The Splintered Kingdom (21 page)

‘Quiet,’ I told him.

He spat on the ground, and then glanced up, face screwed into a look of disgust as he searched the rustling branches for the offending creature. ‘Bloody birds,’ he said.

‘They can shit on you all day long for all that I care. Now shut up.’

It would not be long now. The stragglers in the enemy train were making their way up the track, these ones on foot rather than mounted, the men carrying packs while the women bore their shields, carrying them by their long guige straps across their backs.

‘Any man who so much as lays a finger on any of those women will know my sword-edge,’ I said, making sure that the message was passed on down the line.

Eudo was beside me. ‘So that you can have them first, you mean?’ he asked with a smirk.

‘So that they can go and tell their countrymen of the slaughter we wrought here,’ I replied.

It was partly true, but it was not the main reason, which was that I wanted to make sure that I had discipline. We were here for a purpose, and I was confident that allowing men to slake their lusts at every opportunity was not a part of what Fitz Osbern had in mind. Nor could we take any captives with us, since they would only slow us down.

Besides, I knew all too well what could happen when men were given rein to do as they would. If all those who had gone looting and drinking at Dunholm had held themselves back, perhaps they would have been ready when the Northumbrians had come. Were
that the case, we would surely have won that victory and so many good men would not now lie dead, their corpses left to rot in a wild and distant land. It was pointless to wonder about what might have been, since what was done could not be changed, but I was determined not to allow the same thing to happen again. And so if I said that no women were to be touched, then that was how it would be, and any who dared ignore me would face my wrath.

I turned my attention back towards the road, where, having now climbed to the top of the ridge, the enemy vanguard had drawn to a halt. I froze, thinking for a moment that they had seen something and our plan was discovered, until I realised that they were only waiting for the rest to catch up. In so doing they could not know that they were making themselves easy targets for Maredudd’s archers.

Even as that thought entered my head, it happened. A flash of movement amidst the gorse beyond the road, and suddenly a cluster of dark lines shot silently up into the grey skies, followed by another and another and yet more still. They sailed high, their silver heads glinting dully in the dim light, before arcing down, plunging back towards the earth. Men and women called to one another in warning, but it was in vain. One man dropped as he took a shaft in his chest; another yelled as one ran through his shoulder; behind him a horse screamed and reared up, hooves raised high as it tossed its rider to the dirt.

And so it had begun.

I held up a hand to stall my knights, who were glancing at me, ready for the signal. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’

I spied the dark forms of Maredudd’s archers standing in a line a hundred paces to the other side of the enemy, who were in sudden disarray. Another volley was let loose, and another, as fast as the men could draw the shafts from their arrow-bags. So spread out were their targets, however, that most of them fell harmlessly on to the path or amongst the heather. It was enough to startle the ponies, some of which were bolting, one trailing a man who had not managed to free his foot from the stirrup. His cries were in vain as the animal galloped back down the way that they had come,
and several times his head bounced off the ground before he struck a rock, and then he was still.

‘
Ysgwydeu!
’ one of the enemy shouted, amidst the cries of panic. I could not tell whether or not he was their leader, since from this distance they all looked the same, but the call was taken up by some of the other men, who were at last starting to rally: ‘
Ysgwydeu! Ysgwydeu!
’

Almost as one their women ran to their menfolk’s sides, unlooping the long straps from around their shoulders and passing them the shields before just as quickly rushing back to lead their animals out of arrow-shot. Steel continued to spit down from the sky, but the enemy did not think to form a line, to raise the shield-wall and protect their faces. Instead, driven to rage by the deaths of their comrades, they charged headlong upon Maredudd’s men, crashing through the heather and the gorse, not keeping to their ranks but simply running as fast as their legs could manage. They roared with one voice, shouting out in their tongue as they brandished their weapons high: their spears and their knives and their axes.

This was the moment I had been waiting for: the moment for which I had been longing for so many months. I gripped the brases of my tall kite shield in my left hand, wrapping my fingers around the lance-haft in my right. My heart leapt in my chest, and I could feel the blood surging through my veins, growing hotter and hotter—

A war-horn bellowed out, deep-throated and baleful like the call of some monstrous beast: the signal from Maredudd.

‘Now,’ I yelled, not just for my own knights to hear but for every other conroi that was with me too. ‘For St Ouen and Normandy, for Fitz Osbern and King Guillaume!’

The jackdaws flapped and screeched at the suddenness of the sound, rising in their dozens from the branches as all around me the answering cry came: ‘For King Guillaume!’

Raising my hawk pennon high, I spurred Nihtfeax forward, controlling him with my legs alone as we burst out from the trees on to the heath, my sword-brothers by my flanks, hooves pounding the soft ground, and it seemed that the earth itself trembled under the weight of our charge as more than a hundred horsemen rode knee
to knee, and now I couched my lance under my arm, ready for the moment when we would meet the enemy. Behind me I heard Ithel raise a battle-cry in Welsh: a cry that was echoed by his spearmen who were following, but their voices were soon lost amidst the thunder of the blood in my ears.

Less than two hundred paces before us were the enemy, chasing down Maredudd’s now-fleeing archers. So lost were they in thoughts of avenging their fallen comrades that they failed to notice us bearing down upon them. Made clumsy by the shields on their arms and the weapons in their hands, they stumbled over some of the lower bushes, sprawling as they met the hidden ditches and pits that we had dug last night and covered over with branches and long grass. All the while they grew ever more spread out; Maredudd was waving to his men, sending them in all directions, and the enemy did not know which ones to chase.

Those of the womenfolk who had seen what was happening screamed warnings from further down the road, but their husbands and their brothers did not seem to hear, or else if they did, they did not heed them. Not, at least, until it was too late.

The ground disappeared beneath us as I pushed Nihtfeax into a gallop. Out of the corner of my eye I saw some of the knights at the end of the line falling a little behind and I yelled at them to keep formation. Not that I had time to see whether in fact they’d listened, since then we were upon the enemy. Some of them had awoken to the danger from their rear and were turning, but they were too few and too dispersed to make much of a stand against us. I glimpsed my first foe standing before me, eyes wide as he saw a hundred mailed horsemen and more bearing down upon him. Struck dumb with fear, he knew not whether to fight or whether to flee, and in the end he did neither. I drove my lance into his shoulder, knocking him to the ground where his body was crushed under the weight of so many hooves.

Within an instant he was forgotten; already I was moving on, keeping up the momentum of the charge. One man, seeing his death before him, hurled his spear towards me; I ducked low and it sailed past my head. Sscreaming his final words, he ran at us with
knife in hand. But if he thought he might take one of us with him, he was wrong, as the point of my lance found his chest, striking ribs and puncturing his heart. Blood spurted forth, spattering my chausses, and as he toppled backwards I left the weapon lodged in his torso as I drew my sword instead.

‘No mercy!’ I shouted.

We were among the enemy now and panic was spreading through them. To my left Wace and his men battered down upon shields, burying their blades in the flesh of their foes, while to my right a tide of men and horses and naked steel rolled across the heath, sweeping all before it, engulfing the enemy and driving them down. Shouts of panic filled the air, as they saw themselves trapped between us on the one hand and, on the other, Maredudd’s archers, who were rallying once more and picking off any who tried to flee. Corpses littered the field of battle, lying in the ditches or else scattered amidst the undergrowth: some with feathered shafts protruding from their backs and sides; others with bright gashes across the backs of their skulls, their tunics torn, their faces marked with crimson streaks.

‘On,’ I said. ‘On! On!’

My shield and sword felt light in my hands; my mail no longer weighed upon my shoulders. Each breath brought a fresh surge of vigour to my limbs, and my blade-edge sang with the song of battle, ringing out with each strike, with each foeman it sent to his death. Around me the world itself seemed to slow: I could sense every swing of their weapons, every movement of their shields even before they happened, and all of a sudden I was laughing with the ease of it all, laughing with the joy of the fight and the delight of the kill. Victory was at hand; I could almost grasp it, and with that knowledge in mind I spurred Nihtfeax onwards, no longer caring about keeping formation. All that concerned me now was finding the next man who would meet his end upon my sword-point. The enemy fell before me, and for the first time in a long while I felt free. The battle-calm was upon me, and I was lost to the will of my blade, bringing it down again and again and again as I clove a path through my foes, swinging and parrying and thrusting, falling
into a rhythm so familiar it had become instinctive, sending them to hell.

All too soon it was over. One last strike of my blade, tearing through the throat of a flaxen-haired youth, and I found myself alone with no one else to kill. Sweat rolled off my brow and I wiped it from my eyes while the bloodlust faded and I recovered my breath and glanced about. All the rest of the enemy had turned to flight, most of them turning back down the hill, following their womenfolk who were already halfway back towards the fort. A few tried to escape across the heath, evidently hoping to lose their pursuers amidst the clumps of gorse, although their attempts were in vain for they were soon ridden down, their broken and bloodied bodies trampled into the dirt. They had been routed, and now the field of battle belonged to us.

‘For Normandy,’ I called out, raising my sword to the heavens. The cheer was taken up by the rest of our knights, all chanting as one with me: ‘For Normandy!’

‘
Cymry
!’ another shout went up, and I saw that it was Ithel, leading the cry as he rallied his foot-warriors about him, and his words were echoed by his brother’s men on the other side of the field.

We had lost few men so far as I could tell, which was to be expected given our advantage in numbers. Perhaps a dozen of Maredudd’s men had fallen, and around the same number of Ithel’s too. As I scanned about I counted at least seven mailed corpses that probably belonged to Frenchmen, which to my mind was seven too many. Next to some of them lay their horses, some dead but the rest wounded, shrieking in pain as they writhed on the ground, guts half spilling from their bellies. I marshalled my conroi to me, making sure that they were all present. None seemed to have been injured that I could see, and that was as well, since far sterner challenges awaited than this.

Pons had retrieved my lance with its hawk pennon from the chest of the man it had been buried in, and he handed it to me. Where the cloth had once been white, now its corners were stained pink.

‘A good victory, lord,’ said Serlo. There was blood on his face
and spattered across his mail, but he did not seem to care. For once his serious expression had vanished, and in its place was a broad smile.

‘The first of many,’ Turold added as he sheathed his blade.

‘So long as God is willing,’ I replied, likewise grinning. All my life I had known nothing like the taste of a successful day’s fighting for putting men in good humour, and so it was then. They slapped one another on the back and embraced as if drunk, whooping with delight as they congratulated their comrades on all the foemen they had slain. Others set about looting the corpses of those who had fallen on both sides, many of them fighting amongst themselves for the most valuable things as they claimed coin-purses, corselets of leather, helmets, knife-sheaths, brooches and even shoes, until some of those bodies lay all but naked.

I ought to have intervened, since by right a large part of that loot belonged to myself as the leader of the expedition. But in truth my attention was elsewhere. Close by the road I had spotted Berengar. He was still in the saddle, which was how I was able to spot him, though for whatever reason he was some way off from where most of the fighting had taken place, surrounded by some twenty or so of his comrades and retainers. Their pennons, decorated in his colours of scarlet and blue, hung damp and still from their lances. Even though I could not make out what they were doing there, something about the way they were gathered aroused my suspicions.

‘Come with me,’ I said, gesturing to Pons, Turold and Serlo.

They glanced at each other with confused expressions but they did not question me, instead leaving their animals to the care of the rest of our conroi and following me as I strode across the heath. Men raised their fists and their swords when they caught sight of me, clamouring my name, and I acknowledged them with a wave as we passed, though as I knew well it took more than one man to win a battle: this was more their victory than mine, and it was they who deserved the cheers, not I.

Berengar had dismounted by the time we approached, and his friends had formed a ring around him, jeering loudly and calling
out insults, although through the press of men and horses I couldn’t see at whom they were directed. As I got closer I heard what sounded like a woman’s voice, though her words were not ones I could understand, closely followed by the wail of an infant.