Defiant Unto Death

By David Gilman

PRE-ORDER THE NEW MASTER OF WAR NOVEL BY DAVID GILMAN, TO KILL A KING – COMING IN FEBRUARY 2024

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FRANCE: 1356.

Ten years ago, the greatest army in Christendom was slaughtered at Crécy. Archer Thomas Blackstone stood his ground and left that squalid field a knight. He has since carved out a small fiefdom in northern France, but the wounds of war still bleed and a traitor has given the King of France the means to destroy the English knight and his family. As the traitor's net tightens, so the French King's army draws in.

Blackstone will stand and fight. He will defy his friends, his family and his king. He may yet defy death, but he can't defy his destiny: MASTER OF WAR.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Feb 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781781851937

David Gilman

David Gilman has enjoyed many careers, including paratrooper, firefighter, and photographer. An award-winning author and screenwriter, he is the author of the critically acclaimed Master of War series of historical novels, and was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize for The Last Horseman. He was longlisted for the same prize for The Englishman, the first book featuring ex-French Foreign Legionnaire Dan Raglan. David lives in Devon. Follow David on @davidgilmanuk, www.davidgilman.com, and facebook.com/davidgilman.author

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About Defiant Unto Death

About David Gilman

Map: The Battle of Poitiers

Historical Notes

Reviews

About the Master of War Series

Table of Contents

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www.headofzeus.com

Contents

Cover

Welcome Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Part 1: The Savage Priest

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Part 2: Tide of War

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Part 3: Cruel Justice

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Preview

Map

Historical Notes

About Defiant Unto Death

Reviews

About David Gilman

About the Master of War Series

Coming soon from David Gilman

An Invitation from the Publisher

Copyright

For Suzy,

as always

The wounds of war still bled.

The greatest army in Christendom had been slaughtered ten years earlier at Crécy, when Thomas Blackstone and his fellow archers stood their ground and rained death on knight and horse, prince and commoner. It was from that squalid field of death that Blackstone had risen, fought hand to hand and saved the English King’s son. Dragged from the blood-soaked mud, the badly wounded Blackstone had been given the last sacrament and honoured by his King. There was no greater accolade than to be knighted in battle and Sir Thomas Blackstone’s broken body withstood its agony and eluded the dark mantle of death. Over the years since that day King Edward had continued to press his claim to the French throne. He still held Calais, the gateway to France, but that mighty nation was not yet on its knees.

Pestilence had ripped through the two kingdoms, stripping away lives and revenues, leaving both monarchs unable to finance war, or to bring about a decisive battle. Not yet. That would come when Norman lords, tricky and aggressive men who craved more power within France and who harboured resentment against their King, finally became strong enough to challenge him.

Part 1

The Savage Priest

1

It was said Thomas Blackstone was like a ghost in a graveyard. A man could sense his presence but by the time he turned to face the spectre the chill wind of death struck him down. No one knew where this scarred-faced Englishman might strike next. That he was protected by Norman lords deep in their territory was known, but when mercenary assassins, disavowed by the French King, rode into the forests of the Norman stronghold to seek him out, their bodies were found hanging by the roadside.

His fierce reputation might have suffered had his enemies seen him on this windswept day. Spume ripped from the wave tops as the tide raced against a swirling offshore wind that flailed the sea into a saw-toothed, gut-wrenching swell. The thirty-ton cog, its rudder being wrenched by the turbulence, needed two of the fifteen mariners aboard to hold its tiller. The tide was rising and they hoped that the sandbar ahead of the ship was covered by sufficient water to save the protesting timbers from running aground and casting those on board into the mercy of the waves and the sucking mud that lay beyond. Blackstone’s mentor from days gone by shouted a simple command into his mind. Choose your ground to fight! Sir Gilbert Killbere’s voice insisted. Sweet merciful God, this was not ground! This was the heaving hulk of a ship, one of the hundreds that had taken Edward’s army to France ten years ago. And ten years was too short a respite before being put back aboard a cork-bobbing hulk, no matter how seaworthy her master insisted she might be.

Blackstone welcomed the stinging salt on his face and sucked the cold air deep into his lungs as he gripped the gunwale of the lurching ship. Vomit rose and he retched across the bow, knowing there were men behind him clinging as he was and now, no doubt, sprayed with his previous night’s dinner.

‘How much longer?’ he yelled at the master who, unlike Blackstone and his men, stood braced, legs apart, on the raised quarterdeck, and cupped a hand to his ear to catch the knight’s words.

‘I’ll tell you when I know, Sir Thomas! When I know! Not a damned moment before!’

Blackstone balanced himself, twisting a ship’s rope about his arm. He brought the silver figure of Arianrhod from around his neck, and kissed it with spittle-flecked lips. The pagan goddess had been given to him years before by a dying Welsh archer in the ferocious battle for Caen and her protective mantle had served him well, but misery made him reach further in his quest for relief.

Sweet Jesus, I have turned my back on you many a time. I place my faith in pagan superstition, but I swear to you, by all that is holy in heaven, that if you bring me through this torture I will give my share of spoils from this battle to the nearest, poorest church I find.

A figure staggered up next to him, but the man who held the ship’s side for support showed no sign of illness. He pulled his hair back from his face with the help of the biting wind. ‘Promises to God are seldom kept, my lord. Better to pray to your stomach for comfort,’ said Guillaume Bourdin, Blackstone’s squire, as if he had read his lord’s mind. The young fighter was unaffected by the raging waves. Blackstone could barely raise his eyes without his gorge rising. He squared his shoulders, shamed by his squire’s lack of discomfort. Blackstone had not been on a ship since that crossing to invade France ten years ago, when his brother Richard had been the only man unaffected, yet here he was breaking the vow he had made never to repeat the experience. Every second of the heaving horizon twisted his stomach. Nothing had changed.

‘The men?’ Blackstone demanded, half turning just in time to see the stern rise on a mighty wave, making the small ship dip her nose into a trough that threatened to pitchpole her end over end. Blackstone and Guillaume clung to their handholds. The master shouted an unheard command and the ship slid across the face of the wave, shuddered and then steadied back on course. The single sail fluttered, its iron-hard wet canvas cracking like the snap of a mighty oak being felled. Blackstone could see the packed deck, men huddling behind their shields, shoulders jammed into their neighbour’s, steadying themselves. ‘Can they fight?’ Blackstone demanded.

‘A third are too weak; half have a chance to reach the castle walls; the rest might have the strength to scale them and fight.’ Guillaume squinted through the spray. The shoreline and its feared sandbar were getting closer. The Saint Margaret Boat was twice as long as she was wide, overladen with men and rundlets of tar and oil. She wallowed like a drunken pig.

‘You’re smiling like a monk with a candle up his arse! Don’t mock your sworn lord, Guillaume – he can make your life more hellish than this!’

‘Forgive me, lord, but from what the sailors say there’s no need to worry about assaulting the castle. There’s a wicked cross-current at the mouth of the estuary and beyond that bogland that will suck down man and horse. Taking the stronghold is the least of our worries.’

Another bone-jarring crash and Guillaume bent his body to accommodate the turbulence. He was lithe and strong, taught to move rapidly with sword, axe and mace. A fighting man, nineteen years old, with the immortality of youth, who had fought at Blackstone’s side through desperate hours of battle since the squire had forged his pact of loyalty.

A warning cry carried on the wind. The master had urged his sailors to put their weight on the slab of sail. ‘You’d best ready yourself, Sir Thomas!’ he yelled. ‘Lose a man here and he’s gone to the devil!’

Blackstone took another turn on the rope and felt the ship surge, lift and crash in a bone-jarring jolt. In the sudden, unexpected contortion, Guillaume’s fingers tore loose from their purchase and his body slammed into the ship’s side. The blow took his legs from him and he grabbed wildly to find a handhold. Blackstone loosened his grip on the rope, its coarse fibre stinging his palm as it slid through his hand. He snatched Guillaume’s tunic and took his weight, but knew, despite his strength, that the heaving, sluicing deck would soon wrench the squire free and he would be lost. The young man’s set face showed the determination Blackstone had first recognized when his squire was a boy, and had held a trembling dagger close to Blackstone’s face to protect his dying master. But now there was sudden panic in Guillaume’s eyes. Neither spoke, but with a final, desperate glance at his sworn lord, Guillaume was snatched from him by a churning, malevolent green wave, shrouded in white spray, that tore across the ship’s bows.

Helplessness and regret engulfed Blackstone. He should have left the ship’s master, Jennah of Hythe, on the alehouse floor in Bordeaux with a knife at his throat and let the drunken German mercenaries, who had started the fight, finish it. But Blackstone had kicked the heavy-set murderer aside when the men pinned Jennah’s arms. Knife fights in harbour taverns often ended with someone dead or maimed, but holding a defenceless man down was worse than pig slaughter and so Blackstone stopped it. Men in alehouses should know better than to challenge strangers, he had said to the German who threatened him. Foolishly, the drunken knifeman lunged – a futile attempt, as Blackstone and Guillaume quickly disarmed their attackers. Then Blackstone’s captain, Meulon, the throat-cutter, did the rest, quietly and with a cut so deep the men had no breath left to cry out. The old whore who ran the alehouse screamed abuse, but Meulon showed her the blade and raised his shaggy eyebrows. No words were needed. The woman kicked the child servant and the floor was sluiced; then sawdust was thrown across the spilled blood as the men’s bodies were dragged through the back alley that led to the wharf. The splash as they hit the water twenty feet below was barely heard. The Prince’s invading army would not miss three of their men.

And Master Jennah was grateful. After a dozen shared bottles of rough red wine and a plate of mutton, his rambling stories of sailing the graveyard coast of France’s western shores mentioned a castle garrisoned in the French King’s name that held a key bridge across a river fifty miles to the north as the crow flies. Rumour had it that it held weapons that supplied the French king’s supporters. It was too far north for the Prince of Wales to attack and the castle’s key location kept his loyal Gascon commander, the Captal de Buch, from warring beyond Bordeaux. The English Prince wanted booty and victory, not a prolonged, bone-aching siege in the marshlands, which is why he took his army south: the Prince had landed in Bordeaux late the previous year and was raiding south and east from Bordeaux. Like a cork in a bottle the castle sat at the head of an estuary, a foul, mist-laden place of stinking marsh gas like a whore’s fart and a powerful, surging tide. And when that tide turned it left a devil’s maw of a quagmire.

Blackstone gazed through the haze-laden room. The logs in the grate crackled and spat and men’s eyes watered from its smoke. Figures swayed and moved to and fro; a gust of cold air swept through the room when the door opened and closed, but the stench of stale sweat lingered as men slept where they fell. The alehouse woman kicked them and swore, but, like tufted stumps of marsh grass at low tide, they remained unmoving. Marshland. Could a boat get upriver? Had he asked the question or had it formed only in his thoughts? Someone said that only a madman would attempt an attack upriver even if a ship could ever get that far along the storm-ravaged coast and, in case the Englishman didn’t know, a cog, with its flat bottom, couldn’t sail in a headwind.

Did Jennah of Hythe know those waters? Blackstone was nearly as drunk as the wine-sodden ship’s master, a vainglorious plan forming in his mind, a plan that would put coin in his purse and inflict a defeat on the French: his King’s enemy. He was sworn by honour to Edward and his son.

The sailor’s face was the colour of tanned leather. Broken veins from drink or weather reddened his cheeks and nose. He wiped an arm across his lips that dribbled wine through blackened teeth. ‘Know it? These past twenty years’ worth of knowing. I’ve run m’ship from Bordeaux to Southampton and back carrying my King’s wine from Gascony. I’ve had twenty-odd men lashed together like barrels when we invaded France back in ’46. Twenty! No other carried more than a dozen. Less! I took them lads across and they had dry feet when they landed. You were there, were you, Master Blackstone?’

Blackstone nodded. He could never forget that hellish crossing even when drunk, though it had been nothing compared to what awaited him on the battlefields.

Master Jennah grasped Blackstone’s shoulder, his eyes nearly closed with impending drunken slumber, and slurred a stumbling declaration. ‘I have never slaked my thirst with a knight before, Sir Thomas. The honour is mine, and had my ship not been arrested by the serjeant-at-arms, and pressed into service, and my cargo taken – my cargo! Aye! I’ve lost my contract, right enough. I’m out of pocket serving my King – but... that said... if she were mine to offer... she would be yours if she could ever be of service.’ Jennah’s head slumped onto the table, the wine spilled. Blackstone stumbled across the floor, shouldered the door into the night and took his ambitious idea to the Gascon commander.

*

Jean de Grailly, whose sworn troops fought for the Crown, belonged to one of the noblest families in the Bordelais. It was the English King’s good fortune to have him on his side. He was one of the youngest and ablest commanders, from an august family, who had secured some of King Edward’s greatest victories and who still carried the feudal title, Captal de Buch. He was known across France for his audacious attacks that bolstered the English King’s territorial claims. He was, Blackstone decided as he stood before this great seigneur, perhaps two or three years younger than his own twenty-six. It was unusual for such a high-ranking lord to grant an audience to anyone he regarded as of lesser rank, but Blackstone’s reputation and acceptance by Edward and, if rumour did not lie, the Norman lords, was not to be denied. De Grailly studied the dishevelled man before him. Blackstone was at least a two-week ride from home. Over the years the scarred knight had enjoyed sanctuary with and protection from local English seneschals and Gascon nobles when he raided cattle and food in the warmer climes beyond Normandy. Blackstone was not involved in the fighting and the Prince had made no demands on the Englishman. Here in the south-west, noblemen carried on ancient feuds between themselves. Some could be bought, others defeated to secure territory in war, so why had Thomas Blackstone come to his headquarters? de Grailly wondered. The Englishman had already turned for home with the fifty men who rode with him, herding livestock and carting victuals to replenish his winter supplies. Had the Englishman made a new alliance with a feudal lord so far south from his own domain?

Blackstone was sober, but when he explained his daring plan it felt as cold and hard in his heart as the morning frost underfoot. What had fired his ambition the drunken night before now seemed a damned foolish idea and he had no need to suggest it, but it had been a long, hard winter that was not yet over, and Blackstone was always in need of money and weapons for his men. He accepted the cup of spiced wine he was offered and, keeping his uncertainty at bay, he outlined his plan.

De Grailly listened attentively; he was one of the few who could put aside the arrogance of rank when a seasoned fighter offered a plan that could bring victory, and personal glory.

‘You want me to release his ship?’ said de Grailly, surprised not so much by the request itself as by the objective that Blackstone had outlined.

‘I do. And if he gets us through, return his cargo and let the man make a profit if he gets back to England.’

‘Thomas,’ de Grailly said, uncertain whether the boldness of the plan was that of a man possessed or a feat of daring that would allow him to strike farther north into French territory than he could ever have hoped, ‘you know how many men that small cog can take? A dozen – perhaps a handful more. It can’t be done.’

Perhaps de Grailly was right, Blackstone thought. To throw himself on the mercy of the sea and then sail upriver with a fast-turning tide behind an enemy stronghold, with little knowledge of its fortifications, could be a quick way to die. The ship’s master had told him that a spit of land, like a small island, lay to the seaward side of the stronghold and provided the tides had not risen too high and made the ground impassable, then men could get across it and scale the walls. Beyond that, little was known. Blackstone hoped to burn down the main gate and force the garrison of – how many? Sixty or more? – to defend themselves within the courtyard. De Grailly’s weight of numbers had to arrive in support and on time.

De Grailly said: ‘The French control the river and the road. They will have barges patrolling downriver. A barge can turn and outrun a ship. They will be waiting for you.’

‘Master Jennah tells me the tide will be in our favour, running from the sea. We run with it. Barges from upriver won’t go against the tide.’

Silence settled between de Grailly and Blackstone as both men considered the idea. De Grailly realized that if he could swoop north and deliver a deep wound into the French underbelly, he could then turn his troops inland and drive south in a pincer movement that would throw his enemy off guard and allow him to seize Périgueux, a major French-held city. He tapped his finger nervously on the table. Too far too fast? Too exposed on his flank? How much longer could this English knight lead a charmed life?

Blackstone broke their silence. ‘Take the garrison, seize their armoury and you inflict a wound that’ll bleed them dry. You’ll control the river, your men will command the road north, your back will be protected and the Prince will kiss you on both cheeks and shower you with glory.’

‘And for you, Thomas? What is in it for you?’

‘I take whatever weapons I can carry. I take their plate and silver, relieve them of the coin they’ll have for paying the garrison and those local nobles who support King John. You take the victory; I take the rewards. I can’t pay my men with glory alone.’

De Grailly was nodding. The Englishman was taking the greater risk.

‘You would have to be on that road to secure it,’ Blackstone said, knowing the route to the castle was the key. Reinforcements could pour down it and overwhelm Blackstone’s small force. ‘Be there when I burn down those gates and get inside the walls. If you don’t I’m trapped.’

‘And if you don’t get inside? Then I’m exposed. I can’t turn back six hundred men. The French see my approach and they have me. My head would be delivered to the French King and the Prince becomes vulnerable.’

‘And a horse could stumble walking across a stable yard, throw you and break your neck, or a thief could slip a knife between your ribs. Death is waiting for us all. The trick is to cheat it long enough,’ Blackstone answered.

*

The wave that took Guillaume tumbled him away along the deck. A pitch and a roll and he would be lost. Blackstone could do nothing; his hand already bled from the coarse rope, and as he swung like a flailing pulley-block in a tempest, making a final, desperate effort to grab him, he saw a dark shape separate itself from the huddled mass. The burly figure, his eyes barely visible, his black beard matted with salt, threw the weight of his body onto the helpless man, wresting Guillaume from the roiling water. It was Meulon who pulled the smaller man to him like a shield, and he in turn was grabbed and held by Gaillard. They had enough muscle between them to force half a dozen men to the ground with ferocious ease. The sea god’s anger was denied its sacrifice – and, like a burrowing animal, Guillaume disappeared beneath the shield wall.

Blackstone took a tighter grip on the rope, lost his footing, and was slammed into the ship’s side. Pain burst through him, but gave him a surge of anger that doubled his strength. And then the boat shuddered, the ominous sound of wood scraping across the sand bar. The clinker-built cog was like a fat-bellied sow; its bowed ribs made it wallow, but its flat-bottomed hull allowed it to enter shallow waters, and with a following tide the ship lurched across the gravelled mouth of the estuary. There was an immediate halt to the violence as the ship found calmer water in the broad reach of the river. For two hundred paces each side of the ship, the mudflats rose into a stubbled landscape of rotted tree-stumps that caught the wind and howled dismally.

Blackstone swung himself around to face the huddled men. ‘On your feet! Up! Now!’

The men staggered uncertainly, found what balance they could, locking arms, bracing legs, weapons in one hand, comrades held fast in the other. There had been enough vomit spewed that day to empty men’s stomachs and Blackstone saw the gaunt look of illness on every man’s face. As the ship steadied, Master Jennah ordered the sail lowered and secured.

‘Wind’s against us good and proper now, but this tide will carry us upstream,’ he shouted to Blackstone. ‘Get the water out!’

The ship was heavy with seawater trapped knee-deep with nowhere to go. Blackstone grabbed a bucket and followed the mariners’ example, scooping water and passing it to the next man. Without needing to be told his men slung their shields and, ignoring the cramped deckspace, bent to the task. The boat would settle if they did not empty it of the shipped water. Jennah watched the veering wind scatter spray and foam and shouted his helmsmen to keep their course. The command was merely a ritual in these shallow rivers, but the men who steered the ship had been pressed into service most of their lives and had taken trading vessels like the Saint Margaret Boat up many inlets.

Master Jennah had told Blackstone of the river’s long, twisting curves, of the mudbanks that broke the shallow surface and the wasteland that stretched into the distant forests. If they reached the river mouth by the time the sun was above their heads, he had told Blackstone with a look of misgiving, then when they heard a distant church bell ring for prayers they had less than half the daylight remaining. That was when they would turn the final bend in the river. Blackstone looked at the riverbank and guessed they were moving as quickly as a horse trotted. If Master Jennah was correct, then by the time they reached the garrison there would be only a short time before darkness fell. That was the better choice. It was what he had hoped for: a few short hours to get close to the walls, then fight and secure. They would attack and hold until the next morning. De Grailly would not bring his troops up in darkness. With luck the Gascon commander would be waiting a few miles away, hidden in the forest so that at first light he could secure the road. A soldier needed good fortune on his side, a calming hand from the angels that allowed him to survive; looking at the state of his men, shivering and hunched, limbs aching and bellies empty, he reckoned he needed the earth spirits’ blessing as well.

It was not given.

Blackstone threw the bucketful of water over the side. It was whipped away by the wind, half of it stinging his face. The wind had turned.

He looked to where Jennah stood with his helmsmen and the ship’s master nodded in silent acknowledgement. The wind was now behind them and, with the flowing tide pushed them ever faster towards the enemy, they would reach the castle with more daylight than he had wished.

*

There had been no appetite for the ship’s rations of salted fish, so once the water had been cleared he gave each man a generous ration of brandywine. It would settle the effects of the voyage and put strength back into their limbs, and Blackstone knew its effect would calm the uncertainty that sat in every man’s mind. There were only twenty of them – two more counting Blackstone and Guillaume – and there could be no expectation that the mariners would join in the assault. There was likely to be at least twice the number behind the castle walls to hold a stronghold such as this, but Blackstone prayed that their meandering approach through the mudflats would go unnoticed. The French nobleman who commanded the garrison would expect any challenge to be made from beneath the castle walls. Men of honour did not slip quietly behind the enemy like assassins in the night.

Honour, Blackstone told himself, meant different things to different men.

There was no church bell ringing as the Saint Margaret Boat eased around the headland of the river’s final bend. His men crouched below the ship’s sides as Blackstone stood with Jennah and watched the stronghold ease into view. What he saw was a poor defensive structure that depended on the natural lie of the land. A timbered wall faced the river and Blackstone guessed that the wet ground had been too yielding to secure a stone fortification, which he could see extended beyond the rear wall of the castle where the ground must have been firmer. Drainage ditches had been dug and abandoned over time. There had been little need to expend further effort on a defensive wall where the quagmire and tide formed seemingly impregnable defences. The timber would be chestnut or oak, strong as iron, but with its feet in the soft ground. The castle rose fifteen feet above the river and he could see that what was once a broad reach of water narrowed into smaller channels, finally disappearing into little more than fingers of water that seeped into a distant water meadow. No wonder the castle held the road; there was little chance of an assault by land.

‘Not too close, Master Jennah,’ Blackstone told him. Wild grassland and reeds smothered what remained of stunted trees, sodden with brackish water, which obscured the small ship. Bulrushes bent in the wind, scattering their fine down.

‘I can run aground on that mudbank there, Sir Thomas,’ he said, holding the boat pressed against the riverbank, ‘and I’ll float free when the tide turns. You and your men will have to go through the reeds, and it’ll be hard going, particularly if you have to carry them rundlets.’ He nodded towards the lashed casks, half the size of a wine barrel, but which would still weigh a hundred pounds or more. Master Jennah grimaced – more, was his guess. Blackstone had loaded a dozen of the tar-filled half-barrels with the intention of burning down the main gate, but he now saw that was impossible, since the river did not allow access to the front of the stronghold. It swirled away beneath the road bridge, its strength diminished as it spread out into the shallow tributaries of the water meadows beyond. It was obvious that the only place Blackstone could place them was beneath the timber wall. Wading through marshland carrying the barrels under cover of bulrushes was a task he did not envy his poor seasick men. The reeds might obscure their approach but only so far. A narrow tributary flowed beneath the walls, thick with the stinking black slime of rotted vegetation, and then rejoined the river. It was better than a defensive ditch. If that approach was Blackstone’s only means of attack, Jennah realized, it meant those walls would take a long time to burn, which would give sufficient warning for the garrison to summon reinforcements. Ten years before, he had anchored his boat beyond the great city of Caen and watched its destruction from upriver. In those days the King’s army had brought up barges loaded with archers and their firepower had bought time for the soldiers. This place was no Caen, but with only twenty men, no archers or floating platforms, it might as well have been.

‘Can you get your ship down that ditch?’ Blackstone asked, pointing to the water that ran below the walls.

‘I’d get her down but I won’t be able to get her back. She’ll be held fast.’

Blackstone kept his steady gaze on Jennah’s face. It took only a moment for the ship’s master to grasp what Blackstone meant.

‘No! I’ll not make this a fire ship!’

Blackstone’s legs were still unsteady from the tormented voyage, so the stocky man had strength enough to push him aside. Jennah snarled at the helmsman: ‘Hold her fast! Keep her bow there!’ he said, cutting the air with the flat of his hand in the direction of the riverbank. The following tide still kept his ship pressed snugly out of sight from the French. He glowered at Blackstone. ‘A master of his ship swears an oath to save his cargo and the lives of his men. And a ship is never lost unless master and crew are dead, that’s the law! The law, Sir Thomas! And I’ll not sacrifice my ship or my men for you. I owe you my life, but nothing more.’

‘You’ll earn the Prince’s blessing,’ Blackstone told him, in the hope of stinging the man’s loyalty.

‘Ay! The Prince! God bless him! He’d take the shirt off a man’s back if it meant he could freeze the poor bastard to death. The Prince has no need of my ship to go up in flames though!’

The scarred knight had him outnumbered. Jennah spat and rubbed his cropped head, scattering flakes of scurf into the wind. His salt- and wind-cracked hands had healed too many times to remember, but they had strength enough to grasp a knife and a knotted rope to fight the man who wanted to burn his ship.

Blackstone knew the threat was a brave man’s stand. Jennah was three strides away but Meulon and the men drew their swords. Blackstone raised an arm and halted any violence against the sailors, whose death would have been slaughter, for they could have made only token resistance.

‘You’ll not have my boat, by Christ’s tears you will not, Sir Thomas,’ said Jennah, readying himself. ‘A knight would fight for his pennon or banner; he’d have to be dead before he let his sword fall from his fist. It’s no different for a mariner. We swore an oath. The Saint Margaret Boat is my vessel. Heart and soul.’

It would have been an easy task to disarm the angry man but killing him would serve no purpose. Blackstone did not have the skill to use the tide and nudge the ship beneath the walls, and to blackmail the old man with the killing of one of his innocent crew was not an option that Blackstone would consider – it could only ever be a bluff. Besides, Master Jennah had kept his part of the bargain and brought the fighting men to the shore.

Blackstone said: ‘How long before the tide turns?’

‘Three hours at most,’ answered Jennah, still holding the knife warily.

Blackstone nodded and turned to the waiting men. ‘Meulon. Send Gaillard ashore with a cask.’ Blackstone turned back to Jennah. ‘Lower your blade, Master Jennah. You’ll take no harm from me. Your ship is yours. Men need no better reason to defend that which they love.’

Jennah hesitated, but when Blackstone went down onto the deck he slid the blade back into its sheath. He watched as one of Blackstone’s soldiers, as big a man as Blackstone himself, but with a heavier build to his shoulders, clambered over the side of the ship carrying a tar barrel. There was no doubting the man’s strength or determination as he attempted to make headway through the soggy ground that sucked his legs down to the knee. With the rundlet on his shoulder he tried to keep his balance, but within ten paces he fell. He staggered to his feet, hefted his burden back onto his shoulder again but made no more than three or four paces before he squelched down again.

Meulon took the signal from Blackstone and gently whistled a single note, then beckoned Gaillard back to the ship. Every fighting man knew that if Gaillard’s strength could not even reach twenty paces, then none would ever reach the base of the wall, more than three hundred cloth yards away, and then negotiate the quagmire and stream.

Blackstone weighed their chances. Attack too soon and the garrison would send a messenger for reinforcements. Then, no matter how strong de Grailly’s force might appear, they could be ambushed on the narrow road and the English would suffer a defeat that could have a devastating effect on the Prince of Wales’s war of attrition. Attack too late and Blackstone and his men could be cornered like rats behind the walls. His successful raid, which had occupied the past several weeks, meant that his men were ready for the comfort of their women and a good fire in a grate rather than wet ground and bitter fighting. Now they could end with their heads on poles. He cursed himself for being too ambitious.

He should have been halfway home by now. He had promised Christiana that, once he had resupplied the towns he held and paid the men who followed him, there would be time for them both before his son’s birthday. There were few raids undertaken over the winter months so he had scraped out the foundations of a new wall, embedding stone so that the winter rains would sluice through them and not damage his planned construction. They had carted rock from the fields and quarry and he had spent two cold months in his barn cutting and shaping the stone to his liking. When they had first taken over the old Norman manor house after they were married, he’d discovered signs of an ancient settlement. In their time the Romans had laid cut-stone pathways and built shelters for the animals with defensive walls, but like many old French towns they had tumbled and lain shrouded by undergrowth. Ancient warriors had encamped in these parts until wars of conquest had dragged them away. The place gave Blackstone a sense of belonging, somewhere he would live in relative peace with Christiana and the children. And they had desperately wanted another child. That was all part of his promise to her. Six months before this raid for food and supplies she had lost the child from her womb. The women who attended her had wrapped the infant and hid it from him, but Blackstone had unfolded the bloodied linen and gazed at the small creature that lay curled in sleep-like death and who would have been his second son.

A friend, Joanne de Ruymont, who had never shared her husband’s friendship with the Englishman, had comforted her. She was a woman constrained by the manners dictated by her high-born family, a woman who held a deep-rooted resentment against Thomas Blackstone, an archer who had slain members of her family at Crécy. It was her husband, Guy, who served as peacemaker between the two families, given his close friendship with Blackstone’s mentor, the Norman lord Jean de Harcourt, but it had been Christiana that Joanna visited when the men were away fighting. It had been she who had held Christiana through the torturous time of her miscarriage.

And now all Blackstone wanted was to go home, comfort his wife, and build his wall.

‘Sir Thomas?’

Meulon’s voice broke into Blackstone’s thoughts.

‘What are your orders?’

Blackstone looked at the men who awaited his command.

‘Can any of your men swim, Master Jennah?’

‘Swim? Other than me – no. I’m the only man aboard with a chance to reach the shore if we were ever wrecked. There’s no swimming to be had here, Sir Thomas. Not with this current.’ It made no sense to the sailor. ‘Swim where?’

‘Rope each barrel of oil with another of tar. Someone has to take them beneath the bridges and into the water meadows. And then light them. Send flames across the sky and draw out those inside. But it will take at least two men.’

‘Well, I’m too old to be doing that. The water is cold and a man can be snared by what lies beneath. And to keep tinder dry to fire the barrels will be the devil’s job.’

Blackstone looked to his men. Guillaume stepped forward. ‘I’ll go, lord. But I’ll need time to float them into position.’

He had no wish to see his squire go into the water. Whoever lit the barrels might easily be seen by crossbowmen on the walls. Enough quarrels could be loosed to cut through reed beds without even aiming.

‘Meulon, you lead the assault. I’ll go into the water with Master Guillaume.’ There was no choice. Blackstone had swum in the river that flowed by his village since he could walk.

‘My lord,’ Meulon said quickly. ‘Taking the walls can be done, but it needs you to lead us. We could flounder inside the stronghold as badly as a drowning man in the water.’ There was a murmur of agreement from the men. A wiry man, muscular despite his slight build, stepped forward. It was Perinne, one of the men who had fought with Blackstone these past ten years. A wall-builder like the man who led him.

‘I thrashed across a pond once, Sir Thomas. Give me a shaft of wood to cling to and I’ll get myself out there with a bit of help from the current. We can’t have Meulon here taking all the glory for seizing the place. Besides, it’s safer in the water than having Gaillard sticking his spear up my arse every time a shadow moves.’

The men laughed and muttered their agreement; the tension of uncertainty was broken.

‘Right enough,’ Guillaume said, ‘but when you fire the tar barrels make sure you’re upwind or you’ll have less hair than you have now.’

Perinne’s thinning, close-cropped hair showed bird’s-feet scars across his scalp. ‘I might not have the locks of a girl, Master Guillaume, but I’ll wager my old head has snuggled between more tits than your own.’

Guillaume Bourdin wore his hair to his shoulders and, with his fine features, could easily be mistaken for a young woman – a mistake soon corrected when the fighting started – but it was seldom they had seen the young squire take a whore. The young man’s pride was easily hurt when it came to such matters, but to fight with men like these meant pride had best learn to suffer its own wounds; by now Guillaume’s carried as many nicks and cuts as Perinne’s scalp.

Master Jennah said: ‘Merciful Christ, Sir Thomas. A lad and a man who can barely float on the tide like a turd? Is that your plan?’

‘If victory were governed by how we look and whether shit floats we would all be Kings of France. I’ll swim with them until the barrels are in place and then return. Now, Master Jennah, you’ll keep your boat safe and tucked up here, because when the tide turns we must pray they don’t send river patrols out from that garrison. If they do, your ship is gone and your crew dead – and you with it. I’ll not be able to help you, because we will have put ourselves below that wall, waiting for the fire to take their attention.’

Jennah wiped a hand across his face. The risk of being discovered and attacked was more of a reality now than it had ever been.

‘Sir Thomas, I can’t anchor here for long. They’ll see my mast sooner or later. You need the tide to float the tar barrels; you don’t need my ship. Give me leave to sail when the wind turns.’

It was Meulon’s voice that carried: ‘You abandon us?’ The tightly packed men jostled forward, their mood quickly changing.

The ship’s master took a step back. These violent men were as great a danger as the enemy. He crossed himself, uttering an invocation to Jesu, Son of God. Blackstone stepped between him and the men.

‘Master Jennah has done what I asked. He’s right: we have no further need of his ship. We either take this stronghold and are relieved by the Captal de Buch and his forces, or we die. And I for one would not go another hour on this bucket and leave my innards for the fish. I’ll fight, but I’ll not die on my knees, retching my arse through my throat!’

His deliberately crude comment had the desired effect. ‘Amen, my lord,’ said Perinne.

Others agreed. Meulon took his lead from Blackstone. ‘Then we’d best get ourselves beneath that wall while there’s daylight and try to stomach some of Master Jennah’s salted fish, because it will be a long night.’

2

The eddies settled as the tide turned. Within hours twenty feet of the riverbanks would be exposed as the water raced for the sea. Blackstone stripped off and slipped naked into the chilled water. He gasped with the cold, feeling his muscles tighten. Guillaume and Perinne followed him, but they would be in the marshes all night so stayed clothed, their weapons wrapped securely in oiled cloth. Using the calmer water to drift beneath the road bridge, each man pushed two of the half-barrels roped together, their staves already cracked by axe and covered in sackcloth to hold back their seepage. At times the men’s feet touched the bottom, giving them purchase as they pushed through into the water meadow, easing aside lush grass and reeds, praying that the breeze would cover the reeds’ movement. Once they were beyond the stronghold’s walls they dared to look back and saw the iron-studded doors and gatehouse, where the gloom of the closing day revealed the figures of two sentries guarding their posts. There was no sign of any others. The French commander had grown complacent. So well placed was the garrison it seemed obvious that the only way an enemy could approach would be along the road.

Blackstone took one of the channels into the marshland; Guillaume and Perinne, who had tied a piece of wood beneath his chest, pushed their way into others. In the distance a church bell rang. A hundred yards further and they wedged the casks into the knotted clumps of vegetation and prised the cracked staves further open. Their flint and steel, and the tinder they carried beneath their leather caps to ignite the oil, would be kept safe and dry until the signal was given. Somewhere across the wasteland that same church bell would ring out in darkness, its lonely chime signalling the time to attack.

Blackstone paddled back to the two men. The wind had dropped and the stench of marsh gas that bubbled from beneath the surface soured the back of their throats. Smoke drifted lazily from the garrison, the cold, heavy air pushing it down towards the river’s surface. They shivered not only from the wet and cold, but from the belief that lost spirits of the dead, trapped between heaven and earth, could rise from the bubbling, stinking underworld. Blackstone grabbed Perinne’s shoulder, forcing aside his own fear of the place.

‘They won’t rise at night, Perinne. If they manifest it will be now in the half-light. Don’t confuse that curling smoke with anything else. Get yourself onto this clump of reed and stay out of the water. You know what to do.’

‘Aye, Sir Thomas. I know.’

‘My life depends on you, as it has in the past. I need your courage tonight more than ever. And if there are spirits about they’ll be of our dead friends sent to protect us.’

Perinne grinned. His teeth had almost stopped chattering. ‘Next you’ll be telling me my mother wasn’t a whore,’ he said.

Blackstone pulled himself away through the tangled undergrowth. Arianrhod sat in the hollow of his throat, listening to his whispered prayer for protection as his naked body was caressed by submerged weeds and rotting fingers of roots. But his mind pictured the floating dead reaching up for him; it was all he could do to keep from crying out. The place was rank with evil. Yet he swam back twice again with the uncomplaining Guillaume, pushing his own fear aside and the remaining barrels into place. Guillaume would keep Perinne close to him. Two men’s courage was better than one man alone in the cloying mist. It was almost dark when Jennah’s men hauled the shivering Blackstone aboard and, as Meulon reported that he had sent Gaillard and two others forward with coils of light rope to mark the way, he rubbed himself dry with sackcloth, scouring his skin back to warmth. He could feel the boat moving in a gentle rise and fall as it scraped against the mud bank, straining for its release in its desire to join the ebb tide. A sullen bell marking vespers – the end of the day – sent its haunting sound across the marshland.

Meulon took the men over the side and onto the riverbank, waiting for Blackstone.

‘Your two men in the water, their shields are still aboard,’ Jennah told him.

‘We can’t take extra weight with us. Do as you wish with them,’ said Blackstone, slinging his own shield across his back. ‘They’ll be given others to replace them.’

‘Then we’ll keep them with some pride, Sir Thomas. Mist is settling,’ Jennah said, thankful that it would help cover his departure. ‘It’ll sit around those gullies and cover you and your men till you climb over that wall. I wish you well and that God blesses your endeavours, but I have to let loose my boat and be gone from here.’

Blackstone finished dressing. ‘Your cargo’s waiting for you, Master Jennah. The Saint Margaret Boat is yours again.’

Jennah bowed his head while Blackstone secured his shield as the men ashore had done. ‘I’m a sailor, Sir Thomas. Your world frightens me. But I would have fought you for my ship, even though you would have killed me.’

‘Go and secure your profit and your freedom, Master Jennah of Hythe. I would rather die here than face that sea again. We each fight in our own way.’

No mention was made of Jennah’s debt of life, or

Reviews for Defiant Unto Death

[paulozzypocket · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Gelungene FortsetzungThomas Blackstone lebt mit seiner Frau und den Kindern noch immer in Nordfrankreich. Er hat seinen Ruf als Ritter des Königs von England weiter ausgebaut. Aber König Johann von Frankreich ist erbost darüber, dass anscheinend niemand diesen Mann stoppen kann. Er hetzt ihm deshalb einen gefährlichen Gegner auf den Hals. Jetzt heißt es für Thomas nicht nur für den König kämpfen, sondern auch die eigene Familie schützen. Dies ist nun der zweite Band um den ehemaligen Bogenschützen Thomas Blackstone. David Gilman schildert, wie das Leben des Mannes weiterging. Dabei gibt er interessante Einblicke in die Zeit nach der großen Schlacht von Crécy. Gilman erzählt von den Intrigen am Hofe, von den Versuchen des Adels die eigene Macht weiter auszubauen und eben von Thomas.Dieser zweite Teil hat mir ebenfalls gut gefallen. Erzählt er doch, wie es weitergeht und wie hart das Leben in dieser Zeit war. Der Erzählstil ist weiterhin leicht lesbar und lässt ein bisschen erahnen, wie die Menschen damals miteinander umgingen. Allerdings werden auch wieder einige Kämpfe detailgetreu geschildert. In dieser Geschichte hat Blackstone aber nicht nur gegen die Franzosen zu kämpfen, es kommt auch noch ein persönlicher Feind dazu. Das macht die ganze Geschichte noch ein bisschen spannender. Mir hat gut gefallen, wie Thomas mit der neuen Situation umging. Auch wenn es so einige Szenen gab, wo man beim Lesen schon dachte, also diese Falle musst du doch sehen, aber Thomas ist eben Thomas und hält sich an den Kodex der Ehre. Ein ausführliches Nachwort klärt auch hier, was an der Geschichte rein fiktiv ist und wo der Autor sich an historische Details hielt, soweit sie eben bekannt waren. „Der Ehrlose König“ ist in meinen Augen eine gelungene Fortsetzung zu „Das blutige Schwert“. Auch wenn 10 Jahre zwischen den Handlungen liegen, sollte man Band 1 gelesen haben, um richtig in die Handlungen zu finden. Schon allein, um zu sehen, wie Thomas sich weiterentwickelt und um zu verstehen, warum er wie handelt und nicht anders. Ich jeden Falls bin gespannt, wie die Geschichte um Thomas Blackstone weitergeht, auch wenn der Ausgang des Krieges ja bekannt ist und Blackstone das Ende ja nicht miterleben wird.