The Splintered Kingdom

by James Aitcheson

  Any lingering hopes I might have held of storming that stronghold faded when first I glimpsed it. Night was fast approaching by then and it was hard to discern much in the gloom and the mist settling over the flood plain, but they had made campfires inside the stronghold and their faint glow was enough for my eyes to make out a series of earthen banks and ditches arranged in a rough rectangle, with the remains of what looked like a stone gatehouse at the eastern end. A timber palisade did indeed run along the top of the earthworks, although from such a distance it was impossible to tell its condition: whether it had been repaired in the years since Ithel and Maredudd had made their stand there, or whether it was already rotten, in which case all that would be needed were a few swift axe blows before it fell.

  ‘There’s a breach on its northern side,’ said Eudo, whose sight was better than mine. ‘Too narrow to make an attack, though.’

  Not that any of the other approaches looked more promising, for Caerswys stood at the meeting-point of two fast-flowing rivers, meaning that it was protected by water to south and west, and while the Welsh brothers assured me that both were fordable I knew it would be all too easy for the enemy to see us coming and hold us at those crossings. The only other choice we had, then, was to try to assault the gatehouse, but that would be well defended and would surely mean the loss of many lives, which we could ill afford, especially when we had other choices at hand.

  ‘What do you suggest?’ asked Wace.

  ‘We wait until morning,’ I said. ‘They’ll leave sooner or later, and when they do, we’ll be ready for them.’

  After posting sentries to keep a lookout for any signs of movement, I returned to where the rest of our host were waiting. From there we marched along the ridge that rose to the north of the fort, travelling in groups of no more than twenty at a time so that we would be less easily seen. Shadows shrouded the hills and cloud obscured the skies, and so it seemed doubtful that the enemy would spot us, but even so, one could never be too careful.

  Several cart-tracks led out from the fort, heading in all directions along the two river valleys as well as into the hills, but only one led north. Suspecting that was the one that the enemy would take, I left Maredudd around half a mile from the fort with a contingent of spearmen and the forty or so archers we possessed. The gorse was thick enough there that they could easily lie hidden within arrow-shot of the road. At the same time his brother Ithel and I took the rest of our host – some three hundred men, most of them mounted – over to a clump of trees that stood a further quarter-mile away on the other side of the track, on the highest part of the ridge, where we might see the enemy but they would find it difficult to see us.

  And there, with our trap set, we waited. By the time our whole host was in place, though, I reckoned it could only be a few hours until first light. My eyes stabbed with tiredness but I knew that I would not be able to sleep even if I tried; already I could feel my heart beginning to pound, my sword-arm tensing, though the prospect of battle lay some while off still. My feelings were shared by Eudo and Wace, as well as my own knights, and so in order to keep them busy I sent them all to keep watch whilst I did the rounds of the men, conferring with the other barons and making sure that they all knew what they were supposed to do. We held the advantage not just in numbers but also in position, and so it ought to be a simple victory, but all the same I knew better than to get complacent. When it came to war I was only too aware that things were never quite as easy as one imagined.

  ‘Your plan had better work,’ Berengar said when my path brought me to him to his companions. ‘Otherwise I’ll see that you pay for each one of my men who loses his life fighting in your cause.’

  I shrugged. ‘If it doesn’t work, we’ll all be dead men.’

  He scowled, but evidently could think of nothing else to say, and I moved on. Yet even as I walked away I could feel the weight of his gaze pressing upon my back, and I shivered in spite of myself, sensing that if I were not careful his knife might be in there before too long. Straightaway I castigated myself for the thought. Whatever grievance he harboured, surely it was not so serious that he would wish me dead because of it?

  Still, as I sat sharpening my sword that night I made sure to keep a close watch over him, at the same time promising myself that if he or his men ever came for me, I would be ready. And if any at point it came down to a choice between my life and his, I knew where my decision lay.

  Twelve

  THE ENEMY WERE later leaving Caerswys than I had expected; it had already been light for some while when we first received word that they had been spotted filing out from the fort’s gatehouse. The skies were grey and a steady drizzle had been falling since before daybreak, dampening the men’s spirits with every hour that passed and also, I imagined, frustrating Maredudd’s archers, who needed to keep their bowstrings dry or else the sinews would stretch and be useless. I could only hope that, huddled low amidst the gorse bushes and the heather, they had found some shelter from the damp.

  In any case it was too late now to do anything about that, as through the trees and the bracken I glimpsed the first few Welshmen, albeit still several hundred paces off. Their spearpoints bobbed as they climbed the track that led up the hill towards us, and though they had no way of knowing it, towards their deaths. I’d been right insofar as they were heading north, although already it seemed to me that they numbered more than the one hundred our scouts had told me yesterday. Indeed I would have said they had half that many again, though any exact count was impossible; they did not ride or march in ordered lines but rather in groups of as few as five men or as many as twenty. Not all of them were warriors either, for among them I spied more than a few women: soldiers’ wives and other camp-followers; gatherers of wood, tenders of stew-pots, stitchers of wounds and menders of cloth.

  ‘Remember who’s beside you in the charge,’ I said to my conroi and the rest of the knights around me. ‘Stay close and watch your flanks; don’t break from the line.’

  Of course they knew all of this already, but battle does strange things to one’s mind. Many times I had seen men whom I usually considered clear-headed become blinded by rage, by the bloodlust, by dreams of glory. Forgetting themselves and where they were, they would ride gladly to their deaths, only realising their folly when it was already too late. I had no wish to see any of my men succumb to that fate – friends and sword-brothers whom I had grown to know so well – and so I gave them this reminder, regardless of whether or not they thought they needed it.

  Already the enemy vanguard was approaching the place where Maredudd lay waiting. My grip upon the reins tightened as I waited for him to give the signal to his archers to let their arrows fly. Surely it would not be long now. It didn’t help that the enemy were not all in one column, as I had been hoping, but rather strung out along the track, since that made them harder targets. Nihtfeax pawed restlessly at the ground and I patted his neck to keep him calm. Like men, horses grow anxious before a fight; whether they can feel the apprehension in the air or sense when danger is near, I have never been able to tell, but at the very least they know when they are about to be called upon, and so it was then.

  He wasn’t the only one who was anxious. I was too, partly because this would be the first time I had led so many men in the charge and partly because somewhere lost amidst the darkness of the woods to my rear was Berengar. I would have preferred to have him where I could see him, but I didn’t trust him enough to put him and his comrades in my conroi or even in the first line, and so he lurked in the ranks, no doubt stirring up sentiment against me, for he seemed to me the kind of man who would do that, even in these moments before the charge. My blood rose as I pictured his hard-eyed scowl: about the only expression I had seen him show in the short while I had known him. Still, I couldn’t let my anger get the better of me; all I could do was trust that he and his comrades would do their part, as he had promised. Until victory was assured I couldn’t afford to waste time on petty distractions such as
him, no matter how much he tried my patience.

  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.

  The ground disappeared beneath us as I pushed Nihtfeax into a gallop. Out of the corner of my eye I saw some of the knights at the end of the line falling a little behind and I yelled at them to keep formation. Not that I had time to see whether in fact they’d listened, since then we were upon the enemy. Some of them had awoken to the danger from their rear and were turning, but they were too few and too dispersed to make much of a stand against us. I glimpsed my first foe standing before me, eyes wide as he saw a hundred mailed horsemen and more bearing down upon him. Struck dumb with fear, he knew not whether to fight or whether to flee, and in the end he did neither. I drove my lance into his shoulder, knocking him to the ground where his body was crushed under the weight of so many
hooves.

  Within an instant he was forgotten; already I was moving on, keeping up the momentum of the charge. One man, seeing his death before him, hurled his spear towards me; I ducked low and it sailed past my head. Sscreaming his final words, he ran at us with knife in hand. But if he thought he might take one of us with him, he was wrong, as the point of my lance found his chest, striking ribs and puncturing his heart. Blood spurted forth, spattering my chausses, and as he toppled backwards I left the weapon lodged in his torso as I drew my sword instead.

  ‘No mercy!’ I shouted.

  We were among the enemy now and panic was spreading through them. To my left Wace and his men battered down upon shields, burying their blades in the flesh of their foes, while to my right a tide of men and horses and naked steel rolled across the heath, sweeping all before it, engulfing the enemy and driving them down. Shouts of panic filled the air, as they saw themselves trapped between us on the one hand and, on the other, Maredudd’s archers, who were rallying once more and picking off any who tried to flee. Corpses littered the field of battle, lying in the ditches or else scattered amidst the undergrowth: some with feathered shafts protruding from their backs and sides; others with bright gashes across the backs of their skulls, their tunics torn, their faces marked with crimson streaks.

  ‘On,’ I said. ‘On! On!’

  My shield and sword felt light in my hands; my mail no longer weighed upon my shoulders. Each breath brought a fresh surge of vigour to my limbs, and my blade-edge sang with the song of battle, ringing out with each strike, with each foeman it sent to his death. Around me the world itself seemed to slow: I could sense every swing of their weapons, every movement of their shields even before they happened, and all of a sudden I was laughing with the ease of it all, laughing with the joy of the fight and the delight of the kill. Victory was at hand; I could almost grasp it, and with that knowledge in mind I spurred Nihtfeax onwards, no longer caring about keeping formation. All that concerned me now was finding the next man who would meet his end upon my sword-point. The enemy fell before me, and for the first time in a long while I felt free. The battle-calm was upon me, and I was lost to the will of my blade, bringing it down again and again and again as I clove a path through my foes, swinging and parrying and thrusting, falling into a rhythm so familiar it had become instinctive, sending them to hell.