Dream of Legends (68 page)

A sizeable contingent of Saxans from the general levy had spread deeper into the battlefield, most in the process of gaining their first taste of battle. Against fragments of the enemy infantry, their overwhelming numbers offset their lack of skills and good quality weaponry. But in the face of mounted Avanoran knights, they were little more than plump sheep standing before an oncoming horde of ravenous wolves.

As nervous and timid as many of them were, the levymen needed little encouragement to begin a hasty retreat. Hearing the cries of those such as Wulfstan, and seeing the Saxan ceorls, thanes and other veterans hurrying back, the levymen shouted out to each other, with panicked countenances. Turning, they rushed away in a sprawling cavalcade before Wulfstan.

Wulfstan glanced to his right, and his heart caught in his throat as he saw Avanoran horsemen amongst the Saxans. The muscular stallions and their heavily-armored riders were a deadly, terrible combination. The Avanorans leveled their spears in a technique whereby the far ends of the long shafts were held securely beneath their arm pits, orienting the shining, sharply-honed tips towards Saxan flesh.

Caught out in the open, and in disarray, it did not matter whether one was a household warrior, a thane, a ceorl, or a simple farming peasant from the General Fyrd. The brushfire was now blowing back onto Saxan grass.

Wulfstan cast his lot with a number of mailed household guards and thanes that had gathered around a fallen warrior, whose blood-caked chain mail was rent in more than one place. The older warrior’s helm still lay upon his head, but his eyes stared lifelessly skyward, as if gazing into another world.

“Lay as befits a thane, at his lord’s side! Fight to the last!” roared one of the other thanes defiantly, delivering the words with a booming passion that smote the very air around them.

From all appearances, fighting to the last was exactly what the small band was intending to do, but Wulfstan did not have any other options if he wanted even a remote chance to survive. The forward elements of the oncoming Avanoran cavalry now surrounded them.

Wulfstan had never before witnessed the Avanorans up close, but now saw why they possessed such a legendary reputation. Their discipline was extraordinary, as they maintained tight, small units that appeared to act as if they were of one mind.

The knights among them were easy to spot. Had they not been wearing colorful surcoats, they would have displayed bodies entirely covered in chain mail. Mail hose covered their legs and feet, long-sleeved mail coats encased their upper bodies, with mail mittens protecting the backs of their hands.

Some wore conical helms with nasal guards, but several looked impassive and foreboding in their flat-topped, cylindrical helms. Iron visors affixed to the brows extended downward, covering their faces, and giving them cold, expressionless visages of war. Only horizontal eye slits, and tiny holes piercing the iron visors for ventilation, broke the metallic surfaces.

The barrel-chested destriers, to Wulfstan’s dismay, showed themselves to be well-trained for combat as they drew near the Saxans. Biting and lashing out with their hooves, the tall, robust horses created a menacing combination with the armored riders skillfully wielding weapons from their backs. Wulfstan watched several Saxans die horribly under the explosive hooves of the war horses. The gruesome sight instantly erased any qualms that he might otherwise have had about driving his own sword into the body of one of the majestic beasts.

Behind the enemy knights came a mass of other mounted fighters. The accompanying Avanoran squires and sergeants were not as encompassed in iron links as were the knights they followed into battle. Yet, for the most part, they were equipped as well, or better, than virtually any Saxan that they engaged. Most of these secondary fighters wore helms with iron nasal guards, and a large majority had their upper bodies sheathed in coats of mail.

As a whole, their horses were not as dangerous or powerful as the brawny, ferocious stallions of the knights, being a little smaller in size, and less aggressive.

The initial strikes of the knights were made with lowered, couched lances. Several Saxans caught on open ground were brutally impaled upon the long shafts, as the great power of the warhorses’ momentum coursed into lethal, deeply penetrating blows.

Once the long lances were lodged into their victims, or were abandoned by necessity in close-quarters fighting, most of the knights resorted to secondary weapons. Wulfstan saw that most of these weapons were long, tapering swords, while a few were flanged, bronze-headed maces, of a kind that could deal crushingly powerful blows.

Even though the Avanorans displayed a propensity for aggression, they were not foolhardy. They rapidly showed great wariness for the long, two-handed Saxan axes that indiscriminately slew horse or rider, whichever offered a better target for the axe-wielders.

The caution allowed a few Saxans caught within the killing ground to reach their comrades. A few peasants and ceorls, finding refuge in the presence of the small island of Saxans around Wulfstan, held their long spears outward to ward against sudden charges, allowing thanes and household guards to emerge to strike at the enemy with sword and axe.

Seeing yet another Saxan run down by a mounted knight, who drove a lance right through the unfortunate man’s body, Wulfstan was relieved that even the staunchest of the warhorses were loathe to rush upon a concentration of lowered spears.

In front of Wulfstan, several Avanorans whipped their heads about, as a cluster of Saxan horns sounded from just beyond them. With his back, left, and right amply protected, Wulfstan risked taking a couple of paces forward.

A horseman directly in front of him, likely a sergeant, was holding a lance above his head, as Wulfstan advanced upon the horse’s right side. Wulfstan kept his shield raised, acting as if he were about to strike the horse with a forward thrust of his sword. The Avanoran reacted to the perceived threat, twisting in his saddle to thrust his spear downward at Wulfstan.

Wulfstan side-stepped quickly to the left, sliding by the shoulder of the horse as the spear jabbed nothing but air a few scant inches behind him. He brought his sword racing up in a sweeping, backhanded slash, feeling the crashing impact of the heavy blade into the exposed side of the Avanoran warrior. A mail coat could not stop the bludgeoning impact, and the large, heavy Saxan swords could pulverize as much as they could sever.

Absorbing the entire force of the blow, the shocked Avanoran sergeant collapsed forward in his saddle. Wulfstan whipped his sword around, bringing it up, over, and downward in a thunderous, cleaving blow that found a narrow space between the hapless man’s iron helm and mail coat. The horse was left riderless, as the sergeant’s maimed body slid to the side, toppling heavily to the ground.

The Avanoran knights, sergeants, and squires were now reeling backwards, finding themselves beset from both sides in the sudden shift of battle. Other Saxans had rallied, streaking to the aid of the throng gathered around Wulfstan, arriving in force at a most unexpected moment.

It was one of the most welcome sights that Wulfstan had ever seen. Saxan cavalry charged down from the left, rugged men from the lands of Count Einhard. Medium and light cavalry were both thrown into the desperate fighting, penetrating into the swirling chaos to stem the Avanoran tide, and prevent the Saxan right flank from being destroyed.

While not as heavily equipped as the mail-encased Avanoran knights with their full visors, the Saxan cavalry’s spears and swords could still deliver lethal blows to any opponent. The broad, drawn out spear blades of the Saxan riders, with their short, lateral wings protruding from the bases of the blades, were wielded in a variety of ways. One-handed and two-handed techniques were employed, using both thrusting and slashing methods.

While the Avanoran knights were the equal of virtually any warrior standing upon the battlefield, the squires and sergeants were not quite as prepared for the encompassing Saxan onslaught.

Thanes, household guards, and others around Wulfstan responded quickly to the beckoning openings. They levied several more casualties on the Avanorans, before turning their attention to the cleared channels across the battlefield back towards the Saxan shield wall.

Given a miraculous reprieve on the apparent finality of just a few moments before, the energy born of anger and desperation was replaced by a surging hope. Most of the ceorls, and all the peasants, broke into a vigorous run through the cleared ground, as the rest of the Saxan riders passed by them.

The household guards and thanes moved more slowly and orderly. A couple of their number gently lifted and carried the body of the high-ranking thane that they had been warding, and for whom they were willing to lay down their lives.

In one’s and two’s, other Saxans that had been stranded in the no-man’s land streamed around Wulfstan’s methodical group, sprinting for the harbor of the Saxan shield wall. Other cohesive clusters of thanes and household guards also began to emerge in the wake of the Saxan cavalry. Like the ones near to Wulfstan, they kept close together as they moved, with weapons readied as they backed up towards the Saxan lines.

On the cusp of a route, the Avanorans now found themselves in the midst of a little chaos themselves. Count Einhard’s cavalry hurled javelins, and engaged the Avanorans with spear and sword wherever they could. Hand axes loomed up, as if out of thin air, swung in deadly arcs towards the enemy riders.

Yet after the initial shock of the influx of Saxan cavalry, the Avanoran knights threatened to rally, stem the counterattack, and roll it back. Evincing their steely discipline once again, they began to regroup, bringing the lesser-skilled squires and sergeants back in from the far-flung reaches of the fighting.

Wulfstan witnessed the unsettling skill of the Avanoran knights as they wielded their blades, felling many of Einhard’s warriors. Their tapering swords were every bit as devastating in blurring-fast, piercing thrusts, as they were when slashing.

Glancing blows upon the mail-encased Avanorans did little, as only the heaviest of strikes could unhorse them, or have a chance at mortally wounding them. Their taller, more powerful steeds also lent the enemy riders further advantages.

But just when the knights were almost reassembled, and had begun to stiffen their resistance, they were beset from an entirely new direction. The Bretican force, which had been thwarted from reaching the Andamooran leader, was now furiously cleaving its way back through to the Saxan lines. In a unified body, the Breticans burrowed relentessly into the Avanoran riders.

Horns were immediately sounded amongst the Avanorans, as the heavy cavalrymen of Count Gerard gored them. Denied their chance to finish off the Andamooran force, the Bretican warriors took out their tremendous frustrations in a searing assault that swiftly began to claim the lives of Avanoran knights, in addition to many squires and sergeants.

Nothing had ever looked better to Wulfstan, as the shiny scales on the Bretican horse armor made the formation look like a massive sword as it drove into the ranks of their enemies. The incoming Breticans eliminated any further notions of attack that the Avanoran knights might have entertained, as the enemy riders began to fall back towards the center.

The Avanorans were still quite dangerous in retreat, and both Breticans and riders from Annenheim were slain as the Saxans harried the knights, and kept pressure upon them. When the Avanorans were pushed back farther towards the center, both Count Einhard’s and Count Gerard’s mounted warriors withdrew from pressing the attack, cantering back in broad masses along the face of the Saxan shield wall.

By that juncture, Wulfstan had reached the face of the shield wall. Before he slipped through one of the openings created for the retreating Saxan warriors, he took a moment to watch throngs of Saxan horsemen stream by. The rumble under his feet now felt welcome, as he looked with gratitude and pride upon the brave warriors that had delivered him and the other Saxans from certain entrapment and death.

The course of battle was so unpredictable, and fickle. Just as the Andamoorans had thought they had achieved a prime opening to strike a crushing blow to the Saxans, they had been splintered apart. When the Saxans had been poised to route the Andamoorans, they had themselves been pummeled by the Avanorans from the center. Likewise, the Avanorans had seen a decisive blow snatched out of their own grasp by the warriors of Count Einhard and Count Gerard.

It was a sobering, frightening lesson, regarding the abrupt ebbs and flows of a large-scale battle. Crescendos of exhilarating hope, flavored with the taste of victory, were juxtaposed with terrifying abysses of despair.

The Andamooran spearman swallowed up in the surge of the Saxan ranks was no different than the Saxan ceorl or levyman that found himself stranded amongst charging Avanoran knights. Hopes of surviving the battle could suddenly be revealed to be false, ephemeral illusions.

In a very short time, Wulfstan himself had experienced the tremendous swings of fate, brought face to face with a death that he feared was imminent, as the Avanorans swept around his position. The whims of circumstance had left him free to walk between the Saxan shields, when so many had fallen behind him on the blood-drenched battlefield. He was not so arrogant to think that he had been singled out to be spared by the All-Father, when so many men who were far more devout than Wulfstan had met such brutal, agonizing ends. Such dour thoughts brought a degree of hollowness to Wulfstan’s relief at his survival, as he edged wearily through the Saxan ranks, trudging towards the back of their line.

“Wulfstan!”

The voice was like a piercing light in the growing, dark cavern inside his heart, snatching his attention as he was about to sink deeper into a grimmer state. He reached for that ray of light, as it blocked the darkness beginning to shroud him.

Stained and caked in filth, the face of Cenwald looked simply beautiful to his eyes. His shield was a jagged wreck, and he had evidently lost his spear, as he had only a seaxe in his hand. Cenwald set his shield down, and then lay the single-edged blade upon it, as Wulfstan placed his own shield and sword upon the ground. Without a word, Wulfstan strode up and embraced his friend tightly.