Free The Archer's War: Exciting good read - adventure fiction about fighting and combat during medieval times in feudal England with archers, longbows, knights, ... (The Company of English Archers Book 4) by Martin Archer

longbows? 
           Our pike men can raise their shields and our archers can respond by shooting over and around the cover the shields provide.  But nothing can protect our fetchers and carriers who are behind our archers – they’ll have to temporarily pull back while the enemy bolts are coming in and then be brought back to support our pike men and archers when Cornell’s main assault begins.  We’ll have to start practicing that.
     
     
                                       Chapter Five
           Things are going well in London.  Winter is almost done and Roger Miner and I have already sent off two galleys and a cog packed with new archers and untrained recruits.  And we’ve got another thirty of them ready to go. 
           At the moment our new recruits and my ten guardsmen are sleeping and eating in Simon’s galley, the one that is always here with our coin chest on board.  That’s where our new recruits wait until one of our galleys or cogs is able to return from Cornwall to pick them up.
           Our latest recruits are about evenly divided between untrained men and archers with their own longbows.  While they are waiting for our ship to come in the recruits live and cook and practice sword fighting on Simon’s galley; some of them are so ill-clothed we have to advance coins to them so they can buy hooded skins to wear and sleep in.  It’s been such a cold and wet winter it’s a wonder they survived long enough to get to us.
           Roger is my new second now that Peter is gone back to Cornwall.  Roger’s an archer from Yorkshire.  Before he went off to the crusades with us he helped his father dig coal. That’s probably how his arms got strong enough to pull a long bow. He replaced Peter when Peter carried an important parchment back to Cornwall with our first batch of newly recruited archers – the one telling William about the mercenary company I may have recruited.        
           As you might imagine, Roger is known to everyone as Roger Miner since we have several other Rogers in our company.  Roger must be a popular name up there.
           I say ‘may have recruited’ when I talk about the mercenaries because you never know for sure about mercenaries, do you? All that is certain is that their captain took a few of our coins and made his mark on an agreement to bring one hundred and fifty men and fight for us anywhere in England.  According to the Nuncio, who sent the mercenary captain to me.  The mercenary captain is a Scot named Leslie and, according to the Nuncio, he is known to have that many men in his company and to provide them if the price is right.  
           It’s a very good contract for the mercenary captain if he can actually provide the men and they are actually willing to fight.  I had to take him on the galley to show him the coins before he would make his mark – though I’m rather sure he doesn’t know what is written on the parchment since he held it upside down when he was pretending to read it before he made his mark and accepted some coins to bind himself and his men to us.
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           At the moment I’m in London and one of our new archers, Joseph from King’s Lynn, is on his way to Coldfield with Leslie to inspect his mercenaries and report back to me if they are real.  Coldfield’s about a three days march from Cornell’s castle in Derbyshire.  It’s a good place to marshal our mercenaries because from there we can either march to either Cornell’s Castle or to the old Roman road Cornell will almost certainly take when he leads his men to Cornwall.  Joseph’s taking three of our guards with him for protection when he or a messenger comes back to report.
           There are supposed to be a company of hundred and fifty mercenaries waiting for me in Coldfield.  Almost all of them are lowland Scots and mostly swordsmen.  At least that’s how many I