But it was harder work at the gate, for there the foemen were more densely packed before us, and they seemed to climb in an unending stream.  More than one fell inside the gate, and there lay still; but none had won his way to the ground alive, nor had we yet lost a man.  The loss was all on the side of the attack.

Then at last the men at the gate drew back for a time; but from the side attacks came a new danger.  With spear butt and seax they were trying to undermine the stockade, and one could hear the creaking of the stout timbers as they tried to tear them down.  It would have gone hardly with us had there been but a few more men, or if these had brought pick and spade with them.

As it was, that attempt did not last long.  Into the crowd of men who worked the heavy javelins fell, and through the timbering the reddened spears went and came, driving at last the foe to safer distance.  And so the first attack ended, and for all that Gymbert from the gate tried to urge them on, his men stood sullenly in the deep ditch and under the gate, where we could not well reach them, save by casting javelins and darts high into the air, that they might pitch among them; but there were few throwing weapons to spare.

“He would have done better to attack at one point only,” said Jefan, sitting down on the rampart above the gate.  “He might have overwhelmed us so, for he has men enough.”

His brother laughed.

“There is a difference between us in this way,” he said, “and it is a great one:  there is little fight in his men, and we must needs fight our best.  Listen! they are passing some word round.”

So it was, for there fell a silence on the humming men below us, and we could hear muttered words from one to another.  Then the attack came again from the same three places, but I thought it was not pushed home as at first.  Nor did it last so long.  In a few minutes men began to get out of the ditch and away down the hillside while the Welsh were too busy to shoot at them.  There they scattered, and stood and watched.  And then the attack on the gate ceased, and back the foe went.

“After them, and scourge them home to their mistress,” shouted Kynan, leaping down to the gateway, where his men did but wait some word which should tell them to throw it open for a sally.

I looked for Jefan; but he was across the camp, seeing hastily to the weakened places in the stockade.

“Kynan,” I cried, “have a care!  This is what they want you to do!  Wait!”

For I could see that in the open Gymbert had the advantage of numbers, and I suspected that he was trying to draw the fiery Welsh from their works.  There was surely some reason for this half-hearted attack on the stockade that had been already proved too strong.

He did not hear me.  It is in my mind that I may have called to him in the Frankish tongue of my last warfare.  That is likely enough, for with the clash of arms again I know I had been thinking in the familiar tongue once more.  I do not know, but again I called him, and he seemed not to hear.  The gate flew open, and with a wild yell of victory out went the Welshmen, with the prince at their head.