Cross of Fire by David Gilman

Author:David Gilman [Gilman, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788544931
Publisher: Head of Zeus

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

They left the fallen routiers where they lay, scattered across the open field. The Teutonic Knights pulled on their breeches and a linen shirt, giving them sufficient dignity to drag their own dead close together. They laid the two half-brethren next to young Walter von Ranke. They did not try to free him from his armour. His flesh would be too badly seared. Then the Germans, ignoring their own wounds, attended to digging graves for their comrades. They found a place near a rocky outcrop and dug four pits. Andreas von Suchenwirt had also fallen. He had seen a figure running free from the routiers’ camp: a crouching Guiscard, crabbing his way across the field, safe from the attack. Andreas had fought through the men who opposed him but as he pursued the crippled peasant a crossbow bolt struck him. He managed to ride down and kill the woodcutter who had betrayed them before, weakened by his mortal injury, he turned to throw himself into the fray, smashing through horsemen that surrounded von Plauen and Rudolph von Burchard. He had been dragged down from the saddle and put to death.

The knights laboured despite their injuries until the graves were deep enough to dissuade any wild creature from digging up the bodies. They left no marker for fear of brigands disinterring their friends thinking there might be weapons or money buried with them. They scattered the excess dirt and flattened the burial mounds with rocks until it looked no different from the surrounding area.

Blackstone and the men had withdrawn to the forest where William Ashdown had kept the rearguard, frustrated by the duty of protection that kept him from the fight. Blackstone’s men had minor wounds and knew they had been lucky not to lose anyone in the skirmish. Blackstone ordered the men to camp for the night and treat their injuries. The captains placed the pickets; cooking fires were lit and horses fed. Blackstone and Killbere went among the men and assessed their injuries, ensuring every man washed their wounds, bound them with clean dressings and made good use of the potions and herbs they carried to stop infections. ‘You took a cut on your back and side,’ said Killbere. ‘You’ve bled down into your britches.’

‘My shirt sticks and seals it. Once the men and horses are seen to, I’ll attend to it.’ Blackstone looked to where the Teutonic Knights knelt in prayer at their comrades’ graveside. ‘They honour their dead with a deep fervour, Gilbert. They’ve been on their knees for a long time.’

‘I’m grateful they didn’t try to scrape the poor bastard out of his armour. Be worse than trying to clean out an old cooking pot.’

‘You think he’s serious about wanting to fight me?’

Killbere stripped off his mail and swabbed a flesh wound on his arm. ‘They’re mad bastards, Thomas, and when they get caught up in religious fervour, they think they can rule the world. Challenging you to a fight is like a Will Longdon fart.

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