They were singing. Hal could hear it faintly as he loped past the archers, who were lobbing high, ragged shots into the mass of men crushed between the shining snake coils of the river. The Selkirk men were snatching up what shafts remained in front of them, for they heard the singing too, saw the movement of horse towards them and wanted away from it, back to safety behind the relentless boulder-grind of pike squares.
The slow, rolling roar of those squares drowned out the voices of angels. It swelled, red and angry, bloated with fear and fury, almost in pace with the approaching horses, now into a flogged trot, until it vomited out in a great, throat-ripping scream as the pikes stopped raggedly and braced.
The front ranks dropped their chests on to the left knee, supporting the pike, right leg trailing. The men behind raised their long pike spears over their heads and heeled the butt of the front man’s pike into the soft ground with the stamp of a left foot, then leaned their weight to keep it fixed. The men behind them thrust long shafts between heads, resting them on shoulders in front of them when the weight became top heavy, butting the shafts into their own cloak-padded shoulders against the expected impact.
Breathing hard, sweating like bulls, roaring like wet-mouthed beasts, they stood in their own stink and fear, close as lovers, waiting for the curling wave of spurred horse to fall on them.
Time flowed, thick and golden as honey. Sheltered in the rear of his father’s pike square, Hal saw the horses, each barded, snorting, mad-eyed beast, the waving lances, the bouncing shields – white swans, red boars, chequered, ermined. The breath crawled in and out his nose, his palms itched and his groin felt drawn in, tight and hard; he wanted to run, to piss, to scream. It did not seem possible to resist . . .
They struck, with a crashing splinter like falling trees, and time howled back. Horses shrieked and flailed and reared, yellow teeth gnashing, necks snaking this way and that. Men screamed and stabbed, fell into the grinding, mud-splattering whirl of hooves and metal to be chewed and pounded.
Hal heard someone yelling meaningless sounds, discovered it was his own voice and started to move, crabbing into the maelstrom whirl that had the hedged knot of pikes at the centre of it, looking for the fallen and the dazed. A figure crawled, shoving and pushing out from under the dead weight of his horse, barded in thick padding and leather studded with bronze rings. He wore maille and a surcoat of the same leather and bronze, emblazoned with a blue lion on a yellow shield. He saw Hal and staggered weakly upright, holding out his hands to yield.
Knights did not die in tourney melee. Knights lost, were unhorsed and taken as ransom. Even in battles, only the ill-armed scum died. The slash of Hal’s sword brought reality slicing in on the knight, a cut that spilled the fine wool padding from his cuisses and the blood from the thigh beneath it. He had time to feel the pain and shock of it, then the point of Hal’s sword, growing as large as the whole world, came in through the slit of his helmet and stole his life.
No quarter here. Not with Berwick a raw wound on the body of the Kingdom – community and commonality were as one in the pain of that and no ransoms would be accepted by Scots this day. No-one had said so – but every Scot had determined it.
Hal felt something smack the back of his armoured head, the glancing blow staggering him, deafening as a bell. He whirled as the rider, twisting in the saddle as the warhorse skidded and turned, tried to face front and find a better blow from the axe he swung. A pike swung sideways, caught in the horse’s legs and it went down with a high, angry scream, scabbing clods up with flailing hooves.
A figure covered in mud and streaks of blood lurched out of the press, swinging a sword in one hand and tearing off the domed full-face helm with the other, which he flung at Hal, roaring after it with his sword in both hands. The helmet clattered off Hal’s shield, knocking him sideways, and he barely wobbled a parry with his sword as the second blow cut low at his legs.
Then Sim was at the knight’s elbow, the crossbow slung and his long, thin dirk in one hand, the other snaking round the knight’s neck, dragging him backwards with a crash. The sliver of blade gleamed like a silver snake tongue, flickered at the corner of the knight’s eye and he shrieked and thrashed even before Sim lanced it into his skull.
The knight with the axe had crashed down, flailing in the mud. He scrambled away from the licking spear points of the hedgepig square while his horse kicked and shrieked, then he rolled over, sprang up, tearing off the great helm, as most knights did when it came to the heat of battle, eager for the air and the vision, leaving maille coif and open-faced bascinet to protect head and neck.
He stumbled towards Sim, ring-metalled feet sucking out of the mud, only to to take Hal’s sword on the side of his bascinet helm, a bell-clang that drove the metal in on his cheek and knocked him sideways. He fell down, blood leaking from his eyes in red tears.
Hal and Sim gripped each other upright.
‘Aye til the fore,’ Sim said, his face streaked with sweat and someone else’s blood.