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of the English and Gascon men-at-arms had fetched their horses, and more and more came to join the pursuit. Down into the shallow valley they went, then up to the flat top of le Champ d’Alexandre from which the French had attacked that morning, and now it was the horsemen who attacked. Groups of men rode into the disorganised French, weapons swinging, horses snapping at men, and the French panic grew desperate as their ranks were split. Small groups stayed together and tried to defend themselves. The nobles were shouting that they were rich, that they surrendered. English archers, their bows discarded, were using their huge strength to wield axes, maces, and hammers. Men bellowed in bloodlust or in terror. All order had now vanished from the French, who were being broken into smaller and smaller groups assailed by battle-maddened men with sweaty faces and gritted teeth who only wanted to kill and kill. And so they did. A Frenchman fended off two archers, using his sword to foil their axes, then he stepped back and tripped on a fallen man and went down, and the archers jumped forward, axes swinging and the Frenchman screamed as a blade crashed into his shoulder; he tried to stand, fell back again and swung his sword in a great sweep that parried an axe. Thomas could see the man gritting his teeth, his whole face distorted with his desperate efforts. He parried another axe, then cried out as the second archer chopped into the meat of his thigh. He tried to lunge his sword at that man, spitting out teeth he had shattered because he had bitten down so hard, but his desperate lunge was parried, then an axe crunched down into his face and a poleaxe spike rammed into his belly and his whole body jerked in a great spasm as he died. For a moment his helmet’s open face filled with blood, then it drained away as the two archers knelt to search his body.
    Keane had dismounted and was standing over a corpse whose belly had been split open by the Irishman’s poleaxe. The man’s guts had been trampled into the stubble, while next to the corpse, and wearing the same livery of yellow circles on a blue field, was an older man with a pale, lined face, grey hair, and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore plate armour with a golden crucifix blazoned on his breastplate. He looked terrified. He had plainly surrendered to Keane, because the Irishman was holding the man’s helmet that had a cross on its crest and a long blue plume trailing behind. ‘He says he’s the Archbishop of Sens!’ Keane said to Thomas.
    ‘Then you’re rich. Hold onto him! Make sure no one steals him from you.’
    ‘This fellow tried to protect him,’ Keane looked down at the disembowelled man. ‘Wasn’t a clever decision, really.’
    There was a wild melee in the centre of the field and Thomas, looking that way, saw the French royal standard still flying. Men were hacking at the standard’s defenders, wild in their savagery as they tried to cut through to King Jean. Thomas ignored it, riding southwards to see men fleeing down the hill towards the Miosson, but the Earl of Warwick’s archers were waiting there and the Frenchmen were fleeing towards death.
    A man hailed Thomas and he turned to see Jake, one of his archers, leading a prisoner on a horse. The man wore a jupon showing a clenched red fist against a field of orange and white stripes, and Thomas could not help but laugh. It was Joscelyn of Berat, the man sworn to retake Castillon d’Arbizon. ‘He says he’ll only surrender to you,’ Jake said, ‘on account that I’m not a gentleman.’
    ‘Nor am I,’ Thomas said, then spoke in French: ‘You are my prisoner,’ he told Joscelyn.
    ‘Fate,’ Joscelyn said resignedly.
    ‘Keane!’ Thomas bellowed. ‘Another one here to guard! Look after them both, they’re rich!’ Thomas looked back to Jake. ‘Guard them well!’ Men squabbled over the ownership of prisoners, but Thomas reckoned there were enough Hellequin to keep the archbishop and the Count of Berat from being poached by other men.
    Thomas spurred northwards. More Frenchmen were fleeing that way, desperate to reach the safety of Poitiers. A few, very few, had managed to find their horses or else had taken a horse from an Englishman. Most ran, or rather stumbled, harried all the way by vengeful pursuers, but one man rode straight towards Thomas, who recognised the piebald destrier and then the red heart of Douglas, though the surcoat was so sodden with blood that for a moment Thomas