Ear-piercing, wild, the cry of slaughter came up from the valley again and again, and worse sounds came now on the clear air, the howls of men pressed together and powerless, slain in hundreds with arrows and stones, and the unearthly shrieks of horses wounded to death.
"They are in thousands," said Gilbert, listening. "I must have more men."
"I give you my army," said Eleanor. "Command all, and do your best."
For one moment Gilbert looked hard at her, scarcely believing that she meant the words. But she raised herself in her saddle, and called out in a loud voice to the hundreds of nobles and knights who had already come up.
"Sir Gilbert Warde commands the army!" she cried. "Follow the Guide of
Aquitaine!"
There was light in his face as he silently bowed his head and mounted.
"Sirs," he said, when he was in the saddle, "the way by which I shall lead you to rescue the King is narrow; therefore follow me in good order, two and two, all those who have sure-footed horses. But beyond the defile as many as a thousand may fight without hindering each other. The rest encamp here and protect the Queen and her ladies. Forward!"
He saluted Eleanor and rode away, leaving her there. She hesitated and looked longingly after him, but Anne of Auch laid a hand upon her bridle.
"Madam," she said, "your place is here, where there is no one to command. And here also there may be danger before long."
All the time, the dreadful din of fight came up from below, louder and louder. The Seljuks had waited until not less than five thousand men, with the King himself, had passed through the narrow channel from the lower valley and choked the upper gorge, pushed on by those behind; and then, from their hiding-places among the rocks and trees, they had sprung up in their thousands to kill those taken in the trap like mice. First came the thick flight of their arrows, straight and deadly, going down with flashes into the sea of men; and then great stones rolled from the heights, boulders that crushed the life out of horse and man and rolled straight through the mass of human bodies, leaving a track of blood behind; and then more arrows, darting hither and thither in the sunlight like rock-swallows; and again stones and boulders, till the confusion and the panic were at their height, and the wild Seljuks sprang down the sides of the gorge, yelling for death, swinging their scimitars, to kill more surely by hand, lest they should waste arrows on dead men.