The rest, seeing the danger from their rear, were beginning to turn, but we were amongst them now and they were in disarray. The battle calm was upon me and time itself seemed to slow, each heartbeart a fresh surge of vigour through my veins as we tore into their lines.
‘Kill them!’ I roared, and my cry was taken up by some of the Normans on foot.
‘Kill them!’ they shouted, the few of them that they were, and they pushed their shield-wall forward, driving into the dwindling English ranks.
When a line breaks it is almost never a gradual thing but rather happens all at once, and it was no different then. Pressed from both front and rear, the enemy crumbled, and suddenly on all sides there were men fleeing. One stumbled back into the path of my sword, and he was dead before he hit the ground. Another tried to raise his spear to defend himself, but he was too slow and my blade tore into his throat. Yet another tripped as he ran, falling face down into the mud, and he was struggling to get to his feet when Ivo rode him down, his mount’s hooves trampling across the man’s back, crushing his skull.
The Northumbrians were running now. Gérard and Fulcher were pursuing them, but we were few and I did not want us to get separated from one another, in case there were more of them on their way.
‘To me!’ I called, sheathing my sword and going to recover my lance, which still protruded from the back of the first man I had killed. It took some effort to pull it out: I had driven it deep through his torso, but I twisted the head about and eventually it came free. The head and top part of the shaft were streaked with his blood, and where before the pennon had been white, it was now pink.
Gérard and Fulcher rode back to rejoin us, and we were five once more. Four of the dozen spearmen lay dead in the street, but there was no time then to feel sorry for them. I rode up to those who remained. Some leant on the top edges of their shields while they recovered their breath; others staggered about amongst the corpses, retching by the side of the street, and I supposed those ones were drunk. If they were, it was something of a miracle that they were still alive.
‘Where’s Earl Robert?’ I asked those who looked the most sober, but they looked blankly at each other.
‘We don’t know, lord,’ said one. His eyes were bleary and he smelt of cattle dung.
I was about to correct him, for I was not a lord, but evidently he had seen the flag attached to my lance and it was easier to let him assume that I was. I let it pass.
‘Go back up the hill,’ I told them. ‘Back to the fastness.’ I did not know where the earl would be rallying his men, but eight warriors on foot were unlikely to accomplish much here on their own.
A flash of silver caught my eye further along the street and I saw a conroi of knights – at least a dozen, perhaps as many as twenty – charging down the road from the stronghold, towards the town square. I couldn’t see any banner, but a few were carrying torches and the flame streaked behind them as they galloped past.
‘Go,’ I said again to the spearmen, then I waved to Eudo and the others to follow me, and we rode on.
The road was strewn with corpses both Norman and English, but far more of them were Norman; this I could tell because their hair, rather than running long and loose, was cut short at the back in the French fashion. There were corpses with spears through their chests, corpses missing arms and some missing heads. One lay sprawled forward, his face deep in the mud, a great gash across the back of his neck.
The road branched to the left, down the hill towards the north, and we turned to follow the conroi I had seen, which was some way ahead of us, already passing the tower of the church, disappearing around the bend that led down to the square. One of the lords had joined them from somewhere, for I saw a banner flying over their heads, though I did not recognise the colours: two thin green stripes on a red background.
‘With me,’ I said. I noticed Ivo was beginning to lag behind, and thought he shouldn’t be tiring so quickly, but then I saw that he was clutching one hand to his side, close to his waist, and I realised that he had been struck.
‘Onwards,’ I told the other three as I slowed Rollo and trotted back towards Ivo.
His teeth were clenched tight and he had a pained expression on his face. ‘I’m not hurt,’ he gasped. ‘Go with them.’
‘Let me see,’ I said as I prised away his fingers. His mail was wet with crimson; beneath it, his tunic was similarly stained, and there was a round, open wound where a spear had pierced his skin. It looked deep, and I only hoped that it had not penetrated his gut.
‘Get back to the fastness,’ I told him. ‘Find someone who can help you.’
‘It’s nothing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I can still fight.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ I said, more harshly than I had meant, perhaps, but it was plain that he was going to be of little use in the fighting that was sure to come.