Master of War Read Online Free PDF Page A

same.
    When the doors closed behind them Lord Marldon wiped the wine-mingled blood from his lip.
    ‘Chandler wants their land and I doubt I’ll be able to stop him. Do I send the boy with his brother?’
    Sir Gilbert poured wine for himself. ‘He’s like a bullock. I doubt the rockfall that killed his father would have done the same to him. And I think he’s got a temper if it’s aroused.’ He took a mouthful and wondered if his lord needed to hear his thoughts about Blackstone. There was little choice. Time dictated honesty. ‘The oaf’s an archer all right, but Blackstone’s a lying shit. I’ve watched from the woods and seen him practise. He’s the better man. He can loose enough arrows to kill a small army.’
    Lord Marldon’s voice was barely a whisper. ‘He protects his brother at the cost of his own stature.’
    ‘If the dumb beast is with him then at least he’ll slaughter his fair share of poxy Frenchmen. I’d let him go. Why not?’ He hesitated. ‘But Blackstone? Loosing arrows at a straw target isn’t a way to take his measure. He’s not a shadow of his father. He has no instinct to kill. He shies away from violence. I doubt he’d manage to kill a suckling pig. There’s a weakness in him. Like his mother corrupted his father. I think he’ll be dead or a deserter after the first battle.’ He swallowed the wine.
    Lord Marldon nodded. Henry Blackstone had not beaten the boy enough. Sentiment and love needed to be tempered with unflinching courage in the slaughter of war. How often had he spoken to his sworn man about the boy’s gentle nature? His lordship’s friend had argued that in addition to the skills of war a nobleman was encouraged to appreciate poetry and the finer things in life; why, then, should a common man not have the same attraction?
    ‘Do what you can. Even the tenderest heart can be turned to war,’ Lord Marldon told him. ‘And if they are to die, let it be with anger in their blood and love for their King in their hearts.’

2
    Blackstone and his brother rode with Sir Gilbert and forty other mounted archers wearing Lord Marldon’s livery over their russet brown tunics. The surcoats, of a black hawk on a blue field, were faded and bleached from many years of service, and from being beaten against river stones by the estate’s washerwomen. Faint, speckled stains could still be seen; blood spots from older battles.
    The archers’ leather belts held their arrow bags, made of laced waxed linen for protection against moisture – an arrow with wet feathers would not fly straight. The bag was stiffened by withies to keep the arrows separate, which helped protect the goose-feather fletchings. As well as the bag the archers carried a short-bladed bastard sword that cost sixpence in the local town – the cheapest sword men could buy. A long dagger and the archer’s bow, carried snugly in its leather case, were their only other weapons. In a small pouch was a spare hemp bowstring, which Blackstone, as his father had taught him, impregnated with beeswax to ward off the damp. Fine thread was kept for repairing damaged fletchings, a leather guard to protect the fingers of the right hand from the bowstring and a brace to cover the inside of the left forearm, the arm that held the bow. Like all archers, the brothers kept their bows unstrung when travelling to reduce the tension in the wood. Each man carried a small haversack for food. They were the lightest-armed and fastest-moving soldiers on the battlefield; and at sixpence a day they were paid twice as much as archers on foot.
    Lord Marldon was contracted by the King to supply forty mounted archers and a dozen men-at-arms, all of whom would come under the command of Sir Reginald Cobham, a veteran whose fifty years made him no less able to lead his men from the front.
    The invasion fleet being anchored at Portsmouth meant the roads became increasingly congested as supply carts clogged high­ways already packed with horsemen and