Warlord(144)

We gathered up our dead and wounded and retreated to the ring of forts around Gisors: Dangu, Courcelles, Sérifontaine and Boury. We had captured almost a hundred French noblemen and knights that day – Mercadier had taken thirty himself. And I cursed my unthinking naivety in not securing even one enemy captive, a rich one that would have made my fortune. My part in the battle had been a series of reckless, desperate, almost suicidal attacks, with no time for the protocols of war: and when poor Shaitan had been wounded and unable to bear me any further, I had no way of joining in the orgy of prisoner-taking before the fallen bridge. Robin, with the Locksley men’s help, had managed to take the surrender of a dozen men of various ranks. And when I met him in the courtyard of Dangu Castle, shortly after dusk, he had a deeply satisfied grin carved across his lean, handsome face.

‘Eight knights, three barons and a count,’ he said to me triumphantly by way of greeting, his silver eyes shining in the light of the castle torches. ‘They have all given me their parole. And the count is uncommonly rich – a cousin of King Philip’s, no less. What a marvellous day’s catch!’

‘Congratulations!’ I said, trying to be happy for him.

He looked closely at me: ‘No luck, Alan?’

‘Shaitan was injured, and I had to break off the pursuit,’ I admitted. I was feeling deflated; stricken once again with my familiar post-battle melancholy.

‘How awful for you; I am so sorry.’ Robin’s expression was the soul of compassion itself; Our Lord Jesus Christ – our Saviour himself – could not have bettered it.

‘Well, we won the battle,’ I said, struggling to sound cheerful. ‘And we are both still hale and mostly whole.’ I had discovered after the battle that I had a shallow cut below my cheekbone, and absolutely no recollection of how I had come by that wound.

‘Yes, there is that, I suppose,’ Robin said doubtfully. ‘Alan – I know you must be bitterly disappointed, but there will be other opportunities to take prisoners, I’m sure of it. Now, if you will excuse me, I must see to the men.’ And he gripped my shoulder for a moment and turned away.



I nodded and walked away to roust out Thomas, who was sleeping in one of the store sheds. I was thinking of what there might be for our supper when the quiet of the night was interrupted by a terrible howl of pain, followed by a gust of boozy laughter. It was coming from a side of the castle courtyard near the stables, an area that I had been deliberately ignoring, filled as it was with a drunken squad of Mercadier’s routiers.

That terrible scream caused me to swing around and observe what was occurring in that particular dark corner of Hell, and I thank the Good Lord that I did.

About thirty of Mercadier’s men – their scarred captain was absent – were grouped around a dozen of the poorer French knights, bound hand and foot, who had been taken captive that day. Some of the knights were weeping, others praying, some just sat stoically, grim-faced and silent. There was a large wooden box about three feet high in the centre of the group, which the men had been using as a kind of table for their dice games earlier that evening. And I saw that there was a man stretched across it – a French knight, I guessed, though he had been stripped of his armour and most of his clothes. His back was to the box, his body arched over it, his eyes pointing heavenwards: what was left of them. As I looked, a routier, was lifting a pair of iron pincers holding a large red-hot coal from the brazier away from his face. The knight was whimpering from the pain, and I could see a stream of viscous fluid running down his cheek, and it was clear to me that he had been blinded in both eyes only moments before.

As I looked on, I saw the other routiers guffawing with laughter as they cut the poor man loose and shoved him into a corner against the wall, one routier hurling a wine-soaked cloth after him to allow him to bind up his burnt face. Then another French knight, this one fighting like a madman, was wrestled by a dozen of Mercadier’s cut-throats down on to the table. He was secured in a few efficient moments and, as the man jerked his body against the ropes frantically and whipped his head left and right, I saw with a horrible, sickening sense of despair that it was Roland d’Alle.

He caught my eye, stopped his wild thrashing and fixed his terrified gaze on mine in mute appeal, but I was already striding over to the mercenaries, my hand on my sword hilt.

‘Hold hard,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘What does it look like … Sir Knight?’ said the man by the brazier, and I realized that I recognized him from that long ago day when he and his mates had held Brother Dominic in their grasp, and Hanno had shot their red-haired friend stone dead with the crossbow bolt. I would have given my right arm, at that moment, to have Hanno, shaven-headed, fully armed and growling by my side.