The rest had shouldered their bows and
were aiming, but I thought unsteadily; and before the triggers were
drawn again Will Green had nocked and loosed, and not a few others of
our folk; then came the wooden hail of the bolts rattling through the
boughs, but all overhead and no one hit.
The next time Will Green nocked his arrow he drew with a great shout,
which all our fellows took up; for the arbalestiers instead of turning
about in their places covered by their great shields and winding up
their cross-bows for a second shot, as is the custom of such soldiers,
ran huddling together toward their men-at-arms, our arrows driving
thump-thump into their shields as they ran: I saw four lying on the
field dead or sore wounded.
But our archers shouted again, and kept on each plucking the arrows
from the ground, and nocking and loosing swiftly but deliberately at
the line before them; indeed now was the time for these terrible
bowmen, for as Will Green told me afterwards they always reckoned to
kill through cloth or leather at five hundred yards, and they had let
the cross-bow men come nearly within three hundred, and these were now
all mingled and muddled up with the men-at-arms at scant five hundred
yards' distance; and belike, too, the latter were not treating them
too well, but seemed to be belabouring them with their spear-staves in
their anger at the poorness of the play; so that as Will Green said it
was like shooting at hay-ricks.
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