The Splintered Kingdom (28 page)

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.

‘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.

‘
Sceld
,’ I said to the boys. ‘
Bringath me sceld.
’

Cnebba hurried away while Snocca passed me a wooden bottle filled with water. I took it and drank as quickly as I could manage; the liquid spilled down my chin and the front of my hauberk, and when I’d finished I tossed the empty vessel aside.

Knights flocked to their lords’ banners, their horses snorting impatiently. Among them were men of all ages: some so young they must have only recently taken their oaths, their eyes eager and filled with the battle-hunger; a few much older than myself, many of whom were missing ears or fingers and whose faces were lined with the scars of campaigns past.

‘What’s your plan now?’ a familiar voice growled. I turned; it was Berengar. His face was flushed and he was nursing a fresh cut, bright and glistening, that ran across his cheek just above the line of his jaw. At least that showed he had been making himself useful, rather than hiding behind the spear-arms of other men.

‘Now we take the fight to them.’ Waving to those men who had been with me in the charge earlier, or as many of them as were left, I shouted with hoarse voice: ‘Conroi to me!’

As they were driven back to the slopes beneath the ridge, however, the Welshmen began to rally. The strength of the charge lies mainly in its speed and the sudden force it can bring to bear, but against a tightly packed formation it can quickly fail. Having recovered from the shock of the opening collision, the enemy now closed ranks and locked shields against Earl Hugues’s knights, forcing them to abandon the attack lest they became surrounded. The Normans peeled off, back down to the level ground on the valley floor, to where the Wolf was marshalling the rest of his host: his five hundred knights, to which we could now add the fewer than three hundred that at a glance I reckoned I had left to me. Eight hundred at most, then, against an enemy numbering probably twice as many. Somewhere amongst them had to be Lord Robert. I wondered where all the Wolf’s foot-warriors were, and then glanced to the north and saw ranks upon ranks of shield-bosses and spears coming to join us, albeit still more than a mile off. The enemy must have seen them too, and realised that they had to make use of their advantage now if they were to stand a chance of defeating us. Once more they came, this time hurling their entire force into the fray, spilling down the hill in pursuit of Hugues’s knights as they broke off from their charge.

‘Defend the wolf banner,’ I cried. ‘Go, go, go!’

What remained of our raiding-party had marshalled by then, and I waved to them, urging them on, directing them towards the left wing of the Wolf’s army where the lines looked thinnest and in desperate need of reinforcement.

I was about to spur Nihtfeax on and follow them when out of the corner of my eye I saw Maredudd and Ithel riding towards me, having gathered together those of their hearth-troops that were left. Both looked weary; their faces and hair were streaked with dirt and spattered with the blood of their foes and some that might have been their own, but there was a determination in their eyes that I had not seen before.

‘Stay together,’ I said. Men raced past us on both sides and I had to raise my voice to make myself heard above their shouts and the hammering of hooves. ‘As long as we manage that, we stand a chance of making it through this day with our heads still attached to our necks.’

Ithel shook his head fiercely. ‘We will not get a better chance than this to slay the usurpers, those defilers of law and of the Church, those stealers of kingdoms. They have denied us our birthright for too long!’

‘No,’ I said. ‘If you and your retainers break away to go after Rhiwallon and Bleddyn, you’ll not only be riding to your own deaths but risking our skins too. All we need to do is hold off the enemy until Earl Hugues’s spearmen arrive to bolster our ranks.’

‘We came seeking the help of your earl, Fitz Osbern, to drive them out of our lands, out of Wales,’ Maredudd put in, his tone less impassioned than his brother’s, though he sounded no less determined. ‘This is the day for which we have been praying for seven long years. We will not be denied.’

‘We will drive our swords into their bellies and rip the hearts from their chests,’ Ithel added before I could so much as get a word in. ‘We will throw their corpses to the dogs to feed on and carry their heads as trophies to show to their vassals in Mathrafal. We have vowed to kill them and we will do it today, in this valley, here in Mechain!’ He turned to his retainers. ‘
Ni ae lad wynt!
’

The Welsh horsemen, of which there were perhaps two dozen, roared as one. Perhaps some of them had been drinking in the lulls between the fighting, or perhaps their blood was already up after the killing of their fellow warriors, but whatever he had said, it was enough to stir the battle-rage within them.

‘No,’ I said sharply, grabbing Ithel’s shoulder and forcing him to turn and face me. ‘Listen to me.’

In an instant he had twisted free. ‘Take your hands—’

‘Shut up and listen,’ I interrupted him. ‘If we’re to succeed and see this day through, I need you and your men to stay with me.’ Desperately I met Maredudd’s eyes. Being the older of the two, I
thought he would be more likely to see reason. ‘Surely you understand this?’