did not find the path clear. For the King's men resist them,
defying them courageously and reproaching them for their treason. Their
iron lance-tips are splintered and shattered as they meet; they come
together with swords drawn, striking each other and casting each other
down upon the face. They rush upon each other with the fury of lions,
which devour whatever they capture. In this first rush there was heavy
slaughter on both sides. When they can no longer maintain themselves,
help comes to the traitors, who are defending themselves bravely and
selling their lives dearly. They see their troops from four sides arrive
to succour them. And the King's men ride hard with spur to attack them.
They deal such blows upon their shields that, beside the wounded, they
unhorse more than five hundred of them. Alexander, with his Greeks,
has no thought of sparing them, making every effort to prevail into the
thickest of the fight he goes to strike a knave whose shield and hauberk
are of no avail to keep him from falling to the earth. When he has
finished with him, he offers his service to another freely and without
stint, and serves him, too, so savagely that he drives the soul from his
body quite, and leaves the apartment without a tenant. After these two,
he addresses himself to another, piercing a noble and courteous knight
clean through and through, so that the blood spurts out on the other
side, and his expiring soul takes leave of the body. Many he killed and
many stunned, for like a flying thunderbolt he blasts all those whom
he seeks out. Neither coat of mail nor shield can protect him whom he
strikes with lance or sword. His companions, too, are generous in the
spilling of blood and brains, for they, too, know well how to deal their
blows. And the royal troops butcher so many of them that they break them
up and scatter them like low-born folk who have lost their heads. So
many dead lay about the fields, and so long did the battle rage, that
long before the day dawned the ranks were so cut in pieces that the rows
of dead stretched for five leagues along the stream. Count Angres leaves
his banner on the field and steals away, accompanied by only seven of
his men. Towards his town he made his way by a secret path, thinking
that no one could see him. But Alexander notices this, and sees them
escaping from the troops, and he thinks that if he can slip away without
the knowledge of any one, he will go to catch up with them. But befo