He sat up upon the skins, poured himself a cup of wine, and drank.
His father, looking still at the bridge-tower, rose with suddenness to his feet. “The lord of Chalus and his men are going in! There must be yonder half Stephen the Marshal’s force! The plain stirs. Ha! best arm—”
Jaufre rose now also. There was a gleam in his eye. “Breath of God!” he said. “I feel to-day like battle!”
His squires armed him. While they worked the trumpets blew, rousing every segment of the camp. Trumpets answered from beyond the bridge. In the town the alarum bell began its deep ringing. The day turned sound and motion. Count Savaric left his tent, mounted a charger that was brought, and spurred to the head of a press of knights. The colours of the plain shifted to the eye; dust hung above the head of the bridge and all the earth thereabouts; out of it came a heavy sound with shouting. The area affected increased; it was evident that there might ensue a considerable, perhaps a general, battle. It was as though a small stir in the air had unexpectedly spread to whirlwind dimensions. And all the time the sky hung moveless, with an iron tint.
They armed Jaufre in chain-mail, put over this a green surcoat worked with black, attached his spurs, laced his helmet, gave him knightly belt and two-edged sword, held the stirrup while he mounted the war horse, gave him shield and spear. He looked a red-gold giant, and he was a bold fighter, and many a man followed him willingly. He shook his spear at the castle, and at the banner waving above the huge donjon. “Ha, Audiart the Wise! Watch now your lord do battle!”
Around the bridge-head, where Stephen the Marshal had his host, the battle sprang into being with an unexpectedness. There had been meant but a heavier than ordinary support to the endangered barriers, a stronger outward push against Aimeric the Bastard and Gaultier Cap-du-Loup. But the tension of the atmosphere, the menace and urge, the storm-light affected alike Roche-de-Frêne and Montmaure. Each side threw forward more men and more. From the bridge-head the shock and clamour ate into the plain. The mêlée deepened and spread. Suddenly, with a trampling and shouting, a lifting of dust to the skies, the whole garment was rent. There arrived, though none had looked for it on this day, general battle.... The leaders appeared, barons and famed knights. Here was the marshal, valiant and cool, bestriding a great steed, cheering on his people, wielding himself a strong sword. The battle was over open earth, and among the tents and quarters of the soldiery, and against and from the cover of the works that guarded the bridge. Now it shrieked and thundered in the space between the opposing camps, now among the tents of Roche-de-Frêne and now among those of Montmaure. Banners dipped and fell and rose again, were advanced or withdrawn. There were a huge number of banners, bright-hued, parti-coloured. They showed amid the dust like giant flowers torn from a giant garden and tossed in air. It became a fell struggle, where riderless war horses galloped hither and yon, and the footmen fought hard with pike and sword, and the crossbowmen sent their bolts, and the archers sent whistling flights of arrows. And still the clouds hung grey, and the town and castle drawn against them watched breathlessly.
Aimar de Panemonde had joined his brother-in-arms. A brave and beautiful knight, he rode in the onset beside Garin of the Golden Island. The two lowered lances and came against two knights of Montmaure. The knights were good knights, but the men from Palestine defeated and unhorsed them. One was hurt to death, the other his people rescued. Garin and Aimar, sweeping forward, met, by a bit of wall, mounted men of a Free Company.... The din had grown as frightful as if the world was crashing down. Always Montmaure might remember that Montmaure had in field twice as many as Roche-de-Frêne. Garin and Aimar thrust through the press by the wall, rode with other knights where the fight was fiercest. Garin wished to encounter Jaufre de Montmaure; he searched for the green and silver banner. But there was a wild toss of colours, shifting and indeterminate. Moreover the day, dark before, darkened yet further; it was not possible to see clearly to any distance.
And then, suddenly, a knight was before him, on a great bay horse caparisoned with green picked out with black, the knight himself in a green surcoat. The helmet masked the face, all save the eyes. Each combatant shook a spear and drove against the other, but a wave of battle surging by made the course not true. The green knight’s spear struck the edge of Garin’s shield. But the latter’s lance, encountering the other’s casque, burst the fastening, unhelmed him. Red-gold hair showed, hawk nose, scar across the cheek.
“Ha!” cried Garin. “I know you! Do you, perchance, know me?”