“Protect the Emperor!” went the cry to his rear.
The Roman infantry regiments, including those beaten back and exhausted, some with less than a third of their number remaining, were thus goaded to charge again — this time at double-speed, running rather than walking, despite their weight of arms and armour. But they were advancing behind their own cavalry screen, so their view of the vale’s north end was concealed — and they did not see the infantry ranks on Arthur’s east flank shuffle aside, creating an open passage from which a fresh stream of horsemen issued.
This was the other half of Arthur’s chivalrous host: the mounted portion of the Familiaris Regis, King Hoel and his Breton knights, and those other Knights of the Round Table who had not yet entered the fray: Tristan, Hector, Dornar, Caradoc, Udain, Ider, Palomides, Urre, Lavain, Gareth and Griflet — another six thousand combatants, and at their head the fearsome forms of Lancelot du Lac and his mesnie, distinctive for their leopard badges and their blue and white livery. At the same time, the cavalry force that had retreated, which if Emperor Lucius had only looked he would see was still largely intact, wheeled around and came back pell-mell into the action.
Arthur, Kay and Bedivere, anchoring the centre of the infantry line, also mounted up. Arthur raised his royal banner so that it streamed in the hot, gusting wind, and blew a single blast on his battle-horn. He lowered his standard and charged, and the infantry line went with him. Howling like a barbarian horde of old, the whole army of the Britons surged down the slope of the Vale of Sessoine.
Their mounted companies engaged first, Lancelot projecting himself into battle at the spear-point. With his first contact, he impaled a Roman general through the breast with his lance. In the same motion he drew his sword, slicing throats in all directions. Roman horsemen fell around him without even realising who or what had slain them.
Lucan, on the other flank, was the next into battle, careering through the enemy cavalry with abandon, laying to his left and right, Heaven’s Messenger soon slathered with gore not just the length of its blade, but up and over its hilt. He now engaged with Roman horsemen wearing orange livery. They showed skill and courage, but his rage grew inexorably. Heaven’s Messenger twirled about his head as he struck and parried and fended and butchered, carving his way through line after line of these handsome fellows, oblivious to their counter-blows, feeling only the ache in his sword-arm.
So furious was his charge, and the charge of all those others like him, that even the fresher Roman ranks dissolved into complete disorder, horsemen falling back among their infantry, orders being issued to no-one, which made it even easier for Arthur’s men, who, by comparison, were so well organised for war that their horses were trained to fight alongside their masters. Nightshade was in the thick of the combat; the noble brute reared at a clutch of Roman footmen who came at it with pikes, its iron-shod hooves ploughing into their helms, smashing their face-plates, pulverising the features beneath.
In the heat of battle the Knights of the Round Table knew no retreat. Forward, ever forward, was their motto — so, though the Romans ranked in front of them grew denser and denser, still they chopped their way among them. Lucan had his entire pack at his heels: Turold, Wulfstan, Guthlac, Gerwin, Cadelaine, Brione, Alaric and many others, flailing on the enemy with their blades and mattocks. Blood flowed in torrents as mailed and plated bodies fell on top of each other. Riderless steeds shrieked insanely, rampaging back and forth, causing more mayhem.
In the midst of this chaos, Lucan came upon a Roman horseman he recognised: a short, portly fellow encased in gilded armour cut with elaborate patterns — though, separated from his followers, he had now reined his steed and thrown down his weapons. He lifted his visor to reveal a plump, purple face and strands of long, red-grey hair: Ardeus Vigilano, Duke of Spoleto. His charger was in a dreadful state, broken arrow husks protruding from its sides, its head hung low, blood gushing from its nostrils. Spoleto himself could only raise one arm in surrender, for the other was punctured through the elbow by an arrow.
“I’m your prisoner!” the duke pleaded. “Whoever you are, brave knight of Albion, I throw myself on your mercy. My family will pay you a king’s ransom for my safe return. They will make you the wealthiest man in the whole of Christendom.”
Lucan hesitated only a second before ramming Heaven’s Messenger into Spoleto’s gargling mouth, and twisting it so that teeth and bone shattered.26 “All I ever had or wanted you people took from me!” snarled a bestial voice that Lucan himself barely recognised. “You can never repay it… except with your souls.”
The slaughtered nobleman fell to the ground, and Lucan dug his spurs into Nightshade’s flanks, driving the animal on.
“My God!” Turold shouted, lifting his visor. He, too, was gashed and scarred, his mail rent, blood streaking his black mantle. Alaric reined alongside him in a similar state. Turold indicated Spoleto’s corpse. “That suit of armour alone could pay the household wages for an entire year.”
“We can collect the bounty later,” Alaric said, standing in his stirrups to locate their lord, once again fearful that Heaven’s Messenger might now fall on a gentler head.
Turold laughed. “Aye… unless some camp-following scullion’s beaten us to it. Can’t you sense it, lad? We’re winning.”
He slammed his visor closed and urged his mount forward. Alaric followed.
In fact, the army of Albion was not winning the battle — not yet.
Numerically, they were still outmatched, though they had the momentum thanks to the downhill charge. The morale of New Rome’s finest was strained by the prolonged fight and by the sight of so many comrades-in-arms lying drowned in gore and filth. But the real turn of the tide only came fifteen minutes later, when King Arthur spotted the banner of Imperial Rome just ahead of him. Seated on his horse, fully armoured, but with visor open and mouth agape as he witnessed the slow destruction of all his dreams, was Emperor Lucius Julio Bizerta. An entire phalanx of mounted bodyguards had drawn up around him, clad toe to crown in the black enamel plate of the old Praetorian Guard, maces and falchions in their fists.
Arthur glanced to his right. Kay was still close, and Lancelot was ranging towards them. His horse, much bloodied, had to pick its way through the piles of mangled corpses. Arthur signalled to both and indicated the Imperial bodyguard. They nodded and, hunching forward, entered into a full gallop, in the midst of which Arthur and Tristan joined them.
The two small companies clashed with explosive force, sparks flashing, splinters flying from shattered lances. The Emperor’s bodyguards fought valiantly, but compared with Arthur and his knights were little more than human shields. The first shock of impact saw two of them eliminated, one skewered through the groin, the other with his left arm cloven at the shoulder. The remainder rained blows on their assailants, but for every contact they made, Arthur’s men made two or three, and very quickly the last few Praetorians fell from their saddles, blood spouting from joints in their armour.
Emperor Lucius was alone, fists tight on the reins of his terrified horse, his pale face lathered with sweat, his green eyes bulging as they fixed on the ferocious horseman confronting him — a horseman who could only be the King of the Britons.
“Your time has come, hell hound!” Arthur said, snapping up his visor.
“You crazed, barbarian beast!” the Emperor shrieked. “It was my destiny to rule.”
“And it was mine to draw a sword from a stone, and now to plant it in another.”