Estienne crouched in the shadows as, around him, Falkes and the other crossbowmen waited, still as stone, barely daring to breathe. The air was thick with anticipation, undercut by the reek of smoke that clung to the city.
Ahead, the western postern gate stood, small and insignificant, but it might well be their way to turn this siege in their favour. Guarding it was one lone figure – a young man, barely more than a boy, his face pale beneath the rim of his steel cap. He clutched a spear in white-knuckled hands, gaze darting northward, a rabbit scenting the wind for foxes.
In the distance, the din raged. The relentless clash of ram against wood carried on the air, Earl Ranulf of Chester hurling his might at the northern gate in a bid to draw the enemy’s eye. All so Estienne and the others could slip in unseen, a blade between the ribs of their unsuspecting foe.
Beside him, Falkes shifted, the big knight a shadow given form. Estienne watched as he slid forward, uncoiling from the undergrowth. The young guard never even had time to cry out. One moment he was standing, the next he was in the grip of the knife-wielding Falkes, hands scrabbling at the ruin of his throat, his life spraying out in a hot gush. The knight let the body slump to the ground and turned to the others, teeth flashing in a wolf’s grin, as he jerked his head toward the postern. Estienne’s hands tightened on his crossbow as he moved to the entrance.
Falkes hammered on the door, the boom of his mailed fist echoing. For a moment, nothing. Then a rattle of iron, the groan of hinges, and the postern yawned open. Estienne readied himself as Falkes ducked inside.
They moved like ghosts across the worn stone. Estienne followed close on Falkes’s heels, heart lodged in his throat as they wound their way up, up, toward the battlements. A flicker of movement in a side passage made Estienne start, but it was no threat that greeted them. An old woman stood flanked by a pair of men-at-arms, her face lined and stern, silver hair caught back in a braid. She watched them pass, and Estienne had the uncanny sense she was taking their measure, weighing their worth in a glance. Nicola de la Haye. The lady of Lincoln, unbroken by the siege that had assailed her for so long now.
Then they were past, taking those last few steps to the battlement. The wind gusted, cold and cutting, as Estienne reached the top. He moved to the parapet, peering out, and below the enemy teemed. Armoured knights milled, horses stamping and snorting. They looked almost like ants from this vantage. Ants with swords and lances, hungering for blood.
All along the wall, the crossbowmen took up positions. As one, they hooked bowstrings to spanning belts, stood in the stirrups and pulled back to notch their bowstrings. Then they slotted quarrels into grooves. Estienne unslung his own bow, hands moving in a deft long-practised manoeuvre. He could feel the thrum of anticipation building, the indrawn breath before the hammer stroke.
Falkes raised a hand, as he watched those knights. Estienne sighted down the stock, the wood cool against his cheek. Below, a mass of men and horses, unaware of what was to rain down. Estienne lined up the shot, time stretching out between one heartbeat and the next.
Falkes’s hand dropped.
As one, the crossbows thrummed. A deadly volley, punching down into the massed ranks below. Horses screamed, lashing out with iron-shod hooves. Men tumbled, shafts standing out from mail. Confusion rippled through the besiegers, but Estienne was already working his crossbow, slotting another bolt, sighting on another rampant horse and rider…
* * *
Ilbert cursed, wrenching brutally on the reins as his destrier shied and grunted. All around him, horses reared and bucked, eyes rolling in terror as crossbow bolts rained down like a torrent. They punched through mail, driving men from their saddles to sprawl in the muck.
A knight just to Ilbert’s left took a bolt to the eye, his shriek abruptly silenced as he toppled, blood gushing down his face. His horse bolted, and Ilbert barely wrenched his mount aside in time.
‘Get to cover,’ a voice bellowed. ‘Shields up.’
But the cry was lost in the tumult as the crack of bolts skipped off stone, the raging of horses, the screams of the wounded. The massed ranks began to buckle, knights circling in confusion, cursing, shouting, all discipline fled. It was bedlam, a seething cauldron of terror and rage.
And then, rising above the din, the groan of tortured timbers. The boom of a great gate crashing open. Ilbert twisted in his saddle in time to see the northern gate yawn wide, vomiting forth a tide of steel. They poured through the gap, streaming into the city in a flood – rats swarming from a stirred nest. The king’s loyal knights.
The French line buckled, thrown back on its heels by the sudden fury of the attack, horses colliding, men tangling. Ilbert glimpsed Thomas of Perche trying to rally his men, his raised shield bearing red chevrons on white, a beacon in the heart of the confusion.
Ilbert gritted his teeth, grasping his reins. No more dancing. No more twitching helplessly under sniping bolts. With a roar, he couched his lance and spurred forward into the fray, hooves clacking on cobbles. He smashed into the royalist press, the crack of his lance a sweet song, the crunch of bones and screaming of men the only music he could ever wish to hear.
Dropping the broken weapon, he wrenched his blade free, teeth bared in a snarl, in the thick of it now. An enemy knight loomed before him, sword hacking. Ilbert bellowed his challenge, surging to meet him in a clash of steel on steel.
He lashed out, feeling the impact of sword on helm, hearing the metallic thrum and the knight before him swayed, leaning back in his saddle, as his horse lurched by.
Fighting for breath, Ilbert cast about, seeking a new foe to challenge. All around, battle raged – the clash of swords, the screams of the dying – but there was a savage joy singing in Ilbert’s blood now, drowning out all caution, all fear.
‘To me!’ The cry rang out over the clamour, raw-throated and fierce. ‘Rally, for Prince Louis. Rally for the Lion of France!’
Ilbert twisted to see Thomas of Perche, still mounted, sword thrust to the sky. Men were already streaming to him, steel bright in their fists, prepared to follow their lord into hell’s embrace. Ilbert spurred towards him, a fierce grin stretching his face. This would be a charge for the ages. A death ride to make the bards sing his name for generations. He opened his mouth, a cry building in his throat, a roar to bring these royalist scum to their knees…
Ilbert watched in horror as a sword lanced through the eye slit of Thomas’s helm and his white surcoat was drowned in the red wash of his blood. The sword wrenched free, and Thomas folded in his saddle before falling to crumple beneath the stamping hooves.
No. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
The line fractured, men fighting now in knots and clumps, robbed of leadership, of direction. But there, in the thick of them, the man whose presence made Ilbert’s gorge rise, red and bloody.
Guillaume Marshal, helm lost, teeth bared. His sword rose and fell with a butcher’s efficiency, no artistry, no glory, just cold-blooded slaughter. Ilbert watched as he slammed his battered shield into a mercenary’s face, the man falling with a scream. More animal than man in his savagery. So unlike the loyal fool Ilbert had once thought he’d known.
Red rage seared across his vision as he watched the man he had called brother. A traitor. A turncoat who would spit on his own if he thought he would reap benefit.
Ilbert gathered himself, heedless of the screams, the clash of battle, his focus on naught but the man before him. Then he charged, a roar of pure hate tearing from his throat, sword drawn back for the killing blow…
* * *
‘With me, you dogs of war,’ Falkes bellowed as he led them from the castle.
Estienne stumbled after him, through the open gate, and into hell.
Screams rent the air, the clash of metal, the roar. Men grappled and cursed, writhing like animals in the mud of the street. Blood ran slick, howls echoed, and rising over it all, the pale facade of the cathedral. It loomed above the slaughter, its spires clawing at the clouds, such beauty and horror that should never have been allowed to meet.
But he had no time for such musings as the enemy surged towards him, and he fell into the melee, knife rising, a wordless snarl tearing from his throat as he cut and thrust. Estienne lost himself to it, to the savage drumbeat of battle. Dimly he was aware of Falkes at his side, the big knight laughing like a fiend as he swung his sword in great, cleaving arcs. Of the other crossbowmen, they were a pack of lean and hungry hounds harrying the Frenchmen’s flanks. The enemy was already falling back, stumbling over their own dead in their haste to disengage and retreat downhill, to the south.
A flicker of movement in the corner of Estienne’s eye. He turned, expecting a fresh wave of enemies, but instead saw two knights, circling one another on horseback, trading blows with a savage grace that belied the crude brutality surrounding them. One wore a surcoat bearing the wyvern of FitzDane; the other was proud in the livery of Marshal.
Ilbert and Guillaume. Tooth and claw, striving for the kill.
Even as Estienne watched, Ilbert drove forward. His destrier crashed into Guillaume’s with bone-shaking force. Guillaume was knocked from the saddle and flung to the cobbles in a clatter of mail. His horse screamed and bolted, an arrow protruding from its haunch. Riderless, it ploughed into the ranks of the fleeing mercenaries, kicking and biting.
Guillaume foundered on his back, reaching for a sword too far from his grasp. Ilbert leapt from his saddle, striding forward to stand above him, his own blade reflecting sickly light through the blood-spatter that obscured its sheen. Ready to thrust down. To end Guillaume Marshal as he lay helpless.
Estienne started forward, a surge of desperation lending wings to his heels as he threw himself towards the two men – Ilbert, towering over Guillaume’s prone form, sword poised for the killing blow. Guillaume, scrabbling for a blade that wasn’t there, fingers churning the muck.
Estienne snatched up a fallen sword and closed that last, yawning gap in a heartbeat.
Ilbert’s weapon flashed down.
Estienne’s rose to meet it.
The blades met with a shriek, the killing blow halted.
‘Fucking whoreson!’ Ilbert spat.
Then he was on Estienne in a whirlwind of steel. A storm of hacks and cuts, of parries and counters. Estienne met him blow for blow, the song of sword on sword rising to a deafening tumult.
He moved on instinct, all Ilbert’s focused hate and savagery against Estienne’s desperate, frenzied defiance.
‘I’ll cut you to bloody rags.’ Ilbert’s voice was thick with hate, the words snarled between the crash and ring of steel.
Estienne saved his breath for the fight, each blow more desperate, every one of Ilbert’s strikes threatening to breach his defence.
And then, distant but distinct, the blare of a trumpet. The call to retreat, high and piercing. A moment of distraction and Estienne seized his chance, stepping into Ilbert’s guard and smashing his sword pommel hard into the side of his helm.
Ilbert reeled back, spitting curses. Estienne raised his blade, ready to end it, but before he could land the killing stroke, Ilbert was turning, fleeing with the rest of the French rabble.
‘This isn’t over, Wace,’ he shouted over his shoulder, voice thick with malice. ‘Next time, I will tear out your guts!’
And then he was swept up in the tide of bodies flooding towards the southern gate. Estienne watched him go, sword suddenly boulder-heavy in his grip…
* * *
Ilbert ran, the taste of blood filling his mouth.
All around him, men fled like rats from a flooded nest, throwing down arms and shields, all thoughts of valour and glory left trampled as they scrambled to save their own skins. The French, so proud and peerless, stripped of dignity and driven before the royalists like curs.
Disgust welled thick and oily in Ilbert’s throat. At them, at himself. He should be standing fast, blade in hand, spitting defiance to his last breath, but the tide of bodies was inexorable, carrying him toward the southern gate. And there, the final indignity. The square was packed tight as a barrel of fish, men crammed shoulder to shoulder, the reek of sweat and fear rising.
Horses screamed, lashing out in the confined space, and men cried out as iron-shod hooves found flesh. The gate loomed, dark and narrow, and bodies pressed through it in a writhing mass. Too small. It was too damned small to pass so many so swiftly.
Ilbert snarled, elbowing his way forward through the crush. Men piled up at the gate, clawing and trampling in their desperation to squeeze through that too-narrow gap.
An unholy din filled the air – curses, moans, desperate cries. Panic hung thick enough to choke on, like smoke from burning pitch, but still Ilbert muscled forward, heedless of who he trod underfoot, seeing only open road and escape.
The wind hit him like a slap when he finally broke free. The stink of battle and cowardice clung to him, a foul perfume, and his fingers cramped white-knuckled on the haft of his sullied sword. He staggered, gagging for breath.
Behind, Lincoln burned. The flames of ambition and rebellion, doused in royalist piss. The taste of failure rose up to coat his tongue. How had it come to this? How had it all turned to ash?
But beneath the humiliation, hope glowed forge-hot behind his ribs. The rebellion was not done yet. This was just a battle lost. He would return to Prince Louis’ side and make everyone, loyal to the child-king, pay in blood… starting with Estienne Wace.
‘You’re a dead man, whoreson.’
The vow tasted like iron, and Ilbert relished it. He’d put the fucking mongrel down. Like he should have done the first time Wace darkened William Marshal’s door…
* * *
The world seemed oddly muted after the din of battle. A great, ringing silence broken only by the crackle of flames and the low groans of the wounded. Estienne stood amidst the ruins of slaughter, the mud and cobbles churned to a red slurry.
A grunt, the scrape of metal on stone, and he turned to see Guillaume struggling to rise. His surcoat was torn and bloodied, but he was alive. Estienne slipped an arm about his shoulders.
‘Easy,’ he murmured, as Guillaume leaned into him with a hiss. ‘I have you.’
Guillaume’s face was sheened with sweat, but his eyes were bright as they met Estienne’s, something perilously close to gratitude lurking in their grey depths.
‘You saved my life, squire,’ he said simply.
Estienne found it difficult to acknowledge the fact, modesty or fatigue staying his answer. Instead he helped Guillaume north, through streets strewn with the dead and dying. Past the looming edifice of the cathedral, its pale stone smeared with soot. The keep rose proud opposite, the three-lion banner of King Henry fluttering in the wind from its highest tower. And in between both, the man who had won this victory.
William Marshal sat upon his destrier like a graven idol, hewn from granite. He watched as Estienne and Guillaume approached.
‘You are both well?’ His voice was roughened from a day of shouted commands.
‘We are, Father.’ Guillaume bowed his head as best he could manage.
‘Good.’
No warmth, not even for his son saved from the brink of death. Estienne shifted, chafing under that measuring gaze, but Marshal had already turned away, wheeling his destrier to survey the captured city.
Around them, the rats began to appear from their hidey-holes, the people of Lincoln creeping into the sun now the French dogs had been driven out. But Estienne could see that already looting had begun. Men loyal to the king, driven on by zeal if not loyalty, were now making ready to claim their just rewards.
For liberated Lincoln, the coming night would be a long one.