"There are only a few hundred of them. They hardly even outnumber us."
Henry says it rather loudly as we watch the knights trot across the road and come towards our camp next to the trees. They are coming in a big disorganized mass strung out behind six or seven lordly banners.
"I'm going to wait until they're all inside our kill zone," I announce rather loudly to no one in particular.
"There's no sense dragging this out."
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We watch and wait as the banners leading the knights and their squires go past our markers to enter the kill zone for our longs - and then stop to organize themselves for their traditional grand charge.
It certainly would have been a safe place for them to stop and prepare themselves if we'd been the French knights or mercenaries they've fought in the past. Unfortunately for them, we're not.
The mounted men in front of us are still arriving and moving about to organize themselves behind their banners as I raise my right hand as high over my head as I can reach. Behind me I can hear the familiar rustling noise and soft grunts as more than two hundred English Marine archers respond to my signal by nocking arrows into their bow strings and drawing their longbows.
I wait a second longer. Then I give a shout as I drop my hand, make pumping motions with my arm bent at the elbow to signal continuing launches, and start taking the dozen or so backward steps needed to move back through our first three lines.
In little more than a blink of an eye I'm standing next to Henry and Peter in the open space in front of the fourth line of Raymond's Horse Marines and outriders.
As soon as my hand drops there begins a great and continuing rustling and whooshing of outbound arrows, the grunt of archers as they strain to throw their shots forward as hard and as fast as they can, and the loud slaps as bow strings hit the leather sleeve every archer wears on his arm to protect it from "string bite."
The sergeants' loud shouts of "aim and shoot" continue as they and everyone else including me and my lieutenants joins in the shooting. Even George and the boys start launching arrows until Thomas shouts at them to wait until the horses get closer.
From where we're standing my Marines and I can see our arrows have an immediate impact as soon as they start landing. The mass of mounted men and their horses in front of us suddenly begins to shudder like a wounded animal and we can hear their distant screams and cries.
Almost instantly some of the banners at the front of the distant riders start to move forward. Within seconds the entire mass of mounted men in front of us, at least those who still can, starts to move towards us.
It's almost as if they're a wounded animal which thinks it can get out from the storm of arrows that are wounding it by moving forward.
Everything happens quickly as each archer instinctively concentrates on the riders who are closest and coming towards him. They particularly, as they've been learned over and over again, go for the nobles and knights around the banners.
The results are inevitable - many of the riders in the front rank of our attackers are hit multiple times almost simultaneously - and each time a horse or rider goes down or staggers the injured horse or rider tends to block or trip those coming from behind.
It only gets worse for what's left of our attackers as their horses reach our stakes and caltrops and the sergeants pick up my cry of "heavies" and we switch to the weighted arrows that can go through chain like a knife through cheese.
The horses are all wearing blinders so they can only see straight ahead and the riders, the knights and lords at least, are almost totally blind in their helmets when their visors are down. They can barely see out their helmet's little eye holes and they don't know what is happening behind them.
The result is inevitable - they keep coming until a caltrop takes out one of their horse's legs or one of our stakes or arrows impales them or their horse. And when one in the front goes down the others coming behind it tend to trip or be pushed over and go down with it.
A few of the riders, particularly those with armor on the front of their horses, somehow avoid our caltrops and stakes and make it all the way to our lines. That's when the sergeants roar and the Marines in the first three lines kneel down and raise their pikes for the first time.
Most of the charging riders don't even see the pikes come up and it's too late to turn away for the handful who do.
There are great crashes and screams and the cracking sound of splintering wood as the knights and their horses begin to impale themselves on our long wooden pikes. And, sure enough, in the next twenty or thirty seconds half a dozen or so riders come flying off their horses and crash head over heels into our lines.
Suddenly and unexpectedly it becomes very quiet except for scattered moans and cries. Then our men begin to talk and cheer and tend to our casualties. It didn't take long and it's all over.
Both Peter and Henry are looking at me intently to make sure I'm ready to give the next orders. I am.
"Raymond," I snap at the commander of our mounted men.
"Mount your Horse Marines and gallop straight to Oakhampton Castle. Set your men to block access to the castle's gate so none of our attackers can get back in. Leave your outriders here to chase the evaders. Hurry; run man run."
"Outriders attention. Outriders to mount up fast and ride out and catch those we didn't bring down. Accept the surrenders of all those you don't have to kill to get them to stop. Tell them to drop their weapons and walk back here with their hands in the air."
"Drop everything and report back here immediately if you see any more enemy forces."
"Sergeants," I roar in my loudest voice. "Each file sergeant and two of his men are to go forward to take prisoners for questioning. Don't kill them unless they try to fight or need a mercy. We want prisoners. Everyone else stand firm and ready."
The men know what to do. They should; they've practiced it enough.
My orders were still being loudly repeated by all the sergeants who'd heard them as I turn to my lieutenants and begin telling them what we're going to do next.
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Things move quickly after the orders are given. The men begin stripping the dead and wounded of their armor and weapons and putting down the men and horses who have no hope. We're going to put our handful of wounded and all of theirs not needing a mercy into hastily erected tents to keep them out of the rain that seems to be coming.
While the leather tents are being put up and the wounded collected, Thomas and the lieutenants and I walk out into the middle of the field and begin questioning our prisoners. Most of them are wounded or injured in some way except for a handful who got thrown off and didn't break any bones when their horses went down.
We've got more prisoners than we need so I start with one of them who seems not to be wounded, a noble with specks of grey in his beard. At least I assume he's a noble since he's wearing what appears to be a very expensive suit of armour.
The baron's horse threw him when it went down and his problem is simple - he's flat on his back in the mud and his armour is so heavy that he can't get up unless someone helps him. He just lies there on the ground shouting orders at us in French as we gather around him.
The damn fool acts like he's at a tournament and we're the servants sent to help him up.
Peter snorts in disgust and promptly chops his exposed throat with a pike blade when the baron begins to give arrogant and insulting answers to my questions. I never did learn his name.
According to one of the wounded men on the ground near him, the man whose head Peter cut off is one of the northern barons, whatever that means. Unfortunately Peter deaded him before we got him out of his armor. Now, goddamnit, we'll have to clean the death piss and shite out of it before we can carry it off to London or the Holy Land and sell it.
What we learn from our prisoners is quite interesting. It seems a number of the northern barons have come down from Gloucester and Yorkshire to encourage the barons of southern England to join them in overthrowing King John. They told their men we were outlaws and attacked us for practice in order to blood them.
Killing people for practice?
According to the prisoners, the barons' grievances relate to the king's taxes and his recently annulled marriage to Isabella of Gloucester, who is apparently the cousin of several of the northern lords we deaded.
King John, some of our prisoners tell us, insulted their lord's family by refusing to consummate the marriage and refusing to recognize her as his wife and queen.
More importantly, they say he also refused to return the lands Isabella inherited and ordered them to vacate their fiefs on her lands so he can replace them with his own favorites.
What the northern barons came south to do is offer Isabella as the rightful queen so that whomever the southern nobles select to marry her becomes the king when they overthrow John. All the northerners are asking in exchange is that they be allowed to keep her lands and be given more. They even brought a list of the lands they each want.
Well, they'll all be having new lands and that's for sure - gravesites right here next to the old Roman road.
Chapter Seven
We spent all that day on the battlefield tending to the wounded, questioning our prisoners, and burying the dead and mercied after we strip them of their weapons and armour. Thomas himself gave some very nice prayers to send our dead attackers off most properly after we covered up the ditch we threw them in.
Hmm. Isn't it an amazement how fast news spreads even out here where no one lives; all day long we never saw a single traveler even though the road to Exeter is usually quite busy.
Collecting the wounded and burying the dead takes all day. It is not until the next morning at daybreak that we strike our camp, piss on the grave of our attackers, and set off for Oakhampton Castle with the wounded riding on top of the supplies in our wagons.
The castle is quite close so we reach it about noon on a somewhat cloudy day even though we have to stop for a few moments to bury one of the wounded attackers and have Thomas say a prayer for him. The poor fellow up and died before we could find a barber to sew him up and properly bleed him.
Raymond and his men are waiting for us with big smiles on their faces as we come up the track to the castle with our drums beating and our Marine companies marching in step behind us.
"Hello Captain, welcome to Oakhampton Castle. A couple of the buggers showed up yesterday and got themselves chased and killed for their trouble but that's about all."
"Any response from the castle or the village?" I ask.
"Not a thing. It's been quiet. Almost too quiet, actually."
I'd no more than dismounted and started to get Raymond's report when there is a shout and someone waves from the battlements on the castle wall above the gate and drawbridge.
A few minutes later the little door in the castle gate opens and a rather timid, and obviously very scared, old man comes out. He hobbles up to the edge of the castle moat most respectfully with his hat in his hand.
"The lady in the castle asks why you are here, masters." He shouts. "Can you tell us?"
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Something unexpected happens about ten minutes after the old man listens to my brief explanation and reenters the castle - the drawbridge slowly creaks down and the castle gate begins to open.
Raymond's men, and the men in our column behind them, instantly rush to assume defensive positions in the expectation that the castle's defenders are about to sally out and attack us.
To our surprise all that comes out of the castle is the old man once again. What really surprises us is his message.
"The lady invites you and your men to enter and for you to join her in the great hall for your evening meal.
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An ambitious sergeant volunteers to enter the castle to make sure the invitation is real and the castle is friendly. From what we can see its parapets and archer slits are empty. It appears deserted. But is it?
We wait and watch from a distance as the sergeant cautiously crosses the drawbridge over the moat and enters through the open gate.
A few minutes later we see him walking confidently towards us with a big smile on his face. There are no defenders in the castle. The invitation is real.
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I can see two women standing by a door that opens into the castle's keep. One is quite old and plainly dressed; the other is about my age or perhaps a bit younger. They watch intently as our horses clatter across the drawbridge and into the little bailey.