onto the sheep with both hands; some were on their knees trying to hold the animals fast or slit their throats. They died first as the Saracens overtook them, slaughtered animals and slaughtered men tumbling indiscriminately over each other. I saw several of the stragglers brought down by dogs and mauled on the ground until the Saracens ended it.
It had happened so fast that I still stood immobile, hypnotised by the savage speed of fortune’s reverse. Then an arrow clattered off a rock near by — the Saracen archers on the walls, driving on the Franks — and I saw our danger.
‘We have to go.’
‘Down the hill,’ said Aelfric. A little way down, the sea of cloud still ebbed against the slope, thick and impenetrable. ‘Into that. It’s our best chance.’
As soon as I moved, all became chaos. Fleeing knights and soldiers were spilling off the hilltop and cascading down the slope around us, tripping and stumbling in their panic. The slope would have been dizzyingly steep in daylight, but in the mist it became a vertiginous world where every direction was down. We could not stand upright for fear of falling; we turned our backs to the mist and pressed ourselves against the crumbling earth, scuttling like ants on the face of the hill. Muted echoes of ghastly sounds filled the air: all around us men were screaming, falling, dying, but we could not see them. A helmet tumbled past, clanging like a church bell as it bounced from rock to rock.
Suddenly, I came over a hummock to see a standing shadow looming in the mist, its dark arm poised to strike me. I cried out in fear but my reactions were true: my shield came up, parrying his attack, while I scythed my sword at his knees to cut his legs from under him. He did not flinch, did not even make a sound, though my blade had cut so deep I could not pull it free. Terror overwhelmed me as I found myself suddenly defenceless — I tugged on my sword but it would not come. Instead, in my clumsy desperation I lost my footing and tumbled forwards, splayed out to receive the killing blow.
Another figure appeared in the fog. It stood over me, and I heard a familiar laugh.
‘Well done, Father-in-law. You’ve killed a tree.’
His voice trembled on the brink of hysteria, but it was true what he said: the arm I had thrust aside with my shield was no more than a hanging branch, and the legs I had sliced into its trunk. White sap oozed onto the blade. I put my foot against the tree and pulled the sword free, cursing. As I tried to wipe the sticky sap on my tunic, I heard another sound in the fog near by. The shrieking, sawing braying of a horse in agony.
There was only one man I knew on that hillside on horseback. Praying Aelfric and Thomas would manage to keep close, I dashed towards the noise. It was not easy to follow — the cold screams sounded all around me, tangling with the fog and addling my senses, in my eyes and in my ears, until I could hardly tell if the fog was the sound incarnate, or the sound the howl of the fog.
Gradually, though, the noise grew louder. The closer I came the more unbearable was its anguish and the more I raced on, as if by finding the noise I might at last silence it. Damp earth and pebbles scattered under my feet; in my haste, I began to lose my footing. The only way to keep upright was to blunder on, faster and faster and ever more unbalanced, straight into the fog. A root snatched at my foot; I flung out my arms and threw myself back, but momentum carried me forward and down. I thumped into the ground with a bruising shock, slid a little way on my belly, then stopped abruptly, brought up against a warm, writhing mass blocking the path.
I screamed, thinking I must have come up against a corpse, though my screams vanished in the mad welter of sound around me. It was not a fallen soldier; it was a horse, crying out its distress like a newborn child. Sweat stained its flanks, foaming white in places, and I had no sooner raised my head than I had to duck to avoid a flailing hoof in the fog.
Somewhere in my fall I had dropped my sword, but mercifully it had slid down after me, close enough that I could see it. I crawled away from the horse and reached for the weapon, feeling a flood of relief as my hand closed around the hilt. I stood, feeling the grazes and bruises where I had fallen.
I was not alone. As the horse’s cries weakened, I heard another sound in the cloud: the sound of running feet. It might have been Thomas or Aelfric, both of whom I had lost in my descent, but it came from down the slope and I did not think they had passed me. I skirted around the dying horse and edged down the hill. I had barely moved a yard when I saw two men: one lay on the ground, hardly stirring, the other stood over him, his sword poised for the kill.
I could not see much of either man: a bulge in a helmet where a turban might have wrapped it, the curve of a sword, a half-seen device on a discarded shield. It was a poor basis to choose who would die — but if I did not, there would be no choice to make. I stepped forward, deliberately kicking a cluster of pebbles downhill to distract my opponent, and as he half turned I lunged forward with my sword. The slope added weight to my thrust: the point of my sword struck his breast, forced its way through the scale armour, and I felt the sudden rush as the blade sank into the vital flesh beneath. I straightened, planted my foot on his chest and pulled my sword free as he sank to the ground, heeled to one side and rolled a little way down the hill.
I turned to his opponent. He lay on his back, one hand clutching his ribs and the other reaching helplessly for the shield that had fallen out of reach when the horse threw him. The single eye looked up at me from his grizzled face.
‘Count Raymond?’
His eye never blinked, staring with such intensity that I thought for a terrible moment he must be dead, and I had killed a man over a corpse.
‘My knights,’ he croaked. His voice was old and brittle. ‘Where are my knights?’
Where were his knights? How had the greatest lord in the Army of God come to lie abandoned on a hillside, facing a solitary death at the hands of a lone Saracen? It was not how men like him were supposed to die.
‘What happened?’ I asked at last.
Raymond shrugged. ‘We were retreating. One minute, all my bodyguards were beside me, the next they had vanished in the fog. I was trying to find them when my horse fell. Then a Saracen found me — and then you.’
I heard the scrape and rustle of someone crashing down the hillside above. With weary arms I snatched up Raymond’s shield and tensed myself for an attack, but it was only Aelfric, with Thomas behind him. As they descended into view, Aelfric took in the scene at a glance.
‘We have to get down from here.’
Our progress was agonisingly slow. With Thomas in the lead we edged across the hillside, flinching each time one of us rustled a clump of grass or kicked a pebble. Every few paces Thomas would pause, his young eyes and ears straining for any sign of danger. Count Raymond still lagged behind. The fall from his horse had not injured him badly, but it had left him with a limp, which seemed to grow worse as we continued. Several times I froze with terror as I heard his foot drag across a patch of loose ground; if any Saracens had been nearby they would surely have found us. The fog that had caused us so much confusion was now our salvation, a blanket hiding us from danger, and I looked at it with new eyes, praying it would not lift.
Though we could barely see it, our way led gradually down into a cleft in the hillside where a thin stream trickled between boulders. We followed it, hoping it would lead to the valley floor and the road. We had not gone far, when suddenly I heard the tumble of rocks, a cry, a splash and a resounding clang. Three of us turned in horror. A little way up the gully Count Raymond lay sprawled in the stream. He must have stepped on a loose rock and upended himself.
We froze, listening for signs we had been heard. Even Count Raymond lay still and let the stream trickle over him. For long seconds there was nothing save the babbling water and a wounded horse braying in the distance. I began to relax, glancing down the stream and wondering if it was too treacherous to attempt. And then, just as we had convinced ourselves we were safe, a spear ripped through the fog and struck the soft earth of the stream bank. It stuck there, quivering with the impact, scant inches over Count Raymond’s head.
We had not heard a sound; now, suddenly, it engulfed us, rushing down both sides of the gully as our enemies emerged from the mist. Aelfric moved fastest; he plucked the spear from the earth, reversed it, and, as the first Saracen appeared, drove it into his belly. The man’s momentum carried him on, impaling him so deep that Aelfric had to let go the spear and leap clear before his enemy barrelled into him. The man fell writhing in the stream.
‘Make a line,’ shouted Raymond. He was on his feet, his sword in his hand, his armour dripping wet. Another Saracen stumbled down the slope with a spear, too fast to control himself; Raymond parried the thrust easily, kicked the man’s feet from under him and plunged his sword into his neck. Blood bubbled into the stream.
