The Black Prince by Adam Roberts

Author:Adam Roberts [Roberts, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783526499
Publisher: Unbound
Published: 2018-08-13T04:00:00+00:00

Camera Eye

He feels a strange elation, and this is a feeling for which he cannot account, since things are not since things are not going

not going well.

From the little hill he took in as much as he could: Audley’s attack dissipating itself without effect upon the south French flank. The larger attack to the north was beyond his view. Directly before him came the main body of Jean’s force: the marshals’ battalions, pennants brave in the clear air, red and gold and red and blue and red pinkred and spottedred bloodred.

He hears them: saint denis, they cry.

and the cry is taken up

sundeny sundeny sundeny

and they were coming in their thousands to break him suddenly, as a hammer descends upon the smith’s anvil. And now the hedgerow was to their right, and the scrubland and bush-primped space to their left and to his left Edward saw men squirreling out of their places in the hedge and running away like cowards, and saw other men, small as birds in the distance, sneaking off into the woods, and he saw the whole in a sudden vision: not one thing, a single army, but a mass of differentiable individuals, flies in a swarm, all pulling in different directions. And God the Father sends down orders, but men are legion like the devils that Christ faced, and some obey and some do not, and that fractures the whole, and the son must stand in full view of everyone and die to so redeem their scrabbling, petty-minded selfishnesses

sundeny sundeny sundeny

sundeny sundeny sundeny

sundeny sundeny sundeny

—Saint George, says the Prince, as loud as he may. And he lifts his sword into the bright air.

and with a suddenness akin to grace, the whole scene changes in his eye. The men are not abandoning the hedge, but moving to better positions within it. Audley’s charge, following up another volley of arrows, and another volley, is routing the French left flank. The marshals’ battalions are almost upon them and he understands that there is a third thing, beyond the unyielding authority of the Father that says die if you must, and beyond the pity of the son who says let me die so you may live. It is a mysterious third quality, imperceptible to sight or taste or feeling, yet somehow palpable as well. And it works through the whole body of the English army. It turns the myriad clustering mass of I into a We. It says: only in We do we live forever. Edward’s excitement is so intense now it almost closes his throat and prevents him breathing.

The whole force works as one

Archers

Archers loose from the hedgerow, from the bushes. Arrows snap instantly into the unarmoured rear flanks and back legs of horses. Horsemen tumble and fall, and are ridden over by those behind them. In minutes the space between the two bodies of bowmen is dammed up with fallen men; but the force behind is too large, its momentum too great, to be able to stop. Men and horses keep piling in.

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