The Petchenegs had drawn off, regrouping and preparing another attack. Because of dunes along the shore back where they were, they had not seen the boats.
Suddenly, the walking drum began to beat, and we poured from the forts, surrounded by a wall of pikes. The drum began the beat double-quick, and we started on a trot for the beach, holding our tight formation.
How much distance did we gain? Forty yards? Fifty? They came like the wind.
Low in their saddles, they threw themselves into our pikes, dying while they drove our men in upon themselves. Men went down and were trampled into earth. An acrobat whom I had known went down, his face obliterated a moment later by the hoof of a charging horse; yet he came up and threw his sword like a spear into the back of the rider.
We fought inch by inch. Men fell; we helped them up, and now the months of working together told, for men fought to save each other as only brothers fight. And we reached the shore.
Dense reeds and brush crowded our right flank, and eagerly we used that flank to aid us. A shout went up, and we saw more Petchenegs riding in the water, coming to cut us off.
In the wild abandon of that fight I forgot who I was, where I was; thoughts of escape were laid aside. Grasping a heavy pike from the hands of a fallen man, I hurled it into the breast of a charging horseman. My sword cut a swath around me. A hand grasped my leg as an enemy tried to pull me down, and I kicked him viciously. He fell back, his neck broken.
We fought. A body fell from a horse and knocked me flat. Struggling to rise, I glimpsed the Hansgraf surrounded and cut off, laying about him with a falchion, handling the heavy blade with the ease of a dagger.
An arrow took him in the breast, and he wrenched it free and fought on. Lucca went down. Lolyngton I could not see anywhere.
Blood was running into my eyes, and a horseman charged at me, lance at rest. My blade turned his lance and thrust into his side, but the rush of his horse slammed me back and into the water. A horse fell near me, his hooves threshing in agony.
Struggling to rise, I gulped bloody salt water. Somebody struck at me with an ax, but my swinging sword slashed through his ear and deep into the side of his head. He fell into the water, and I put my foot on his chest to pull my sword free.
The drum was still beating, a heavy throb, pounding in my skull. Something struck me, and I fell back into the water. A horse leaped over me, his hooves missing me by inches.
Plunging riders were all about me, as our men fought deeper into the water. Some were already swimming for the boats. Sarzeau, Flandrin, and others were bunched together; some were archers, some pikemen. One of the Petchenegs snaked out a loop, catching Sarzeau and jerking him from the crowd. Sarzeau’s knife slashed the rope, and then he threw the knife with such force that it drove to the hilt between his attacker’s eyes. The man and his horse plunged by me, his eyes blazing with fury still, the knife sunk to the hilt above his nose.
A wave of riders swung around and past me, a blow on the helm sent me again into the water. Consciousness ebbed, but I fought like an animal to live. A stirrup struck water near me, and I grasped the stirrup and leg and was pulled up. Dragging the man from the saddle, in the grip of a terrible fury, I charged the nearest horseman, knocking him from his saddle with the power of my momentum. I grasped his sword as it flew from the rider’s hand. A rider was coming at me, and I struck his head from his body with one sweep of my sword.
A cold flash of reason swept over me, and turning, using the thicket for a flank, I rushed back into the water.
If I could just get to the boats! Men were swimming wildly for them; others were being hauled in. I thought I saw Suzanne in one of them. I clapped spurs to my horse, and then suddenly he seemed to trip. I went over his head into the water, and it closed over me as I sank. Coming up, I glimpsed a hole in the wall of the thicket, such a hole as is made by wolves or other game. Desperately, I clawed my way into it and lay gasping.
Such a hole as this had saved me long ago in Armorica, saved me from Taillefeur.
Would I ever see him again?
Suddenly, there was a voice speaking, the voice of Abaka Khan. “Another drink you owe me!” And a wineskin struck the opening of the hole and lay there. Reaching out, I drew it to me.
With the last of my fading consciousness, I crawled deeper into the thicket. A strange hot darkness swept over me, a hot darkness that a long time later was cold … cold … so very, very cold.
42
A cold, heavy mist hung over the lowland plain, and there was no sound in my thicket but the lap of the sea against my shelving coast. Over a tiny fire I huddled and shivered, a sick, hurt, almost helpless thing: my clothing in rags, my face overgrown with beard, my hair untrimmed.
Shivering, I stretched my thin hands toward the tiny blaze, for it was cold … cold.
My skull throbbed with an endless ache; my skin was blue where it showed through the rags. I had been ill for a long time, and my wounds had been frightful, far worse than I dreamed during the heat of battle.
How long ago had that been? Wrinkling my brow against the dull ache, I tried to estimate the time. A month? Two months?
Through long, bitter, pain-wracked nights I had fought for life, struggling to hold the thin line against my wounds, against the cold, against hunger, thirst, and depression.
There had been a gash on my skull, cut to the bone after I lost my helmet, a blow that left me with a severe concussion that undoubtedly contributed to my recurring headaches. There had been two arrow wounds in my side from which I lost much blood and from which poison had gotten into my system. There had been a bad gash on my thigh, and a foot had been stepped on by a horse and almost crushed.
Somehow, between moments of delirium, I contrived to squeeze the moisture from some sphagnum moss and pack it into my wounds. It was a good dressing, and one of the earliest I had learned. My father had told me of it when describing the use of it at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.
This saved my life, for it stopped the flow of blood. That and the wineskin dropped by Abaka Khan, who in the fury of battle had seen me crawl into my hole to escape death.
The wine quenched my thirst and enabled me to survive during those first bitter days when I dared not move for fear of being discovered and killed. All around the Petchenegs were looting what remained of our camp, taking the furs we had traded for, taking armor from the dead, and what valuables they possessed. Those found still living were slain.
When at last they rode away, the field was left to wild boars and vultures as well as a multitude of small creatures and insects. For days, scarcely daring to move, wracked with pain and shaking with fever, I could hear the boars rooting and tearing at the bodies that lay on the field, and the shrill cries of the vultures clashing over the flesh of my old companions.
My sword was gone. Only my Damascus dagger remained, and my old belt brought from home, which I never relinquished. Once a wolf prowled into the tunnel where I crouched, and I grasped my knife and awaited him, answering his growls with my own. Finally he backed off, still growling.
All this occurred during intervals of delirium, and when at last I became fully conscious, I could not walk, could scarcely move. My foot was horribly swollen, and I had no way to tell if bones had been crushed or broken.
My throat rasped with dryness, now that the last of the wine was gone, and my bones ached from lying on the cold, damp ground. It was then I managed my first fire, hitching myself to an elbow, reaching out with my one useful arm to break twigs and draw nearer the dead brush scattered about.
Flint I always carried, and my knife provided steel. I made a spark that fell into dry leaves and grass, carefully pulled together, then added small sticks. Breaking the sticks enlarged my sleeping quarters, and in scraping together grass for a better bed, I uncovered some small nuts, filberts, that grew on some of the brush. The small effort required to gather and crack the nuts exhausted me. Slowly, I ate the few I had found, then scratched for more.