Wars of the Roses: Bloodline: Book 3 (The Wars of the Roses) by Conn Iggulden

else.
    Warwick squeezed his eyes closed. He opened them bloodshot, his lips pressed to nothing. The rain fell harder, sculpting his cloak in sopping folds and making his horse snort, flinging drops into the air.
    He turned to his captains and saw his uncle Fauconberg had ridden up, a look of honest anger on his ruddy face. Warwick began to give a stream of orders, seeing the picture of the battlefield in his mind’s eye and issuing commands to individual units that would hold the ground. Half thequeen’s forces were still coming down the hill. If he could shore up John’s broken ranks, he might yet steady the lines. Margaret’s northern savages would be like sheep running at a line of slaughtermen. It would not matter then how many she had been able to bring to the field. He would grind them up rank by rank – and he had the weapons to do it.
    ‘Uncle, this for you. Bring up the cannon,’ he called to Fauconberg. ‘Have my crossbowmen and hand-gunners stand in support. Choose a line and set them ready. You understand? Braziers and supplies. Organ guns, bombards, culverins. When I give the order, I do not want the rate of fire to slow until we have pushed them back in
rags
.’
    ‘We’ll stop them here, Richard,’ his uncle said. ‘I swear it.’
    Warwick stared coldly back until the man had turned his horse with a flourish and raced off, gathering a wake of serjeants and men-at-arms to carry out the orders.
    The fighting continued on Warwick’s left shoulder as John’s reeling soldiers were forced back over their own dead. It was not edifying. Those men knew they were the worst of the York army – the old men and the boys and the one-eyed and the criminals. It was true they were not cowards, but no commander would risk his defence on whether or not such men would hold. They did not have much pride – and pride mattered.
    Warwick looked up at the sound of longbows clattering, breathing in relief when he saw his red-coated archers still visible in long ranks. He knew they would be swearing and cursing the rain, hating the damp that warped their bows and stretched the linen cords. Those men had pride to spare. They’d stand for ever, in righteous fury against the men who were causing them to stand. Henodded to himself, taking heart from the constant rattle of shafts.
    The assault was slowing, bogging down, giving his captains the time they needed to form a line of cannon. Whether iron or bronze, the big weapons were brutally heavy. Some had been mounted on wheeled gun carriages, while others had to be dragged on a keeled wooden sled like a boat, with groaning oxen under yoke. The weapons used a huge number of fighting men, sometimes as many as twenty to move, load and fire just
one
– men who would otherwise have been standing in line with the rest. Yet those guns were his joy – his pride.
    Warwick wiped sweat and rain from his brow. For all his outward confidence, he was still staring at disaster. He could not allow himself to think of John falling. So soon after the loss of their father, it was too much to take in.
    Seeing his cannon dragged across the field was enough to make a man weep, Warwick thought. They had been snug in structures of turf and brick, propped and aimed and surrounded by sheltered awnings for their precious stores of powder and shot. All that had been dug up and torn down. The tubes of black and bronze were shining in the rain, half covered by canvas that was as likely to snag under a wheel and be yanked clear as it was to protect the touch-hole in the breech. Still, a dozen of the largest bombard cannon made a terrifying sight when they were lined up together, heaved into place, with smaller culverins in between. The braziers were brought up by groups of four, carrying beams like oars, with the iron cage full of coals gripped between them. Warwick could hear the fires hissing and crackling as the rain increased. Some were spilled in their hurry, to rush a great wave of steam across the