The shield-wall is a brutal place to be. In all my years I have known nothing else like it, and to those who have not experienced it, it is a hard thing to describe. For until a man has stood shoulder to shoulder with his fellow warriors and stared death in the face – until he has stood so close to the man trying to kill him that he can gaze into his eyes, that he has smelt his putrid ale-stinking breath, his shit-filled braies and the sweat running from his armpits; until he has buried his blade in that enemy’s belly and watched his guts spill forth and his lifeblood slip away – until he has done all that and survived to tell the tale, he has not truly lived.
How long we held them there I could not say. It felt like hours, and perhaps it was, for the next I could recall the skies had grown black with cloud and the rain was lashing down upon us, bouncing off my helmet and ringing in my skull, running down my face and dripping from my chin, soaking through my mail and plastering my tunic against my skin. Men fell to my blade, and more than once I had to let someone in the rank behind take my place while someone passed me a fresh spear when the one I’d been holding had had its head snapped off or its shaft sheared through. I lost track of the number I had killed, and yet however many it was, it was not enough. Still the enemy came, and gradually we were being pushed back from what remained of the wall towards the river. Not by much, but with every step I knew we were losing ground, losing the fight.
To my left Turold gave a yelp of pain as he staggered back. The young knight’s shield had splintered and he was clutching his bleeding side as a lank-haired foeman swung wildly with his seax, trying to finish him. Except that in doing so, he had abandoned the safety of his own wall. Even as he pressed his advantage he found himself in the midst of more Frenchmen than he could probably count, and before he could get close enough to Turold to finish him, Serlo had driven him through, burying a wide spearhead in his lungs and gouging a deep wound in his breast.
Turold lay on the ground, wide-eyed as crimson dribbled thickly from under his mail shirt.
‘Stand up!’ I shouted to him desperately. ‘Stand up!’
No sooner had the words left my lips than I realised how futile they were. He could not stand, let alone fight. The next man stepped over him, taking his place in the front rank, and then other hands were dragging Turold back out of reach of the enemy’s weapons, and that was the last I saw of him.
I had my own worries, though. An axe bore down upon me: a weak blow that I fended away easily; or so I thought until my opponent managed to hook the curved part of his blade behind the top edge of my shield. Too late I understood what he meant to do. With one heave he forced my shield-arm down and out of position, at the same time tugging me off balance and bringing me stumbling out of the wall. The ground was slick with mud and guts from the foemen I had dispatched, and I slipped, falling at his feet as he raised his weapon for the telling blow.
In the distance war-horns bellowed out their doleful cry. Close by, voices cried out, but the blood was thundering in my head and I could not make out what they said or even if it was meant for me. Rolling on to my back, I managed to lift my shield just in time to meet the Englishman’s strike. The impact shuddered through my arm as the blade rang off the boss, hewing chunks of leather from the face and shattering the rim. How it missed my neck I will never know. Again he hefted his weapon above his head, and at the same time a satisfied, gap-toothed grin spread across his face as he glimpsed my helmet-tails and sensed that glory would shortly be his.
‘Godemite!’ he yelled, his pox-scarred face red with anger.
My spear lay on the ground just beyond arm’s length and I reached to my sword-hilt instead, freeing the blade with a flourish. Before he could bring his axe to bear for a second time I swung it around, aiming for his legs. It was a wild, brutish strike, lacking in finesse, but none of that mattered, for he did not see it coming. The edge bit into his ankle, ripping through sinew, smashing bone, cutting clean through so that he was left with a crimson mess of a stump where his foot had once been. With a scream he fell backwards, limbs flailing as he crashed through the shields of the men standing behind him, the axe falling from his grasp.
Hardly believing I had survived, I scrambled to my feet, taking my place again in the wall, all the while expecting to find more spears thrust at me than I could count. But Eudo and Serlo were protecting my flanks, holding the enemy off, and for some reason the English seemed to be wavering, unsure whether or not to press their advantage, even though they must have seen that our numbers were dwindling. In battle even the slightest hesitation can prove fatal, as I had often seen, and I knew we had to seize this chance.