LOWER BAILEY, NOTTINGHAM CASTLE
WEDNESDAY, 25TH DAY OF MARCH
“NO, THANK YOU!” DAVID shouted over the castle walls.
But the French army still approached.
“It was worth a shot,” he said, and absently fingered the feathers of his arrows. It was unlike him to display such amateur behavior—Arthur had seen his friend scold other men for exactly such a thing. “Are your arrows still in your quiver?” David had asked one of the Red Lions when they’d been practicing at their archery. “Yes? Then stop touching them. They’ll be there still if you need them.”
But they’d never done this before. They’d never seen this. It was as if the world itself had ended, it was so impossible to imagine life ever being normal again. The earth was moving, rolling, screaming. The French army was as wide as the goddamned horizon, its noise was more than anything that could even count as sound. Arthur felt it in his bones, in his heart, it pounded through him like a sudden crack of thunder, except it never ended, never settled.
They stood on the battlement of the lower bailey, as did every other competent archer in the castle, as did every other half-competent archer, as did every other incompetent slug who could be made to hold a bow, as did a few other people even more useless like Arthur himself. They stood shoulder to shoulder, Nottingham Guardsmen next to soldiers from Gloucester and Worcester, next to villagefolk and baileyfolk, next to Will Scarlet’s men, next to liars like himself and David. Some had their own bows, some had those from the castle armory, some had nothing. David had his own personal quiver slung at his legs, while most relied on barrels or page boys prepared to run across the battlements and replenish any bowman who ran low.
And the French army still approached.
They hadn’t slept, the French had seen to that. Horns had blasted all through the night. “But that means they didn’t sleep, either, right?” Arthur asked his friend. “That had to hurt them as much as us, right?”
David squinted back at him. “Is that … is that supposed to change our strategy in some way?”
“I don’t know,” Arthur answered, because he didn’t know anything anymore. “Sure. You can shoot your arrows into the ground, so that if they try to lie down and fall asleep they’ll be very uncomfortable.”
“I think I’ll aim for their bodies,” David replied without humor.
Arthur didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say, if there was anything at all that was expected of people in circumstances like this aside from waiting and dying. He wiped the sweat from his brow only to find something slick and oily. His wound was weeping again.
“That’s not a good color,” David said, sparing him a glance.
Arthur smelled his fingers and wished he hadn’t. Admittedly, he felt as if he had a bit of a fever, too. “Not the top of the day’s worries.”
Arthur’s fault, that they were here. He’d convinced Will to stay and fight, argued that the three of them were somehow special, that they were the sort of people others looked up to. But now he knew how profoundly wrong he was. They were just three bodies, three of a thousand who would die, meaninglessly, and soon. They weren’t helping anyone by being here—except the French, who could gloat over three bodies more.
“Will was right, we should’ve left,” he whispered, watching the army collide with the city walls. The decision had been made to abandon the defense of the city. Nottingham’s perimeter was too long, impossible to defend against an army of this size. Instead Prince John commanded them to make their stand at the castle, which was far more defensible. If there was anyone still left guarding the city gates, they had no effect. The unfathomable mob of the French army barely flinched as it passed into the city, as if the walls weren’t even there—there was only the slightest sense of bottlenecking before they were in the streets.
For some reason, Arthur thought the streets would slow them. He’d thought the people of the city would ambush the army, bursting from their doors and windows with knives and clubs, beating the invaders senseless from the advantage of their close quarters. He’d wanted to see the throng stall and swell, recoiling in horror, not knowing how to react to a populace that refused to be overridden. At least a slight delay, at least slow them down. At least tell the French that they meant not to lie on their backs and spread their legs.
But the army flowed through the streets and alleys like melted butter—if anything, their approach went faster, rushing through the seemingly abandoned city of Nottingham.
“Why won’t they defend themselves?” he asked aloud. “Why are we fighting if they won’t fight for themselves?”
What had happened? Why was Arthur left to defend this city when those who lived here were cowering in their homes? What the fuck was he doing here?
Panic grabbed him. He was trapped. There was no getting out of the castle now, he hadn’t realized it until this moment, there was no last-minute escape anymore, there was no chance of using Will’s rope ladder now, nothing but the ground beneath him tilting steeper and steeper still—steeper until the beast, war.
He reeled, Guardsmen all around him. These people … why was he beside them now? Only a few months ago they’d hunted him, captured him, put him on his knees—he’d watched silently as Elena had died. Some of those men were with him now. They weren’t going to defend him, not if he was injured, they didn’t care about him …
Behind him, down in the bailey, a mob of fucking civilians. Will Scarlet, leading his men in training exercises, making them repeat the same moves, even now, stepping in formation. The same practices that Robin of Locksley had taught them, now applied to commonfolk who’d never swung a sword before. Will barked out numbers and orders, keeping them alert, sharp. It was better than waiting on edge, Will had explained—better than letting the dread seep into their muscles and freeze them. If they could keep moving, keep practicing up until the very moment the army broke through the walls, then they’d hardly notice the difference between when they were practicing and when they were dying.
Arthur had convinced them all to stay.
The rest of the Nottingham Guard was behind them—behind them.
“Oh God.” His voice crept out of his lips. “We’re all going to die.”
Thunder, thunder, down the streets it pounded, beating, mauling, smashing the air into pieces and back again, thunder thunder, fuck the king and fuck the prince and fuck the city, thunder thunder.
Out beyond the castle, in the empty expanse between the stone curtain wall and the first of the city’s buildings, the army arrived at the foot of the castle. Massive tower shields formed a front line, red crosses and blue stars and green fields and mud and spears, horns, calling, screaming, and in their middle a cluster of raised banners, red fields with golden lions, their standards bursting up where the noise was loudest, until it bulged out to the front of the lines like a bubble, where paraded a man mounted on a horse with a warcrown and mail, flanked by an entourage.
“There is all the proof you need!” called out a man who’d been given command of this legion of archers, someone important or other from Worcester, but Arthur couldn’t remember his name now. Hell, Arthur could scarcely remember his own name. The commander screamed, “They parade an impostor before us dressed as a king, as if we are foolish enough to bow down! Are we to believe the real King would march to the front line? Perhaps in France where they have no wit at all, but this is England! This is Nottingham! Ten crowns to the first man who can feather that French asshole with English plu—”
David released his arrow before the man finished, and a shocked hush followed its flight. The army was still far, almost too far for any bow to reach, but David carried a strong yew longbow and his arms had spent their life preparing for a distance shot such as this. The arrow flew high and straight, perhaps unnoticed by the French, its arc smooth and perfect and then cut down to slice through the morning air.
Though he did not hit the Frenchman pretending to be king, his arrow found the neck of a soldier nearby, who spasmed and fell. Around him, the French army recoiled and pulled back, surely having thought they were still too far away to be struck.
David’s face—the man who could find laughter in everything, who was ever the light that kept Arthur fighting—was as stone serious as he’d ever been. There was no drop of doubt in his harsh lines, no regret, just a grim determination that put Arthur’s earlier panic to shame.
The Frenchman across the expanse, stumbling down to the ground in blood, that was David’s first kill.
The Worcester captain did not call Loose but Arthur—and every other proud Englishman alive—screamed bloody hellfire, and the sky went dark with English arrows.