As dust rolling before a March wind, so the horsemen of Gambrevault poured down on the horde of wavering pikes. The storm had come sudden as thunder out of a summer sky. Before the hurtling impact of that bolt of war, the palsied ranks of foot crumbled like rotten timber. The Gerainters were too massed and too amazed to squander or give ground, to stem with bill and bow the rolling torrent of death. They were rent and trampled, trodden like straw under the stupendous avalanche of steel that crushed and pulverised with ponderous and invincible might.
"God and Gambrevault, kill, kill!"
Such was the death-cry thundered out over the rebel van. The column broke, burst into infinite chaos. Yeoland's guards alone stood firm, a tough core of oak amid rotten tinder. Over the trampled wreckage the fight swirled and eddied, circling about the knot of steel where the red banner flapped in the vortex of the storm.
Yeoland sat dazed on her white horse, as one in the grip of some terrific dream. Nord was at her side, snarling, snapping his jaw like a wolf, his great iron mace poised over his shoulder. The red banner flapped prophetic above their heads. Around them the fight gathered, a whirlwind of contorted figures and stabbing steel.
Yeoland's eyes were on one figure in the press, a man straddling a big bay horse, smiting double-handed with his sword, his red plume jerking in the hot rush of the fight. She saw horse and man go down before him; saw him buffet his way onward like a galley ploughing against wind and wave. His leaping sword and tossing plume came steady and strenuous through the girdle of death.
Fear, pride, a hundred battling passions played like the battle through the woman's mobile brain. She watched the man under the red plume with an intensity of feeling that made her blind to all else for the moment. Love seemed to struggle towards her in bright harness through the fight. She saw the last rank of the human rampart pierced. The man on the bay horse came out before her like some warrior out of an old epic.
None save Nord stood between them, shaggy and grim as a great Norse Thor. She watched the iron mace swing, saw it fall and smite wide. Flavian stood in the stirrups, both hands to the hilt, his horse's muzzle rammed against the opposing brute's chest. The blow fell, a great cut laid in with all the culminating courage of an hour. The sword slashed Nord's gorget, buried its blade in the bull-like neck. He clutched at his throat, toppled, slid out of the saddle and rolled under his horse's hoofs.
"THE SWORD SLASHED NORD'S GORGET, BURIED ITS BLADE IN THE BULL-LIKE NECK."
The man's hand snatched at the girl's bridle; he dragged her and her horse out of the press. She had a confused vision of carnage, of stabbing swords and trampling hoofs. She saw her banner-bearer fall forward on his horse's neck, thrust through with a sword, while Modred seized the banner staff from his impotent hand. The rebel column had deliquesced and vanished. In its stead she was girdled by grim and exultant horsemen whose swords flashed in the sun.