So the council broke up, there being nothing to advise save to fight heartily. Richard sent the heralds through the camp and, with cry and trumpet, roused the sleeping host, though the alarms of the night already had waked many. A great confusion there was: a thousand voices shouting at once, women wailing, war-horns blaring, wheels creaking, all trebly loud in the murk of the breaking day. Long before the wagon barrier, also, was as it should be, a great cry began to swell: "The foe! the foe!" and the infantry commenced to bang their shields and clatter their pike-staffs, for discipline was none the best. Richard rode away with his hundred St. Julien troopers,—men that he could trust to the last pinch,—and drew them up beside the personal command of Prince Tancred. Prince Bohemond and the Norman Duke had arrayed their mailed cavalry in a solid rank, the line stretching far down the plain, every man in complete armor, with a good horse between his knees. As the light strengthened, Richard could see the long files of lances, ten thousand bright pennons whipping the wind, and the new sun shone on as many burnished casques and flashing targets—noble sight; yet not so strange as that which he beheld when he looked northward just east of the little town called Dorylæum. The hills, so far as eye could reach, were covered with an innumerable host, thousands on thousands, and all on horseback. He could see the gay red and green turbans, the bright scarfs and mantles, pennons, banners—past counting; and even as the sun lifted above the hills, and sent its weird red light over the valley, a mighty roar of tambour, kettledrum, and cymbal came rolling from the foe, and a shout from myriad throats, wild, beastlike, shrill as the winter wind. With the shout, as if at magician's wand, all the hills seemed moving; and the Seljouk hordes charged straight upon the Christian lines.
It was a wondrous spectacle; far as the eye might pierce, only horsemen, and more horsemen, speeding at headlong gallop. "Christ pity us!" more than one bronze-faced cavalier muttered in his beard. And some cried, "Charge!" But Tancred held them steady. The hordes swept on as one man, nearer, so near that the dust-cloud blew in the Christians' faces; and all braced themselves for the shock. But just as the crash was about to tremble on the air, lo! the foremost Turks had wheeled like lightning, and arrows flew out that darkened the sky by their number. And as the first horde rolled off to one flank, still shooting, the next, the next, and yet another whirled past, pouring forth their volleys.
"Stand fast, Christians!" was Tancred's shout, as the first shafts dashed harmlessly on the good mail; and for a moment the Franks sat, their steeds immovable, and let the blast of steel beat on them. Yet only for a moment; though but one arrow in a hundred struck home, here and there men were bleeding, wounded horses plunging. Each instant Crusaders were falling; should they sit forever and be shot to death? Duke Robert was the first to charge. "Dex aiè!" cried his Norman knights, and lance in rest they spurred straight in the face of the wheeling myriads. Vain courage! A few Seljouks they struck and rode over in a twinkling; but the vast horde parted before them like water, and rained in arrows and ever more arrows from safe distance. The Duke regained his lines, but one-fourth of his men had been stricken, and the terrible horse-archers were shooting a more deadly shower than ever.
"The foot! the crossbowmen!" was the cry of the raging knights. And their archers and arbalisters, coming to the front, tried to return the fire as best they could. Many a Seljouk rode no more after their volley, but their shafts were as a bucket on a holocaust. Horsemen, and yet more horsemen, were rolling in. More and more rapid the arrow fire, the sky was dark with flying dust, the ear deafened with the thunders of hoofs uncounted, the clash of the kettledrums, the yell and howl of the Seljouks. Flesh and blood could stand the strain no more. Either the Turks must be routed, or the Franks would perish to a man.
"Charge! Charge!" this time the cry went down the line on every lip. Two arrows had grazed Rollo, despite his leathern armor. Thrice had Richard felt the sting on his ribs, where the mail had turned the shaft. Only one desire had he now,—to ride through or over his tormenters.
"God wills it! Normandy! Normandy!" came from Duke Robert's cavaliers. "Montjoye Saint Denis!" rang from the Count of Chartres. "Biez!" thundered the Auvergners; and the whole steel-mailed line swept upon the Seljouks, like an avalanche. And now a crash! They smote the Turks with might irresistible; the destrers trampled down the frail Tartar horses by thousands. What guard were light targets and cotton turbans to the swords of the men of France? For a moment, when Richard reined in Rollo, he believed the foe annihilated.
"God wills it!" myriad voices were calling. Yet even as the dust hung in the air, the arrows began to beat down again. Like flies the Turks had scattered; like flies they returned, new hordes making good all loss. And now the Christians were in deadly peril, for their ranks were all broken into little handfuls, and the Seljouks swarmed round each, trying to trample it down by weight of numbers. Richard led his men back from the charge. Trenchefer was very red. How many Turks opposed the St. Julieners he could not tell, but by the grace of the saints the line was re-formed at last. Prince Bohemond, crafty of heart, but a very lion in battle, flew down the line to steady it.
"We have slain a thousand infidels!" the Count of Chartres was crying. "One more charge and we have victory!"
"One more such victory and we are crowned martyrs!" Prince Tancred made answer. "Robert of Paris is slain, and William, my brother, and a hundred good knights more; and we are being shot down like sparrows."
Another onrush of the Seljouks, this time nearer. Richard felt the moments creeping by with leaden feet. The possibility of a disaster beyond thought stared him in the face. It was one thing to go to death in a fair fight with the sword hot in one's hand—another to sit passive and feel destruction beating down. Yet he was thinking, not of himself, but of another. Prince Tancred, burning to avenge his brother's loss, charged out with his own troop. The Seljouks closed around him like the sea. Bohemond flew to aid, and rescued his nephew. Richard saw Tancred riding back within the lines bareheaded and bloody, his lance broken. "Christ keep our souls, the Seljouks have our bodies," murmured the Breton Count Rothold, "I will not die here!" and he also charged out with his shrill native war-cry, "Malo! Malo!" In a twinkling the hordes rolled round him; Richard and the St. Julieners saved him. But now Robert, the Norman, spurred up to Longsword. The Duke's casque was beaten and gory, his long white pennon red-dyed, his horse wounded.