BRITTANY

IT WAS WINTER. A cold morning wind blew from the sea bringing a sour salt smell and a spitting rain that would inevitably sap the power of the bowstrings if it did not let up.

"What it is," Jake said, "is a waste of goddamn time."

No one took any notice of him.

"Could have stayed in Brest," Jake grumbled, "been sitting by a fire. Drinking ale."

Again he was ignored.

"Funny name for a town," Sam said after a long while. "Brest. I like it, though." He looked at the archers. "Maybe we'll see the Blackbird again?" he suggested.

"Maybe she'll put a bolt through your tongue," Will Skeat growled, "and do us all a favor."

The Blackbird was a woman who fought from the town walls every time the army made an assault. She was young, had black hair, wore a black cloak and shot a crossbow. In the first assault, when Will Skeat's archers had been in the vanguard of the attack and had lost four men, they had been close enough to see the Blackbird clearly and they had all thought her beautiful, though after a winter campaign of failure, cold, mud and hunger, almost any woman looked beautiful. Still, there was something special about the Blackbird.

"She doesn't load that crossbow herself," Sam said, unmoved by Skeat's surliness.

"Of course she bloody doesn't," Jake said. "There ain't a woman born that can crank a crossbow."

"Dozy Mary could," another man said. "Got muscles like a bullock, she has."

"And she closes her eyes when she shoots," Sam said, still talking of the Blackbird. "I noticed."

"That's because you weren't doing your goddamn job," Will Skeat snarled, "so shut your mouth, Sam."

Sam was the youngest of Skeat's men. He claimed to be eighteen, though he was really not sure because he had lost count. He was a draper's son, had a cherubic face, brown curls and a heart as dark as sin. He was a good archer though; no one could serve Will Skeat without being good.

"Right, lads," Skeat said, "make ready."

He had seen the stir in the encampment behind them. The enemy would notice it soon and the church bells would ring the alarm and the town walls would fill with defenders armed with crossbows. The crossbows would rip their bolts into the attackers and Skeat's job today was to try to clear those crossbowmen off the wall with his arrows. Some chance, he thought sourly. The defenders would crouch behind their crenellations and so deny his men an opportunity to aim, and doubtless this assault would end as the five other attacks had finished, in failure.

It had been a whole campaign of failure. William Bohun, the Earl of Northampton, who led this small English army, had launched the winter expedition in hope of capturing a stronghold in northern Brittany, but the assault on Carhaix had been a humiliating failure, the defenders of Guingamp had laughed at the English, and the walls of Lannion had repulsed every attack. They had captured Tréguier, but as that town had no walls it was not much of an achievement and no place to make a fortress. Now, at the bitter end of the year, with nothing better to do, the Earl's army had fetched up outside this small town, which was scarcely more than a walled village, but even this miserable place had defied the army. The Earl had launched attack after attack and all had been beaten back. The English had been met by a storm of crossbow bolts, the scaling ladders had been thrust from the ramparts and the defenders had exulted in each failure.

"What is this goddamn place called?" Skeat asked.

"La Roche-Derrien," a tall archer answered.

"You would know, Tom," Skeat said, "you know everything."

"That is true, Will," Thomas said gravely, "quite literally true." The other archers laughed.

Copyright © 2006 by Bernard Cornwell.