Summoned by Anselm's horn to guard the treasure from the pilfering drovers, Eggihard and his Neustrians rushed forward among the ox-wains, only to share in the fate of the Frankish horse. When they turned again to fly, they found the way behind them bristling with pikes and spears. The laggard Asturians and Navarrese, silently trailing the host, had closed upon the rear, eager to share the Moslem plunder and to avenge the ruined walls of Pampeluna.
In the heart of that steel-leaved thicket fell Eggihard the High Steward, valiantly striving to cut a way for his Neustrians out of the shambles.
But the greater number of the footmen shrank back before the advancing spear-points, to perish on the heaps of slaughtered beasts and men. Soon Anselm and a score of followers fled alone before the advance of the Hispano-Goths; while from every mountain cleft and slope the Vascons clambered down to snatch their blood-drenched booty from beneath the mass of torn and shattered victims.
CHAPTER XXVI
We have fought; if we die to-day,
If we die to-morrow, there is little
To choose. No man may speak
When once the Norns have spoken.
LAY OF HAMDIR.
But not all the Frankish host perished by the Vascon missiles. As Roland and his hundred horsemen charged after Olvir upon the wall which barred the gorge, the fiery Moslems answered the Northern battle-shouts with shrill yells, and the foremost among them leaped their coursers over the barrier, to rush upon the Franks. A hundred or more had crossed the wall before the slower Frankish horses could meet them; and the treacherous Vascons above, only too willing that their allies should win more of wounds than plunder, hastened away to share in the looting of the baggage-train. Of all the riders who had turned to follow their count, two only were slain by Vascon arrows. The others, stung to desperate fury by the shrieks of those behind them in the gorge, thundered after their leader with brandished blades.