Jack looked down with kindling eyes and flushed cheeks, and almost immediately a strange sort of roar began to run through the ranks. The cause of this excitement appeared to be the banner which had just been unfurled in the royalist ranks.
"The red dragon! the red dragon!"
Leofric and Jack looked wonderingly at each other.
"What mean they by that? What is the red dragon?" they asked. And Amalric, looking over his shoulder with a stern, set face, made reply,—
"When the ensign of the red dragon is unfurled in the ranks of the King, it is the sign that no quarter is to be given. We are to be slaughtered like sheep in the shambles if it pleases Heaven to give our foes the victory."
At the sound of those words a strange murmur ran through the ranks. Men gripped their sword-hilts hard, and set their teeth with a sense of iron resolution, and an indignation which would go far to win the day.
The field was in motion. The quick eyes of those posted upon the hillsides saw that the royalists had begun to move. Prince Edward on the right, was bearing vehemently upon their left wing, which consisted of the London levies. The Prince had been bitterly angry with the men of London ever since they had stoned and insulted his mothers barge, as she tried to escape by water from the Tower, but was driven ignominiously back by the citizens, who hated her for her many extortionate charges upon the city. Now he was rushing furiously against his foes, who wavered before the charge of trained horsemen. But no more of that could Leofric and Jack see, for at this moment their own ranks were called upon to move forward, and, behold, the battle had begun!
The King's brother, Richard of Cornwall, King of the Romans, was leading his forces against them. In another moment the rival armies had met with a crash of arms. There was a stifling sense of pressure, and then a recoil; whilst over the heads of their own men came hurtling showers of stones cast from above at their assailants, and soon the closely-serried ranks both of friends and foes were a little broken and scattered, whilst man met man and horse charged horse in the indescribable mêlée of a hand-to-hand battle.
Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, rode Amalric, Leofric, and Jack. They felt rather than saw the recoil of their foes, who at first had been pressing upon them with such fiery vehemence. Charging down the hill, they met the answering charge of mail-clad warriors; but the slope of the field was in their favour, and they hewed them down and routed them, despite the fiery resistance they met.
They were down upon the level now, and before them stood the serried ranks of the centre of their foes' army behind which floated the red dragon, marking the spot where the King himself was posted.