“Because Melisande would never forgive you,” Lanferelle said, and he saw the hesitation on Hook’s face and he tensed, ready to bring up his own poleax, but then the steel spike ground into his mouth, ripping his upper gum.

“Go on,” Hook said, “try.”

Sir John still watched.

“Just try,” Hook begged. He kept his eyes on Lanferelle’s face. “You want him, Sir John?”

“He’s yours, Hook.”

“You’re mine,” Hook said to Lanferelle.

“Je me rends,” Lanferelle said, and he released his poleax shaft so the weapon thumped into the mud.

“Take your helmet off,” Hook ordered, drawing back the blood-tipped poleax.

Lanferelle took off his helmet, then his aventail and the leather hood beneath, so releasing his long black hair. He gave Hook his right gauntlet and Hook, triumphant, took his prisoner back to where the other French captives were under guard. The Sire de Lanferelle looked tired suddenly, tired and distraught. “Don’t tie my hands,” he begged.

“Why not?”

“Because I have honor, Nicholas Hook. I have surrendered and I give you my word I will not try to fight again, nor will I try to escape.”

“Then wait here,” Hook said.

“I will wait,” Lanferelle promised.

Hook shouted at a pageboy to bring the Frenchman some water and then went back to the battle that was once again dying. The second French battle had done no better than the first. They had added more bodies to the heaps of the dead, and now the survivors struggled back through the mud, leaving corpses, injured men, and prisoners behind. Hundreds of prisoners. Dukes and counts and lords and men-at-arms, all in surcoats streaked with mud and sodden with blood, all now standing behind the English line and watching, in disbelief, as the remnants of the two French battles limped away.

The third French battle remained. Its flags flew and all along that line men were climbing into saddles and calling on their squires to bring their long lances. “Arrows,” Saint Crispinian spoke in Hook’s head, “you need arrows.”

The day’s work was not over.

Melisande watched.

The English baggage was in the village of Maisoncelles and in the wet pastures around it, and some was halfway up the hill as pages and servants led packhorses toward the protection of the English army beyond the skyline, if indeed there was an English army anymore. Melisande did not know. She had watched men spill over that horizon into the valley where Maisoncelles lay, but those men were few and, by their movements, she guessed they were wounded soldiers, and after a while other men had come, but slowly, not in panicked flight, and she had not understood that they were prisoners being taken toward the village. The lack of panic suggested the English army still held their line on the plateau, but she half expected and half feared to see it come spilling over the edge pursued by the vengeful French.

Instead the French horsemen had come from the west, and now they spurred into the village and Melisande watched as they cut down pages and then dismounted to start pillaging the English baggage.

The horsemen drove away the peasants who had arrived first. A handful of English men-at-arms and wounded archers had been left to guard the encampment, but they only numbered thirty and they had spent their arrows on the serfs and those men now retreated uphill. The women of the army went with them as the horsemen found the English king’s quarters. A priest and two pages had stayed with the king’s treasures, and those three were quickly slaughtered and the plunder began.

Melisande watched. She saw a man parade in a fur-trimmed red robe and with a crown on his head, making his companions laugh. She did not understand what was happening. She could only pray that Nick lived, and so she shut her eyes, crouched low, and prayed.

Hook lived.

The two French battles had retreated, struggling back over the plowland and leaving the space in front of the English thick with bodies in mud-smeared armor. The third French battle was mounted now. It was the smallest of the three French battles, yet it still outnumbered the English. The riders’ lances were upright, some flaunted pennants. Trumpets sounded. The third battle could not charge yet for so many dismounted Frenchmen were in front of them, but they moved their horses a few paces forward before stopping again.

“Arrows!” Hook shouted at his men.

“We don’t have any!” Will of the Dale called back.

“Yes we do,” Hook said. He found his bow, slung it on his shoulder and led his men out into the field where the French bodies lay, and all around those fallen men were spent arrows. Some, because they had struck good armor head on, were now useless because their bodkin points had bent or crumpled, but many were in fine condition. Hook found some undamaged points on arrows that had splintered shafts and he pulled those bodkins free and married them to good shafts. He also pillaged the French bodies. He found a silver chain about one man’s neck and he thrust that into his arrow bag. Men-at-arms were also searching among the heaped French casualties, hauling the corpses away from the living, killing men too injured to survive or too poor to be worth ransoming, and rescuing the wealthy. Hook picked up a gray-fledged arrow trapped in the surcoat of a man lying on his back, and the man suddenly moved. Hook had thought he was dead, but the man groaned and turned his visored face toward the archer. Hook lifted the visor and saw scared eyes. “Aidez moi,” the man said, half choking. Hook could see no wound, no puncture in the armor, but the man screamed when Hook tried to lift him. The Frenchman was in such pain that he lost consciousness and Hook let him fall again. He took the arrow and moved on. A dog barked at him. It was standing over a corpse in a blood-soaked surcoat. Hook left the dog alone, skirting it to pick up a dozen more arrows that he thrust into his arrow bag.

“Nick!” Will of the Dale called, and Hook looked up to see a lone French horseman had ridden through the retreating fugitives of the first two battles. The rider was short and slightly built, and the only weapon he carried was a scabbarded sword. He wore plate armor, but he was not mounted on an armored destrier, instead he rode a small piebald mare. His white linen jupon was decorated with two red axes above which was the glimmer of gold from a heavy chain that hung around his neck. His helmet’s visor was raised and he seemed to be searching among the bodies, but checked his horse when he realized the archers were staring at him.

“Bastard wants trouble,” Will said.

“No, he’s just looking at us,” Hook said, “and he’s only a little fellow. Let him be.” He picked up a broadhead, then another bodkin, and glanced again at the horseman who had suddenly drawn his sword and kicked his horse forward. “Maybe he does want trouble,” Hook said and he took the bow off his shoulder, braced it on a corpse’s breastplate, and looped its string about the upper nock.

The horseman stopped again, this time to gaze down into a tangle of armor and bodies. The dead lay on top of each other and the man seemed fascinated by the sight. He stared for a long time, now no more than twenty paces from the archers and then, abruptly, he screamed a high-pitched challenge and kicked his piebald horse straight at Hook. The mare responded, flailing its hooves in the mud to throw up great clods of earth.

“Stupid bastard,” Hook said angrily. He laid a bodkin over the string and raised the bow, just as a dozen other archers did the same. Hook thought the man must swerve away, but instead the rider lowered his sword to spear the blade at Hook who drew the cord to his right ear and did not even think about what he did. It was all instinctive. The cord came back, he watched the horseman rise and fall with the piebald’s motion, saw the open visor and the unnaturally bright eyes, and loosed.