‘Smart your sticks,’ Addaf called and his bowmen strung the weapons with swift, easy movements.
Hal led his riders out at a fast walk, all spread out to look more threatening towards the flanks of the column. His plan was to keep just beyond the hurling range of these spear throwers and harass them with shouts and waving, pinning them in place with the idea that, if they turned to move off, the riders would fall on them. He saw another fat column, coming to an uncertain halt to one side and tried to watch it as well as the one in front. Slow them all down, he thought. Give Bruce time to fight the English heavy horse.
The flicker in the middle of the three-deep column of spear throwers disturbed him a little, as did the determined, cool way it moved – unlike the second one, who were now waving spears like beetle-feelers and milling in an ungainly, uncertain mob.
Closer still and his unease turned to a deeper chill; not one of these little javelinmen had a shield. Not one … the cold plunge in his belly coincided with the pungent curse from Sim Craw.
‘Virgin’s erse-cheeks – they are Welsh bowmen.’
Bowmen. Welsh. The two words struck a gibbering panic into everyone and Hal had to fight himself for control. It wasn’t that they had better bows or more skill than the archers Hal knew from Selkirk and elsewhere – it was because the Welsh delivered death in steel sleet, all loosed together rather than the ragged shooting Hal was used to seeing, even from the vaunted Gascon crossbows.
It was a rain of arrows that swept men down like sudden storm did summer wheat, flattening them to ruined stooks.
‘Turn. Away,’ he yelled and took his own advice, hearing the giant barndoor creak of drawing strings, then the Devil’s-breath rush of feathers in flight.
Too late. Hal knew it even as he flogged the garron into a mad race for the far side of the field, half-stumbling through the fetlock-clinging barley. Too late. He heard the evil breath of it the way a night mouse hears the owl’s wing, an eyeblink before the talons close.
There was a rising hiss and then the rain fell on them. He saw Jemmie o’ The Nook arch, heard the drumming thumps and the scream from him as his back turned to a hedgepig; the garron, stuck in rump and haunch, squealed, veered off and he was gone.
Another garron went over its own nose, but the man on it was pinned to the saddle through the thigh and backbone and was plunged to the bloody greenery whether he cared or not.
Hal’s horse leaped in the air, came down half on and half off the ragged bundle of him, then stumbled on for a stride or two until it stopped, head down, legs splayed. A great gout of blood and a groan came from it, then it started to fold and Hal kicked free of it, only seeing the strange sprout of feathered twig in one side. Into the lungs, he thought wildly; it missed my knee by a hair.
Addaf was satisfied with the one shoot, for he would have to send men out to recover what arrows they could; they were in short supply and too crafted to waste. He watched the riders vanish into the treeline on the far side of the field, saw the riderless little horses, some running in mad circles, most limping painfully.
A single man staggered and Addaf, tempted, started to nock an arrow – a long shot, but no longer than ones where he had put a big battle-arrow through a willow-wand …
The sudden shouts distracted him and he turned to see the second column, now no more than a crowd, waving weapons and cheering.
‘An audience appreciates you,’ he said, nodding to them, and his men laughed.
‘We make them jig, we make them kick,’ yelled out the irrepressible Hywel, ‘with a feather shaft and a crooked stick.’
All of them laughed aloud and, when Addaf remembered the limping man and looked for him, there was nothing to see. He frowned, unsmarted the bow and sent men out to fetch the arrows back, or dig out the valuable points for re-shafting.
In the treeline, Hal sank down, sweating and panting, while others retched, spat and then examined each other and their mounts for unseen wounds.
‘How many?’
‘Six,’ Sim Craw told him. ‘Five are gone down the brae, certes, and Hob o’ the Merse has a barb in his back and says he cannae feel his legs. Eight garrons down. God be praised.’
‘For ever and ever,’ Hal answered, then struggled up. ‘But not this day, I think. Mount and ride, double if you need – Sore Davey, I will climb ahint you, since you are lighter. Throw Hob over a saddle an’ bring him. There is a battle yet to be won.’