LOWER BAILEY, NOTTINGHAM CASTLE
“GO, GO, GO, GO!” Arthur led the men at a crouch as long as seemed reasonable, then they broke into a run. Back onto the battlements from which they’d previously retreated. The fighting was now outside the curtain wall—both the mounted Nottingham Guardsmen and the bulk of Will Scarlet’s baileyfolk had streamed out the front gates to bring the battle to the French line. This distraction had successfully slowed the stream of soldiers climbing the siege ladders, and gave the archers a chance to reclaim ground. Arthur was a shit shot with a bow, but when the French were shoulder to shoulder as they were, it didn’t take much skill to find a fucking target.
“Down!” he yelled again, and the eight Guardsmen ahead of them took a knee. They each held a tall shield that they angled as they knelt, giving the archers a few perfect seconds to shoot over their heads. Arthur let his arrow fly and knew it sailed shy to the right of their target, but he pulled another arrow and compensated to the left. His middle fingers were bleeding from the hemp cord, and he silently reminded himself to never make fun of David’s fancy archery glove again. As soon as the second wave of arrows had flown, he screamed for the shield men again, who raised their defense and ran another dozen paces forward.
“Pull with both your arms,” David said, beside him, hunching his head until their next opportunity.
Arthur stared at his friend until those words made sense, which was never.
“You’re just holding your bow out with your left hand,” David explained, “and pulling the string with your right.”
“That’s how you shoot a fucking bow!” He couldn’t believe David thought this was the proper time for a lesson in archery finesse.
“But your right arm is tiring, isn’t it?”
“My whole body is fucking tiring!”
“Start with your bow at the center of your body,” he demonstrated as best he could, given that they were shuffling behind a rampaging shield line, “and push it forward with your left just as much as you’re pulling back with your right. Don’t shoot this time, watch me.”
“Down!” Arthur would have yelled either way, but Arthur knelt along with the shield men and watched David as the arrows flew. He loosed three arrows in the time it’d taken Arthur to do two, and still had enough time to flash him a reassuring face between each one, showing him his proper bow placement.
“Do you see the difference?” David asked when the shields went up again, and they started nudging forward.
“No,” Arthur said, honestly. It looked exactly like every other damned person who’d ever shot an arrow, excepting David’s smug little face.
“It’ll keep your aim in line,” he continued. “Right now you’re yanking the string back and missing your target.”
“Fucking hell.” He shook his head. How David was able to keep track of Arthur’s form during the midst of this madness was so far beyond him. “I thought you said you’d never killed anyone before!”
What rippled beneath his friend’s skin had no humor. “Well, I’ve quick become an expert.”
When the shields went down again Arthur stood and tried this new technique, giving his muscles equal weight as if he were tearing a giant wishbone in two. The end result was an arrow that sprung far to his left and down into the bailey—thankfully finding nothing but mud, but Arthur nearly exploded with anger. “I’m doing it my way!” He pulled another arrow and flung it into the dwindling group of Frenchmen. He felt a painful searing slice in his fingertips as this arrow too flew wide, and he cursed every damned thing that’d ever been bold enough to bother existing in his path. He was useless up here. He needed a sword and a Frenchman close enough to stab with it.
“We’ve got this covered.” David nudged him away. “Get back down to Will.”
“Henry,” Arthur corrected him.
“Go!”
He clambered backward, looking down into the bailey in search of Will Scarlet. He hadn’t left the castle with the rest of the baileyfolk—frankly, Arthur wasn’t sure that was even part of Will’s plan at all. But when the castle gates opened for the first time in a month, those baileyfolk had seized the opportunity to fight their way out. He wondered how many even engaged the French at all, or if they fled south down the castle walls until they ran out of army to fight and could escape, finally, back into the city. Find their families. If they still lived.
Wherever they’d gone, the tactic had worked. As the cranes grappled a few more siege ladders up and over the walls, the French had fewer opportunities to reclimb onto the battlements. It took twenty men and women below to spin the turncocks, even with the tall wooden fulcrum arms they’d built to make it easier. If the curtain wall had been any higher, then it might not have been possible at all. But there were already a dozen stolen French ladders cluttering up the bailey, and it didn’t seem that the invaders had built many more than they’d used on their first wave.
Arthur practically ran down the open stone staircase into the bailey. The enemy that had already made it below was grouped in one massive cluster on the north end now, held in place by the Worcester garrison, but Arthur could see they were struggling to contain them. He spotted a heavy spiked mace lying on the ground between him and that throng, and felt a burst of dark joy. David may be good with arrows, but Arthur—Arthur was good at clobbering things. Swords were nice but they required such … aim. But a mace, all it wanted was to smash things to pulp, and Arthur very coincidentally wanted the exact same thing.
It was surprising how quickly his senses—and humor—had returned to him, once the tide of battle had changed. The first few hours had been like nothing he’d ever experienced. Pure blistering white fear had turned his bones into fire, and when the French topped the walls and slowly started gaining ground he’d been overcome with a singular clarity of action that had been intoxicating. Men were killed all around him at times, but not Arthur. Perhaps he started to believe in his own words, that the three of them were indeed special in this rabble, but it prompted him to lose himself in the mania of it all—something like the fabled euphoria of a long-distance runner, where time sped by and blurred together and his muscles could not tire. It was hard to tell how long that lasted, but now that the French were being beaten back, he felt the slow, cold normality sink in, which made the world all the easier to laugh at. In normal speed, Arthur looked at the throng of enemy soldiers and knew he just had to smash his mace into each of their heads, and fuck all if that wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever been asked to do.
“Arthur!” came a voice, and he was quickly joined by Will Scarlet, the red paint on his face marred with sludge and blood. He carried a tower shield with a red cross on it, scarred with deep axe gouges. It was nearly as tall as he was.
“Perfect,” Arthur said, waving Will closer. “Let’s do this together. Make room for me, I swing, then fall back. Over and over until they’re dead.”
Will made a couple of quick pointed breaths. “All of them?”
“Do you think we should keep a few alive?”
“No, you’re right.” Scarlet smiled. “All of them.”
They ran into the line where it was thinnest, Will pounding forward hidden entirely by the shield, pushing against the first man he could find, then turning into a slim profile. Arthur filled the gap, wheeled the heavy mace up and down, and smashed a man’s helmet in, bursting blood out the front of his crushed skull. Will closed the shield and backed up.
They could save Nottingham, the three of them. They’d united the Guard and the baileyfolk. They’d negotiated for the release of the prisoners who had joined the fray. The defenders of the castle were three times what they would’ve been without them. Let the prince and his men stay in the baileys above. He laughed, swung, killed, retreated. Let them look down at the real heroes here. Smash, skull, gore, meat. Captain of the Guard, Arthur a Bland. Swing, pound, bone, crack. Bend the knee, Sir Arthur a Bland, Sir Arthur of Nottingham. Black, crunch, pulp, pop! Prince Arthur! King Arthur! Here’s your God, Tuck, here’s the God you’ll never meet, a God of death, a God of Gods!
Around him, the screams, the screams, the screams of victory.
The French were dead, only a pile of bodies, moaning and begging for mercy, which they would not find. Nottingham Guard next to Red Lion next to poorfolk next to nobleman all there, raising their weapons, roaring, roaring.
He turned his attention up to the battlements, and found the archers there rejoicing, too. He spotted David—always easy to find in a crowd, thanks to his height and golden locks—who raised his bow in victory. They waved at each other, and Arthur laughed that he was so damned lucky to be alive at a time when such a thing as this was possible.
“That’s just the first wave,” Will was saying, trying to dampen Arthur’s celebration.
“Bring another!” Arthur shouted in his face, heaving the weight of the bloody mace from hand to hand. “I’ve got more in me!”
He was met by Will’s curious expression, which carried with it a hesitation. As if he did not recognize Arthur, and perhaps he didn’t. Arthur had never expected to be here, embracing the city he’d hated, and the Guardsmen he’d despised, and himself … who he’d never been exactly fond of. But defending the city felt good, as good a thing as ever he’d done. There were still people that needed him, and damn but he still had room for scars.
David joined them shortly, and pressed a skin of water into Arthur’s chest. “Drink.”
He did, amazed that he hadn’t realized how parched he was. Leave it to David, always the saint to whatever-it-was-that-Arthur was, to think of bringing him water even at a time like this.
“Facking fack,” David said, cracking his neck, “that was lunacy.”
“I hope some of them got through alive,” Will said, looking deeply at the front gates of the castle, where his allies had escaped. “Sad that they have a better chance out there than in here.”
Arthur couldn’t follow his logic. “What do you mean?”
“The prisoners,” Will answered. “At least out there they might get out of this alive. In here…”
“What’re you talking about?” Arthur balked. “We got them out of the gaols.”
Will scoffed. “You think that’ll matter when this is over? If this is ever over.”
Arthur hadn’t thought about it at all. His mind hadn’t really grasped the concept of what anything would be like afterward. Would the captain’s offer of pardons stand? Would the prisoners be sent back below to pay for whatever crimes the prince thought they should be punished for? Would he and David be captured once their faces were finally recognized? Did he even want to stay?
Or did the world just go back to the way it was, thieving in the forest, with the Sheriff building little posts in the Sherwood to search for them? That was an impossible world, it was forever ago.
And if he had a choice, which side would Arthur be on?
“What do we do after this?” David asked him quietly.
“I don’t know.” He clasped his friend’s shoulder, unable to bear that burden at the moment. “But it’ll start with drinking.”
“That, I can agree with.”
“You know I thought of something earlier,” Arthur added, remembering a stray thought. “When we left Marion’s group, you said that we ought to stop running and build a castle instead. Well here it is, David, you got your castle.”
David’s thin smile had a bit of pride in it.
At that, a commotion at the front gates aroused their attention. “Open the gates!” came a hurried call. “Captain Grendon!” They all turned to the main entrance, where a dozen men rushed forward to lift the massive timber barrels from their iron locks. It was a good sign, that the French must’ve retracted far enough that they felt safe to briefly open the gates again. The Nottingham Guard came streaming forward, whooping at the return of their captain.
The moment the gate heaved open, a single body appeared in its gap. It was Captain de Grendon alright—horseless, nursing an injured arm, covered head to heel in blood. He had led the mounted assault out of the gates, to break the bases of the siege ladders, which was how they’d claimed this first victory. Arthur had assumed nobody on that assault would come back alive, but here he was—the heroic captain, returning to his castle. Battered, beaten—but walking, and victorious. That’s how Arthur wanted to end this day, too.
“Close the gates!” came another command, and the ground thundered.
“Hurry!”
It was hard to tell because he was limping, but Captain de Grendon was running.
“They’re English!” the captain screamed, then his back exploded with arrows and he fell into the slop.
The gates screamed on their hinges nearly shut when a roar sounded from the other side, and the mouth of the castle was suddenly blocked by a horseman who swung his blade down into the heads of the men who were pulling the gate closed. Then another horse squeezed into the gap, a renewed struggle, until the gates lurched a second time … this time opening. A dozen horses burst through the entrance at full gallop, pounding over Fulcher de Grendon’s body with little care. The earth shook with their mass, and more were coming, more, not just more—the entire fucking army. It grabbed Arthur by his bones and throttled him, he turned and ran, unable to speak, to scream, he could only count the number of steps between himself and the barbican up to the second bailey and he knew he could not make it in time.
This is the tale of a boy that was angry with the world.
Will Scarlet on his right side, David of Doncaster on his left, they ran. There was no way to plug that hole, no way to close the gates again. Just like that, the lower bailey was lost. Up on the ramparts the archers scrambled to shoot down into the attackers, but down here there were just people ready to be trampled. They couldn’t fight this.
Nobody ever taught him that his hands could be used as anything but fists.
Screams, again, this time the dying. Arthur wondered pitifully if the people behind him might slow the horses down with their bodies. Might buy him a few extra seconds of life.
So he smashed the world, to make it as ugly as he thought it was. As ugly as he thought himself.
Up ahead, the slope and the bridge up to the barbican, where the portcullis was already being lowered. It stopped a few feet off the ground—low enough for people to scramble beneath, but impossible for a horse. The men who manned the gates knew the danger, and a small group of spearmen had already come out with shields to make a wall, to let as many people through before the horses got to them. Arthur prayed he would get there in time. He didn’t even realize he was praying, but he asked God for help more times in thirty seconds than in thirty years.
One day the angry boy met another boy, whose hands were open, not closed. The angry boy had never seen such a thing before. Didn’t know hands could do that.
The crowd around the portcullis was huge, a hundred people desperately trying to duck beneath it to safety, and the spearmen expanded to keep them protected. Some joined that group, though armed only with swords they fared little chance against mounted attacks. Arthur ran past the shield line, astonished he was alive, pushing forward, urging, he could hear the riot of violence behind him. The archers, too, were retreating from the curtain wall, back to the doorways that led up to the middle bailey barracks. He cursed whoever had given the command to open the gates for the captain, who didn’t think the French could rush it in time.
The angry boy used his fists on the new boy, because it was the only language he spoke.
After ducking under the iron teeth of the gate, Arthur helped Will Scarlet do the same, but his stomach lurched when David was not there. He turned and looked through the grate’s wide squares, but David was not nearby. Damned damned David of Doncaster, always easy to spot in a crowd, he was still down at the foot of the hill with four other men. They’d picked up one of the siege ladders and had turned it into a fence, keeping the charging horses at bay.
And the new boy, bleeding, welcomed the angry boy still, with open hands.
Because that was the only language he spoke, too.
Arthur screamed his name, as others flooded under the gate. They even raised it up a few more feet that the crowd could escape faster. But some were still behind, fighting back, or creating a blockade with David. David had probably called Arthur’s name, asking for him to help, and he hadn’t heard. Or maybe David had just gone, because that was who he was. It was his instinct to help before ever looking after himself. It was that thing Arthur had thought he’d found, the urge to help—but here he was, realizing it wasn’t in him yet.
He could talk about it, but it wasn’t in his bones. David … David did it just as natural as breathing.
In time, the angry boy learned to open his hands, and with it he opened his heart.
The makeshift hovels that the baileyfolk had built from the broken spectator stands, they were obstacles for the horses, too. The siege ladders quickly turned those obstacles into dead ends. They’d accidentally made a maze. And from above, some quick-thinking shitheads in the middle bailey started throwing barrels down, small casks full of oil, that shattered and splashed open amongst all that wooden claptrap. Bam bam bam, the barrels fell with sickening noise, even over the roar of everything else, and quickly followed by a hail of arrows, their heads lit ablaze, and where they found wood and oil the flames took quickly.
One of those barrels, sent by some horse-fucking Guardsman who thought he was saving the day—Arthur watched as it crashed squarely over his friend David’s head.
When the new boy died, the angry boy’s heart closed into a stone fist.
Arthur was carried backward by the crowd, away from the portcullis. The world had lost all color except the orange of flame. The gate slammed down, its hideous iron scream putting an end to the day’s fight. More arrows rained down from above. The structures of the lower bailey billowed into a massive column, the black smoke encompassing the entire bailey, choking the attackers and forcing them back. The French had conquered the bailey but couldn’t use it, not now, not until the fires were out. Anyone who tried to stay in that inferno would be burnt to cinders.
Arthur didn’t move from the inner gate, despite the heat, despite Will Scarlet’s attempts to pry his bleeding fingers off those iron bars. His eyes were locked on the black shape that was once his only friend.
And when the angry boy smashed the world again, it was all the worse. Because it was no longer the only language he knew, it was now the language he chose.