Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .txt) 📗

“Sire?” his squire asked.

Lanferelle ignored the question. “Visors!” he shouted at his men. He led sixteen men-at-arms and he turned to make certain they had closed their visors before pulling down his own with a metallic thud.

He was instantly engulfed in darkness. A moment before he had been able to see the enemy clearly. He had even seen the glitter of gold circling Henry of England’s helmet, but now there was a steel shutter in front of his eyes and the shutter was pierced by twenty small holes, none wide enough to admit even a bodkin arrow’s narrow point, and to see anything through those holes Lanferelle had to move his head from side to side, and even then he could make out little of what happened.

Yet he did see the lone horseman ride from the center of the English line.

And he saw the baton thrown into the air.

And he heard the words. “Now, strike!”

He lowered his head as if he struggled into a fierce wind and he heard the rising rush of arrows and he flinched, teeth grinding together, and then the missiles struck.

There was a terrible noise as thousands of steel arrowheads plunged onto steel armor, and a man called out in sudden pain, and Lanferelle felt a thumping blow on his right shoulder, and even though the arrow was deflected it lurched him to one side with the sheer force of its blow. A second arrow quivered in his lance, though he could not see it. Some fool in the rear rank had left his visor open and was making a gargling noise around an arrow that had fallen from the sky to pierce his mouth and drive down into his windpipe. The man slowly sank to his knees and coughed a stream of thick blood. Other arrows plunged into the soil, or else glanced off armor. A horse whinnied and reared to Lanferelle’s left.

“Saint Denis! Montjoie!” the French shouted and Lanferelle, jerking his head so that he could make some sense of what the small holes in his visor revealed, saw the horsemen at last start forward. Then another shout to advance came from the center of the French line, where the oriflamme flew, and all the first battle lurched toward the enemy.

“Montjoie!” they shouted, the sound of their voices huge and deafening inside their helmets, and Lanferelle could hardly move because his armored feet were stuck in the mud, but he jerked his right leg free and so began the advance. Men of mud and steel, no flesh in sight, lumbering toward the waiting English. And the English were howling hunting cries like rabid devils pursuing Christian souls.

And the second arrow-storm fell.

And the devil’s hail rattled and more men screamed.

As the French, at last, attacked.

The horsemen came first. Hook saw one horse rearing, saw the rider topple backward as his pennanted lance scraped a circle against the sky, and then that horse was swallowed by the charge. Knights roweled back their spurs, lowered their lances and called their battle cry, and Hook saw great clods of earth being thrown up behind the monstrous hooves. The stallions tossed their armor-weighted heads, hating the uneven ground, and the spurs struck back again and the charge took shape as the horses gained speed.

The skill of a mounted charge was to start slow, the riders knee to knee, and to advance in that close formation so that the whole line of heavy horses struck the enemy together. Only at the last minute should a man kick his destrier into a gallop, but the plowland was so soft and the arrow fall so sudden that men spurred impulsively forward to escape both. No one had ordered the charge, rather it was the sting of the first arrow-storm that prompted it, and now, on both flanks, the horsemen charged as fast as their big horses could carry them. Three hundred horsemen attacked the English right wing, and even fewer assaulted the left. There were supposed to be a thousand horsemen on either flank, but the other riders were missing, still exercising their destriers.

And the archers drew and loosed.

Hook used broadheads. They were useless against armor, but they could pierce the padded cloths protecting the horses’ chests and, as the range shortened, so the arrows flew at a lower and lower trajectory, none wasting their force on the upper air, but searing straight into the charging animals, and for a moment Hook thought the arrows were having no effect, but then a horse stumbled and went down in a great flurry of mud, man, lance, and harness. The horse screamed and its rider, trapped by the rolling body, screamed with it and the horse behind struck the rolling beast in front and Hook saw the second rider being pitched forward over his horse’s head. He drew again, picking a big horse with shaggy fetlocks and drove an arrow into its side, just in front of the saddle’s girth and the horse swerved away, colliding with another, and Hook’s next arrow thumped into a padded chest to bury itself to the fledging and the world was hoofbeats and screams and the sound of bow cords and at least a dozen horses were on the ground, some struggling to get up, others splashing mud with frantic hooves as their lives drained away through sliced arteries. Will of the Dale put a bodkin into a rider’s throat and the man jerked back under the arrow’s strike, then rebounded forward from his saddle’s high cantle and his lance buried its point in a furrow and so lifted the man out of his saddle as his horse galloped on, eyes white and visible through the holes in its face armor, and the man was dragged along by the stirrup as the horse took an arrow in the eye and veered to one side and so brought down two more horses.

The archers were shooting fast. The horsemen did not have far to charge, but the ground slowed them and in the minute it took the three hundred to reach the archers on the English right they were the target of over four thousand arrows. Only the bowmen in the front two ranks were shooting at the horses, the other archers, their view of the charge obscured by those front ranks, were still hoisting arrows high so that they fell among the dismounted French.

A maddened horse, blood spurting from a ripped belly, twisted away and charged at the French men-at-arms in the field’s center. Others followed it. Some horsemen, balked by the corpses and by the dying horses to their front, pulled up, and then they were easy targets and the arrows whipped into them, each one striking a horse with the sound of a butcher’s cleaver, and the horses were screaming and men were trying to control them.

Yet still some horses reached the English line.

“Back!” centenars shouted, “back!”

The front ranks of archers stepped backward to leave their stakes facing the enemy. They still shot. Hook had taken a handful of bodkin arrows and he let one fly at less than twenty paces and saw the heavy, oak-weighted point glance off a manat-arm’s armor. He drew again, this time plunging the arrow into the horse’s chest.

Then the charge struck home.

But the riders had their visors down and could see nothing through the small slits or holes, while the horses, wearing their steel chamfrons, were almost as blinkered as the men. The charge struck home, but struck onto the stakes and a horse whimpered pitifully, a stake deep in its rib-shattered chest and blood bubbling from its open mouth. The stallion’s rider flailed his lance at empty air. Arrows drove into him and both man and horse were twisting and screaming. Another destrier made it past the first stakes and somehow saw the second row and veered aside to lose its footing in the slick mud. Horse and rider fell in a crash of steel and ash lance. “Mine!” Thomas Evelgold shouted and ran the few paces forward with his poleax. He swung it once, thumping the lead-weighted hammer onto the man-at-arms’s helmet, then he knelt, hauled up the stunned man’s visor, and ran a knife through an exposed eye. The man-at-arms quivered and was still. The horse tried to struggle to its feet, but Evelgold stunned it with his poleax, then struck again with the ax blade that pierced the chamfron and cracked open the beast’s skull.