Philip Augustus; or, The Brothers in Arms

by G. P. R. James

"Fly, Isadore! fly!" repeated De Coucy, at the same moment drawing his sword, and spurring his charger furiously against the first of his opponents. "Fly up to the right! The castle on the hill!--the castle on the hill!"

Isadore required no second injunction, but parted like an arrow from the scene of the battle, while De Coucy made almost more than mortal efforts to drive back the enemy.

Though he thus gave her time to escape, his valour and skill were of course in vain, opposed to numbers not inferior to himself in personal courage, and clothed in arms equal to those by which he was defended. All he could do was to give his scattered followers time again to collect about him; and then, satisfied with having delivered Isadore, to keep up a defensive fight along the road.

Even this, however, was difficult to conduct successfully in the face of a body of men so much superior to his own in numbers eager to avenge themselves upon him, and hurried on by the knowledge, that, being upon adverse ground, they must win their revenge quickly, or not at all. The four knights pressed on him on all sides, striving to bear him down to the earth; his armour was hacked and splintered in many parts; his shield was nearly cleft in two with the blow of a battle-axe; several of the bars of his visor were dashed to pieces, so as to leave his face nearly uncovered; but still he retreated slowly, with his face to his enemies, shouting from time to time his battle-cry, to cheer the spirits of his men, and striking terrible sweeping blows with his long sword, whenever his opponents made a general rush upon him.

One of these united attacks, however, had nearly proved fatal to the gallant young knight; for, in suddenly backing his horse to avoid it, the animal's feet struck against a felled tree, and he went down at once upon his haunches. "A Coucy! a Coucy!" cried the knight, striving to spur him up; but all four of his antagonists pressed upon him at once, beating him down with repeated blows, when suddenly two new combatants were added to the fight, Philip Augustus and the Count d'Auvergne.

Both, though we have seen them in a preceding chapter opposed hand to hand, suddenly ceased their mutual conflict, and rushed forward to strike upon the side of De Coucy. The Count d'Auvergne, warned by his friend's well-known battle-cry, rushed, bare-headed as he was, into the midst of the struggle, and, striking with all the energy of insanity, dashed at once the foremost of the young knight's opponents to the earth. The king, recognising instantly, by the Norman fashion of their harness, the followers of his enemy King John, sprang on his horse; and, with the same chivalrous spirit that induced him in former days to attack King Richard's whole army near Courcelles with scarce two hundred knights in his own train, he cast himself in the foremost of the battle, and plied his weapon with a hand that seldom struck in vain.

The struggle, by its greater equality, now became more desperate; but it was soon rendered no longer doubtful, by the sight of a body of horse coming down at full speed on the road from the castle. The Normans, who had followed Guillaume de la Roche Guyon, now hastened to effect their retreat, well knowing that whatever fresh troops arrived on the spot must necessarily swell the party of their adversaries. They made an effort, however, in the first place, to deliver their companion who had been struck down by the Count d'Auvergne; but finding it impossible, they turned their horses, and retreated along the line of road over which they had advanced, only pausing for an instant at the spot where the contest had first begun to aid William de la Roche himself, who had, as we have shown, been cast from his horse by a blow of De Coucy's battle-axe; and now sat by the road-side, somewhat stunned and dizzied by his fall, and completely plundered of his fine armour.

"Haw! haw!" shouted some one from the top of one of the leafless trees hard by, as they remounted the discomfited cavalier. "Haw! haw! haw!" and in a moment. Gallon the fool cast down one of the gay gauntlets on the head of its former owner, laughing till the whole cliffs rang, to see it strike him on the forehead, and deluge his fair effeminate face with blood. The Normans had not time to seek vengeance; for De Coucy's party, reinforced by the troop from the castle, hung upon their rear, and gave them neither pause nor respite till the early night, following a day in February, closed in upon the world; and, fatigued with so long a strife, the pursuers drew the rein, and left them to escape as they might.

So fierce and eager had been the pursuit, that scarce a word had passed between De Coucy's party and their new companions, till, by common accord, they checked their horses' speed.

It was then that the two brothers in arms turned towards each other, each suddenly grasping his friend's hand with all the warmth of old affection. "D'Auvergne!" cried De Coucy, gazing on his friend's face, down which the blood was streaming from a wound in his temple, giving to his worn and ashy countenance, in the twilight of the evening, an appearance of scarcely human paleness.