Archive for the ‘King’s Man Extracts’ Category
King’s Man, sneak peek 6: Nottingham Castle
Posted on Thursday, July 7th, 2011
Hey there,
As this is the last extract I’ll be posting from King’s Man, I’ve made it a nice long one.
It’s March 1194. On King Richard’s orders, Robin Hood’s men are about to attempt to storm the main gatehouse of Nottingham Castle. Enjoy!
“The enemy in the gatehouse had not all been sleeping; their sentries were alert. There were shouts and angry cries, and whistle and trumpet blasts as the garrison of the wooden fortification was roused as fast as possible from their bed rolls. A hundred and fifty yards away, heads began to appear on the palisade, little round black shapes, clustering thick as elderberries on the crenellated wooden walls. A single crossbow twanged from the gatehouse, a sergeant shouted something angrily, and a bolt whizzed past a good twenty yards to the right of my waiting men, who were by now formed up in a loose mob behind me, the ladder-bearers to the fore.
And then there was more movement to my right. Robin stepped out from between two houses, slightly up the slope from our position, and a great mass of men followed him – archers, more than a hundred of them, all in uniform dark green, but few with more than a scrap or two of armour. They shuffled into a loose line, two ranks deep, between my position and Little John’s men, with Robin at the southern end. My lord raised a hand in cheery greeting to me, put a horn to his lips and blew two short notes.
And the archers began to shoot.
With a great creaking of wood, a hundred men pulled back the hempen string on their great yew bows, and leaned far back and loosed. Up, up, almost vertically, the arrows climbed into the grey dawn sky, and then seemed to pause for a moment at the top of their parabola, and hang in the air, before plunging down, down, the shafts falling on to the gatehouse and into the bailey beyond it, and slamming deep into logs of the building and into the men sheltering behind the wooden walls, driving down into cowering bodies like a solid, killing rain.
Even from more than a hundred paces away, I could hear the cries of pain from the defenders and the lethal yards of ash wood, tipped with four-inch long, needle-sharp bodkin points cascaded down upon them, punching through the padded jerkins of the crossbowmen, and plunging deep into mail-clad shoulders and chests of the enemy men-at-arms with awful force. Robin’s archers had waited a few moments to check their range, and then they hauled back their bows once more and loosed another storm of wood and steel up high in the sky to fall like the wrath of God upon the enemy. And a third wave of death swept up, seemingly swallowed up by a pale and hungry sky, before being spat down venomously on the defenders below.
It was time to go.
I turned to look at the men behind me. I knew that I should find something to say to those frightened, familiar faces – Robin would have had said exactly the right thing, at that time, to put courage into their hearts. But I had nothing to offer. I pulled out my sword, raised it in the air and said: ‘Right, let’s go. Keep your shields high. For God and King Richard – forward!’ And I set off at a jog across the burnt strip of land towards the imposing bulk of the gatehouse, the soft ash puffing beneath my running feet.
For a moment, I feared that nobody would follow me; that I would be charging across that wasted strip of land on my own to certain death. But I was too proud to look behind me – and, eternal praise be to Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I soon heard the rattle and chink and thump of running men behind me. My heart soared. I was about to take my sword to a hated enemy, and I was charging into battle at the head of as brave a band of fighting men as had ever trod this earth.
We had crossed fifty yards of open ground before the first crossbow bolts began to fly: black bolts of death hissing from the battlements like a demonic swarm of hornets. I felt rather than saw a quarrel smash into the top right corner of my shield. I heard a cry behind me and turned my head. At least four of my men were down, just from the first crossbow volley. The ladder-man directly behind me had dropped his burden and was kneeling on the grey-black ground, coughing blood, a quarrel protruding from his neck. The bolts were whistling past me left and right, I stopped and took a step back towards him, and he looked at me with beseeching eyes. Men were falling all around me, quarrels were whipping past in long black streaks – the earth seemed to be moving beneath my feet; I had the strange sensation that I was in the midst of a wild gale on a storm-tossed sea. I sheathed my sword and held out my right hand to the ladder-man, but at the last minute hardened my heart and grabbed the first rung of his ladder instead.
Keeping my shield arm up, I shouted: ‘Come on, come on; let’s get this over with quickly.’ And we all stumbled forward again, the bolts hissing and cracking around us – those of us who could still run. I heard Robin’s horn ring out behind me three times, and was dimly aware that the deadly rain of our arrows had ceased. But I had no time to ponder what damage might have been done to the enemy by my lord’s dropping arrow-storm: his barrage did not seem to have slowed their deadly crossbow work one jot. Men fell beside me, skewered, punctured, plucked from this life by the wicked black bolts: I feared that there would be not one single man alive by the time we made it to the wall. By God’s mercy, I was mistaken . . .”
OK, that’s it!
Don’t forget that King’s Man will be available from all good bookshops, supermarkets and online retailers from July 21st. Buy it, read it, and please feel free to tell me what you think of it.
King’s Man, sneak peek 5: a price on Alan’s head
Posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
Only three weeks to go till King’s Man hits the bookshops. It’s getting harder and harder to find excerpts from my third Robin Hood book that don’t give away the plot twists – but here’s one that I hope isn’t too much of a spoiler. Enjoy!
“It was clearly my week for making a fool of myself. I brought up the prospect of a southern journey with Robin the next evening after a late supper: most of the guests had departed by then and there were only about thirty of Robin’s senior men gathered around a great table in the main cave finishing a modest meal of soup and bread and cheese. To my surprise, Robin thought it a good idea.
‘You can escort a pack-horse train of silver to London for me,’ he said. ‘You’ve been sitting about for too long now. It’s been – what? – three, four weeks since we pulled you out of Nottingham? It’s about time you did something useful. Take at least twenty men with you, and be very, very careful. I’ve just heard that you have been formally declared outlaw by the shire court – it’s Prince John’s doing, of course – and there’s a price on your head, a pound of finest silver. Congratulations!’
I beamed at him. I felt a strange kind of pride to be an outlaw; I had been too insignificant to be properly outlawed when I was last living wild in Sherwood: now I was a dangerous, wanted man with a price in silver on his head. And I rather liked it.
Robin continued: ‘Be extra careful: any man may take your life now and claim the reward, and if word gets out that you are carrying large quantities of specie, there’ll be half the footpads in all England waiting for you on the road. And if you lose that money, Alan, I will be extremely displeased. So have a care!’ And he gave me a cold, hard stare.
Then his expression softened. ‘When you get to London you can give my love to Marie-Anne, and little Hugh – and to Goody, of course.’ And he smiled at me, with a glint of something knowing in his odd, grey eyes.
I was feeling very pleased with myself. A pound of precious silver for my life – it was a goodly sum. I thanked Robin, and was about to leave the cave, when a thought struck me and I turned back to my outlawed lord. ‘What is the price on your head now, Robin? Tell me honestly, I beg you.’
For a moment my master looked almost embarrassed. Then he looked straight at me: ‘I’m told it is up to a thousand pounds by now.’
I felt instantly deflated. ‘A thousand pounds! A thousand pounds!’ I said the words too loudly, almost shouting – in that company, nobody raised his voice to Robin – and a tense silence descended over the supper table. But, for some reason, I couldn’t stop myself: ‘And what about John Nailor?’ I said to Robin, once again too loudly, and nodded over to the giant form of my blond friend who was watching us, grinning evilly from the far end of the table.
Robin coughed: ‘Ah, um, I think it is five hundred pounds of silver just now!’ He smiled mockingly at me. ‘And I believe even Much the miller’s son is worth ten pounds – and that’s dead or alive, of course.’
‘This is outrageous! Unfair!’ I was suddenly very angry. I shouted: ‘Why am I only worth one paltry pound of silver. That is nothing – it’s nothing but a damned insult! I’ve a good mind to complain . . .’
‘To Prince John?’ said Robin, with a straight face, and the whole table – thirty big, tough, dirty outlaws – erupted in a deafening wave of laughter. I flushed a deep red, turned on my heel and stalked out of the cave with as much dignity as I could gather around me, and with a cascade of boozy laughter, and crude half-heard jests, sweeping me out into the chilly night.”
OK, that’ll do. I’ll be posting the last extract next week.
Toodle-pip!
King’s Man, sneak peek 4: bloody justice
Posted on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
Hello chaps,
Here is the fourth brief extract from King’s Man. In this one, a minor Nottingham landowner called Wulfstan is in a dispute with Prince John over some contested land. Rather than bring the case to the corrupt courts, Wulfstan opts for an old-fashioned trial by combat against Prince John’s lanky champion Rix.
Here goes. Hope you like it.
“Wulfstan wasted no time. He charged at Rix with a wild yell and began to batter at the taller man with a welter of hard blows, wildly swinging with his strong right arm, and battering his opponent with powerful cuts at his head and shoulders. Rix retreated before the onslaught, fending off the attack with ease, blocking with sword and letting the blows slide off his shield, and slowly moving back before the fury of his foe. Wulfstan, I could see, was not unused to the sword: someone had instilled the rudiments in him and he would have made a decent if not particularly skilful man-at-arms. I had trained worse men than him for Robin, and he had a passion, too, a rage in him that gave force to his sword cuts – he was fighting for his honour, for his family lands and he knew in his heart that his cause was just.
But he was no match for Rix.
In the middle of a storm of blows from Wulfstan, the tall man’s long blade lanced out over the top of Wulfstan’s shield and plunged deep into the top of his opponent’s left shoulder. It was like the strike of an adder, fast, precise, deadly. Blood spurted red from the wound and Wulfstan fell back with a cry of rage and pain. His shield sagged, his torn shoulder muscles unable to support its weight. Then Rix struck again, once more on his opponent’s left side, the shield side, his sword flickering out almost delicately to carve a bloody furrow in Wulfstan’s cheekbone.
The blond farmer charged once more, red droplets flying from his face into the clear air; a howling surge of fury and desperation and blurring, hacking sword, but Rix merely blocked, dodged, ducked a blow, stepped forward and back-swung gracefully, chopping into the meat of his opponent’s bare right forearm. Wulfstan screamed and staggered back. He could barely hold up his shield with his left and his sword arm now had a great chunk of purple flesh flapping from it. He was a dead man – and he knew it. He could no longer either attack his foe or properly defend himself and it was only a matter of time before blood loss pulled him down. Every man watching knew it.
A more merciful opponent would have finished him then, but Rix seemed to have no compassion in his lanky black soul. The next few minutes were excruciating, as Rix circled around Wulfstan inflicting minor cut after minor cut. He slashed at his calves and drew a spray of blood, sliced into his side, into his right thigh, and carved a furrow on the right side of his face to match the one on the left side, this time taking the eye along with it. He was slowly cutting his opponent apart. Very slowly chopping the life from him.
The crowd had been cheering the display, whooping and applauding the first blood, but gradually the noise died away to a few scattered shouts as Rix played with Wulfstan as a cat plays with a wounded mouse. The Saxon could no longer protect himself, staggering about the square, weak with loss of blood, sword and shield held in drooping blood-slicked hands, as Rix danced in and struck, each time leaving the man weaker and more gory, but distaining to make the killing blow.
My stomach was sickened by this display. I have seen much of battle and death but this was the slow draining of a man’s courage and life force, mocking his pain and making sport with his pride. I looked over at Prince John, hoping that the man would stop this cruel exhibition, but he sat there grinning, pointing and clearly sharing a joke with Sir Ralph Murdac, who was standing at his side.
Wulfstan was by now on his knees in the centre of the list, he had dropped both sword and shield and he knelt there passively head hanging low, beard dripping blood, as Rix took two steps in and sliced off an ear. Wulfstan made a low bellowing noise of pain and frustration but he barely moved except to rock to one side when the ear was lopped. He merely waited like a bullock for the release of death.
I had had enough.
I stepped over the ropes, and drew my sword.
‘Hey! You there, Rix, or whatever your name is. He is finished. Let him be,’ I said striding into the centre of the square with my sword in hand.”
OK – that’s all for now. More next week.
Don’t forget: less than a month to go until publication of the hardback version of King’s Man on July 21st . . .
King’s Man, sneak peek 3: in darkest Germany
Posted on Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
Hi guys,
Here is the third short extract from my next Robin Hood book King’s Man (to be published 21st July). Alan Dale, his Bavarian body guard Hanno, and a couple of English abbots, are searching for King Richard, who has been captured and is being held for ransom somewhere in a remote part of the Holy Roman Empire . . . It’s March 1192, and our heroes now think they know where the Lionheart is being hidden:
“As we set out on the muddy track, to my left I caught a glimpse of Ochsenfurt itself, a mile away through the still-skeletal limbs of the trees. It was a fortress, a compact town with high walls on four sides, built in the shape of a square with each walled side no more than half a mile long, and with four powerful round towers standing guard at each corner. Somewhere inside that stronghold, I mused, most likely in one of the four big towers, my King was being held captive. My sovereign lord, a man I respected as much as any I had met, a warrior I had followed loyally and fought beside in Outremer and with whom I had enjoyed merry-making and fine music, a man who had honoured me with his company and, dare I say, friendship, was imprisoned there against his will. His enemies had seized him, a returning pilgrim from the Holy Land, against the laws of God and Man, and were seeking to make themselves rich from the sale of his person, as if he were a slave. For the first time since I had heard the news of Richard’s capture, I felt a hot surge of genuine anger in my gut. If it were ever within my power, I vowed, I would punish all those responsible. And the flame of my quiet fury warmed me as we splashed along the rutted track, hauling along the reluctant mule by main force, towards the drab walls of Tuckelhausen.
Abbot Joachim was rather bewildered to find himself host to a bedraggled party of distinguished foreigners when we were ushered into his cosy, brazier-warmed chamber. But he greeted his fellow abbots with a kiss of peace and ordered his servants to bring us wine and to prepare food and beds for us. We had presented ourselves at the gates of Tuckelhausen just as night was falling and the church bells were ringing out for Vespers. The monastery doors were shut but Hanno, who spoke the local Bavarian dialect, had explained to the porters that we were a distinguished party of noble English clergymen and that we must be given entrance even at this late hour.
‘But why, my noble lords, did you not write to advertise that you were paying our humble monastery a visit?’ Abbot Joachim kept on asking. ‘We could have prepared suitably for your visit. I fear we are in a state of some disarray here and we are readying ourselves for the great feast of St George in a month’s time. He is a very popular saint in these parts – this house is dedicated to him, as I’m sure you know – and we have many pilgrims under our roof at this moment, the dormitory is quite full, and everything is in the greatest turmoil.’
Joachim was a worried little man, small and plump and sad-looking, with only wisps of white hair around the wrinkled bald patch of his tonsure. And while he spoke to us in Latin, his accent was so strange that it was difficult to understand what he was trying to say. On more than one occasion, we had to ask Hanno to ask him to repeat himself in German so that my bodyguard could translate for us.
‘If only you had given us some notice,’ Joachim went on, ‘Just a few days notice . . .’
‘Only the Lord God Almighty can say what happened to the messenger who carried the letter that we sent you,’ intoned Abbot Robertsbridge gravely, and I realized that, for a high churchman, he was rather an accomplished liar. ‘Have you much trouble with bandits in these parts?’ he added.
‘Oh yes, oh most decidedly, yes,’ said Joachim. He seemed relieved to have found a plausible solution to the problem of our unexpected arrival. In fact, he seemed very much cheered by the notion that our messenger might have been slaughtered by footpads while attempting to deliver the news of our coming. He poured the abbots some more wine, now positively beaming.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘scores of bandits, scoundrels by the dozen – I don’t know why Duke Leopold does not scour them from the land; the way they trouble God-fearing folk, devout pilgrims such as yourselves. We are famous hereabouts for our wine, our sausages, our women – and our bandits. Ha ha!’
OK, that’s all folks. Hope you enjoy the book when it comes out in July.
All the best, Angus
King’s Man, sneak peek 2: bar fight
Posted on Tuesday, June 7th, 2011
Hello chaps,
Here’s another brief extract from my forthcoming novel King’s Man (the third book in the Outlaw Chronicles), which is being published on 21st July. In this bit, Alan Dale is angry and depressed after a disastrous encounter with Goody in Westminster. He gets drunk in a very rough tavern by the Thames waterfront with his friend and fellow trouvere Bernard de Sezanne . . .
So here goes:
“Even Bernard’s supposedly funny stories could not lift my spirits, and as soon as my friend disappeared into a back room with one of the slatterns, I finished my wine and was just thinking of settling up with the owner and going to bed, when I looked up from my stool to find the big, dark-haired man looming over me, with a thick oak cudgel held casually over one broad shoulder.
‘I don’t like you,’ he said, and glowered at me. He had a rough southern accent, and was clearly very drunk. ‘I don’t like you at all, or your friend, or any of your kind,’ he continued. ‘Musicians, trouveres or whatever you call yourselves; you’re nothing but peddlars of soppy ditties, mincing little sodomites, lickspittals to any lord who will listen to your God-damned noise.’
The tavern keeper called over from the ale tuns, where he was polishing a metal tankard: ‘You behave yourself now, Tom. Leave the musical gentleman alone. We don’t want any trouble here.’
The big man – Tom, apparently – ignored him.
‘I don’t like you . . .’ he began again. But I had had more than enough.
‘You know something? I don’t think I care for you much either,’ I said, looking up at him. ‘So why don’t you take yourself out of my face and go and find a pig to fuck – one that’s not too choosy about its bed-mates.’
Tom leaned further over me, his huge bulk was nearly blocking out the dim light in that grimy den. He said: ‘You listen to me you little poof . . .’
And I thought: ‘Yes, this will do. This is what I’ve wanted all night.’
My sword was with my other belonging at Westminster Hall, but my misericorde was snug in my boot. In fact, I had no need of either. I merely launched myself directly upwards, using all the power in my young legs, surging straight up with the force of a battering ram, the top of my skull smashing into his mouth as he loomed over me with stunning force. Tom staggered back and, now standing, I went up on to the balls of my feet and whipped my forehead forward in a short hard arc, crunching it into his nose in a second devastating headbutt. My poll smashed into his face like a boulder crushing a loaf of new bread. He stumbled away, spitting blood and teeth, a look of dazed incomprehension on his big ugly face and I lashed out with my right boot, catching him squarely in the fork of his crotch. He doubled over moo-ing in agony and I took a step back and swept up the stool I had been sitting on and shattered the heavy wooden disc of the seat over the back of his head. He toppled over slowly, like a felled tree, and crashed to the floor, lying senseless on the dirty rushes and bleeding quietly but copiously from a great split in the back of his scalp.
The tavern owner was staring at me in amazement. So I fished in the purse at my waist, trying to control the shaking in my hands from my sudden surge of rage, and threw a handful of coins on to the counter. ‘That’s for the wine – and the stool,’ I said, making for the doorway. ‘And you’d better give that great ox a drink of ale when he wakes.’ ”
That’s all for this week. More next Wednesday. Toodle-pip!