Man after man
fell, and the cross-bow bolts also told heavily upon the crowd. They had
come down but a short distance farther when Long Tom, and the archers with
him on the wall, began to send their arrows thick and fast, and the
machines hurled heavy stones with tremendous force among them. A moment
later the French broke and fled up the slope again, leaving some fifty of
their number stretched on the ground. The knights followed more slowly.
When they reached the crest a group of them gathered around Sir Clugnet de
Brabant.
"By my faith," the latter said bitterly, "we have reckoned without our
host, Sir Knights. We came to shear, but in good sooth we seem more likely
to go back shorn. Truly those knaves shoot marvellously; scarce an arrow
went astray."
"As I mentioned to you, Sir Clugnet," Sir Hugh de Fruges said, "Sir
Eustace brought with him from England five-and-twenty bowmen, and I heard
tell from men who had seen them trying their skill at targets that they
were in no wise inferior to those with whom we have before had to deal to
our cost."
"Truly ye did so, Sir Hugh; but the matter made no impression upon my
mind, except as a proof that the knight's inclinations were still with
England, and that it were well that his castle were placed in better
keeping; but in truth these fellows shoot marvellously, both for strength
and trueness of aim. I marked as we came back that of the men we passed
lying there, nigh all those who had been struck with arrows were hit in
the face or throat, and yet the distance must have been over a hundred and
fifty yards.
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