‘Forwards!’ I shouted, in spite of my splintered shield. My voice was hoarse as I raised my sword to the sky. ‘Forwards!’
The strength of the shield-wall lies in its numbers and its close-packed ranks, and yet for all that it is a fragile thing, for if those ranks are ever broken it can quickly collapse. And so it did then as we rushed forward, driving a wedge into the gap where the man whose foot I had severed had stood, and which the English had not yet filled. My sword had a life of its own as it struck out left and right, dancing from one foe to the next: parrying, carving, thrusting, cleaving a way through the enemy’s midst. This was the mêlée, the truest test of a warrior’s footwork and sword-skill, and we were winning: sending the English to their deaths, or else fleeing back towards their Welsh allies. We might have succeeded in fighting off the first few attacks, but as I surveyed our host, I saw what the cost had been. Dozens had been wounded and scores more lay dead. Their broken bodies lay sprawled in the mud, spears lodged in their bellies with pennons drooping limply from their hafts, their clothes and their faces plastered with a sticky red-brown mess. Some of those faces were ones that I recognised, men I had made conversation with over the last few days, spearmen and knights and other barons. We could not withstand another assault like that.
Except it seemed that the two lion banners were on the move. Rather than making their way down the hill to try to finish us, to my surprise the Welshmen were marching along the valley to the north, beyond the mill. Again the horns blew, and this time I realised where the sound was coming from, and what it meant.
Riding from out of the rain and the gloom to the north came conrois upon conrois of mailed horsemen, too many to count, kicking up mud and stones as they came. Held high above them, streaming in the wind, were black pennons and flags, and emblazoned in white upon each of them was a device that I recognised, in the shape of a wolf.
Earl Hugues had arrived.
Sixteen
THERE HE WAS, surrounded by his knights, riding up the valley through the driving rain, between the copses and the briar patches and across the fields and the meadows towards us.
‘The Wolf!’ Eudo cried out, laughing and whooping with joy at the same time. ‘It’s him!’
Word must have reached him, and now he had come to give battle in person, together with his army of fifteen hundred men. In an instant our fortunes had turned, and now it was the Welsh who were shouting rallying cries, bellowing orders and trying desperately to encourage their men. Under the twin banners of the blue-tongued lion, they rallied against the greater threat coming from the north, and this time I could make out both their kings, Bleddyn and Rhiwallon, each on horseback and each surrounded by his teulu. Meanwhile the Englishmen who not so long ago had been throwing themselves in their scores against our shield-wall were now falling back, leaving their Welsh comrades to stand alone against the onrushing wave of Norman horsemen sweeping across the flood plain of the valley floor. Clods of turf and mud were thrown up by their passage, and their hundreds upon hundreds of hooves raised a thunder that resounded off the hills.
Above that din came a repeated cry, one that was taken up all along the line, until they were shouting with one voice: ‘Normandy!’
And then they were upon the enemy. Often horses will refuse to go up against a properly formed line bristling with spears firmly set against them, but equally a mounted charge is a terrifying thing to face, and any shield-wall lacking in either discipline or nerve will quickly crumble. So it was then, as the Wolf’s knights drove wedges into the massed shields of the Welsh lines. Like nails being hammered into timber they smashed through their ranks, skewering foemen on their lances and trampling their corpses into the dirt. The tide of battle was turning; suddenly the enemy were being pushed back towards the ridge, and all that lay between us and Earl Hugues was open ground, albeit open ground that was strewn with loose stones from the destroyed wall, with what remained of the carts, with broken bodies, snapped spears and splintered shields.
‘To horse,’ I said to Serlo and Eudo beside me, then called out for all to hear: ‘To horse!’
I did not so much as bother to wipe my blade clean as I sheathed it, then made for the field by the river behind our lines, where the beasts had been corralled. My arms felt heavy, weary from so much killing and weighed down by mail and shield, and my legs protested, but I knew this fight was far from over yet. Snocca and Cnebba brought me Nihtfeax and I mounted up, though not before untangling my forearm from the straps attached to the ruined piece of wood and leather, and casting the thing aside. A broken shield was about as much use as none at all, or perhaps even worse, for it was a burden that offered no protection.