The dust cloud had begun to sink, and through it I saw Aelle of the South Seax, the War King, with his house carls about him and his white horsetail standards, come forward with his reserves. The pause was over and with a roar and a bellowing of war horns, the two hosts sprang again for each, other’s throats.
And again, after a sharp and bitter struggle, I saw the British battle line begin to give ground; slowly as ever, and contesting every yard of the way, back over ground that had been fought over before, back beyond it; they were level with the concealed cavalry wings now; and I knew that it was time to fling in the horse. And in that same instant, I saw what remained of the bodyguard — a score of men, maybe — led by old Aquila, heave forward from the rest of the battle line, cleaving like a wedge of red-hot metal into the battle mass of the enemy.
They too knew it was time for the horse, and were drawing the attention of the whole war host upon themselves to give the best possible chance to the cavalry charge; they were throwing away their lives for the price of taking the greatest possible number of the Barbarians with them. It was a superb and glorious piece at waste, one of those things that men do when for the moment they cease to be quite men, and walk with the high gods.
My hand was already lifting in the signal; Prosper raised the horn to his lips and the swift notes of the cavalry charge took wing across the valley, to be caught up before the last note had died, by the trumpeter on the ramparts of Cader Berywen. Among the thorn scrub a sword flashed up, and the next instant, with Perdius at their head, the cavalry broke forward and were away at a canter, at full flying gallop, their spears swinging down as they went.
I watched them away, as one watches one’s hounds slipped on a boar, but there was no time to see how the charge took effect. I caught up my buckler, and sent Signus plunging back to rejoin the waiting squadrons of the Company. “Our turn now! Come on, lads!”
For us it must be the longer way around, for with the steep slope of the hill northwest, and the spread of the fighting up the flanks of it, it was impossible to bring a rear charge around that way without arriving in disorder that would rob us of half our striking power. We flung our curve right-hand-wise around Badon Camp, riding like the Wild Hunt, for we must have had the best part of a mile to cover. I heard the drum of the squadrons’ hooves behind me and on either side; the wind of our going filled the standard so that the Red Dragon of Britain seemed to spread its wings in flight above us. We struck the Ridgeway and thundered down it toward its meeting point with the road south. Signus’s flying mane whipped back over my buckler, and the round sods flew beneath his shod forehooves; and as we swung into the mouth of the pass, at full pitch of my lungs I raised the war cry of Arfon: “Yr Widdfa! Yr Widdfa!” and heard it caught up behind me into a challenges into a paean.
From both sides the cavalry wings had driven home their charge, crumpling and driving inward the Barbarian flanks to jam their own center, breaking the force of the deadly thrust against the British battle line; and now it was for us to give the crowning blow.
We took the Saxon war host in the rear, crushing in the hastily formed shield-wall as though it had been a thornwork hedge. And I saw before me a swaying and struggling mass of yelling, battle-crazed faces under horned and flanged helmets, a crimson deadly leaping of spears and short seax blades over the rims of the linden bucklers; and then it broke and crumbled back, and with a roar, we hurled through upon the reeling battle mass of the enemy beyond.
The battle of which I had decreed the pattern, and which, so short a while before, I had looked down on, magisterially aloof, seeing it spread below me in its entirety, became for me as for the youngest boy with a javelin, the few yards of howling turmoil closest at hand, the feel of my weapon striking home, the snarling face of the man next before me, the reek of blood and horse’s sweat and choking chalk dust.
My spear broke in my hand at last, as I wrenched it from the body of a gigantic Saxon, and I flung the shaft away and drew my sword as we thrust on. I was making for the place where, dimly through the rolling dust cloud, I could glimpse the white horse standard with its crimson tassels and gilded skull that staggered to and fro above the mob, marking where Aelle of the South Seax fought among his house carls; and suddenly it seemed that the solid battle mass before me was thinning, breaking up as the mailed wedges of cavalry drove into it. The muzzle of a black horse swept up on my right, and snatching a glance that way, I saw Medraut flinging his squadron forward as though the battle were his alone; his face, with a small east-wind smile on it, was white as the moon daisies that he wore like a plume in the comb of his war cap, and his sword blade was blooded to the hilt and over the hand that held it.
An alley of clear space opened for an instant, and as I thrust Signus into it, a naked figure sprang across almost beneath his breast. The Saxons had learned long since that their berserkers were the most terrible weapon they possessed for use against cavalry. For a splintered and sickening instant of time, I saw the drugged, dilated eyes, the lean body reddened from head to heel, the wicked disemboweling blade; then, as the creature dived for Signus’s belly, I took the only chance there was, wrenched the great horse away, and sent him up in a rearing half turn, screaming with rage, his hooves lashing for the man’s head. It was a hideous expedient, for the least misjudgment of time or position would give the berserker a perfect opening for his belly thrust; as it was, hampered by the reeling throng about me, I doubt if I should have made it, but in the same instant, with a deep singsong snarl, Cabal crouched, and launched himself at the man’s throat. Between the lashing forehooves I saw them go down together, and could wait to see no more . . . no more . . . but thrust on toward the white gleam of the horsetail standard that still showed above the sea of conflict. I was within half a spear toss of the royal shield-burg, when a young man — a chieftain to judge by his dragon-scale war shirt and the red gold about his neck — sprang in before me at the head of a yowling knot of his own kind, and caught at Signus’s bridle, and clung on, and even as the horse reared and plunged squealing with fury, his sword rang against mine; and the westering sunlight, slipping over the downland shoulder into the shadows of the pass, fell full upon his face. And for a moment as his fellows swept forward to meet the squadron the fighting that boiled around us fell away. His war cap had been struck off and the wild mane of hair that sprang to his shoulders was red as a fox’s pelt, and the eyes that blazed into mine were filled with a gray-green fire, a kind of furious laughter. And across the years that had made him a man and a leader of men, I knew him again, and he knew me. He shouted to me, “Did you not say that I should come again, and kill you if I was able?”
And I shouted back, “Or I you, Cerdic, son of Vortigern!” and caught his stroke with a shock of blade on blade that ran up my arm in numbing flight of pain sparks, and sent it spinning from his hand, then struck again, at the neck. I saw his face contort into a choking snarl, and the bright spurt of blood, and without a sound, he was gone among the trampling hooves and feet of the battle.