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sword and held it towards Roland. It was the Count of Labrouillade. There was shit dribbling down the back of his armoured legs. ‘I am your prisoner!’ he announced loudly.
Thomas walked towards the two men. Sam and a half-dozen archers had seen Thomas and they now rode towards him, bringing Thomas’s horse with them.
‘He surrendered,’ Roland called to Thomas.
Thomas said nothing. Kept walking.
‘I have yielded,’ the count said loudly, ‘and will pay a ransom.’
‘Kill the fat bastard!’ Sam called.
‘No!’ Roland de Verrec held up his hand. ‘You cannot kill him. That is dishonourable.’ He stumbled over the English word.
‘Dishonourable?’ Sam asked, incredulous.
‘Sir Thomas,’ Roland looked desperately unhappy, ‘a man who has surrendered is safe, is he not?’
Thomas ignored Roland, seemed not even to see him. He still said nothing. He walked up to the count, who was holding his sword out in surrender.
‘Chivalry dictates that he must be kept alive,’ Roland said. ‘Is that not so, Sir Thomas?’
Thomas had not even looked at Roland. He just gazed at the count and then, almost as fast as Sculley, he backswung
la Malice
so that the blade chopped into the count’s neck. The sword sliced beneath the helmet’s rim, cutting through the aventail to bite deep into the fat neck, and Thomas sawed it back, thrust it forward with an archer’s strength and was hit by even more blood as the Count of Labrouillade sank to his knees, and Thomas gouged the blade deeper and deeper until the life went from Labrouillade’s eyes and he fell hard onto the grass.
‘Sir Thomas!’ Roland said in outrage.
Thomas turned wide-eyed on Roland. ‘Did you say something?’
‘He had surrendered!’ Roland protested.
‘I’m deaf,’ Thomas said. ‘I was hit on the head and I can’t hear a thing. What are you telling me?’
‘He had surrendered!’
‘I can’t hear what you’re saying,’ Thomas said. He turned away and winked at Sam.
Fifty yards away men were fighting around the King of France. His standard had fallen, the standard bearer was dead, and his son was trying to help his father. ‘Look left, Father! To the right! Watch out!’ The king was fighting with an axe, though no one was trying to kill him, just to capture him. The decoys who had worn his colours were dead or had fled, but everyone knew this was the real king because his helmet was surmounted by a golden crown, and men wanted to take him alive because his ransom would be unimaginably huge. Men grabbed at the king, fought each other to get close to him, and the king shouted that he could make them all rich, but then two horsemen forced their great destriers into the crowd and bellowed at all the men to step back on pain of death.
The Earl of Warwick and Sir Reginald Cobham confronted King Jean and Prince Philippe. Both men dismounted and both men bowed low. ‘Your Majesty,’ the earl said.
‘I am a prisoner,’ the King of France said.
‘Alas, Your Highness,’ Sir Reginald said, ‘it is the fate of battle.’
The king was taken.
One of the archers played pipes made from oat straw, the tune wistful and thin. A campfire burned, throwing twisting red light onto the branches of the oaks. A man sang; other men laughed.
The King of France was being feasted by the Prince of Wales, while on the flat hilltop where the battle had ended the birds and beasts gorged themselves on the dead. The dead went all the way to the gates of Poitiers because the English and Gascons had pursued the enemy that far, and the citizens of Poitiers, fearing an English invasion, had refused to open their gates and so the fugitives had been trapped under the walls and there the last of them had died. The old Roman road that ran to the city was littered with the dead, but now the living sat around fires and ate food they had plundered from the enemy’s abandoned camp.
Thomas had joined the pursuit, riding with Sam and a dozen other archers. Those archers would all become rich on their plunder, but Thomas had not ridden to find jewels or plate armour or an expensive horse.
‘You found him?’ Genevieve asked. She sat beside him, her head on his shoulder, and Hugh leaned against her.
‘I found them both.’
‘Tell me again,’ she said, like a child wanting to hear a familiar and comforting story.
So Thomas told her how he had caught up with Cardinal Bessières and how the cardinal’s men-at-arms had tried to protect their
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