LVIII
GISBURNE BARELY KNEW what happened on the first pass. He had participated in cavalry charges before, and the intensity of that experience was unlike anything he had ever known. The shouting, the screaming, the ground shaking under hooves, the sudden jarring, ear-splitting impact of wood and steel and flesh—like a wave crashing upon a shore; like being the wave, and having the roar rise up all around you, through you.
But this... this was like striking at a dandelion with an axe.
That they were not an army, not used to battle, was immediately apparent. With nowhere to run, experienced men would have held their ground—you could possibly dodge a lance if you knew how, but only if you could see it coming. These men ran blindly in every direction. They went straight under the hooves of the knights’ destriers, or were speared in the side or the back, or felled by the attackers’ swords. Barely any had armour; not more than one in ten any kind of helmet.
In the mayhem, a few of the knights’ horses stumbled, throwing or crushing their riders, but for the most part they trampled the enemy like grass.
Every one of them seemed to evade Gisburne’s lance point. Partly it was the sheer chaos, but also his own reluctance; the few terrified men who did cross his path he simply could not bring himself to spear.
And then it was over, and he was on the far side of them. He wheeled about, a line of knights turning with him like a great scythe blade.
The second pass was different. Looking around for his fellows and seeing none, he spied a big, stocky man who had also spotted him, and who was not running. David of Doncaster, one of Hood’s most dedicated men. Gisburne urged Nyght on, and levelled his lance.
Doncaster stood firm, sword in hand, a great roar in his throat. He meant to sidestep the point, Gisburne supposed, and slash at either Gisburne or his horse as they passed, using their own momentum against them.
And then it happened.
A lance point—wavering at the end of ten feet of ash—is not easily moved with accuracy when couched, and if you know its limits and are quick enough, you can dodge it. Clearly, Doncaster thought he’d done so. So, for that matter, did Gisburne. But in the closing moment he felt something slam into Nyght’s left flank. One of Hood’s men had apparently run headlong into his horse’s side; whether he survived, Gisburne was never to know.
The stallion stayed true to his course, but for a instant the impact nudged him to the right. It can only have been inches, but in that moment, Doncaster’s fate was sealed.
Gisburne felt his lance jolt and twist down, and as it met solid resistance it sheared, the mid-section spinning in the air. A moment later, all was far behind him.
Gisburne heard rather than saw the effect upon his target.
The point had hit Doncaster in the open mouth, bringing his great roar—and his life—to an abrupt, shuddering end. When Gisburne risked a look back, he saw the big man—surely dead but still somehow staggering—the tip of the broken lance stuck through the back of his head, the bunched up banner of the King rammed in his mouth. He tipped backwards, the protruding lance caught the ground, and as he fell it twisted his head with an audible crack.
Gisburne threw away the splintered length of ash and drew Irontongue.
Hood’s men’s bows had been unstrung, and nearly all of them still were—because nocking the string meant standing still, and that almost none of them were prepared to do. But a few had.
As Gisburne wheeled around for a third pass, he saw a half-dozen or so crouched in a tight formation, now loosing swift volleys of arrows—not random, but concentrating on specific targets. Three knights were felled as Gisburne watched; a fourth stayed in his saddle, his shield like a pin cushion—but they shifted their attention to his horse. It fell, the knight rolled clear—apparently unharmed by the fall—but then three of Hood’s men were on him, stabbing and kicking.
One gripped the stricken knight’s helm and tore free. That should have been the end of him—Gisburne was still a good thirty yards away—but the moment the helm was off, the three men recoiled in horror. One scrabbled backwards, straight under the hooves of a riderless horse, and the other two hesitated, still horrified, until the leper knight staggered back to his feet, drew his sword and thrust it straight through the taller man’s chest. The last of the assailants turned to run, but metal flashed in the air and the man dropped like a stone, Asif’s chakkar embedded in his face.
A cry of “Lepers!” went up among the scattering horde—and even those who were not already terrified gave it up as a lost cause. All looked to their own preservation now—and that was their undoing. The Knights of St Lazarus cut them down as they ran, exacting revenge for their fallen comrades.
Gisburne, meanwhile, turned his attention back to the group of archers, who were now starting to disperse. At their head, Gisburne saw, was Gilbert White Hand—second only to Hood as an archer, and without doubt the one who had been directing the volleys with such deadly effect. Gisburne caught up with the first of them, clouting him about the head with Irontongue’s blade. The man fell with a cry like a stabbed pig, and White Hand turned.
The others were too intent on fleeing to put arrow to string, but not White Hand. He reached for an arrow shaft, and as he did so Gisburne leaped from his horse and snatched up the fallen man’s bow. He was crucial seconds behind the enemy archer, but then Tancred—his helmet gone, his skull face grinning like something out of Hell—rode from nowhere, sword whirling. White Hand, looking up in horror, wavered for an instant—and in that moment Gisburne’s arrow sank into his chest from barely ten yards.
They were the last to stand their ground. The battle was over, at least for now. But there were faces Gisburne had not yet seen. He turned this way and that, scanning a field littered with outlaw dead, and then he saw them.
At the very edge of the trees, heading north-west at a run, was a small, tight-knit group: the monk Took, Scarlet, Arthur a Bland, Will of Stuteley and a half-dozen others—and with them, a head higher than the rest, was Hood. As Gisburne watched, he turned and looked right at him. As if unmoved by the slaughter of his men, he smiled and gave a cheerful wave.
Then he turned, and the group plunged back into the forest, back towards their village.