Master of War

25




It was a wall to be proud of. It ran in true lines to the road, forming a low defensive curtain to the front of the monastery, fifty yards each side with a front wall, all in all a hundred and thirty yards already built, according to Blackstone’s experienced eye. It was not yet finished, but even if Saquet returned that day, Blackstone thought, the wall would be sufficient to form a strong defence and deny anyone ease of access over the crossroads. The men stopped working and cheered when they saw the survivors return from Chaulion, but their good humour settled when the monks unloaded the dead and took them into the monastery. These soldiers may have served different lords but they were in this place to fight together under one man, and each was dependent upon the other.

Gaillard recognized an old friend’s body being taken from the cart. ‘That’s Jacopo. Jesus, he was a stupid bastard. He’d trip over his own spear if you didn’t watch out for him. I’m not surprised he got himself killed,’ he said. Gaillard had served with the slain soldier since they were boys. ‘Did he fight well?’ he asked Blackstone.

‘He was at my side,’ said Blackstone. ‘We were outnumbered, but he stood his ground.’

‘There you are, then. I always told him to keep moving,’ Gaillard said and turned back to placing rocks into position on the unfinished section of the wall. Sentiment and prayer for the dead could wait until he was alone in his bunk and the night candle blown out.

The town’s carpenters hauled their timber from the carts and the six prisoners were shoved unceremoniously to the ground.

‘You four will hang for the torture you committed,’ Blackstone told the condemned men. ‘And you two, he pointed to the other prisoners, ‘will hang because I’ve no need for you or your kind.’


One of the men snarled like a dog on a chain. ‘Do it then, you scar-faced whoreson,’ raising his voice so all of Blackstone’s men could hear, ‘because when Saquet sees what you’ve done, he’ll gut you all, slow and even, a knife to your innards and your cocks sliced and stuffed down your throats. He’ll put you on a spit and make you eat each other. And then he’ll burn Chaulion to the ground. Do your worst. My body might swing in the wind like a tavern sign, but we sliced those feeble curs at Chaulion and took their women and we lived like men should live. Death is coming to every one of you. A bad death! Get on your knees and pray for your souls because—’

Meulon took a few strides and slit his throat. A final curse gurgled as blood spurted and splattered those chained to him as they attempted to pull away when his body kicked and spasmed.

‘He talked too much,’ he explained to a scowling Blackstone as he wiped his blade. ‘There are lads here who haven’t seen vicious fighting yet. Can’t have a turd like him putting thoughts in their head. They’ve not much room up there as it is.’ Meulon turned and ordered the men and monks who had stopped their labours, ‘Finish the work! Saquet is an evil bastard who slays women and children for his pleasure. You’ll be killing him and the scum with him when they get here. We’ve taken Chaulion and you’ve booty coming your way, thanks to Sir Thomas!’ Meulon raised a fist and the men cheered, though the monks looked more worried than ever. Throat-slitting was easy work for men like these.

Brother Simon tended the weakened men in his infirmary as Blackstone came to check on Guinot and the others. The men sat propped on straw mattresses as a couple of the monks went among them spooning the pottage’s liquid into them. ‘Will they be able to fight?’ asked Blackstone.

‘They have been starved, my son. And beaten. I have medicine in the broth. Give them time.’

Blackstone knew that even though a killer whose men outnumbered his own was soon to be on them, men could not be raised from their exhaustion because of it. ‘Tell me what you need and you shall have it,’ he said.

‘We have God’s blessing now that you have come,’ the old man answered simply.

Blackstone felt a heaviness building in him, something he had not experienced before. It was not fear, but it carried the same sense of trepidation that clenched his heart. And then he knew what it was. It was others’ expectations. ‘Brother Simon, I’m nobody’s saviour. Don’t have any thought that I am. I’m a soldier. I can be dead by this time tomorrow and then I’m only good for worm bait.’

The old monk looked at him a moment longer and then pointed a wavering finger at the silver effigy of Arianrhod. ‘I was a pagan once, my son, I prayed to all the Gods including our Lord. One of them must have heard me, though I’m unsure which one it was. I’ll find out soon enough, no doubt.’

‘I’m no pagan,’ Blackstone answered.

‘No matter. What’s important is who you believe it is that guides and protects you. Don’t be ashamed to go on your knees and beg for their help,’ he answered, and then went back to tending the sick.

Guinot swung his feet over the side of the cot, and tried to stand. ‘I’ve heard a scaffold being built before. You’re hanging them here, aren’t you? That’s a challenge to Saquet all right. He’s a reputation to uphold and stringing his men up at a crossroads is going to make him come after you personally, but before he does I want to see them choke,’ he said.

Blackstone eased him back onto the cot before his legs gave way. ‘You’ll see it. I give you my word. You and the others need to rest and let Brother Simon care for you. There comes a time when we have to surrender to those who can help us.’

Guinot nodded and eased back onto the mattress. ‘You think you can stop the routiers here? You and a handful of men straddling the crossroads? Sweet Mother of God, you were lucky at Chaulion. Those men you killed were just the scum that settles on top of a shit pit. Prepare yourself because when Saquet breaks down those doors every last man of us will be put to the sword. I heard what the old monk said. Listen to him – give the men Mass. Put God on their side.’

Blackstone wanted more than God on his side, he wished he had another fifty men. A hundred would be better. As he walked past the cots he saw that Matthew Hampton’s fever had broken. His eyes searched the torn face that gazed down at him. His breath rasped with effort through cracked lips. ‘Thomas?’

Blackstone nodded.

‘Look at you. We thought you dead. Bless you, boy. Where am I?’

‘The monastery.’

The archer nodded. ‘You got us out of Chaulion, then. We were dead men. They tricked us, Thomas, and killed us. Badly. My lads died badly.’

Blackstone rested a hand on Hampton’s and squeezed gently. ‘We’ll avenge them together. I’ve got your bow.’

‘No, they took it…’

‘I took it back. It’s yours. No one else carried a bow with such a dark band of wood that twists across the grain. I saw it right away.’ Blackstone brought the war bow up from where he had held it out of Hampton’s sight.

The archer’s hands caressed the length of yew and his fingertips stroked the nocked horn tips. He nodded with an almost inaudible sigh, and then eased it back to Blackstone. ‘You take it, Thomas, and kill as many as you can. There was none better’n you. Not even Richard, God rest his soul. Take it, lad.’

Blackstone extended his crooked arm. ‘I’ll never draw a bow again, Matthew. A sword stroke snapped me like a twig.’

Hampton’s eyes followed the line of his arm. ‘A sword stroke cannot break a mighty oak, Thomas. Give me and the others another day of the good friar’s broth and we’ll stand by you.’

Blackstone grasped the man’s extended hand. He could see that no matter how willing Hampton and the other men might be they would need more than a day to recover. There would be no archers ready if Saquet’s attack came the next morning as expected. Before that happened he would have a Mass said for his men.


They dragged Abbot Pierre from his room and kicked him out in front of those condemned to hang. As he fell his cassock was rucked up, exposing his bare backside. Blackstone’s men and the lay brothers laughed at his humiliation. Blackstone saw that the other monks who had benefited from the fat abbot’s rule looked concerned. They knew that if their penance of building the wall did not please the Englishman then they too could face ignominious banishment from their own monastery. And who would they turn to? Brother monks of the same order would have heard of the way they lived. They would most likely be shunned if forced out from the safety of these walls, and penance at another monastery could be harder than staying where they were. They all knew that the time of Abbot Pierre was over and that their future lay in the Englishman’s hands.

Blackstone’s men hauled the abbot to his feet as the Englishman stood before him. ‘Those who want it can have the sacrament before they hang. And you can lead your brothers in prayer for your own safe deliverance before I send you on your way.’

Abbot Pierre’s eyes darted back and forth among the gathered soldiers and monks. ‘You cannot send me away, this is my monastery. I have the favour of the King and he has the favour of the Pope. You can’t send me from this place; it’s miles to the nearest village.’


‘If you reach it alive you can beg for food and shelter like a true mendicant. Though I suspect that every door will be closed to you for allowing Saquet and his men to strip them bare. Your blessing to him became their curse.’

‘You cannot! The weather is closing in.’ The abbot’s jowls quivered.

‘You led Saquet and his routiers into Chaulion. I should put you on the scaffold with the rest of these men, but I doubt we have a gallows strong enough to bear such a barrel of lard,’ said Blackstone.

Abbot Pierre fell to his knees, hands clasped, and begged for his life. ‘Sir Thomas, I have no chance of reaching even the nearest village before nightfall. The cold will kill me, the coming snow will bury me and I will lie in unconsecrated ground. Recant, I implore you.’

‘What about these men who are about to die? Have you no wish to beg on their behalf?’

The abbot struggled to his feet, sweeping his arm in a gesture to encompass the condemned men. ‘Blasphemers and murderers. Their end was determined when their whore mothers dropped them from their fouled wombs. I was at their mercy. I had no choice in what I did!’

‘Then forgive them their sins when they receive their last sacrament before I send you on your way. Hurry, the day is already shortening. Darkness will soon be your only companion. Get to it.’

One of the routiers stepped forward and gobbed a mouthful of phlegm at the abbot, splattering his shoulder and face. The abbot recoiled in horror.

‘I’ll not have a creature like this pray over me. I’ll meet the devil on my own terms,’ the routier said, and tried to land a kick on the fat abbot, who stumbled back, turning this way and that, searching the faces around him for any sign of compassion. There was none. Some of the monks turned their faces deliberately away from him.

Blackstone said, ‘I wouldn’t be able to face my King if I put you to the sword, or hanged you from a tree. I have given you your life. Do with it what you will.’

The abbot trembled as tears welled and spilled. Like a blind man he stumbled, not knowing which way to go. He was beyond the wall and his beseeching gesture as he reached out to those on the other side did nothing but graze the skin from his arms on the coping stones bristling like teeth along its top.

Everyone watched as Abbott Pierre moved further away, his sandalled feet finding a path to tread once he was across the bridge. He fell once or twice and then, almost on all fours, clambered like a child up the rising ground towards the forest. No one watching doubted that his fat carcass would soon become a feast for the creatures of the woodland. It had been a harsh winter and the wolves would find him.

Blackstone asked the routiers if any of them wanted the sacrament. They all accepted except the man who had spat his contempt at the abbot.

‘Brother Marcus,’ he said, gesturing the prior forward, ‘you held Mass for my men last night, and now you’re in charge of this monastery. Step forward and ease these men’s souls into the next world.’

Guinot and the others were carried from their beds to watch the execution. When Matthew Hampton saw the gallows he knew that the boy who had become a ventenar and now a man-at-arms would never lose the inherent skills of an archer. The six men captured at Chaulion were hanged at hundred-yard intervals from the edge of the wall. The dead men marked out the distance for his archers, be they French crossbowmen or the English with their long, curved war bows. Ailing or not, he and the others would loose as many shafts as they could at the men who would soon fall upon them.


Some Norman lords had turned against King Edward; others were as yet undecided where their loyalties lay. The violent William de Fossat, seeing an opportunity to regain his pride and reputation, had offered his services – and thirty men – to the French King. He had vowed to the King that he would track down the marauders led by the Englishman. But then he stumbled upon the mercenary Saquet.

Saquet and his men had camped in the forests in rough shelters made from hacked branches and dead ferns, then finally picked their way through the forest’s tracks until they came to where the road should be beneath the snow. They had not enjoyed a hot meal for days and their slow progress home was becoming a further irritation. The French King’s warrant to kill the daring Englishman gave William de Fossat no status among the brigands he had joined and he and his men dutifully followed the mercenaries at the rear, acknowledging that the Breton was master of the routiers under his command.

As luck would have it the defenders at the monastery were granted another three days before the mercenaries broke the skyline. Heavy snow fell during that first night and into the next day, and it took another two to die away into flurries. A blanket of snow a foot deep covered the approach roads to the monastery and smothered the obstacles that Blackstone’s men had laid before their wall. No broad front of horsemen would be able to approach, only two or three men abreast, tentatively easing nervous horses forward through snow that hid uneven ground. Blackstone had marked out the road in the direction from which he wanted the mercenaries to come. The executed men’s bodies hung in the cold air, barely moving from the breeze, caked with snow, clumps of which fell from them like rotting flesh. The man whose throat was cut took his place among the dead, a rope under his shoulders, the gaping wound blackened, his clothes stripped, leaving his naked body a meal for scavenging ravens and crows. His would be the first body that Saquet would see as he turned the bend in the road to bring him in sight of the monastery and the crossroads to his town. It would bring him down the track exactly as Blackstone had planned.

Blackstone’s footprints led to the small bridge where he stood watching the river wash the snow from its boulders. The weather was fickle and warming; the snow might soon melt. He would rather Saquet arrived when it was still on the ground. He wanted the fight over and its outcome settled. His men were inside the monastery on his orders because he knew that when his enemy came they would be cold and stiff from a long ride and the discomfort of sleeping cramped in the open. He wanted his men warm, well fed and strong, ready to kill.

‘You think he’ll come today?’ Gaillard asked Meulon, who stood with him at the front wall, watching Blackstone pace across the bridge.

The big man nodded, and pulled his beard. ‘He has to. No one travels in winter; there’ll be no food for him to scavenge. This snowfall bought us time.’ His eyes scanned the distance. The dark figure of a horseman broke the grey horizon. ‘It’s today,’ he said.


Saquet reined in his horse and gazed at the mutilated bodies. Anger pumped warmth into his frozen limbs. He spat and cursed. He had been pursuing a ghost through the forests and now the Englishman taunted him with the hanged men. So be it. He would slaughter Blackstone like a beast in the field and then send his butchered body back to the King, limb by limb, using the Norman lord as a lowly messenger. Those few pathetic defenders would soon lie in the bloodied snow and then every man, woman and child in Chaulion would die. He would smear the countryside with a streak of blood a mile long and no man would ever challenge him again. The French King would reward him handsomely.

William de Fossat brought his horse up next to Saquet’s. ‘He’s got behind you and taken what you held. I told you he was cunning. Are those yours?’ de Fossat asked, meaning the hanged men. There was no need for an answer; the look on Saquet’s face was enough.


‘Then if he’s taken the crossroads he’s taken Chaulion as well. Look, twenty-odd men behind a makeshift wall and not a bowman to his name. It looks as though your arse will freeze for more days to come. Shall I kill him for you?’ the nobleman sneered.

‘Stay back!’ Saquet snarled. The Norman lord had already been kept in his place. He needed no help from a baron, or whatever he was; these earls and counts were no different from him, but they hid behind a cloak of nobility. As far as Saquet was concerned they were just better dressed brigands who trampled the poor and sought favour with the King. Saquet knew exactly what his code was: a man had to kill and spread terror to make a mark in his world. He spurred his horse down the path marked out by the hanging men and what remained of their executioner’s footprints. Saquet’s horsemen shoved de Fossat and his men aside. And as the last of the fifty or so mercenaries spurred their horses on, de Fossat turned to his men. Whatever the outcome of Saquet’s murderous attack, de Fossat knew he would achieve his goal.

‘Get ready!’ he commanded, and drew his sword.

Five hundred yards away Blackstone stood at the head of his men. They were behind the wall, their shields on their arms, spears and swords ready as the horsemen came recklessly along the narrow road. Crossbowmen stood poised on each side of him, their weapons held out of sight. Matthew Hampton was ten paces back with the half-dozen English archers. They had few arrows between them, but they would bring men down more quickly than the crossbows.

Meulon stood next to Blackstone. ‘You see that? Mother’s tears. That’s de Fossat up there on the ridge. He’s joined the bastards. With Saquet’s men there must be eighty or more of them.’

They were outnumbered by Saquet’s forces alone; with de Fossat and his men, the sheer weight of them would easily break through their thin line of defence. Blackstone glanced at his men’s faces. Their eyes widened as the horde got closer. Four hundred yards. Who could blame them if they broke and ran?

‘Curse the bastards!’ he yelled. ‘Curse them for being whoresons and turds! They’ll die condemned! Curse them! Let them burn in hell!’ and then yelled abuse at the top of his lungs, clenching Wolf Sword above his head, clambering on top of the wall so all could see him. ‘Burn in hell!’ he bellowed.

And the chant went up as Meulon and Gaillard strode along the line screaming the curse.

Burn in hell! BURN IN HELL!

Blackstone twisted around and looked at Matthew Hampton. The archers looked sick and weak. Their sallow faces and flecked lips told him that they couldn’t loose more than a volley or two.

Saquet’s men were closer, their voices urging their horses onwards.

Blackstone waited. Watching those horses struggle downhill, seeing the men’s urgency to kill them.

A few more strides was all he needed from them. Stay on the track, stay on the track, he urged silently.

It was time.

‘Archers! At three hundred paces! Nock…’ The men readied their shafts, arms trembling from ailing bodies, but a lifetime of training and skill steadied them. ‘Draw…’ Blackstone looked back to the horsemen being channelled down the narrow road as they came next to one of the hanged men. ‘Loose!’

Though there were no more than a handful of archers the twang of their bowstrings and the sudden rush of air made the Norman soldiers at the wall turn and gape at the arrows’ flight. The first fletchings were still quivering through the air when another volley chased them. And another. Blackstone couldn’t hold back the yell of triumph that burst from him. It was England’s killing machine doing its work again. Horses and men fell in a tumble, cartwheeling and sliding, veering away only to fall from unseen hazards beneath the snow. Some of the mercenaries pulled their horses up short for fear of more arrow strikes and dismounted, running forward in ragged numbers, tripping and making hard work of the assault, their lungs heaving in the cold air. They would be weakened by the time they reached the wall.

Two of the archers sank to their knees – the effort had taken the last of their strength. Hampton and the three others let fly their final volleys and were then out of arrows.

‘God bless you, lads!’ Blackstone yelled and then shook the walls with his yell: ‘Normans! Gascons! Ready!’

The mercenaries were two hundred paces from the bridge when Blackstone’s men brought up their crossbows and levelled them at the attackers. ‘Wait! Wait!’ At a hundred and fifty paces they were on level ground, some wading across the stream. ‘Loose!’ And a hum of armour-piercing bolts struck like a mailed fist on the first wave of men. The mercenaries faltered but recovered. The crossbowmen needed two minutes to reload and in that time Saquet’s men would be over the wall. That knowledge gave them strength and courage.

Meulon stood at the end of his line of men, Gaillard was on the flank, and the ailing Guinot stood propped, sword in hand, against the main gates to steady himself: it looked as though he would be the last man they would have to kill in order to gain entry. Matthew Hampton and his archers had dragged themselves to stand with him. The mercenaries ran with wild abandon, thirsting to close for the kill. No one behind the wall moved. Blackstone leapt down to be with them. Fifty paces.

‘Spearmen!’ Meulon yelled. And where crossbows had been, spears now bristled across the saw-toothed wall. They had no intention of losing time reloading the weapons. The mercenaries tripped, stumbled and fell on the scattered rocks and branches that the wall builders had placed there on Blackstone’s orders and which slowed their advance. Bruised and broken, the ragged horde of men got back on their feet and kept attacking, but those who had fallen lost momentum. Blackstone sought out Saquet. No man looked more vicious than another. Which was the routiers’ leader?

He turned and yelled, ‘Guinot! Which one is he?’

Guinot took a pace forward and looked desperately at the attacking men thirty paces away. Saquet was in the middle of a group of men running with shields half covering their bodies and faces. ‘The boy!’ Guinot yelled, and pointed with his sword.

Blackstone thought he had misunderstood. His eyes went from face to snarling face and settled on one of them – a clean-shaven lad who looked no older than most of the boys in his own village, but who towered head and shoulders above the others. A steel-rimmed leather helmet capped flowing fair hair, and blue eyes glinted beneath the shield’s rim. For a moment Blackstone felt doubt drag at him. Could this be Iron Fist? The boy was big and he ran, powerful and lithe, behind the front rank of attackers. His sword was half raised in a gloved fist. He made no sound. He uttered no curse. He had no need of a battle cry to urge him onto the spear points. Blackstone suddenly understood. The men in front of this boy were there to breach the wall. They would die if they had to, as many of them would, but they would carve a space for Saquet. Blackstone saw the intensity of those blue eyes. They were locked on him. Blackstone was the target.

The mercenaries struck the wall. Spears jabbed and drew blood, but the routiers were too many for the defenders to stop – some of them clambering over the dry-stone wall, spilling the top stones and hurling themselves with great ferocity on men who had little experience of close-quarter killing. There was a clash of steel and the sickening dull sound of blades cutting through bodies, like a butcher’s cleaver on the block, caused pitiful cries and screams from wounded men. Perinne and Talpin fought side by side, a torrent of abuse adding power to their spear and sword thrusts, as Meulon and Gaillard formed a shield wall to seal the breach.


Guinot saw a knot of men forcing their way towards Blackstone and somewhere behind those shields Saquet had lowered his head and the force of the charge was like a bull trampling those before it. Guinot knew he would be unable to reach the Englishman in time and Blackstone was becoming more isolated as he twisted and turned, sword striking and killing those nearest in the attack. The Gascon yelled a warning to Meulon, bellowing two or three times to be heard over the shouts and screams. Meulon finally half turned and saw what was happening. With a concerted push with the shield wall and with half a dozen men in support as Perinne and Talpin added their weight, they pushed back the assault, forcing mercenaries to clamber back over the wall so that the defenders could not pursue them. There were already twenty or more dead and half as many wounded. Meulon’s surge had broken the tide of men. A strange silence fell. No shouts of rage or screams of agony tore the air; only the repeated thud and blows of sword on shield and metal.

Meulon and Gaillard had stopped the advance, but as the wall shield was turned it gave Saquet an open corridor, letting him stride forward with fighting men to hurl himself at Blackstone. Like a battering ram he smashed into the Englishman, rocking him back on his heels. Blackstone used the force of the attack to let his weight spin away, moments before Saquet’s sword thrust came up from below his shield. There was no denying the man’s power and strength and still Blackstone could not believe that this youngster led a band of killers. That doubt did not stop him from slashing down towards the boy’s exposed neck, but where that charging bull had been seconds before he had now spun away and Wolf Sword slashed thin air.

There was no moment for either fighter to brace or find a solid stance, each reacted instinctively and they clashed again. Saquet smothered Blackstone’s shield with his own and beat down on his helm with the base of his sword, its pommel hammering with such force that Blackstone felt as though he was being hit with a mace. Saquet, a slaughterman’s apprentice from the age of five, had waded in gore all his young life. The brutal manner of a beast’s death was a daily occurrence and, just as Blackstone had been taught to carry and cut stone, so too had Saquet been tutored in butchery. A hammer blow to stun a cow into submission and stop its panic from the stench of other slaughtered animals became a personal test of strength that grew ever more powerful until it was said he could stun a beast with his bare hands before using his knife. The boy’s gentle looks belied a born and bred killer.

Blackstone felt that brutal power, managed to raise his shield, heard and felt the strikes and thought his knees would buckle. He rammed into Saquet, smashed muscle and fibre and roared a battlefield curse to wake the dead. Time and again he beat against Saquet’s unflinching shield, feeling his shoulder muscles gorge with strength as he wielded his own attack. Saquet took the punishment, but Blackstone saw that the blows rocked him. No one until now had matched Iron Fist’s strength blow for blow, as once again Blackstone used his crooked arm to give him the angle of attack. He had been taught how to move quickly, never allowing an enemy the advantage of having him in one spot. He shifted his weight, brought his right foot back slightly, then dipped his shoulder and angled the shield, then heaved his weight as if he were breaking down a door. The force of it took Saquet by surprise and caught him on the edge of his helmet. He rocked back, shock registering in his eyes. He was wrong-footed as Blackstone pressed home his attack and, despite Saquet being taller and heavier, he began to fall back from the blows rained on him with a rage that took Blackstone into the heart of an opponent and destroyed him. Saquet resisted, and caught Wolf Sword’s blade on his crossguard, with the unmistakable glint of triumph in his young face. However, his killer instinct and fearlessness were not enough to match Blackstone’s strength and skill. He had made the strike deliberately, forcing Saquet to bear the weight of the attack, giving Blackstone the chance to kick his legs away from beneath him. As Saquet’s limbs floundered, eyes widened in surprise at his fall, Blackstone lunged and rammed his blade through the boy’s open jaw, holding it there with a foot on the killer’s chest, his face welling with blood until the writhing demons that dragged men’s souls into the afterworld ceased their struggle.

It was finished.

No sooner had the routiers seen Saquet fall than they turned and fled. William de Fossat and his men could finish off Blackstone. Iron Fist was sprawled dead, bloody jaw still gaping and those intense blue eyes lifeless. Blackstone spared no thought for his victory. Some of the men began to clamber over the wall in pursuit of the twenty or so mercenaries who ran towards de Fossat’s distant horsemen.

‘Let them go!’ Blackstone shouted. ‘There’s more to come!’

Meulon and Gaillard hauled soldiers from the wall and cuffed them into position.

‘Stand fast!’ Meulon spat at them. ‘Hold your positions!’

Sweat trickled down their faces, and Blackstone took a moment to pull off his helm and wipe his face. Men sagged, breathing hard, while others lay unmoving. The archers were unscathed, as was Guinot, but he must have fought, Blackstone realized when he saw his blood-slicked blade.

‘Meulon!’ Blackstone called. ‘How many have we lost?’

‘Four dead, two wounded,’ he answered. ‘My God. It’s nothing. Defend the house of God and He holds a protective hand over us, eh, Master Thomas? We’ve been blessed.’

‘By a stone wall worth fifty men,’ Blackstone answered. The men raised their heads. He was right. Their efforts with that wall had given them the advantage. Gaillard picked up a fallen coping stone and laid it back in its place and then others followed his example. The stone wall had saved lives.

‘Look to your front,’ Meulon said when he saw de Fossat’s horsemen begin trotting towards them. No hail of arrow shafts would greet them, and if they got close enough with their mounts some of those men would jump the wall. If they did get inside, and de Fossat and his men were experienced enough fighters to do just that, then the defenders would have little chance of survival. They had turned back one onslaught from mercenaries but if a Norman lord and thirty mounted men got inside it would be as devastating as a fox in a chicken coop.

‘Listen to me!’ Blackstone called. ‘They can’t bring their horses over here if we stand fast. Every other man on this front wall. Crouch below the wall, ram your spear shafts into the ground and keep their blades on top. You’ll rip their bellies open. The rest of you, ten paces back, with me. We’ll take on those who get through.’ The grim-looking men shuffled into position. The mayhem had only just begun.

Blackstone lowered his voice and walked among them. ‘Ready yourselves. Spearmen to the front, shield wall to the rear. They’d be stupid to try. But then, some of our noble lords are not known for their clear thinking.’ There was a murmur among the mixed bag of soldiers.

Matthew Hampton called out, ‘What Sir Thomas means is their horses have more sense!’

That caused a ripple of laughter. Blackstone knew they would settle and hold.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Take your positions.’

The older, more experienced men ushered the others. The wall would do its job again, but a horse, even if it ripped its belly open, would bring down a low stone wall. They all knew that but no one spoke the thought aloud.


Once the men were ready, Blackstone pulled on his helm, and rested Wolf Sword.

His eyes held the far ridge as the mercenaries and de Fossat’s men met.

And then the utterly unexpected happened.

Screams echoed down the road as the slopes were suddenly sprayed with blood. De Fossat and his men trampled and slaughtered the mercenaries. Horses whinnied and slithered as some riders came out of the saddle, but it made no difference, they suffered no casualties as they stood on the torn ground, blood-churned beneath sword and hoof.

De Fossat rode clear and brought his horse slowly towards Blackstone and his men. He stopped fifteen paces away and raised his visor, his dark-bearded face and hawk eyes glaring from the helm like a caged raptor.

‘Well, Blackstone. This is a fine day. You’re alive and well, I see.’

Blackstone clambered over the wall, but stopped short of going too close. ‘I am, my lord. As are you.’

‘Barely. My arse is freezing, my sword needs cleaning and I have a warrant for your arrest and execution. And I need a drink.’


The antagonistic Norman was invited into the monastery and settled by the fire in the abbot’s old quarters. There was to be no act of violence between de Fossat and Blackstone.

‘No wonder the King favoured this abbot; he lived in some comfort,’ de Fossat said, sipping mulled wine and selecting pieces of meat with his eating knife. Blackstone had ensured that Meulon and Gaillard kept the men alert, in case de Fossat was laying a trap. But it was soon obvious that the soldiers who had defended the monastery were compatriots of the men riding with de Fossat. Food and drink was supplied to them. Despite this mixed bag of men having served their own lords, Meulon kept a wary eye and had sentries posted. He moved among them as fires were lit and those who knew each other talked of the fighting and how Blackstone had taken Chaulion with few losses. His reputation was already being enhanced as the men who had fought gilded their stories with extravagant claims of his fighting skills and how they, numbering so few, had slain so many in hour upon hour of fighting. The greater their stories of Blackstone, the greater their own exaggerated role and glory became.

William de Fossat accepted another mug of spiced wine. ‘This is how it is, Master Thomas. When you left, Jean de Harcourt sent me to the King on behalf of the Norman lords. We are a self-governing Duchy which has always been in the hands of the King’s son. And we needed some security, protection if you will, now that your English King has stepped back from seizing the French crown. And so Jean suggested that I ride to Paris and tell them that an English independent captain – that’s you,’ de Fossat said, tipping his head slightly towards Blackstone, ‘intended to seize Chaulion and that I, and the soldiers offered by my Norman lords, would ride south and make sure you failed. We would seize you and lop off your head and display it on the end of a pole.’ He sipped the wine. ‘That is what I promised, not necessarily what I would deliver. Circumstances change a man’s intentions, like a rock diverts water in a stream. Saquet was that rock.’

Blackstone waited in silence, studying the man he had humiliated at Castle de Harcourt, so who better to promise revenge to the King? ‘And is that still your intention? You’ve helped kill the routiers you sided with. In what position does that place you now?’ He could not deny the sense of unease he felt, still wondering if de Fossat’s arrival was part of a more elaborate plot. Were there men in the forest just waiting for him to lower his guard, and then ride down on them because the enemy was already within?

William de Fossat was weaned on conspiracy and honour that curdled together like sour milk and red wine. Norman lords had their Norse heritage chanted to them while they suckled. A lifetime of hearing La Chanson de Roland, the epic poem of valour recounted at feast days, celebrating French honour, was as much a part of their heritage as Rollo the Viking. And now de Fossat sat, once again, opposite a peasant stonemason who now bore arms. The world turned mysteriously. The scarred face gazed at him.

‘Why not kill Saquet before he attacked?’ Blackstone asked.

De Fossat showed no sign of pretence. ‘Why risk my men? The oaf thought himself better suited to the task of killing you. So, I let him try. Once I saw your defences I knew you would prevail. But, if by some chance he had killed you I would still be in the King’s favour,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Your life or death is important to me only as long as either serves a purpose. I am not Jean de Harcourt, Blackstone; I would lose no sleep over your death.’

‘Then you’re not to be trusted,’ said Blackstone.

‘See it for what it is. I return with sackfuls of heads and I tell the King that they are your men and that I helped slaughter them. Unfortunately you had more men than we anticipated and that brutish Saquet was no tactician, but an uncontrollable peasant. His mercenaries fled or are dead, leaving me and my brave troops to engage you in battle. It was impossible to root you out of Chaulion and we retired with honour, having slaughtered thirty or more of you,’ he sipped his wine, ‘depending how many heads I take back. And the mean-spirited King’s son, the Duke of Normandy, will return some of my lands that he confiscated because I have proved my loyalty to his father, the mean-spirited King. We shall all come out of this with our lives and lands intact.’

It was an effective deception and Jean de Harcourt’s plan had given the Norman lords protection now that Sir Godfrey had been disgraced. ‘And what happens to me and my men? Will your King send another force against me?’

‘The King will not concern himself with losing a few walled towns this far from Paris now that I have tried – and failed; he has bigger worries than that. It means that another pawn has fallen in this game of war, but that you are master of what you hold.’

‘I hold it for Edward,’ Blackstone said, ‘not myself.’

‘And he will hear of it. You’re no fool, Thomas, in time you will have control of this area; there are more small towns for you to take, and root out those that can cause us all problems. You will have enough money – the Norman lords will make sure of that, to start with at least – to keep your men paid, but then you’ll take a share of the crops and livestock and raid and take booty.’ De Fossat finished his explanation.

‘Then our business is done, my lord.’ Blackstone stood – an act that once again told the Norman that although Blackstone was in the presence of a superior, this was now his territory and he would do as he wished.

De Fossat’s dark eyes flashed; a superior glare of authority. He lowered the pewter mug and wiped the excess from his bearded lips. ‘Bear this in mind. Your men are paid by Norman lords, so you’re a man-at-arms in our service,’ he said. ‘Do you have any message for those who secretly support you?’

‘Our actions here are message enough.’

De Fossat pulled on his gloves and turned to leave. He had taken only a few strides when Blackstone’s words stopped him. ‘There is one thing: I have no further need of their money. I now have land and supplies.’ He paused to let de Fossat take in his words that denoted his independence. ‘And a cellar full of booty.’

De Fossat nodded. ‘Then you’re no longer a man-at-arms in our pay, but a knight of your own standing… Sir Thomas.’

Blackstone knew there was still an issue that needed to be broached.


‘And what of you and me, my lord?’

The Norman held his gaze. ‘You bested me in a contest. My pride was wounded – it still is. And if you had not been restrained by Jean the madness in you would have slain me. To that extent I am in your debt.’

‘There isn’t one, my lord. Had there ever been a debt it was wiped clean by the role you played in killing the routiers. Even though it was not done for my sake.’

‘A gracious gesture is a sign of good manners, Sir Thomas. Is it possible you aspire to dine at high table?’

‘You once said I fight like a bear-baiting dog.’

‘And so you do.’

‘Then it’s unlikely that courtly manners will calm such a savage mongrel, wouldn’t you say?’

De Fossat smiled. ‘I would say.’ He paused. ‘We’re from different worlds, Blackstone, but you should know that you have my respect as a knight and I would ride with you against a common enemy. But if we find ourselves on opposing sides I’ll kill you when you least expect it.’


The bodies were gathered and laid in the snow, to be kept until spring when the ground softened and they could be buried in a pit. De Fossat’s men cut off their heads and put them in sacks. They left Saquet’s horses and weapons for Blackstone. Those men who knew each other from being in the service of the same Norman lord bade farewell and watched as the horsemen rode up past the hanged mercenaries and disappeared up the track through the forest.

While de Fossat’s men had gone about their grisly work Blackstone had gathered his men together and offered them the chance to return to their own masters. It was an opportunity to leave the service of the Englishman and return to their garrisons and the protection of whichever lord they served. It took only a few moments, as men looked at each other; some shrugged; others passed a comment between themselves. It was Talpin, one of the wall builders, who stepped forward.

‘You’ve bought us a stronghold here and Chaulion, Sir Thomas, and we’ve food in our bellies and money in our purses. I think we could make this wall bigger and stronger, so I’m thinking I’ll stay and see if it can be done.’

‘Aye, and he’ll need me to make sure he keeps it straight and true,’ Perinne said.

A murmur of approval ran through the survivors.

Meulon said, ‘We stay with you as long as you need us, Sir Thomas.’

Blackstone turned to Matthew Hampton standing with those archers who had not been taken to the infirmary.

‘You’re asking me to fight next to Frenchies,’ said Hampton, and glowered at the gathered men. ‘Me and the lads don’t much care for them. The Gascons we know about; they’re like us,’ he said, leaning on his war bow, ‘but this bunch of Normans seem to have taken to you and that’s good enough for us.’