Read Online Outlaw by Angus Donald - Free Book Online Page B

the other side, swinging his two great hammers, surprisingly nimble for such a big man. Once out of our cart-ring he gave a passing enemy horse a great smash on the forehead and the poor animal tottered and sank to its knees. Quick as a weasel the smith was on his rider, even as the animal was sinking, pounding with both the great lumps of metal in turn at his square helmeted head. He must have smashed through the helmet and into the brain because, suddenly, there was a great gout of blood and greyish pink matter that splashed the front of his chest. He saw me watching, appalled at this savage display, and he smiled an enormous, battle-mad grin and shouted: ‘Don’t gawp, boy, get stuck in, get stuck in . . .’
    Robin was to my right, standing on a wagon with another archer; both of them calmly shooting arrow after arrow into the enemy horsemen. I turned to my left and there was Little John, outside the circle, swinging his enormous axe with murderous skill. I saw him hack into the back of a rider and cut straight through his mail, severing the spine. As he tugged the double-blade loose, the man fell forward, limp as a doll, his head almost touching his foot in the stirrup as a scarlet fountain from his partially severed waist shot straight into the air.
    Everywhere I looked there were Robin’s followers, men, and some women too, on foot, some armed only with quarterstaves or stones, some with hoes or scythes, surrounding isolated riders and smashing them and their mounts with a near-berserk fury. A body of horsemen, disciplined and armed with the long lance, can destroy a crowd of infantry in moments; but when the horseman is alone and surrounded by a pack of blood-crazed peasants with a chance to wreak vengeance for the crimes committed against them, and their forebears, by that mounted symbol of Norman power, it’s like watching a crippled spider being overrun by a pack of maddened ants. The horses were hamstrung, quick-smart, with long, sharp knives; the unfortunate man-at-arms’s legs seized by many hands. He was yanked, tugged alive, from the saddle to be pulverised to bloody ruin on the steaming earth. Pounding metal, blunt tools punched into living flesh; screaming man and horse, and hot, squirting blood.
    But it was not all going our way: one of the plumed knights was wreaking havoc on our people. His reins dropped over his saddle horn and controlling the horse only with his knees, he laid about him with sword and spiked mace, smashing skulls and severing arms. As I watched an arrow slammed into his thigh, and he wheeled away with a curse.
    The blacksmith just in front of me had stopped hammering at his foe’s mashed skull and was watching Little John, who sank his huge axe-blade with a graceful backhand into the throat of a passing horse. The unfortunate animal, spraying gore, reared with the last of its strength and dislodged the rider, who lay winded on his back on the life-drenched ground. Within a heart-beat, he was surrounded by a swarm of hacking, gouging peasantry. ‘That’s the way, lad,’ the blacksmith grinned at me, ‘no lollygagging, get stuck in.’ And then his mad, happy face suddenly changed shape, paled and he sank to his knees. From the centre of his chest the bloody tip of a steel lance was protruding. He looked down in disbelief and his huge body juddered and jiggled as the man-at-arms on the other end of the spear tugged at the weapon to release it from his sucking flesh.
    An image of my father’s distorted hanged face leapt into my mind and I found myself screaming ‘Noooo . . .!’ My naked sword was in my fist and I was up and had leapt over the wagon before I could think. I charged at the rider, whose lance was still trapped in the smith’s body, and swung my weapon at his leg, crazed with red fury. The blade slammed into his mailed calf and the man shouted in pain but the blow did not break through the chain armour. The man dropped the lance and swung at me, left handed, across