Henry III by Griff Hosker

Author:Griff Hosker
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Sword Books Ltd
Published: 2018-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The Battle of La Vie

The river was fuller than when I had last visited and the boggy area larger. The rains had done that. Nature was helping us. It was getting on for dark when we arrived but I had had all my archers and men at arms each carry two of the stakes. While the ground was soft, we drove them into the ground. We would have time enough on the next day to sharpen them. The King and his knights were slow to arrive. My men had chosen the best area for our camp. We were already cooking our food when they arrived. The King’s tent had just been erected when Mordaf and his men rode in. They had with them six spare horses.

“Lord,” they bowed to the King, “Your Majesty, there are four hundred knights just six miles east of here. They have with them over a thousand men.”

I saw the King’s face fall. I shook my head, “Many of those, King Henry, will be servants. They will be men without armour. Are there French knights with them, Mordaf?”

“I saw ten French banners, lord.”

I nodded, “And scouts?”

He chuckled, “They sent ten men to scout the land to the west. The ten now lie dead. The four horses we could not recapture will have told the enemy that their scouts failed.”

“And their purses?”

“Their livery and their purses told us that they were the men of Apremont and Poitiers.”

Hubert de Burgh looked the most worried of all. He shook his head, “King Henry, those odds are too great. If we lose and you are captured then the ransom would lose us not only Poitou but Gascony too. It is not worth the risk.”

I saw the King vacillating. The encounter with the advance guard of the Poitevin army had shaken his confidence. It had not surprised me. The advance guard would not be knights. They would be the hardened men at arms and mercenaries. Scouting was one of the things they did the best. “Sir Hubert, why do you think we cannot win?”

“They outnumber us!”

I nodded, “Mordaf, how many archers did you see?”

“Archers lord? Proper archers such as you command, none. They had some of the levy with hunting bows but not above twenty. The hundred crossbows they had were the only ones with missiles.”

“There, King Henry, you know our archers. If the French advance with crossbows then my men will win the duel. If they bring their knights and men at arms then the ground, our stakes and our archers will thin them so that when we meet them, they will be defeated. We need courage and we need to fight dismounted at first. Let us make them waste their animals in a fruitless attack. When the time is ripe, we mount our animals and we charge. We will have fresh horses and unbroken spears.”

While I was with the King, he was positive. When he was with Sir Hubert, he was hesitant. I won the day and he nodded.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.