Yet the French ranks held. They pushed back as the Bretons held in reserve added their weight. Beyard slithered through men’s gore. Dead horses blocked the passage of battle. Beyard turned to the men at his side, shouting above the din, when a crossbow bolt pierced one man’s neck. Beyard swung instinctively. The bowman was less than ten strides away. Beyond him was the bridge. They were almost there. A blow from a mace felled him to his knees. Shield raised, he swept his sword back in a scything arc and felt the blade bite into a man’s legs. He tried to stand but his head swirled, his eyes blurred and he sank down and fell onto his back. He heard rolling thunder across the clear sky and then realized it was the dull thud of hoofbeats across the wooden bridge. The French had more reserves hidden in the trees across the river. The strength fled from his arms as he yielded to his descent into darkness. They had lost.

CHAPTER SIX

Blackstone walked among the dead.

Horses stood in the midst of the carnage, blood-smeared, reins loose, some grazing. Blackstone’s men despatched those limping from broken legs or seriously wounded. Strutting crows pecked at the fallen troops as the men scoured the field for their Gascon comrades. When they found one, they called out his name, their sadness all that broke the silence. It took hours for them to search the hundreds slain. They recovered nine bodies of the twelve men who had served under Beyard. There was no sign of the Captal de Buch or his captain. They gathered the shields bearing de Grailly’s blazon of five scallops set against a black cross.

Blackstone bent and eased a body aside, his blazon showing him to be from Burgundy, a French ally. The youth was too young to have more than a few whiskers on his face. He looked no older than Blackstone’s son, Henry. The young knight had clearly sought glory and the enemy dead around his corpse was evidence he had fought hard. There was no sign of a wound. His dead horse lay on its side but it wasn’t the fall that had killed him. Blackstone tugged the lad free from those around him and saw the tell-tale rivulet of dried blood from a slash in his groin. A sword tip or knife had pierced his mail and cut into the artery that, once severed, meant his life had drained from him: a merciful wound that saved him from the agony of severed limbs or crushed skull. He would have fought on for a few minutes more, feeling the weakness seeping into his body, robbing him of strength. He might even have been unaware that the injury was taking his life.