(The Fight is On!)

As the false dawn began to bring light back into the world, T’Kai could more clearly make out the faces of her forces that were hidden in the terrain around her. This was the hardest part for her. The waiting felt like it took forever, but it took self-discipline to have patience and remain still for so long. It would be critical that they remained undetected. She knew that Robin and his men would be having an even harder time, as they had horses to keep quiet and still. That was no small feat.

Eventually the sounds of clanking weapons and armor greeted the sun, as it came over the horizon. Both sides were moving into position. The French forces were vastly larger, but from the appearance on the field, the French outnumbered the English by roughly ten to one. In reality, the odds were more like three to one, but the French had poor scouts and had not sent out new patrols since the previous day. This gave the English plenty of time to move into position, making the French think that the main camp was the only camp.

The French had chuckled and tried to convince the English that this was a futile gesture and that they did not need to die like this to prove anything. To them, the English were being foolish and wasting the lives of their brave men. To the English, there was indeed something that needed proving, and the French were going to be the ones to learn the lesson.

Finally, the forces were all assembled on both sides. The French began to march out onto the field, the English moved to meet them. The French left their archers in the rear and fired a few salvoes hoping to pick off a few unlucky members that might not have brought a shield. They did manage to drop a few, but the rain of arrows only served to make the English tighten their formation more. As they did do, they allowed their line to curve a little.

The French quickly took advantage of this and moved their mobile reserves to flank on the side of the woods, thinking to keep them from being able to escape into the trees, when the lines eventually broke, which they were certain would happen.

Eventually, the lines reached a point where they were only 25 meters apart and the English heard what they were waiting for. As the French began to order their charge into them, the English bolted forward in a roar. This served two purposes, it shocked the French troops and they were unable to hear the rest of the orders.

The English bashed into the wall of infantry, knocking many to the ground by the force of their momentum. The edge of a shield was an ugly thing when it came under a chin. They had also learned valuable lessons from the Norse and had trained many of their people with long axes. They could quickly negate a man with a sword and shield, and they had trained to work together, so there was no safe place to turn. Wooden shields did not hold up well to the axes either. This placed a great deal of importance on those few with metal shields.

As the French began to recover, two things happened. The French were very busy trying to surround and kill the English, but this caused few of them to see the other two forces join the battle. Robin had been hiding behind the low hills with his men and their horses. They had done their best to have the horses remain on the ground and covered with some straw. They were not a large force, but they would prove to be worth their weight in gold. As they mounted and charged through the back of the French marshalling area, they cut through the unprotected archers like a hot knife through butter.

The Dauphin watched this happen from his perch on his fine horse and shouted, “Where did they come from? Turn our reserves!”

To which his General responded, “They are already engaged. I beg your forgiveness, Dauphin, but you said to have them attack the flank.”

That was when the Dauphin got his second punch in the gut. T’Kai and her forces came out of the woods and attacked the flanking forces from behind. Caught in such confusion, they were easy marks for the English, always with their backs to an enemy, no matter which way they turned. There were a number of archers that were stationed in the trees, and they fired over the heads of T’Kai and her forces with deadly accuracy.

T’Kai ran toward the enemy and fired an arrow on the run. It struck a man in the throat and she quickly fired another, this time striking an unsuspecting man in the back of the head and he fell limp in front of a grateful Englishman who was already facing more enemies.

A number of Frenchmen spun and faced T’Kai and her companions. She swung her bow with both hands and nearly removed the jaw of the first man as she connected with his skull and saw a spray of blood and teeth to let her know that the bow had done its job. The bow went down in a tangle with the man, but she had already let it go and was drawing her sword. She spun as she did so and used the momentum to thrust it into the next man to the hilt. She continued to spin, pulling the blade free as she did so and grabbing the mace out of his hand, as he no longer appeared to need it as his entrails began to spill onto the ground.

Robin had finished with the archers and they had turned to work on the backs of the central French forces from horseback. This was proving very effective and Robin was shouting loudly with each kill, “Seventeen!…Eighteen!…”

The words were loud enough that from nearly 50 meter away, T’Kai could make them out and she smiled, replying with her own tally, “Twenty one!…Twenty two!…”

She continued to spin and dance her dance of death. She was cutting flesh with one hand while crushing skulls with the other. At one turn, she lost her mace, caught in what was left of the face of an enemy and the grip of his hands in his spasm of death. She quickly replaced it with an axe and found it even more productive as she dismembered more than a few enemies with it in swift fashion.

At one point, the remains of the French forces tried to flee. Some were foolish enough to try and flee to the trees, not knowing they ran directly into the arms of death there. Others tried for the hills, where Robin had come from, most of whom were run down by him and his remaining men.



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Ens Ilian S'ilik
Chief Medical Officer
USS Carina