Chapter Nine
Holdingham Castle
Forty miles northwest of Narborough
Four days since departing Narborough with weather that had been crisp and clear, the day of the actual battle had turned dark and stormy.
De Lohr, de Winter, Lincoln, and Savernake troops found themselves holding the line against an onslaught of French armies that were here simply because the French prince, Louis, had been an ally of the rebels against King John.
Almost a year after John’s death, Louis wouldn’t leave the country because he’d been promised the throne.
In light of John’s death and Henry’s ascension to the crown of England, Louis had no support from the rebels who were now supporting Henry.
Cast aside, and angry, he was determined to wreak what havoc he could.
With nothing to lose, his recklessness made him quite dangerous.
Even though it was summer, the storm that rolled over Holdingham was severe and within just a few hours of fighting, the ground had turned to ankle-deep sludge.
The blood of the wounded was mixing with the rain that puddled off the battlefield, turning everything into a sea of red.
The landscape was quite flat, with very little elevation, so everything simply sat and pooled.
The de Winter army was covering the south flank of de Lohr’s army, with Savernake covering the north flank, in a line of men and animals that stretched for a half-mile.
The Lincoln troops were in Holdingham Castle, a quarter of a mile to the east, shoring up the castle should the French break through the line.
And break, they tried.
The morning had seen vicious fighting with archers, each side launching volley after volley at each other, but the French soon grew weary of the damage they were sustaining.
Being that they were ill-supplied these days, they simply didn’t have the shields or arrows to withstand a sustained attack from the archers, and when Christopher de Lohr, who was in command of the loyalist army, began to heavily pound them with archers to beat them down, the French broke ranks and began to charge at the long line of English loyalists.
After that, it was chaos.
Bric entered the fray earlier on because the French had tried to hit the flanks to go around de Lohr and on to the castle, so it was up to the de Winter army to hold off the French and prevent them from breaking through.
Early on, it was hand-to-hand combat, and Bric spent the hours in the saddle, fighting French knights, dispatching those who were too weak to hold out against him.
The High Warrior was in fine form that day.
He blazed through a fight with a French knight who was quite skilled but, in the end, the Frenchman fell to Bric’s sword.
When the man toppled off his horse, Bric spurred his war horse forward and literally onto the man’s body, a massive hoof coming to rest on the back of the knight’s head and shoving his face into the mud to drown him.
When the knight moved no more, the horse trampled him and dashed off to find more victims.
Once again, whispers of a vicious English knight with silver eyes began to drift among the French lines, and men would run when they saw the black, gray, and red of the House of de Winter, knowing that any man bearing those colors could be the knight with the silver eyes, the one who was killing men as easily as a man could breathe air.
But it was more than that. There also happened to be an abnormal amount of decapitated heads around the battlefield because Bric wasn’t one to go for the kill in the chest or belly, as some men did.
He preferred the definitive, quick kill of decapitation, and he’d used that technique throughout his career.
It was a signature stroke. Unlike some men, Bric wasn’t in the battle for the thrill of a fight, for the excitement of proving he was better than anyone else.
He was in it for the kill. If a man was his enemy, he was destined to die.
And die, they did.
Towards dusk, the sky was still flooding the fields with rain and men were slogging through mud that was now up to their knees, exhausted as they fought the French who were unwilling to surrender.
But the rain had lightened somewhat, and the wind that had whistled through the battlefield all day had eased, so there was hope that the weather would soon clear.
Every so often, the clouds would part and bits of blue sky could be seen but, for the most part, it was still a horribly miserable battle.
Several times during the day, Bric had reached for his talisman to kiss it only to remember that he’d left it with Eiselle.
Eiselle. Such a beautiful name for a woman he was increasingly obsessed over.
Truthfully, he didn’t regret leaving her his talisman, convinced it was giving her comfort knowing that he would return for it.
But the truth was that he would be returning for her, and her alone.
As the battle wore on and he began to feel his exhaustion, his thoughts turned increasingly to Eiselle and the moment when they would be reunited.
He intended to bed her when next he saw her again, perhaps several times, and then he intended to spend all the time he could with her.
He’d even been thinking about asking Daveigh if he could take command of one of the lesser castles in the Honor of Narborough, perhaps Roxham Castle, so that Eiselle could be the mistress of her own keep.
As it was, Eiselle was secondary to Keeva, and he thought the woman might like her own keep.
As his wife, she was deserving of such a thing.
It would give them time to start their life together, without the chaos of a big castle around them.
For the first time in his life, Bric was thinking about easing off from such active duty.
He could turn the Narborough duties over to Pearce, who was young and hungry.
He was a good commander. And Bric could settle down with his wife at a lesser castle, and they could live a perfectly happy and wonderful little life.
Bric’s priorities were changing.
It was rather ironic that he would consider such a thing, coming from de Winter’s High Warrior, but he rather thought it sounded wonderful. Just him, and Eiselle, and their life together. If he had to lift his sword now and again, he would do it, but his focus would be on his wife. His family.
His marriage.
But he had to make it home first. Avoiding the arc of an angry Frenchman’s broadsword, he brought his own sword around and ended up cutting off the man’s arm when his horse suddenly shifted. As the French knight raced off, screaming, Bric noticed Pearce as the man came alongside him.
“How does it look to the north?” he yelled at Pearce. “Is Savernake holding their lines?”
Pearce nodded, trying to hold tight to his excited horse. “Aye,” he said. “Dash and Savernake are holding fast. It seems that we’ve received the brunt of the French attempts to break the lines. I am hearing rumor that we have more dead and wounded than most.”
Bric looked around; he could see that he had many wounded and as sunset approached, the French had backed off for the most part. There were pockets of fighting, but not nearly what it had been. He wiped the water and sweat from his eyes.
“I must find Christopher and discover what he has in mind for the conclusion of this skirmish,” he said. “The French seem to be fleeing, and we have our own wounded to remove from the field of battle. It seems to me that this battle has come to an end.”
Pearce nodded, surveying the field that was full of bodies, beaten and broken. There was so much blood that the mud was red, giving the entire battlefield a macabre and apocalyptic appearance.
“It was a brutal fight, Bric,” he said. “Thank God we were victorious. We held the line so the French were unable to make it to Holdingham. They remain strong.”
Bric was thinking the same thing, but he didn’t voice it. He rarely bragged in battle, thinking that it was an affront to the gods of war. Oddly enough, the man was always humble in victory, no matter how great or bloody it had been.
“Aye,” he said. “We shall live to fight another day. Now, do your duty and sweep the field to ensure the French do not start killing our wounded. We need to have them removed immediately. I will find Christopher and discover what his plans are now that the fighting has died down.”
Pearce nodded. “I will,” he said. “I will find Mylo and he can assist me. Last I saw him, he was near the de Lohr lines.”
“If I see him, I will send him to you.”
The knights were preparing to part when they both heard what sounded like a thin wailing.
Immediately, they knew what it was because they’d heard it in chorus earlier in the day when the French were lobbing volleys of arrows their direction.
It seemed that the French, as a dying beast, weren’t ready to give up yet.
They were going to inflict what they could until the very end.
Pearce managed to get his shield up, but Bric was a split-second slower. As Pearce’s shield was hit with a large, broad-headed arrow, that very same arrowhead hit Bric in the lower left side of his chest.
The noise it made was something Pearce would remember until the day he died.
It was an arrowhead designed to take down horses and other large animals, and the French probably stole it off of another soldier or hunter and reused it.
It was such a large arrowhead that it pushed through layers of tunics and Bric’s heavy mail coat, carving a hole into the left side of his body and anchoring deep.