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heavy branches. Still no arrows. Still no enemy. Pray Christ d’Audrehem is right, Douglas thought. Were they riding into empty space? Were the English really retreating? Or were the horsemen pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp? The sound of his destrier’s hooves had changed and he realised that they were riding into a marsh. There were willows and alders instead of oak, tussocks of earth and stretches of green liquid soil instead of leaf mould. The horses were sinking their heavy feet into the bog, but they were still moving, and then he saw the river ahead, a sliver of brightness in the green gloom, and he saw men there too, men and wagons, and there were archers!
    Marshal D’Audrehem saw them too, and he saw that a wagon had overturned and that the English were in chaos, and an arrow flickered in the sky. He did not see where it went, but it told him he had made the right decision and he had found the archers. He slammed down his visor to turn his world dark, rowelled back his spurs, and charged.
     
    The Earl of Warwick’s archers were still streaming down from the hill. Thomas’s men faced the horsemen and, because the archers were trained and experienced, they chose flesh arrows. These were the arrows made to kill horses because horses were vulnerable and every archer knew that to defeat a charge of mounted knights a man must aim at the horses. That was how Crécy had been won, and so they instinctively picked flesh arrows that had triangular heads, barbed heads, and the two edges of each head were razor sharp, edges to tear through flesh and cut blood vessels and rip apart muscles. They drew the bows back to their ears, picked their targets, and loosed.
    The war bow was taller than a man. It was cut from the trunk of a yew grown in the sunny lands close to the Mediterranean, and it was cut where the golden sapwood met the dark-coloured heartwood, and the dark heart of the yew was stiff, it resisted bending, while the outer sapwood was springy so that it would snap back to its shape if it was bent, and the push of the compressed heartwood and the pull of the golden sapwood worked together to give the great war bow a terrible strength. Yet to release that strength the bow must be drawn to the ear, not the eye, so an archer must learn to aim by instinct, just as he had to train his muscles to pull the cord until it seemed that the stress in the yew must surely snap and break. It took ten years to make an archer, but give a trained man a war bow made of yew and he could kill at more than two hundred paces and be feared through all Christendom.
    The bows sounded. The strings slapped on the bracers that protected the archers’ wrists; the arrows leaped away. The archers aimed at the horses’ chests, aiming to drive the flesh arrows deep into labouring lungs. Thomas knew what must happen. The horses would stumble and fall. Blood would froth at their nostrils and mouths. Men would scream as dying horses rolled on them. Other men would be tripped by the fallen beasts, and still the arrows would come, relentless, savage, searing white-tipped death driven by wood and hemp, except it did not happen.
    The arrows struck. The horses kept coming.
    Men were shouting. Wagon drivers were leaping from their seats and fleeing across the river. The horseman who had tried to hurry the retreat was gaping at the approaching French in disbelief. The first of the Earl of Warwick’s archers were reaching the river and their ventenars were bellowing at them to start shooting.
    And the French were still coming. They were coming slowly, relentlessly, apparently unaffected by the arrows. The closest horsemen were a hundred and fifty paces away now.
    Thomas loosed a second shaft, watched the arrow fly, saw it arc low in the air to plunge dead centre into a bright trapper decorated with diagonal blue and white stripes and the horse did not miss a step, and Thomas saw other arrows were caught in the striped trapper. His arrow had gone just where he wanted, right into the horse’s chest, and it had done nothing. ‘They’ve got armour under the trappers!’ he shouted at his men. ‘Bodkins! Bodkins!’ He plucked a bodkin from the ground where he had thrust a handful of arrows into the soft turf. He drew, looked for a target, saw the red heart of Douglas on a shield, loosed.
    The horse kept coming.
    Yet the horses were coming slowly. This was not a gallop, not even a canter. The big destriers were hung with mail and plate, restricted by