Into The Fire Read Free Page A

nettle-green and white this morning; Frenchmen who have found their fighting spirit.
    It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They should have surrendered a week ago. Rustbeard knows: he spent five stinking winter months masquerading as a Frenchman in the heart of Orléans, speaking in dusty corners with men whose ears were open to gold and promises.
    Listen to me. Your weak and mewling king does not love Orléans; he languishes in Chinon and will not send aid. Send word to the English that you’ll open the gates after Easter and we shall all be safe, our fortunes made. William Glasdale commands them and he’s a decent man. He will not sack a city that has opened its gates. Let it only get to Easter and you will have done your duty …
    Gold makes men nod. Promises extract oaths and the gates would have swung smoothly back on Ascension Day, except that a letter came near the end of Lent,
To the citizens of Orléans, in God’s name, from the Maid …
and all his work undone.
    And now this.
    The smoke drifts and sways, a traitor-curtain hiding attackers and attacked alike. But in the mess below is order, and— Ladders?
Fuck!
    ‘Arms! God damn you! Arms to the south side!’
    His sword is not sufficiently long, but there are arms here enough for the end of days: hammers, archers’ mauls, falchions, big two-handed bastard swords, daggers, pikes, all manner of polearms; dead men’s weapons.
    A hammer lies to his left, three feet of ash haft, leaden head. Tod Rustbeard is not the tallest man in the English army, but his chest is broad and he can lift gun stones one in each hand and run with them; he has the power of a smith if not the skill.
    The big two-handed hammer floats to his grip. He braces his feet, sweeps and sweeps and makes the sweep a swing, a full circle-spin, a whirl that lifts an ox-head’s worth of weight in a cartwheel of death, and when he has it up to speed he aims himself at the ladder that has come up over the stone lip and the face that is appearing there and he lurches one step, two, and the wheeling lead barely falters as he makes contact and the face dissolves in a bright, bright plash of blood.
    More spit in his beard. More gore on his mail. And fragments of bone and tooth and eye.
    He kills two more, still spinning, but there are more and ever more. He sets the head of the hammer on the ladder’s top rung, braces one foot on the wall and shoves. The ladder falls back, taking men screaming to their deaths.
    Men with pike staffs come running at last to fend off this and other ladders, for there are more now, sprouting left and right, bringing Frenchmen into the fastness of their stone and wood rampart. Here to help are Walter Golder and Jack Kentishorn, John of Gayleford and Alfred Rake. And then Sir William Glasdale, commander of the heights, himself in full Italian plate which has not yet lost its lustre.
    ‘Push them back! Send them crashing! Will you be beaten by Frenchmen? Are you children? You! Rustbeard! Swing that hammer harder!’
    Here is the best of English soldiery. Here is the reason England will prevail and France is doomed. Glasdale’s voice is the bellow of a bull, of a bear, of thunder, of God Himself. Men find strength who were losing it, and apply themselves anew to the job of sending ladders back to the earth.
    The enemy have pikes, too. On a ladder? Are they insane? Mad or not, they are certainly ardent. A point skewers past his face and he ducks only by chance and instinct and slashes back and here’s a long sword, swinging, and an axe, striking overhand, seeking faces, bare hands, anything.
    Jack Kentishorn goes down, gargling on his own blood. A new man takes his place. Oliver? Or maybe a Harry; there are many of those about these days. The hammer head is wedged now in the top of the ladder. A blade screams down by his elbow. Oliver-or-Harry thrusts a sword forward, and misses.
    ‘For God’s sake, man! Can you not strike a Frenchman at two paces? We’ll have to—’ But