I had hoped to draw the enemy up from their chosen position onto ground that would allow us better use of our advantage in cavalry, but to delay for that now would mean the sacrifice of the whole of our advance force. Again I spoke to the trumpeter, and again the notes of the war horn sang thin over the western countryside. The tramp of feet and the smother of hooves came sweeping up behind me, and I swung Gray Falcon into place at the head of the Companions as we spilled like a wave over the comb of the ridge, and on down to join with the advance guard. The enemy broke off as they saw us nearing, and scattered back to their own battle line, and we swept on and down, the advance troops wheeling about once more to join with us. It is seldom good to take foot any distance at the full charge, lest they lose formation and breath together; but there were bowmen among the ranks of the great Saxon battle line, and I must get them across the open ground as swiftly as might be. The first flight of arrows thrummed out at us as we came within range, and men pitched in their stride and went down; then our own horse archers opened up in reply, and in the enemy ranks, also, gaps darkened for an instant, until each was closed up by the springing in of the man behind. Forward and away at the canter and the long loping run, the standards lifting and flying on the air of our going, the war horns yelping, and under the horns I raised the war cry: “Yr Widdfa! Yr Widdfa!”
The enemy also had broken forward, to the booming of their own bulls’ horns and the long-drawn shuddering German war howl, having learned the unwisdom, I suppose, of receiving a cavalry charge while at the halt. And so we swept together, yelling at the speed of both armies.
Far on either side of us spread the Barbarian wings, and I glanced back once as we rode, to make sure that the second line on which our hope depended was keeping station, and saw the solid wave of men and horses sweeping after us, under the standards of Powys and Glevum. So far, so good; but in this country where there could be little free maneuvering for cavalry, to engage solidly all along the line would be to ask to be engulfed, and I began to swing the whole war host slantwise so as to bring the Companions and the flower of the spear ranks against, as I judged, the weakest span of the enemy battle line, that held by the Scottish warriors. The spears were flung, a dark whistling shower, and we charged home with drawn swords. War front and war front rolled together with crash of meeting shields that filled the marsh skies with wheeling and calling clouds of birds, and instantly there rose the clash and grind of weapons, the full-throated roar of war cry against war cry, the screams of horses, all blended into the great formless smother of sound that is the voice of all battles.
The line of white shields wavered, and clouds of lime dust rode into the air, choking and blinding friend and foe alike, and in the midst of the sharp white haze we were hacking and trampling our way forward. Almost it seemed, in one short triumphant burst of time, that we should break through to take them in the rear before our own weaker left wing, which I had held back somewhat by the slantwise charge, became fully engaged. That was when Medraut’s cavalry took us on the flank. The charge was brilliantly timed and handled and, save for the unmounted spearmen I had set amongst us, we must have been crushed in by it. As it was, our outer ranks were forced back, and the thing that I had dreaded and prepared for began to happen: the enemy’s longer flank was curling around our own to engulf us. Behind me I heard the trumpets sounding, and knew that our second-line warriors were wheeling about to make their stand back to back with us, while the farthest right of my own wing, withdrawing under the crash of Medraut’s charge, were linking shields with them.
Now we were a long narrow island, thrust and driven at from all sides, but an island that stood like rock, while again and again the dark waves of destruction came roaring in on us, and again and again we flung them back. I had pulled back the Companions into the slim space between the two fighting lines, to re-form them, and that I might have freedom of movement to come at any part of the war host. And I remember Flavian grinning at me from under the standard. He had lost his helmet and his forehead was streaked with blood, and he shouted to me above the furnace roar of battle: “A hot day, and somewhat dusty!” I saw Cei with every cheap glass ornament he possessed bright upon him, standing like a giant in his stirrups in the midst of a battle all his own. I saw men going down, and others stepping forward to fill their places, and knew that soon the lines would grow perilously thin; soon the island, the British shield-burg, must begin to shrink. Constantine and his war bands could not be far off now — and nor could the traitor Cymri. . . .
In the spot where the Barbarian host had come together, encircling us, it seemed to me suddenly, more by a kind of hunter’s instinct than by anything I could see, that the joining place was weak. I sent the order to Tyrnon and saw him unleash the flower of the war host’s cavalry. They rolled forward, not fast, but remorseless as a wave, the spearmen parting to let them through. . . . And suddenly the pressure against us on that side began to slacken. I heard the triumphant yell as it was torn apart and flung off, and the whole battle mass that had been knotted fast seemed to shake free of the bonds that had held it and grow fluid again. With the incredible swiftness with which the entire nature of a battle can change, the whole field had opened up and was now on the move. The fighting lines were swaying to and fro over ground that had been fought over all morning and was cumbered with dead men and dead horses, slippery with blood, stinking. Our hands and war gear were stained red, and here and there a man with his shield torn away would lift a battered corpse in front of him to receive the enemy spears. In the midst of the swifter swirl of cavalry and light troops, Marius with the heavy spearmen had made for the white horse standard, and was locked with Cerdic’s troops like a pair of tusk-locked boars, while again Medraut’s flying squadrons were sweeping down upon us.
The Saxons had unleashed their berserkers some time before, and when a shadow slid up from the undergrowth of battle almost under Gray Falcon’s breast and turned about with knife in hand, my heart jumped cold and I had already flung myself sideways in the saddle in desperate essay to cut the creature down when I saw that it was no drug-maddened Barbarian, but one of the Little Dark People, and turned the sword point just in time. He cried out something to me, but in the tumult I could not hear and shouted to him in return, “Up! Come up here, then!”
And he set one foot over mine in the stirrup, and next instant was clinging to my saddlebow for support, his narrow face streaked with the clay and ochre war patterns on a level with my own, the three buzzards’ feathers thrust into his knotted-up hair bowed and shivering sideways in the squally wind. “My Lord the Bear, the men from the North are near, those that come to join with the Wolves.”
“How near?”
He held up a spread hand. “As many bowshots as there are fingers on my hands and toes on my feet, maybe less — they come swiftly, swiftly, like a wolf pack on the trail.”
And as swiftly as he had come, he sprang down and was gone into the thickest storm of the fighting, where our ranks were desperately striving to rally under the hammer blow of Medraut’s last charge. One more such charge as that . . . and we should scarce be rallied from this one before the newcomers were upon us also. . . .