Already other lords were passing us. We were at risk of being left behind, and I wanted to get as close as I could to the front of the charge when it met the enemy lines. For my heart was pounding, no longer with fear but rather with exhilaration. It was a long time since I had felt so free. Revenge and victory were at hand; I could sense it in the air.
‘For Lord Robert,’ Wace called out, and I knew he didn’t mean Malet’s son, but the man who had led us at Dunholm and through so many battles before. He was the one we were fighting for, as we had always fought: not for the vicomte, nor the king, nor anyone else.
Eudo hooked his ventail into place over his chin and neck. ‘For Robert,’ he said.
‘For Robert,’ I agreed. I pulled my coif over my head once more, retied my helmet-strap, then I turned and spurred my horse on.
‘With me!’ Malet’s son shouted from the head of his conroi. His lance with its black-and-gold pennon was pointed towards the sky. ‘With me!’
There was light on the horizon now, the stars fading as black gave way first to purple, then to blue. We rode down the curving main street as Englishmen fled in every direction. Houses and churches flashed past on either side, and then for the first time that night I heard the battle-thunder. For as we rounded the bend, there, marching in their dozens and their scores, came the enemy.
Thirty-four
THEY BEAT THEIR hafts and hilts against their shield-rims, filling the morning with their fury. Their banner displayed a black raven, a symbol much favoured by the Danes, and I saw that these must be the swords-for-hire that Robert had told us of. All were shouting, taunting us in their own tongue, inviting us to come and die on their blades.
Ahead, the king and his knights pulled to a halt, allowing some of the spearmen to rush forward through the ranks. They formed a line five deep across the road, standing shoulder to shoulder with shields overlapping to form a wall, and through the gaps in that wall they thrust out their spears, ready for the Danish charge.
‘Robert,’ the king shouted, and beneath his helmet his face was flushed. ‘Take your men through the side streets; try to outflank them!’
Robert raised his banner in acknowledgement and then turned to the rest of us. ‘Follow me!’ he said, raising his lance with its pennon high for all to see. Flanked by Ansculf and Urse, he spurred his horse down one of the narrow alleyways between the houses.
I gripped the haft of my lance tightly. So long as I held that, my shield and my sword, nothing else mattered. I checked who was alongside me, and was relieved to find Wace and Eudo. There were none whose sword-arms I trusted more.
Behind us rode another hundred horsemen, as more lords joined us. The thunder of their hooves resounded in the narrow way. I glimpsed torchlight ahead, saw a band of ten or more Englishmen running from us, but we were a tide of mail and hooves and steel rolling in upon them, our lances couched under our arms, sharp and glinting in the dawn, ready to send them to their deaths. They were burdened with shields and spears, whereas we sat astride swift animals trained to the charge, and they had nowhere to go.
I heard Robert shout something, though what it was I never knew, as he thrust his lance through a man’s shoulder, riding over him, and we were behind, cutting the enemy down. One caught his foot on a corpse while he ran and stumbled, falling to his knees, and as he tried to rise my sword-edge penetrated his skull. And then we were through, galloping on past grand timber halls and hovels of mud and straw. Dirt flew up from the hooves of those before me, landing on my cheek, my hauberk, my shield. The way turned sharply to the right, towards shouts and screams and crashes of steel, and as it opened out once more on to the main street, the Danish rear stood before us.
‘For Normandy!’ Robert shouted, and as one we returned the cry.
Some of the enemy heard our approach and were turning, their spears thrust out to try to deflect us. We were many, though, and they were few, and they had no time to come together – to form a shield-wall – before Robert and Ansculf and Urse were crashing into their first line, spearing into their midst, carving a space for the rest of us to follow.