CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The French had no intention of leaving Castle Acre.
French scouts had been out in the countryside as the army from Narborough approached from the north, so by the time the de Winter troops were on the outskirts, the French had set up a second line and were ready for them.
It was a nasty battle from the start.
The French army had scavenged nearly everything of value out of the village of Castle Acre, leaving burning homes and dead peasants in their wake. They stole horses and livestock, even dogs. The de Winter army could hear the screaming from the villagers, but they were blocked from helping by the line of French who were intent to chase them away. The de Winter war machine, however, would not be chased away; Bric ordered his archers to unleash, and as the French rebels began to retreat back into the burning village, the de Winter army charged after them.
But the French soon fragmented, meaning the de Winter army also had to fragment in order to chase them down, and there were pockets of brutal fighting in the village and near the gatehouse of Castle Acre. The castle wasn’t a main residence for the Earl of Surrey, but it was strategic, and the earl stationed about five hundred men to protect both the castle and the village, but it wasn’t nearly enough against the one thousand Frenchmen who wanted to steal the castle and destroy the village.
As soon as the army made headway into the village, Daveigh headed to the castle with a contingent of bodyguards to speak with the garrison commander while Bric took charge of the fighting. He sent Mylo to the east, Pearce to the west, while he and the main body of the army plowed right down the middle of the town. The streets were narrow, the alleys dark and dangerous, and half of the town was burning by the time Bric and his men began to gain the upper hand against the enemy.
But it was the French army’s fault that they began to lose ground. Since they’d stolen so much, they weren’t moving very swiftly and the de Winter troops were able to take back horses, cows, and other livestock that had been stolen. There was a livery near the gatehouse of the castle, one with a big corral, and the de Winter army began stashing the reclaimed livestock there. It began to fill up with frightened horses and cows, a few calves, and many goats, one of which tried to ram those who were attempting to help it. It was a rare humorous moment as Bric watched two of his soldiers get mowed down by a very angry Billy goat as they were trying to lead the creature to safety.
And the fight went on long into the day.
As Keeva had predicted, there was some mist hanging heavy over the land as the sun rose, a mist that didn’t quite burn off even in midday. Mylo returned from the east after several hours of fighting to report that he’d either chased away or killed the French factions he’d been fighting against, but at the same time a report came from the west that the French were moving on the Castle Acre Priory, a large monastic enclave west of the castle. Bric shifted his manpower over to the priory, and there was heavy fighting in the fields all around it.
It was clear very early how badly the French wanted Castle Acre. It was not only a rich castle, but minimally staffed for such a large place because of its somewhat remote situation. Even though the location was out of the normal paths of travel, it was still strategic because it was near the mouth of the River Ouse, and the port city of King’s Lynn, and although the Honor of Narborough controlled the river into the heart of England, Castle Acre sat in a position to control near the river. If the French took it, they could permit French ships to dock in the river, bringing more men and supplies.
At least, that was what Bric assumed their intentions were. It would be a terrible situation for Narborough and its neighbor to the north, Castle Rising, to have a French outpost so close. Castle Acre was under threat of becoming a French lair and Bric wasn’t going to allow that to happen. In truth, it was a much more serious situation than he’d originally thought and even though he didn’t have the military support that he’d had at Holdingham, he was under the belief that he could hold the line at Castle Acre and beat the French back.
The High Warrior would not fail.
Surprisingly, the new recruits had done a good job at fighting the French. Bric had taken about half of them with him, and the rest of them were divided up between Pearce and Mylo. The first hour into the fight, Bric was screaming at the men as he used to before his injury. He even knocked a head or two when they didn’t listen to him fast enough.
For the seasoned de Winter troops, it did them good to see Bric back to his old form. This was the High Warrior they knew, the man who wouldn’t hesitate to insult you if you deserved it, but would also kill for you if need be. Seeing Bric return to the man they once knew was a huge boost for the de Winter army and as the day dragged into night, they fought with a vengeance.
The battle continued as a moonless sky unfolded. The priory was lit up with torches, from every window it seemed, casting rays of light into the darkness beyond. The de Winter army had created something of a barrier around the priory, preventing the French from getting close even though some of them had run off into the nearby woods only to emerge with a battering ram. They used the battering ram to push aside de Winter men, who retaliated by trying to take the battering ram away from them.
It had been quite a struggle, with the de Winter men finally emerging the victors, and Bric watched it all from astride his big war horse. Liath had been unmuzzled at the start of the battle and, even now, he snapped at men who came too close or used his big hooves to knock them down. Bric was quite certain the horse had killed at least one man by kicking him with his powerful rear legs. The horse was intelligent, experienced, and mean, something Bric adored in the beast.
For the first time in a very long while, Bric felt like he was finally back to his top form. Whatever had happened with his panic attack back at Narborough, he was feeling as if he had overcome it. He was too strong to let something so foolish take him down. With Liath beneath him, and with his beloved sword in-hand, it was an unstoppable combination and Bric felt as if he could take on the entire world.
As the fighting went on around him, Bric remained at the door to the priory to cut down any French who managed to make it through the line of de Winter men in the distance. Two massive oak and iron doors were shut and bolted from the inside, and Bric remained in front of the doors and beneath the great Norman arch of the entry. He’d been here before, a few times, and was awed every time at the sheer size and scope of the priory. It was truly a massive place. As he remained in place, watching the pockets of fighting and guarding the door with a couple of hundred men that would not be moved, Pearce thundered up on his war horse.
“Well?” Bric demanded. “What is the status of the battle?”
Pearce tipped his helm back and wiped at the sweat that was rolling into his eyes. “The fire in the town has stopped for the most part,” he said. “When we drew the fighting over to the priory, the soldiers from the castle emerged to help put it out. They also rounded up the villagers, and most of them are now in the castle for safety.”
Bric moved Liath out from the doorway, looking over towards the village. It was a black outline against the dark sky and he couldn’t see much, but he could see that the castle was lit up with pinpricks of light, torches burning in the darkness.
“That is good news,” he said. “What about the livestock?”
“I think we were able to get back most, if not all, of it. The soldiers moved everything back into the castle for safe keeping.”
Bric was pleased to hear that the villagers and their livestock were at least safe from the French. “That is good news,” he said. “The French were more determined than I thought they would be.”
Pearce finished wiping his eyes and put his helm back on. “Indeed,” he said. He, too, could see the pockets of fighting. “They want the priory badly.”
Bric glanced back at the towering structure. “You know why, don’t you?”
“Because it’s there? Because they can?”
Bric chuckled. “Nay,” he said. “This is a Cluniac establishment, meaning the monks here are loyal to the Abbot of Cluny in France. They are loyal to a French abbot and our French friends out there must feel that this is something that belongs to them. I am sure they thought it would be an easy thing to seize the priory.”
Understanding dawned with Pearce. “Now it makes sense,” he said. “I had not realized that about Castle Acre Priory.”
Bric nodded. “Now you know,” he said. “But the monks want no part of these rebels, so I imagine this is a rather strange situation for them. They are on English soil, and depend on the English for protection, but they are loyal to the French dioses.”
It was an odd situation, indeed. Leaving Pearce by the door, Bric headed out to the clusters of fighting to get a look of the situation for himself, hoping to make short work of the French that were still resisting. He’d done some serious damage in town against the enemy, but now that they were out in the open, he intended to do more damage.
The High Warrior was on the prowl.
Unsheathing his enormous broadsword, the one with the serrated edge, he began stalking the individual groups, coming up behind the unsuspecting French soldiers and lobbing off a head or two. God, he felt powerful when he did that. It was his favorite thing to do in battle. When word started getting around about the English knight who was beheading men, some of the French began to flee. Mylo, who had been fighting off a particularly vicious group, threw caution to the wind and began going for the neck like Bric was.
Soon enough, the fighting began to break up as the French began to retreat. The River Nar ran just to the south of the priory, and Bric watched Mylo rush down to the river because there was some heavy fighting going on down there. He lost sight of Mylo because it was so dark, so he returned to his duties of cleaning up the field of battle by dispatching any remaining fighting.
More often than not, men would simply scatter when they saw him coming, and sometimes they would scatter in the direction of the river. Bric wasn’t entirely sure how many men were down by the river now, so he thought to take a look. If there was more fighting going on, then he would hasten to disband it. It was so dark down there, however, that he took some of the soldiers away from the priory entrance and had them carry torches down towards the river so he could see what was happening.
What he saw unfold was disturbing.
The French had regrouped down by the river and were fighting the de Winter army furiously. When Bric saw this, he bellowed to the men near the priory, telling them to pass the word to send every available man down to the river. In a rush, the English were coming, all of them rushing down to the river to engage the French who were being stubborn.
The River Nar was a wide body of water, but not very deep at all, and the foliage around it was quite heavy, making everything seem darker than it was. Bric charged into the foliage, swinging his sword when he was certain he was swinging it at an enemy. His horse, however, was snapping at anything that moved, French or English.
Unfortunately, the near total darkness in the river made fighting chaotic and dangerous. Bric could only really see occasional movement, and the grunting of men, and the torches brought by the English soldiers didn’t illuminate much at all. At one point, Bric stopped swinging his sword, fearful he was going to kill one of his own men. He resorted to kicking and punching mostly, or knocking the heads he could see. It was as much as he could do considering he couldn’t see anything, nor could anyone else. It was fighting in total darkness, a deadly situation.
Light came unexpectedly when soldiers with torches suddenly appeared in the area that Bric was fighting in and he saw that he was right in the middle of the stream, with mostly French soldiers around him. When the French saw the big English knight with the bloodied blade, they began to run, and Bric tried to catch them before they could get away. But just as he was turning to charge after them, he heard someone yell behind him.
“Bric! Behind you!”
Bric heard Mylo’s voice in a panic. An attack was imminent and Bric could feel something off to his right, like the breeze when something rushed by, and the water splashed heavily next to him. He heard a growl, saw the flash of a blade, and ducked low on his horse, hoping to miss the weapon that was flying out at him.
His sense of survival kicked in; determined to defend himself, Bric brought up his sword to counter, or even kill, the man attacking him. He heard a grunt of pain a split second before he brought his sword around and plunged it into the neck and shoulder of the man who had suddenly appeared next to him. He could see the body in the darkness, but nothing more, and at this moment, anything in the darkness was his enemy.
He wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
But he noticed too late that man next to him was on a horse. There was also another man between them, on foot. The man on foot fell into the river, as did the man on the horse, but Bric couldn’t tell what had happened. He couldn’t see anything. He began screaming for light and a soldier with a torch rushed into the area and the foliage, the water, lit up with a golden glow. Bric looked down to see a dead Frenchman lying in the water and Mylo lying on top of him with his head half-cut off.
Horror seized him.
Bric leapt from his horse, into the freezing water, screaming for the soldier with the torch to come closer. Falling to his knees in the bloodied, cold water, he pulled Mylo up, seeing the wound in the man’s shoulder and neck and knowing he had put it there. God help him, he knew. He could see how easily the sword had cut the flesh, something his serrated blade did easily. It was made for lobbing off heads.
“Oh, God,” he breathed. “Oh, God, no… Mylo? Can you hear me?”
Mylo was ghostly pale, with blood pouring from his neck and shoulder. His eyes opened at the sound of Bric’s voice.
“He… he was going to kill you,” he murmured. “I… had to… stop…”
“Stop what?” Bric demanded, his voice cracking. “What happened?”
“I… put myself between you and… you could not see him. I had to stop him.”
I had to stop him. The confusion, the horror Bric experience was now transforming into something unspeakable as the situation became evident. The warrior who had never shown emotion in his life on the field of battle was feeling a rush of it as he realized what had happened.
He’d killed his own man, who had been trying to save him.
“Sweet God,” he gasped. “Mylo, you yelled a warning. I could not see in the dark and I thought you were the man coming to kill me. I did not know it was you!”
Mylo tried to swallow, to breathe, but everything was cut. He was bleeding out all over Bric, his bright red blood seeping into the man’s tunic.
“I… know…” he rasped. “Not… your fault, Bric. You did not know it was… me…”
With that, he breathed his last. Bric stared at him, unable to comprehend what he had done. The fighting around him had died down, but he didn’t notice. At that moment, all he saw in the entire world was his knight in his arms.
The man he had killed.
The sound that came out of him next was something every man in the de Winter army would remember for the rest of their lives.
“No!”
It was a scream that reverberated off of the priory, startling the monks who were hanging out the windows, watching the battle dwindle. But down in that heavily-foliaged river, Bric held Mylo against him and wept as he’d never wept in his life. He cried for the life he took, for the man he loved who had sacrificed himself to protect him, and for a young son who would never know his father.
He wept until he could weep no more.
As he sat there in the river with Mylo’s cooling body against him, he noticed perhaps the only thing he would have noticed under the circumstances. Somehow in the fighting, in the twisting and the turning, his talisman had managed to escape from underneath his hauberk and he could see it outlined beneath his tunic. As he looked at it, the words inscribed on it suddenly came to mind.
A maiorem caritatum nemo habet.
Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for his friends.
That was what Mylo had done. He’d laid down his life so that Bric could live, and he felt painfully unworthy of those words. Without hesitation, Bric yanked off his helm, his hauberk, and pulled off the talisman. He put it over Mylo’s head, thinking that Mylo was much more deserving of the talisman than he was.
He’d made the greatest sacrifice of all.
Pearce, who had come upon the shocking scene of Bric and Mylo in the middle of the river, ran to the castle to tell Daveigh what had happened. Daveigh flew away from the castle in a panic, determined to get to Bric and Mylo to see for himself what a devastated Pearce had told him. His heart was in his throat, tears in his eyes, as dozens of his soldiers ran with him, lighting the way through the darkness.
When he finally reached the scene, the carnage was horrific. Daveigh entered the river only to see it running red with blood, and the dead and dying littering both the river and the river bank. It was so bloody that it was as if every man there had been through a meat grinder, and he plunged feet-first into the river, running to the spot where Bric held Mylo, both of them half-submerged in the freezing water.
When Daveigh saw what had happened, he wept, too.
Oh, God… it was hell.
But it only grew worse as the night went on. Bric wouldn’t move and he wouldn’t let anyone take Mylo away from him. He simply sat in that freezing river and held the knight who had tried to save his life. That was all Bric could comprehend, and as morning began to dawn over the meadows and lands of Norfolk, Bric finally picked himself up out of that water and carried Mylo to the shore.
But he didn’t stop there.
With the dead knight in his arms, Bric began to walk. It was as if he couldn’t even function, his mind devoid of reason. All he knew was that he’d cut down his own knight, and his mind simply couldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t let the man go, and he wouldn’t mount his horse to ride back to Narborough.
All he did was walk.
All the way back to Narborough.
The army, seeing that their High Warrior was devastated beyond words, simply walked with him. Not one man mounted his horse, and not one man spoke a single word. Bric was walking home, and so would they.
They would escort him and Mylo home.
It was a tragic and poignant sight.
As Bric carried Mylo down the road, heading west as the sun rose, it was an agonizing reminder of the fragility of life. What the French couldn’t accomplish in a day and a night of vicious fighting, and what dozens of armies over the past twenty years couldn’t do, a single stroke from a serrated broadsword managed to achieve.
The High Warrior was finally broken.