The Firedrake (29 page)

Fitz-Osbern spoke some words, and the Saxon spoke some words. Fitz-Osbern turned and rode back. His horse grew larger and larger, cantering back across the valley. The sound grew bigger. Fitz-Osbern leaned out, saluting William. His horse reached the Norman lines. The horns blasted. They charged.

The foot soldiers ran in first, with half the archers. The arrows of the archers dropped harmlessly against the shield wall. The foot soldiers closed the gap rapidly. William held back the knights, watching. Laeghaire trembled all over. The stallion plunged and curved his neck. The foot soldiers seemed puny. Suddenly the defenders on the hill loosed a rain of missiles on them. Many of the foot soldieis fell. Laeghaire swore under his breath. He glanced at William. William stared down at the shield wall. His eyes never blinked. Laeghaire could feel his mind working. The noise from the battle up there was tremendous. William moved his hand and the motion was gigantic.

The knights galloped down, threading through the retreating foot soldiers. Laeghaire galloped beside William. The stallion was faster than the gray gelding but Laeghaire held him back. They struck the shield wall. It clanged like a sword on a sword. A fence of axes rose before them. Laeghaire hurled his lance and drew his sword. The stallion reared, clawing at the wall. Laeghaire bent down and slashed awkwardly at a helmeted head. The head swung back when he struck it. An ax reached for him. He thrust it away with his sword. He felt a tight binding in his chest. He felt the heat rising in his chest. He shouted and took the sword in both hands and smashed at the housekarl below him. Suddenly the man vanished.

The rest of the knights were backing away. Laeghaire wrenched the stallion around. From the corner of his eye he saw a Saxon, shield advanced, running in toward his back. He swung around and wheeled the sword backhanded. The blade took the Saxon across the shoulder and toppled him.

He turned and galloped after the other Normans. He was the last man away from the shield wall. He heard a cheer behind him and swung Ills shield around to cover his back. He saw part of the fyrd break the line and come running after them, cheering and waving their weapons.

The Normans were all in a wild flight. Laeghaire shouted. He veered the stallion. He saw the gray gelding leap around, and a horn blew. Knights swerved around all over the field. They flew down on the isolated little band of Saxons, cut them apart from the shield wall, and turned in on them. They rushed together and for a moment struck and butchered, and rushed back, cantering off. Behind them Laeghaire saw the tangled, mauled bodies of the little band of Saxons.

He rode back with William to their hill and watched the Normans slowly regrouping. They sat silent on their horses. The shield wall was unbroken. Their Norman dead lay on the slope, and that little patch of Saxons. The banner flew wildly over the wall. The Saxons cheered again, and Laeghaire called for water and dampened his lips and sat motionless, breathing.

“Is there a chance that we could encircle them?” Fitz-Osbern said to William.

“Take us all day to ride around. Lose the advantage.”

“What advantage?” Fitz-Osbern said, and bit his lip. “They are slaughtering us.”

“He just reached this place last night. His men are tired. And he hasn’t got all his men here yet. You wait and see.”

Laeghaire walked the brown stallion back and forth. He passed William and Fitz-Osbern every few moments and heard bits of what they said. He hardly cared. He looked up at that wall and at the dead men and horses on the slope. It seemed straight as a church aisle, straight from him to the men he would kill and who would kill him. For this day he had been born, to sit his saddle on this day and see all the events of his life in the pattern that took him to this straight line that lay between his life and his death.

The horns blew and they reassembled. The greatest mass of the foot soldiers was on the right flank now. The archers were all up on the end of the hill to the left. William had moved his fingers and everybody had scurried into place.

The archers cocked their bows and leaned back and aimed and fired, and on the whining of the flying shafts they charged.

William beside him seemed to brace; they struck the shield wall and the horses smashed against it. The axes and the swords and the Welsh hooks reached for them. The brown stallion stumbled and Laeghaire snatched for the pommel of the saddle. Something crashed against his shield. The stallion struggled up. Laeghaire was half out of the saddle. He lashed out blindly with the shield and felt the edge strike another shield and crush it in. The stallion lunged. Laeghaire was over the cantle of the saddle. He hauled himself back into the seat. He was in the middle of the Saxons. They turned on him like devils. The wall was behind him; he was alone. He lashed out around him. The shield was half wrenched from his arm. He cleaved a Saxon from shoulder to waist and the blood showered over him. A sword crossed his and he whipped it free. He caught an ax blow on the edge of the shield and heard the iron ring. He wheeled the horse and spurred him, dropping the rein. A man leaped for him and caught his wrist. He swept the Saxon away with his sword. The stallion reared and bolted. Laeghaire caught a blow on his right fist and struck back by reflex. The swing struck nothing until the very end and caught bone and flesh. He clubbed down a housekarl with the flat of the sword, and the stallion jumped. Laeghaire caught at the pommel of the saddle and the rein. The stallion galloped down the slope, full speed.

He rode back to where William sat his horse and talked. It was hot, as if the lowering clouds penned all the heat under them like a forge.

“I never thought I’d see you back again, Irish,” William said.

“There was a moment when I wasn’t too sure of it,” Laeghaire said.

He dismounted and looked at the stallion. William sent someone to call a truce so that they could look for wounded. The stallion was cut over both knees and breathing hard. Laeghaire washed the blood from the horse’s knees. The stallion was covered with blood, but most of it was Saxon.

Laeghaire took off his glove. His thumb was smashed. A piece of white bone thrust up through the torn skin. The thumb was shapeless.

He took a piece from his surcoat and wrapped up the thumb. William rode over. “If that’s all you’re wounded, you’ll survive.”

“I need it to hold my sword.” He put the glove back on and curled his fingers. “Unh. That’s all right.”

William smiled. “Are you ever afraid, Irish?”

“Would it make any difference? I think I’m going to get it today.”

William was silent for a while.

“It’s as good a place as any to end my life, isn’t it?” Laeghaire said.

“No,” William said. “It isn’t.”

Laeghaire looked up at him.

“Mount up,” William said. He looked angry. He had not been angry all through the battle.

He mounted. He could see the sun faintly, through the clouds, and the men coming back, with the wounded carried on their saddles. Jehan passed him, borne between two men. They laid him down. His back was smashed. His head turned slowly from side to side. His mouth was so drawn up with pain that it seemed to slit his head in half.

“Let’s go,” William said. He looked over at the archers, shooting in regular volleys, now that the field was cleared, and the arrows sliding through the sky and down past the wall, past the standard rippling like a snake.

They rolled in on the shield wall and the whole line hacked and struck at it and at the Saxons behind it. A few Normans broke through and were cut down before they could widen the gap or hold it, and the wall closed up behind them. Laeghaire saw the twisted mouths of the Saxons, saw them swear and wince and scream, and his arm was independent of his body, launching the sword against them. Only the sharp pain in his thumb reminded him that that arm was part of him. He took half a dozen murderous blows on his shield, turning them off, his arm numbed. He felt the stallion shy once at a Welsh hook and come up against William’s horse. They withdrew again in disorder and the fyrd came down after them and desperately the Normans turned and hacked them to pieces, hating them.

“We won’t break them,” Fitz-Osbern said. “They are like iron.”

“We’ll break them,” William said.

Laeghaire raised his head. He took off his helmet. The cool air touched his sweaty hair and he felt better.

“They’ve lost a lot of men,” William said. “We’ll take them.”

It was midafternoon now. The sun was gone again. The clouds pressed down on them. The standard of the Saxons waved and fluttered before them. Suddenly it was small, who won or lost here, who lived or died. All the great plans, they sounded good and wise and huge when we talk about, them, Laeghaire thought, they sound like the actions of God, but when I come up to them they are nothing but little men on little horses playing war.

He looked at William, doubting, and William’s face was calm and steady, the mouth not smiling, not frowning, thinking, the eyes thinking. He never stopped thinking.

“Mount up. Mount up.”

His body screamed that he could not mount up again and ride down there. He mounted. They were very much fewer. Jehan was gone; he must have died.

They rode straight for the wall. The stallion was tired and would not race. The horses labored and the foam splashed over them. Laeghaire knew from the way the horse shifted his weight that they had reached the base of the slope up to the shield wall. They came against the wall and were stopped and they fought across the shields. The swords glittered in the air; the air was lull of iron. The Saxons seemed to lean forward to claw at them, the shield wall folded in on them.

William’s horse reared straight up and fell. Laeghaire bent the stallion around. The gray was thrashing on the ground. The Saxons broke to surround them. Laeghaire flung out his shield to cover William. He smashed at the grinning, clawing enemy Saxons. He wanted to destroy them all; he wanted to hurt them, to pound them into pulp. He could not see. His eyes were in his sword, and he moved his sword with his whole body. He stood in his stirrups and crushed the Saxons under his sword and ground them down. Their heads cracked under his sword like bugs. The faces split and their grinning mouths grew all around their heads, and their chests fountained blood. The blood sprayed over him and he was covered with it and the horse slipped and stumbled. He flogged them with his sword. William was up behind him. He spurred the stallion away. They retreated wildly, and once again the fyrd charged after them, and once again the Normans wheeled to cut them off and slaughtered them, but the housekarls stayed on their hill and would not come down and be slaughtered too.

He reined up. William slid to the ground and walked a few steps away. He sat down on the ground. Laeghaire said, “Are you hurt?” He dismounted. The stallion had a cut on his foreleg. Laeghaire bound it up.

“No.”

The Normans had regrouped, but they were shouting. Laeghaire raised his head. He listened to them. William stood up. “Give me your horse,” he said. He mounted the brown stallion.

“They think you are dead,” Fitz-Osbern said. His face was black with blood and dirt. “They think you are dead.”

William pulled off his helmet. He turned and rode out in front of the Normans. They quieted. He rode along before them and a cheer began and followed him. It grew up like a storm and followed him. Laeghaire sat and heard them and bent his head.

He could have died, he thought. He might have died. Oh, God, if he had died—

William rode back. He called for another horse. Laeghaire looked up at him. He thought he had never seen that face before. Calm as a priest’s and savage, and huge; he thought this man much bigger than any other man he had ever seen. He shook, looking at William. The eyes stared glittering out, seeing farther and seeing greater than the eyes of a man. He thought he looked at a mask, and behind the shields of the eyes burned all the fires of the world in arms.

Laeghaire glanced at Fitz-Osbern. He wondered if he looked as Fitz-Osbern looked, seeing William. He got up and mounted the brown stallion.

“Thank you,” William said. He mounted a bay horse. He gathered the reins into his hands. He clapped Laeghaire on the shoulder. “Once more, Irish.”

He looked down the long ride to the shield wall and saw that they had cut down the wall’s length. The Saxons had lost men, too. Laeghaire flexed his thumb and bit his lip against the pain. He curled it around his sword and rested the flat of the sword on his other wrist. William’s new horse was fresh and restless. It shied and kicked out.

“Once more.”

They charged under the horns and they ripped at the shield wall and were flung back. It was almost sundown. The field was slick with blood.

“This is the last one,” William said. “Rest for it. This is the last one. We’ll camp here tonight and try again tomorrow if this one doesn’t work.”

The archers bent their bows and raised the arrows and let fly. Laeghaire watched the arrows whisper into the ground and glance off the shield wall. He knew that he would not come back from this charge.

“I’ll be disappointed if I don’t die today,” he said.

William laughed. The laugh was big and thundering.

No, we will never break them. The arrows slid by the Saxons. They pierced the standard of gold that, whipped in the wind.

“Charge.”

The horse moved forward, sluggish, and Laeghaire bent to ease him. He saw the bay horse moving easily beside them. The bay horse, that capered, while they moved with such pain.