Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell

the breach. Instead, as the dawn mist shimmered above the river, the besiegers catapulted the dogs’ corpses into the town. The animals had been gelded and had their throats cut as a warning of the fate that awaited the defiant garrison.

      The feast of Saint Abdus passed, and no relief force arrived, and then Saint Possidius’s feast came and went, and next day was the feast of the seven holy virgins, and Hook prayed to each one, and in the next dawn he sent a plea to Saint Dunstan, the Englishman, on his feast day, and the day after that to Saint Ethelbert, who had been a king of England, and all the time he also prayed to Crispinian and to Crispin, begging their protection, and on the very next day, on the feast of Saint Hospitius, he received his answer.

      When the French, who had been praying to Saint Denis, attacked Soissons.

      The first Hook knew of the assault was the sound of the city’s church bells clanging in frantic haste and jangling disorder. It was dark and he was momentarily confused. He slept on straw at the back of John Wilkinson’s workshop and he woke to the glare of flames leaping high as the old man threw wood on the brazier to provide light. ‘Don’t lie there like a pregnant sow, boy,’ Wilkinson said, ‘they’re here.’

      ‘Mary, mother of God,’ Hook felt the surge of panic like icy water seething through his body.

      ‘I’ve an inkling she don’t care one way or the other,’ Wilkinson said. He was pulling on a mail coat, struggling to get the heavy links over his head. ‘There’s an arrow bag by the door,’ he went on, his voice now muffled by the coat, ‘full of straight ones. Left it for you. Go, boy, kill some bastards.’

      ‘What about you?’ Hook asked. He was tugging on his boots, new boots made by a skilled cobbler of Soissons.

      ‘I’ll catch up with you! String your bow, son, and go!’

      Hook buckled his sword belt, strung his bow, snatched his arrow bag, then took the second bag from beside the door and ran into the tavern yard. He could hear shouting and screams, but where they came from he could not tell. Archers were pouring into the yard and he instinctively followed them towards the new defences behind the breach. The church bells were hammering the night sky with jangling noise. Dogs barked and howled.

      Hook had no armour except for an ancient helmet that Wilkinson had given him and which sat on his head like a bowl. He had a padded jacket that might stop a feeble sword swing, but that was his only protection. Other archers had short mail coats and close-fitting helmets, but they all wore Burgundy’s brief surcoat blazoned with the jagged red cross and Hook saw those liveries lining the new wall that was made of wicker baskets filled with earth. None of the archers was drawing a cord yet, instead they just looked towards the breach that flared with sudden light as Burgundian men-at-arms threw pitch-soaked torches into the gap of the gun-ravaged wall.

      There were close to fifty men-at-arms at the new wall, but no enemy in the breach. Yet the bells still rang frantically to announce a French attack, and Hook swung around to see a glow in the sky above the city’s southern rooftops, a glow that flickered lurid on the cathedral’s tower as evidence that buildings burned somewhere near the Paris gate. Was that where the French attacked? The Paris gate was commanded by Sir Roger Pallaire and defended by the English men-at-arms and Hook wondered, not for the first time, why Sir Roger had not demanded that the English archers join that gate’s garrison.

      Instead the archers waited by the western breach where still no enemy appeared. Smithson, the centenar, was nervous. He kept fingering the silver chain that denoted his rank and glancing towards the glow of the southern fires, then back to the breach. ‘Devil’s turd,’ he said of no one in particular.

      ‘What’s happening?’ an archer demanded.

      ‘How in God’s name would I know?’ Smithson snarled.

      ‘I think they’re already inside the city,’ John Wilkinson said mildly. He had brought a dozen sheaves of spare arrows that he now dropped behind the archers. The sound of screams came from somewhere in the city and a troop of Burgundian crossbowmen ran past Hook, abandoning the breach and heading towards the Paris gate. Some of the men-at-arms followed them.

      ‘If they’re inside the town,’ Smithson said uncertainly, ‘then we should go to the church.’

      ‘Not to the castle?’ a man demanded.

      ‘We go to the church, I think,’ Smithson said, ‘as Sir Roger says. He’s gentry, isn’t he? He must know what he’s doing.’

      ‘Aye, and the Pope lays eggs,’ Wilkinson commented.

      ‘Now?’ a man asked, ‘we go now?’ but Smithson said nothing. He just tugged at the silver chain and looked left and right.

      Hook was staring at the breach. His heart was beating hard, his breathing was shallow and his right leg trembled. ‘Help me, God,’ he prayed, ‘sweet Jesu protect me,’ but he got no comfort from the prayer. All he could think of was that the enemy was in Soissons, or attacking Soissons and he did not know what was happening and he felt vulnerable and helpless. The bells banged inside his head, confusing him. The wide breach was dark except for the feeble flicker of dying flames from the torches, but slowly Hook became aware of other lights moving there, of shifting silver-grey lights, lights like smoke in moonlight or like the ghosts who came to earth on Allhallows Eve. The lights, Hook thought, were beautiful; they were filmy and vaporous in the darkness. He stared, wondering what the glowing shapes were, and then the silver-grey wraiths turned to red and he realised, with a start of fear, that the shifting shapes were men. He was seeing the light of the torches reflected from plate armour. ‘Sergeant!’ he shouted.

      ‘What is it?’ Smithson snapped back.

      ‘The bastards are here!’ Hook called, and so they were. The bastards were coming through the breach. Their plate armour was scoured bright enough to reflect the firelight and they were advancing beneath a banner of blue on which golden lilies blossomed. Their visors were closed and their long swords flashed back the flame-light. They were no longer vaporous, now they resembled men of burning metal, phantoms from the dreams of hell, death coming through the dark to Soissons. Hook could not count them, they were so many.

      ‘Oh my God’s shit,’ Smithson said in panic, ‘stop them!’

      Hook did what he was told. He stepped back to the barricade, plucked an arrow from the linen bag and laid it on the bow’s stave. The fear was suddenly gone, or else had been pushed aside by the certain knowledge of what needed to be done. Hook needed to haul back the bow’s cord.

      Most grown men in the prime of their strength could not pull a war bow’s cord back to the ear. Most men-at-arms, despite being toughened by war and hardened by constant sword exercises, could only draw the hemp cord halfway, but Hook made it look easy. His arm flowed back, his eyes sought a mark for the arrow’s bright head and he did not even think as he released. He was already reaching for the second arrow as the first, a shaft-weighted bodkin, slapped through a breastplate of shining steel and threw the man back onto the French standard-bearer.

      And Hook loosed again, not thinking, only knowing that he had been told to stop this attack. He loosed shaft after shaft. He drew the cord to his right ear and was not aware of the tiny shifts his left hand made to send the white-feathered arrows on their short journey from cord to victim. He was not aware of the deaths he caused or the injuries he gave or of the arrows that glanced off armour to spin uselessly away. Most were not useless. The long bodkin heads could easily punch through armour at this close range and Hook was stronger than most archers, who were stronger than most men, and his bow was heavy. John Wilkinson, when he had first met Hook, had drawn the younger man’s bow and failed to get the cord past his chin, and he had given Hook a glance of respect, and now that long, thick-bellied bow cut from the trunk of a yew in far-off Savoy, was sending death through the bell-ringing dark, except that Hook was only seeing the enemy who came across the breach where the guttering torches burned, and he did not notice the dark floods of men who surged at either edge of the wall’s gap and who were already tugging at the wicker baskets. Then part of the barricade collapsed and the noise made Hook turn to see that he was the only archer left at the defences.