Messire Mallet de Graville (as becomes a man bred up to arms, and
snatching sleep with quick grasp whenever that blessing be his to
command) no sooner laid his head on the pallet to which he had been
consigned, than his eyes closed, and his senses were deaf even to
dreams. But at the dead of the midnight he was wakened by sounds that
might have roused the Seven Sleepers--shouts, cries, and yells, the
blast of horns, the tramp of feet, and the more distant roar of
hurrying multitudes. He leaped from his bed, and the whole chamber
was filled with a lurid bloodred air. His first thought was that the
fort was on fire. But springing upon the settle along the wall, and
looking through the loophole of the tower, it seemed as if not the
fort but the whole land was one flame, and through the glowing
atmosphere he beheld all the ground, near and far, swarming with men.
Hundreds were swimming the rivulet, clambering up dyke mounds, rushing
on the levelled spears of the defenders, breaking through line and
palisade, pouring into the enclosures; some in half-armour of helm and
corselet--others in linen tunics--many almost naked. Loud sharp
shrieks of "Alleluia!" [160] blended with those of "Out! out! Holy
crosse!" [161] He divined at once that the Welch were storming the
Saxon hold. Short time indeed sufficed for that active knight to case
himself in his mail; and, sword in hand, he burst through the door,
cleared the stairs, and gained the hall below, which was filled with
men arming in haste.
"Where is Harold?" he exclaimed.
"On the trenches already," answered Sexwolf, buckling his corslet of
hide. "This Welch hell hath broke loose."
"And you are their beacon-fires? Then the whole land is upon us!"
"Prate less," quoth Sexwolf; "those are the hills now held by the
warders of Harold: our spies gave them notice, and the watch-fires
prepared us ere the fiends came in sight, otherwise we had been lying
here limbless or headless. Now, men, draw up, and march forth."
"Hold! hold!" cried the pious knight, crossing himself, "is there no
priest here to bless us? first a prayer and a psalm!"
"Prayer and psalm!" cried Sexwolf, astonished, "an thou hadst said ale
and mead, I could have understood thee.--Out! Out!--Holyrood,
Holyrood!"
"The godless paynims!" muttered the Norman, borne away with the crowd.
Once in the open space, the scene was terrific. Brief as had been the
onslaught the carnage was already unspeakable. By dint of sheer
physical numbers, animated by a valour that seemed as the frenzy of
madmen or the hunger of wolves, hosts of the Britons had crossed
trench and stream, seizing with their hands the points of the spears
opposed to them, bounding over the corpses of their countrymen, and
with yells of wild joy rushing upon the close serried lines drawn up
before the fort. The stream seemed literally to run gore; pierced by
javelins and arrows, corpses floated and vanished, while numbers,
undeterred by the havoc, leaped into the waves from the opposite
banks. Like bears that surround the ship of a sea-king beneath the
polar meteors, or the midnight sun of the north, came the savage
warriors through that glaring atmosphere.
Amidst all, two forms were pre-eminent: the one, tall and towering,
stood by the trench, and behind a banner, that now drooped round the
stave, now streamed wide and broad, stirred by the rush of men--for
the night in itself was breezeless. With a vast Danish axe wielded by
both hands, stood this man, confronting hundreds, and at each stroke,
rapid as the levin, fell a foe. All round him was a wall of his own--
the dead. But in the centre of the space, leading on a fresh troop of
shouting Welchmen who had forced their way from another part, was a
form which seemed charmed against arrow and spear. For the defensive
arms of this chief were as slight as if worn but for ornament: a small
corselet of gold covered only the centre of his breast, a gold collar
of twisted wires circled his throat, and a gold bracelet adorned his
bare arm, dropping gore, not his own, from the wrist to the elbow. He
was small and slight-shaped--below the common standard of men--but he
seemed as one made a giant by the sublime inspiration of war. He wore
no helmet, merely a golden circlet; and his hair, of deep red (longer
than was usual with the Welch), hung like the mane of a lion over his
shoulders, tossing loose with each stride. His eyes glared like the
tiger's at night, and he leaped on the spears with a bound. Lost a
moment amidst hostile ranks, save by the swift glitter of his short
sword, he made, amidst all, a path for himself and his followers, and
emerged from the heart of the steel unscathed and loud-breathing;
while, round the line he had broken, wheeled and closed his wild men,
striking, rushing, slaying, slain.
"Pardex, this is war worth the sharing," said the knight. "And now,
worthy Sexwolf, thou shalt see if the Norman is the vaunter thou
deemest him. Dieu nous aide! Notre Dame!--Take the foe in the rear."
But turning round, he perceived that Sexwolf had already led his men
towards the standard, which showed them where stood the Earl, almost
alone in his peril. The knight, thus left to himself, did not
hesitate:--a minute more, and he was in the midst of the Welch force,
headed by the chief with the golden panoply. Secure in his ring mail
against the light weapons of the Welch, the sweep of the Norman sword
was as the scythe of Death. Right and left he smote through the
throng which he took in the flank, and had almost gained the small
phalanx of Saxons, that lay firm in the midst, when the Cymrian
Chief's flashing eye was drawn to his new and strange foe, by the roar
and the groan round the Norman's way; and with the half-naked breast
against the shirt of mail, and the short Roman sword against the long
Norman falchion, the Lion King of Wales fronted the knight.
Unequal as seems the encounter, so quick was the spring of the Briton,
so pliant his arm, and so rapid his weapon, that that good knight (who
rather from skill and valour than brute physical strength, ranked
amongst the prowest of William's band of martial brothers) would
willingly have preferred to see before him Fitzosborne or Montgommeri,
all clad in steel and armed with mace and lance, than parried those
dazzling strokes, and fronted the angry majesty of that helmless brow.
Already the strong rings of his mail had been twice pierced, and his
blood trickled fast, while his great sword had but smitten the air in
its sweeps at the foe; when the Saxon phalanx, taking advantage of the
breach in the ring that girt them, caused by this diversion, and
recognising with fierce ire the gold torque and breastplate of the
Welch King, made their desperate charge. Then for some minutes the
pele mele was confused and indistinct--blows blind and at random--
death coming no man knew whence or how; till discipline and steadfast
order (which the Saxons kept, as by mechanism, through the discord)
obstinately prevailed. The wedge forced its way; and, though reduced
in numbers and sore wounded, the Saxon troop cleared the ring, and
joined the main force drawn up by the fort, and guarded in the rear by
its wall.
Meanwhile Harold, supported by the band under Sexwolf, had succeeded
at length in repelling farther reinforcements of the Welch at the more
accessible part of the trenches; and casting now his practised eye
over the field, he issued orders for some of the men to regain the
fort, and open from the battlements, and from every loophole, the
batteries of stone and javelin, which then (with the Saxons, unskilled
in sieges,) formed the main artillery of forts. These orders given,
he planted Sexwolf and most of his band to keep watch round the
trenches; and shading his eye with his hand, and looking towards the
moon, all waning and dimmed in the watchfires, he said, calmly, "Now
patience fights for us. Ere the moon reaches yon hill-top, the troops
of Aber and Caer-hen will be on the slopes of Penmaen, and cut off the
retreat of the Walloons. Advance my flag to the thick of yon strife."
But as the Earl, with his axe swung over his shoulder, and followed
but by some half-score or more with his banner, strode on where the
wild war was now mainly concentred, just midway between trench and
fort, Gryffyth caught sight both of the banner and the Earl, and left
the press at the very moment when he had gained the greatest
advantage; and when indeed, but for the Norman, who, wounded as he
was, and unused to fight on foot, stood resolute in the van, the
Saxons, wearied out by numbers, and falling fast beneath the javelins,
would have fled into their walls, and so sealed their fate,--for the
Welch would have entered at their heels.
But it was the misfortune of the Welch heroes never to learn that war
is a science; and instead of now centering all force on the point most
weakened, the whole field vanished from the fierce eye of the Welch
King, when he saw the banner and form of Harold.
The Earl beheld the coming foe, wheeling round, as the hawk on the
heron;--halted, drew up his few men in a semicircle, with their large
shields as a rampart, and their levelled spears as a palisade; and
before them all, as a tower, stood Harold with his axe. In a minute
more he was surrounded; and through the rain of javelins that poured
upon him, hissed and glittered the sword of Gryffyth. But Harold,
more practised than the Sire de Graville in the sword-play of the
Welch, and unencumbered by other defensive armour (save only the helm,
which was shaped like the Norman's,) than his light coat of hide,
opposed quickness to quickness, and suddenly dropping his axe, sprang
upon his foe, and clasping him round with his left arm, with the right
hand griped at his throat:
"Yield and quarter!--yield, for thy life, son of Llewellyn!"
Strong was that embrace, and deathlike that gripe; yet, as the snake
from the hand of the dervise--as a ghost from the grasp of the
dreamer, the lithe Cymrian glided away, and the broken torque was all
that remained in the clutch of Harold.
At this moment a mighty yell of despair broke from the Welch near the
fort: stones and javelins rained upon them from the walls, and the
fierce Norman was in the midst, with his sword drinking blood; but not
for javelin, stone, and sword, shrank and shouted the Welchmen. On
the other side of the trenches were marching against them their own
countrymen, the rival tribes that helped the stranger to rend the
land: and far to the right were seen the spears of the Saxon from
Aber, and to the left was heard the shout of the forces under Godrith
from Caer-hen; and they who had sought the leopard in his lair were
now themselves the prey caught in the toils. With new heart, as they
beheld these reinforcements, the Saxons pressed on; tumult, and
flight, and indiscriminate slaughter, wrapped the field. The Welch
rushed to the stream and the trenches; and in the bustle and
hurlabaloo, Gryffyth was swept along, as a bull by a torrent; still
facing the foe, now chiding, now smiting his own men, now rushing
alone on the pursuers, and halting their onslaught, he gained, still
unwounded, the stream, paused a moment, laughed loud, and sprang into
the wave. A hundred javelins hissed into the sullen and bloody
waters. "Hold!" cried Harold the Earl, lifting his hand on high, "No
dastard dart at the brave!"