Without pausing to think I lunged at Berengar. He wasn’t expecting it and in spite of his weight I managed to topple him. The two of us crashed to the ground, and I was on top with both hands gripping his throat, throttling him, until suddenly I felt hands on my arms and around my torso, tearing me away and dragging me to my feet.
‘Tancred!’ someone shouted in my ear, and in the other, ‘Forget him, lord. He’s worth less than a goat’s turd.’
I struggled, but it was no use. Slowly I came to my senses to find Wace and Pons either side of me, pinning my arms and preventing me from moving. Berengar lay on the ground, red-faced with anger, breathlessness and, I suspected, more than a touch of embarrassment. He struggled to get up, helped by his knights. He spat in my direction, his eyes filled with a look of such hatred and vengeance as I had rarely seen.
‘You go too far, Breton,’ he said. ‘Too far!’
I was about to reply, when something else caught my attention. About forty paces away, some of the knights had left their horses and broken from the line and were pursuing another figure through the undergrowth. They had mail and shields to slow them down, however, whereas he had none, and I saw that they would not catch them.
‘Hey,’ one said. ‘Get back here!’
It took me a moment to realise what had happened. While the men guarding him had been distracted, Haerarddur, the Welshman we had captured at Caerswys, had managed to get away from them. Now he was crashing through nettles and branches, half stumbling over exposed roots, making for the open ground beyond the woods.
Swearing, I shook off the hands of Pons and Wace. ‘Fetch me Nihtfeax!’ I said, in an instant forgetting about Berengar.
Already Haerarddur had reached the fields that lay between the copse and the mill, and now he began waving his arms wildly, shouting something in Welsh. A warning, I guessed, for through the leaves and the branches suddenly I spied movement by the ruined mill as men came to see what was going on. So much for our surprise attack, I thought.
My destrier was brought to me by Snocca. I took the reins and a javelin from Cnebba as I worked my feet through the stirrups and gripped the crossed straps of my shield in my palm.
‘Go! Go now!’ I shouted to my conroi and to all the other lords. ‘Ride!’
We burst out from the trees in pursuit of the Welshman, who for all his years was a fast runner. The enemy had been slow to react, at first seemingly bemused at the sight of one of their countrymen flailing down the hill, but suddenly they understood. They rushed to their horses, mounting up and hacking with knives and swords at the ropes that tethered them. They had seen our numbers, and none among them wished to fight.
Behind me our war-horn blasted out. At its bellow Haerarddur risked a wide-eyed glance over his shoulder. He saw us bearing down on him but he did not stop running; in fact if anything it seemed to spur him on, though he must have known that he could not hope to outpace us.
I hefted my javelin tightly, drew it back, then hurled it at his exposed back. It sailed through the air, wobbling in the air as it descended before striking home. The steel point drove through his ribs and out the other side. He sank to his knees, gasping for breath that would not come, clutching in vain at the spearhead protruding from his chest. Eudo was not far behind. He swerved to the left to give his sword-arm room, and then it was just as if he were practising against cabbages at the stakes in the training yard. He swung the blade down; the edge sliced through the Welshman’s neck, in one blow severing the head with its lank hair and gaping mouth, sending it flying. It landed amidst the long grass at the same time as the rest of the corpse collapsed forward.
Ahead of us stood the low stone wall, and beyond that the mill and the river. The last few enemy horsemen were making their escape, and in their hurry to get away they left behind their carts and their oxen. The animals had been spooked by the sound of the horn and the sight of us riding hard towards them, and now they were scattering in all directions, lolloping in ungainly fashion.
The enemy had a couple of hundred paces on us, but as long as Ithel and Maredudd were ready for them that should not matter. We would drive the enemy into range of the Welshmen’s bows. Between the two halves of our host they would find themselves trapped with no place to go.
Blood pounded through my skull as I yelled out, ‘On, on, on; for Normandy!’