The cry was passed down the line as we spurred on across the meadows. A few pulled ahead of me, their mounts enjoying the feeling of open ground beneath their hooves. Normally I would have called on them to keep formation, but the only thing that mattered now was speed. Most of the enemy were not burdened by hauberks and chausses as we were, which meant that even though their horses were smaller than ours, they were beginning to open the distance. Already they had almost reached the bottom of the rise where I had sent Maredudd and Ithel with their men. I hoped they were in place; any moment now a flurry of arrows should be let loose from out of those trees, the spearmen would march out from their hiding place and form a shield-wall to block off the valley floor, and we would fall upon the enemy from behind.
Except that the arrows did not come. Nor was there any sign of the spearmen, and still the enemy were drawing away from us.
‘Faster!’ I shouted, for all the good that it would do. ‘Faster! Ride harder!’
The enemy passed beneath the rise, not one hundred paces from the thicket where our Welsh allies were supposed to be waiting. I gripped the straps of my shield in one hand, the reins in the other, as silently I prayed to God and all the saints: let the arrows fly. But still they did not. Where were they? Unless they had found a better position further ahead, though I couldn’t work out where. Beyond that thicket, the valley broadened out and the only cover was provided by the thorny briar patches beside the riverbank.
Hooves thudded upon the soft ground, kicking up turf and stones. Nihtfeax’s mane whipped in the wind; my cheeks were wet from the drizzle blowing in my face. I dug my heels in, drawing every last ounce of strength that I could from his legs.
‘For Normandy,’ someone shouted close by my flank. I risked a glance and saw that it was Eudo, his eyes filled with the battle-joy and the thrill of the charge, fixed on the horsemen ahead of us. ‘For King Guillaume!’
And that was when it happened, so quickly that at first I could not quite comprehend it. A cluster of black lines shot out from the thicket, their silver points bearing down not upon the enemy but upon us. There was a sharp whistle of air as one passed no more than a hand’s span by my helmet, another dropped just in front of Nihtfeax’s hooves, and then they were everywhere, raining down in their dozens and their scores.
‘Shields!’ I heard someone cry, and it might even have been me except that it sounded somehow distant, and I couldn’t remember having willed myself to speak.
After that all was confusion. Even when it was all over, still I struggled to recall exactly the order of things. Whoever gave the warning, it came too late. Horses shrieked as steel pierced their flanks and their riders were thrown from the saddle. Some of the knights had slowed, uncertain what to do, but that only made them easier targets. Others tried to turn their mounts too quickly; the beasts went down in a writhing mess of hooves and grass, earth and blood, falling upon their masters and crushing them. Not ten paces ahead of me, one of Wace’s men caught an arrow in the neck, the point piercing his ventail. He tumbled backwards across his horse’s flank, dead even before he hit the ground.
‘Retreat,’ Wace was shouting, ‘Retreat!’
Another volley of arrows shot out from the trees, arcing over the meadows that sloped down from the rise. From out of the clump emerged spearmen in their scores, beating their spear-hafts and their sword-hilts upon the rims of their shields, raising the battle-thunder as they marched to meet us.
My first thought was that Berengar had been right: that the princes had indeed betrayed us. After everything, I ought to have listened to him. A furious heat rose up inside me: at the brothers for having deceived us for so long; at myself for having failed to see it.
‘Back,’ I called, waving to catch the attention of my knights. Some dozen or so lay on the ground, blood coursing from wounds that would not be healed. ‘Conroi with me!’
On either side of me shafts thudded into the sodden turf. Nihtfeax wheeled about and then we were galloping back in the direction we had come, towards the mill, where the rest of our host were now rallying, drawing up in their ranks and their conrois.
That was when I saw Ithel and Maredudd together with their teulu galloping down from the ridge: forty or fifty men on horseback with pennons of gold and green on their lances. Behind them, running and stumbling over the tussocks, came an assortment of foot-soldiers with leather jerkins, bows in hand or else slung over their shoulders, and a few with bucklers strapped to their arms.
Except that it didn’t seem as if they were coming to attack us, but rather as though they were in flight. I soon saw why. From the woods that ran along the ridge emerged an array of shield-bosses and spearpoints: too many to count, but at a guess I’d have said there were easily more than a thousand. In the centre of the line flew two identical banners that I recognised in an instant, even though I had never before seen them with my own eyes. Banners in pale yellow, each emblazoned with a scarlet lion that had a tongue of blue. The symbol of the house of Cynfyn. Of the self-proclaimed kings Rhiwallon and Bleddyn.