The staccato crash as the two sets of horsemen collided was stupendous and frightened the sheep and cattle into a hurried flight. Raymond’s line of horsemen strafed across the front of the static Abergavenny men, prodding and provoking, stabbing, always moving as they defended their flanks from counters with their leaf-shaped shields. Spinning their horses, they retreated out of range before returning to send more warriors tumbling to the cold ground with gaping wounds.
‘St Maurice!’ Raymond bellowed his family’s war cry as he barrelled through the centre of the enemy riders at full pace. Immediately he was lost in the tight throng as four Abergavenny horsemen surrounded him, and it looked like there was no way he could possibly escape unscathed from the circling mass of men, colourful shields and sweaty, grunting horses. But the men in Abergavenny blue and red began tumbling from their saddles to leave Raymond alone on horseback, looking for more targets. A smile was plastered across his face.
It was at this moment that Sir William de Braose collided with Raymond, throwing the Striguil captain from the saddle and onto the ground. His ringing lance had struck Raymond’s shield plum on the boss, but it was the bone-crunching impact with the ground which ripped away Raymond’s leather chin strap and sent his helmet skittering away.
‘Raymond, you bastard,’ the Lord of Abergavenny shouted as he circled his horse around and tapped his spurs to the flanks of his destrier. Raymond pulled himself to his feet, eighty pounds of chainmail and weaponry jangling loudly as his enemy thundered towards him. He was winded but unhurt and threw himself across the face of the horse at the last second to avoid the lance tip as it slashed past him. Sir William thundered away, sending clods of earth in the air as Raymond tumbled onto his shoulders and to his feet in one supple movement. He let his enemy go and sprinted towards Walter de Bloet, who was sheltering below his shield as another of the Abergavenny warriors pounded at him manically with stroke after stroke of his sword. The man cried out joyfully as every blow fell upon Walter’s shield while his horse snapped and butted at his legs. Raymond let his shield swing onto his back by the guige, and dropped his mace so that it dangled from his arm as he ran. He pushed into the circling fracas of horses and grabbed the Abergavenny horseman by the ankle, using his strength to hoist him out of his saddle and onto the ground before he even knew that Raymond was there. He brought his mace down once to finish the enemy warrior.
Raymond had barely time to turn as Walter shouted a warning: ‘Beware right!’
Another unseated man ran at him, screaming incoherently with his sword held over his head and blood streaming from beneath his wide-brimmed helmet. Raymond calmly swung his shield from his back and onto his left, sliding his arm into the tight enarmes on its rear. Crouched behind the leaf-shaped defence Raymond was protected from his eyes to his ankle. He took the first ringing blow on the steel boss in the middle of the shield. It was like striking a ton of wet sand and Raymond grunted as he shoved the Abergavenny warrior backwards a few steps with his shoulder before bringing the heavy shield up to horizontal and jabbing the man in the face with the pointed end. The man yelped at the unanticipated move and slashed wildly in his foe’s direction. Raymond was ready and he danced out of its way, smashing the iron and steel mace straight into the man’s face as his opponent’s momentum took him forwards. The swordsman was unconscious before he slammed into the ground.
Amid the blood and carnage of the battle, Raymond began to laugh. He held his mace above his head in salute to the glory of the fight. His bare forearm already shone red and all around him men gaped at him as he whooped like a wolf at the sky.
Two more Abergavenny men came at Raymond. Pushing the mace into his belt, he drew his sword and attacked, his strokes a blur of grey steel that drove back both men. It looked odd that Raymond, short and stout, could perform such flawless swordsmanship against the two taller men who faced him, but his frame disguised his formidable fighting skills. He was twenty-four years old, a warrior and a captain. Those who did not know the portly Norman thought him too young to be captain of Strongbow’s household warriors, too inexperienced to command. They saw him laughing and drinking with his milites and believed him to be a fool, too familiar with the men he was meant to be commanding. They dismissed him as insignificant and called him Raymond le Gros. But beneath the friendly exterior was a hard and skilful warrior of great renown on the March of Wales.
The two men struggled to hold off his attack as they backtracked. Their chainmail hauberks stopped Raymond’s blows from puncturing the skin but could not prevent the power and weight of his sword causing severe bruising. Sir William’s men fell back before Raymond’s offensive.
‘Come back,’ he shouted as the two men finally fled his onslaught. ‘You can’t run away from Raymond the Fat.’ He tilted his head back and laughed long and hard. ‘Alright, maybe you can,’ he shouted at the duo’s backs as they sprinted away with the remainder of William de Braose’s warriors. He watched as they made their way to regroup with the other horsemen at the mouth to the valley.
His courser was watching the fight from nearby, his ears twitching nervously. Raymond walked over and soothed Dreigiau’s nose. Horses whose riders had been unseated wandered listlessly around Dreigiau, as if awaiting his guidance.
‘Good boy,’ Raymond told his courser. The conrois’ only casualty was Harald of Wallingford. He was pale, suffering from a vicious cut to his groin which was spouting blood that would not stop. Raymond knew that his miles would probably not survive, but he bound the wound tightly and then lifted Harald onto the back of a nearby horse on his stomach, stuffing his good leg into a stirrup.
Raymond then jumped up onto Dreigiau’s back and looked across the grassy expanse at Sir William’s men. He counted eighteen on horseback, almost double the number at his disposal, and they still blocked his path home through the valley to Striguil.
‘What are we going to do?’ Bertram d’Alton asked as he pulled up alongside his commander. ‘Find a way back to Usk through the mountains?’
Raymond considered the question and studied the landscape for any advantage that he could use against Sir William de Braose. ‘We ride hard and fast...’ he began, but his warriors never heard the end of their captain’s order. A new, distinctive sound interrupted his words and every head turned towards the valley mouth to the south.
Suddenly everything had changed.
The noise was like the wings of a hundred birds hurrying to the air. It was the twang of bowstrings, Welsh bowstrings, and it was Sir William de Braose’s men who were the target of the arrow shafts. By the time that Sir William’s men had even realised that they were under attack, the Welshmen each had two more arrows in the air and a fourth being nocked onto their bowstrings. Thirty of the best marksmen the March of Wales could offer had approached the Normans through the forest to the west and their arrows were tearing apart the Abergavenny horsemen.
And worse, Sir William hesitated.
The Lord of Abergavenny had learned to fight in England and France against well-ordered cavalry and infantry. Archers were an entirely different proposition to anything he had ever encountered before. Unsure of whether to advance or retreat further into the trees, he dithered as around him his men fell to the deadly arrow storm.
‘The Welsh will deal with them,’ the esquire, William de Vale, told Raymond with a happy glint in his eyes. ‘And then we can escape!’ Some others joined the mirth at their enemy’s misfortune until Borard told them to shut up. He saw the look on his commander’s face and it was not delight which he perceived. Raymond watched the attack on the men of Abergavenny in grave silence.
‘New plan,’ Raymond stated so that all his warriors could hear him. ‘First, we get to those houses.’ He indicated towards the thatched, squat rooftops of the Welsh homestead from which William de Braose had appeared before their fight. ‘Dismount, stay low and go fast,’ he commanded. A jangle of chainmail and weaponry accompanied the motion as the men leapt down from horseback. They crouched,
shields swung onto shoulders, and turned their spears upside down so that the sun did not reflect off their bright blades and give away their position to the sharp-eyed Welsh archers. Raymond led them at a jog slightly north and westwards before looping south towards the Welsh wattle-and-mud buildings.
‘Shut up,’ he whispered loudly at William de Vale who had begun talking again. ‘And don’t you lose those spurs,’ he warned the youngster. William, an esquire on the verge of ending his apprenticeship, had been given a set of cheap spurs and told not to misplace them or face a forfeit. Of course the other horsemen had spent the rest of the journey from Usk trying to steal them from him, dreaming up ever worsening punishments when he found that they had taken.
It was only a few hundred paces to the houses and Raymond went quickly. There was no time to scout ahead, not if he was going to stop the Welsh from wiping out all of Sir William de Braose’s raiders. Instead Raymond gripped his lance tightly and kept an eye firmly on the buildings as he approached. In the long grass he stumbled over the first body. It was a young Welsh boy.
‘God’s teeth,’ William de Vale exclaimed. There was a gaping wound across the boy’s face. Hoof marks dotted the ground around his prone body. One of the Abergavenny horsemen had cut him down as he ran for his life.
‘Keep moving,’ Borard hissed. He grabbed William by the shoulder as he stopped to stare at the body, and shoved him in the direction of the low, thatched houses which loomed a short distance ahead.
As they approached the first building, Raymond indicated that his warriors should stop and allow him to go forward alone. He handed his reins to Borard and hefted a crossbow in both hands, darting between two of the houses. The walls were made of twisted branches and cut turf which had been recently repaired with mud, smeared thick. Weeds grew tall in the crammed space. Flies careered around his head. The upland farmstead had probably been used for generations by the same family, visited only in the summer months to allow their winter pastures in the lowlands to recover.
It would never be used again, he quickly understood.
Still hidden between the buildings, Raymond stared into the small communal area in the middle of the group of buildings. His shallow breath stopped dead as he gazed between the upturned wicker baskets and forgotten cooking fires. He had feared ambush in the village, but he knew now that there would be none for the trap had already closed. It had claimed the lives of the Welsh family.
Raymond could see at least twelve bodies. The men had obviously attempted to put up a fight, but farmers could not hope to win against armoured warriors. Three women lay in disturbing, contorted positions. It was obvious what had happened. The men of Abergavenny had ridden north, away from Strongbow’s sacked manors, when they had discovered that they were being tracked. Half the force had hidden downwind to the east while the larger group had taken up position amongst the houses. They had laid a snare for Raymond. To aid the deception, and to make sure that those who pursued them were not alerted to the trap, Sir William had silenced every voice in the village.
Raymond stepped out from beneath the shadow of the building, his crossbow still raised. There was not a sound within the farmstead, but he could still hear the shouts of the battle going on between Seisyll’s Welshmen and Sir William de Braose’s horsemen. For a moment he considered abandoning his plan to assist the lordly creature who had ordered the massacre.
‘I should let Seisyll exact justice,’ he muttered, his jaw set in anger as he looked down on the body of another child.
Movement to his right caused him to swing around, his considerations swept away by a surge of fear. A woman was tied by her arms to a spear staked deep in ground and had been muffled by a red and blue pennant. She kicked in a last, desperate effort to free her hands, her eyes frantic and locked on Raymond’s crossbow.
‘It’s alright,’ he told the girl in stuttering Welsh. ‘I will not hurt you.’ She was not the only person who still lived. Tied to the same stake, beaten bloody and purple with bruises, was a young man. The only reason that Raymond knew he was living was because he too was bound. The boy did not even need to be gagged, such were the extent of his injuries. The captain wondered who the girl was and why she and the unconscious boy alone had been spared death.
‘The Devil take them,’ said a shocked Borard as he came to Raymond’s side and caught sight of the bodies. He produced a dagger from his belt and moved to cut the girl’s bonds.
‘Leave her,’ Raymond told him, ‘for now. This way.’ The captain waved for Borard to follow him back outside the village where his dismounted milites awaited his orders. He took a deep breath before turning towards the bearded Borard. ‘This is what we are going to do. Get each of our men to go into the village and find a body – tell them to do it quietly! They must bring one back and then get them up on a separate courser. They must be sitting straight up, not strung across on their bellies.’ He raised his arm to vertical in front of him to emphasise his point.
‘How will they stay upright?’ Borard looked confused at Raymond’s odd commands, but knew better than to question them; his captain had a plan and he was willing to trust that it was one that would bring the Striguil men victory.
‘Slide a lance down through the neck of their shirts and then through their trouser leg,’ he suggested. ‘Then tie their feet under the coursers’ bellies and their hands to the pommels. Bind the end of each lance to one of the stirrups so that it cannot fall out.’ Borard nodded in answer and dashed off to complete his task.
Raymond watched his warriors’ reaction as Borard delivered his orders. Most swapped confused glances with their fellows, shifting their weight from foot to foot as they attempted to comprehend. After a few seconds, the first few broke away and cantered towards the Welsh houses to carry out his instructions. The older men followed more soberly, still questioning Borard about Raymond’s plan as they disappeared between the buildings. Raymond did not follow. Instead he grabbed the bridle of the horse carrying Harald of Wallingford. The injured warrior whimpered and bit down on his lip to mask his pain. Blood dribbled freely from his right foot to the ground.
‘Harald, I need one last favour of you today,’ Raymond said as the first of men, Nicholas de Lyvet, returned dragging a dead Welshman towards the horses. Within seconds more of his men had passed by and begun their work.
‘I am leaving you with our coursers,’ Raymond told Harald. The injured man looked pained and pale but he nodded his head aggressively, his eyes screwed shut to mask the hurt. ‘I want you to walk them northwards. The rest of the horses will be nervous, but they will flock behind you,’ Raymond continued. ‘Lead them north,’ he repeated, ‘and make sure the Welsh see you. Make them think we are retreating.’ Raymond squeezed his friend’s shoulder. ‘Go north for five minutes and then circle back. Five minutes then wait for us to get back to the farmstead.’
‘I can do that,’ Harald replied.
Raymond smiled and squeezed Harald’s forearm. He turned to find that his milites had accomplished his orders far more easily than he had imagined. Each of their nine horses had a body tied to their saddles. From close up they looked like the company of corpse-warriors from the nightmares of children, but Raymond knew that from this distance and in the fading light, the Welsh would only see tired Norman warriors, spear pennants fluttering above them, as they retreated in the face of an overwhelming show of force.
With a final glance towards the heavens, he slapped Harald’s courser on the flank and watched as the Englishman rode away from the farmstead. Nine ill-at-ease coursers with dead Welsh villagers strapped securely to their saddles followed him.
‘Christ on his cross, Raymond,’ hissed Walter de Bloet as he watched the coursers follow, ‘you are sending them away with bloody Harald? He’s half dead! How will we get away from the Welsh if they scatter?’
Raymond felt the all too familiar frustration rising in his throat. Not a day had gone by since his advancement to command of Strongbow’s conrois ahead of Walter tha
t he had not been the recipient of one of his snide comments. He had questioned every order. Every slip-up was reported.
‘The captain knows what he is doing,’ Borard answered sternly before raising a hopeful eyebrow at Raymond.
‘I promise you that we will make it home,’ Raymond whispered to his men who collected around him. ‘I swear it to St Maurice,’ he stated confidently. ‘Shields, crossbows and sidearms,’ he stated, giving his own crossbow a small shake. Each man nodded back to indicate that they were armed and ready. ‘Follow me then,’ Raymond said and gestured for his men to follow him back into the farmstead. ‘Stay quiet,’ he added. Despite the order his men were loud as they jogged through the buildings to the far end of the village. Chainmail rattled and weapons clattered off benches and walls. Wooden shields rang as they bumped together and one man cursed loudly as he caught his armoured knee on a cooking pot hung beside an open fire.
‘Quiet, damn you,’ Borard angered under his breath and forced the man onwards past the two people, still gagged and tied to the post.
Raymond reached the edge of the village first. There, he watched the fight going on between the Abergavenny men and the Welsh. It was, to Raymond’s eye, less a battle than it was a bloodbath. Without crossbows or archers, Sir William de Braose’s horsemen could not fight back. The English lord had finally moved his men back under the shelter of the forest, but Raymond knew that the horsemen would still be taking damage from the arrows as they punched through the treetops and rebounded off trunks. Had it been he in Sir William’s position he would’ve fled from the field as fast as he could, for the Welsh could not hope to keep up with the Normans on horseback. However, he suspected that the Lord of Abergavenny would think it dishonourable to follow that course of action.
Lord of the Sea Castle Page 3