THEY STARTED SLOWLY, doing their best to keep a line as their horses picked careful footsteps across the sloping ground. At first it was very steep, then as the incline became more moderate, they picked up speed. The horses reached a gallop and the wind began to roar in their ears as the horses’ hooves beat a tattoo on the ground.
Hagan clenched the reins in his left fist. His spear was couched under his right arm. He narrowed his eyes against the wind that rushed into them. He gripped his horse with his thighs, knowing that to fall off would most likely mean death, his bones first smashed against the hard, stony ground then ground beneath the pounding hooves of the horses following behind.
The ground rushed by in a blur. His horse’s head dipped and rose as it galloped. When they reached halfway down the slope their speed was now beyond control. The horses barrelled on, their weight and momentum carrying them as much as their legs. Riding in close formation, all it would take was one to slip and everyone would go down in a great tangled mass of horses and men.
Despite the danger and the fact that they rode into battle, Hagan felt the fierce battle joy, an elation like his heart was flying along somewhere above his body. The sheer thrill of the speed they travelled at made him laugh out loud. He felt like an eagle, swooping from a mountaintop, to fall on far-below prey. Others around him, also carried away by the moment, were laughing, shouting or yelling war cries.
Thorismund rode in front of all of them, sword in hand. Hagan and Brynhild were directly behind him then the rest of the cavalry rushed on behind. The battlefield was hidden from view by the bulk of the ridge they rode down the back of. When they were almost three-quarters of the way down the slope, Thorismund began turning his horse to the left. The rest followed and the cavalry now swooped across the slope back towards the battlefield.
They crossed the centre of the ridge slope and Hagan saw the beleaguered Visigoth line, beset by the Ostrogoth foot warriors, come into view. The contingent of fresh Hun cavalry was riding to join the attack, no doubt expecting to deliver the final hammer blow that would shatter the exhausted Visigoths’ shield wall.
With a thrill of excitement Hagan realised that the Huns were directly ahead. Thorismund had timed it perfectly. They would smash right into their flank. The Huns, intent on their own charge at the Visigoths, were unaware of the new danger to them.
Hagan began screaming at the top of his lungs. Others around him did the same. They were so close now it no longer mattered. He heard a chilling, high-pitched wail. Glancing around he saw it came from Brynhild who was riding hard, her sword held before her, ready to strike.
The galloping Huns were thirty paces away. A moment later twenty. Some of them began to look around. Hagan saw the surprise and terror on their faces and it ignited the bloodlust inside his own heart. He and his folk at Vorbetomagus must have looked just as shocked when the Hun cavalry had ridden at them from the forest all those years ago. Now the shoe was on the other foot.
Hagan gritted his teeth and clenched his spear. A moment later he and the Alliance cavalry ploughed into the Huns.
The sound was incredible. A great crashing of metal on metal, breaking bones and screams of terror and pain from horses and men filled the air. Hagan’s spear, driven by the whole weight of the galloping horse and man behind it, drove into the side of a Hun’s chest. The blade smashed through the rings of the Hun’s mail shirt, carried through him and burst from the far side, pieces of the man’s entrails trailing from the point.
Hagan wrenched the spear back as the Hun flew out of his saddle. All around him Huns were going down, either killed by weapons or just smashed out of their saddles by the impact of being ridden into. Horses fell, pitching their riders from their backs. Hagan and the others rode on, ploughing a bloody swathe through the Hun formation. He stabbed left and right, opening wounds wherever he could. The Visigoth and Valkyrjur riders slashed with their swords and stabbed with spears. They trampled fallen Huns beneath their hooves.
The Hun cavalry formation split asunder. Men began riding in all directions, desperate to escape the sudden onslaught that had fallen on them seemingly from the sky.
Hagan managed to spear one more Hun through the back, then there were no more targets before him. The Hun cavalry had completely scattered.
Through the din and the noise the sound of a horn blaring came. Smoke was now drifting around him and Hagan had to peer through it to see it was Thorismund who was blowing the horn.
The riders gathered around the young prince of the Visigoths.
‘We’ve broken their cavalry attack,’ Thorismund shouted above the noise. ‘Now let’s hit the Ostrogoths!’
He levelled his sword at the ranks of warriors assaulting the Visigoth shield wall.
‘Have no care that they have their backs to us,’ Thorismund shouted. ‘Remember what they did to your forefathers. Stab them. Slash them. Kill them all! Onward! Into glory ride!’
The gathered riders cheered and wheeled their horses.
As one, they charged into the rear of the Ostrogoth ranks besieging the Visigoth shield wall. Hagan almost felt sorry for the men he cut down first. They had no idea what was coming. But there was a fire in Hagan’s blood that incinerated all pity. Instead he felt nothing but contempt as his spear drove into the back of an Ostrogoth warrior, transfixing him and bursting from his guts at the front. The shaft of the spear shattered into three pieces and Hagan ripped the sword under his left arm from its sheath.
He began hacking to his left and right. Raining blows down on shoulders, arms, heads, anywhere he could find a target. After one strike across a man’s head that split the steel of his helmet the warrior put both his hands on top of his head, as if trying to hold the helmet together, Hagan struck again and watched as the man’s severed fingers tumbled to the ground. A small voice within him told him the memory would return to haunt him in the future but at that moment all he felt was hate.
All the anger that had built up from fifteen years of exile and the frustrated hopes that he had found his people and friends once again rose within his heart like a black tide that drowned out all pity, compassion and empathy. He stabbed and slashed, cut and hacked, felling warriors with his blade as his horse battered others beneath its hooves like it was mowing down long grass. He knew he should be tired – exhausted even – but his arm felt imbued with power.
Soon panic spread through the ranks of the Ostrogoths like the fires Wodnas had set in the dry grass as they realised that they were under attack from the rear. Those who could turned to try to meet the new threat, though those in the front ranks were still engaged with fighting the Visigoths.
Hagan felt the press of men around him ease a little. He saw warriors starting to flee on foot, trying to avoid being struck from one of the horsemen assaulting them as they went.
With a surge of triumph Hagan realised the Ostrogoth attack was breaking.