I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply, letting the moist smell of the earth and the leaves fill my nose, imagining what I would do when we met the Welsh lines, rehearsing in my mind each swing of my sword. Behind me Pons swore, too loudly for my liking, and I shot him a glance over my shoulder as he wiped glistening white droppings from his mailed arm. Above our heads, a colony of jackdaws cawed as they squabbled; the last thing I wanted to do was startle them and cause them to fly up, since there could be no clearer sign to the enemy that something was wrong, and our plans, so carefully set in place, would be scattered to the winds.
‘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.