their
lives dear when they can keep them no longer. On four sides they
see their battalions coming to succour them; and the king's men
gallop upon them as fast as they can spur. They rush to deal them
such blows on the shields, that together with the wounded they
have overthrown more than five hundred of them. The Greeks spare
them not at all. Alexander is not idle, for he exerts himself to
act bravely. In the thickest of the fray he rushes so impetuously
to smite a traitor, that neither shield nor hauberk availed one
whit to save that traitor from being thrown to the ground. When
Alexander has made a truce with him forsooth, he pays his
attentions to another--attentions in which he does not waste or
lose his pains. He serves him in such valiant sort that he rends
his soul from his body; and the house remains without a tenant.
After these two Alexander picks a quarrel with a third: he
strikes a right noble court knight through both flanks in such
wise that the blood gushes out of the wound on the opposite side;
and the soul takes leave of the body, for the foe man has
breathed it forth. Many a one he kills; many a one he maims; for
like the forked lightning he attacks all those that he seeks out.
Him whom he strikes with lance or sword, neither corselet nor
shield protects. His comrades also are very lavish in spilling
blood and brains; well do they know how to deal their blows. And
the king's men cut down so many that they break and scatter them
like common folk distraught. So many dead lie o'er the fields and
so long has the scour lasted, that the battle-array was broken up
a long while before it was day; and the line of dead down along
the river extended five leagues. Count Engres leaves his standard
in the battle and steals away; and he has taken seven of his
companions together with him. He has returned towards his castle
by so hidden a way that he thinks that no one sees; but Alexander
marks him; for he sees them flee from the host, and thinks to
steal away and meet them, so that no one will know where he has
gone. But before he was in the valley he saw as many as thirty
knights coming after him along a path, six of whom were Greeks,
and the other four-and-twenty Welsh; for they thought that they
would follow him at a distance until it should come to the pinch.
When Alexander perceived them he stopped to wait, and marks which
way those who are returning to the castle take until he sees them
enter. Then he begins