Thomas feints right, then turns and swings the pollaxe in a blur. A bellow escapes as the pick head hums through the air. It crashes through the gap in Riven’s cuirass and stops still.

Riven staggers and drops his knife. He lowers his hands, carefully. Time seems to stop; all clamour ceases.

Thomas pulls the pick out and Riven stands for a moment, his arms by his sides. He takes a step or two, then drops to his knees.

For a moment he stays upright, his arms by his sides.

Thomas drops the pollaxe and falls to his own knees, facing him. Blood is pouring from the slash in his shoulder; his livery coat is sodden with it. He is shaking; his vision is blurred. He stretches to open Riven’s visor.

He wants to see Riven before he dies.

He wants to be seen.

Wants to look into his eyes.

But the visor is jammed. Thomas scrapes it open and stares at him.

It is not Riven.

Thomas’s insides rebel and he vomits, scorching and sour, all over his hands and wrists, all over the steel plate, all over this knight.

He falls and rolls on to his back. The rain is wonderfully cold. He lets it fall into his eyes, mix with the blood and sweat.

He stares up into the grey rainclouds, watching them coiling and unfurling, gathering in fists and then drifting away like the smoke from a gun, and all the while the rain falls gently, and all around him he can hear the conclusion to the battle as men are finished off with screams and cries in a welter of blood.

Henry is there, still with that axe. He is threatening someone by the King’s tent.

‘Who by all the saints are you?’ Henry asks.

Thomas hears a reply and then a tall man appears, looking down. He is shaking his head, and saying something Thomas cannot understand. He has one of those boneless faces that reminds him of a brother in the priory who’d died from what the Dean described as an abundance of piety.

Then Thomas sees nothing. Sound and vision fade and silent whiteness envelops him.

Later he wakes to find himself propped against the canvas wall of a well-braced tent. He can taste blood and ash. A mug of ale is pressed into his hands but he cannot hold it. Someone takes it and presses it to his lips. He lets it run over his chin. A face looms into view.

‘You all right, Thomas?’ Dafydd shouts. He is splashed with blood, but alive, and grinning. Thomas’s head is ringing and he hears him as if from the distance. He keeps jabbing his arm, pointing at something, but Thomas can only see the backs of men drifting around the clearing between the tents. Dafydd is laughing.

‘New Henry caught him,’ he shouts. ‘Confined him to his tent. Imagine! A bloody archer from Kent capturing the King of all England, Henry the bloody Sixth! In his tent! A bloody archer!’

Thomas tries to move to see what is going on but the pain is too great.

‘We’ve done it!’ Dafydd is saying. ‘We’ve beaten them! We’ve killed all the nobs and captured the King of bloody England!’