Cedric, the Forester

by Bernard Gay Marshall

They made shift to meet our attack as best they might, facing us with stubborn courage indeed, but with little skill of the military art, and with a battle front that seemed more like a moiling and howling mob of rioters than an army under its lawful captains. If any noise e’er heard could have effected it, we might have been checked indeed, for, as we galloped down upon them, they set up a chorus of shrieks and yells that seemed like to split one’s ears. Swords and maces seemed their principal weapons, with here and there a lance or a battle-ax, and mingled helter-skelter with their heavier arms, the bows and shafts of their archers. Their bows had not the length nor the power of those of our English foresters; and the cloud of arrows they sent toward our mail-clad line had no more effect than as if a flock of sparrows had sought to check and thwart us.

Into that howling mob we rushed with leveled lances. Our horses were stayed by the very mass of the bodies of our enemies; and in a moment we were assailed, as it seemed, from all sides, by the survivors, some of them dreadfully wounded, but wielding swords and battle-clubs and javelins with a demon-like fury.

Their skill with these weapons was not to be despised; and, if they had no coats of mail to shield them, neither were their movements impeded by weight of armor. Hundreds of our men-at-arms and scores of knights fell in that struggle on the river brink. Victory was no such easy goal as I had thought.

Meanwhile the half of the Welsh army which was on the other side of the river, commanded by Rhys himself, essayed to re-cross and come to the aid of their comrades. They might well have succeeded, and mayhap found some means of outflanking us, had it not been for the watchfulness of Cedric of Mountjoy. He and our whole array of archers had been close behind us, striving to do their share by way of shooting between our bodies at the mass of Welshmen. But soon the tangle was such that their bolts seemed as like to slay friend as foe, and they had gradually desisted. Then Cedric caught sight of the Welsh entering the water on the farther side, and drawing the Mountjoy archers to the left of the main battle, began sending a stream of quarrels in their direction. The Lord Constable, having just then a moment’s respite, saw what was toward, and sent word to the other leaders of our bowmen to follow the tactics of the Mountjoy men. In a moment the air above the stream was filled with a cloud of bolts and shafts, and the waters became clogged with dead and dying men and horses. Such a rain of death and wounds was not to be endured by unprotected men. Soon the Welsh warriors were turning their horses’ heads again toward the bank; and those that regained it, with their fellows who had not yet reëntered the ford, fell back to a safer distance.

Now the battle on the river bank went swiftly to its close. The struggling and yelling Welsh grew ever fewer, and our knights gained room for yet more deadly work with sword and lance. Soon the half of the Welsh forces that had occupied the hither bank had been destroyed or scattered, and our army was crossing the river in pursuit of Rhys and his remaining warriors who were riding for life toward the mountains in the West.

True to his sworn purpose, the Constable lost not a moment in the chase. The Welsh horses were fresher than ours that had already traveled far that day, and they were more lightly burdened, else we might have ridden them down and finished the work so well begun at Egbert’s Ford. As it was, our enemies, by abandoning their spoils and lashing their ponies forward without mercy, managed to keep well beyond bowshot for the half a dozen leagues that lay between the Ford and the entrance of a narrow valley that led up into the mountains where they had so often before found safe retreat. Into this defile we rode at three o’ the clock, cutting down or making prisoners of a dozen stragglers whose horses had failed them at the beginning of the upward road.

Without pause we spurred on up the stony pathway for a mile and more; then found the valley narrowing to a pass between high walls of rock. Through this the army of the Welsh had gone, leaving a guard of a hundred or more to stay our progress.

Our leader well knew the tactics fit for such a juncture. He halted his main force, and sent forward the archers,—the long-bow men under Simon of Montmorency, and those with cross-bows under Cedric of Mountjoy. Soon the defenders of the pass were whelmed with a cloud of arrows and quarrels. They sheltered themselves as best they might ’mongst rocks and trees; but the arrows came like rain, searching every cranny of the pass. In scarce half an hour the last of the Welsh rear-guard was slain or had fled, and the way was open before us.

The Constable left two hundred men-at-arms and archers, under an old and trusted knight, to guard the pass behind us; and we rode forward into the wide valley. The day was now far spent, and the sun had passed from sight behind the mountains that rose ever higher toward the West. The scattered oaks and firs and the great rocks that strewed the valley on either hand might well have sheltered an ambush; and we rode forward more slowly, with lines of skirmishers well to the fore and to the right and left.

And now it seemed that Fortune who with the sun had smiled upon us all day long, withdrew her favor also, for we had traversed scarce a league of the rocky track along which Rhys and his army had fled when thick clouds obscured the narrow sky above us; thunder roared and rumbled in the mountain passes, and torrents of rain began to fall. The darkness swiftly enclosed us, and we had perforce to halt lest we should lose our way amongst the woods and rocks. There, drenched and chilled and worn with a day of riding and battle, we made bivouac and ate of the food in our pouches. Mindful of the skill and daring of the Welsh in night attacks, the Lord Constable posted double lines of sentinels; and we seized such sleep as we might, wrapped in our dripping cloaks and lying upon the grass and leaves.