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the battle noise should have diminished. The increase in intensity must mean that the French had broken through the left wing and were pressing in on Otto from that side as well as from the front. |
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All too soon the vague concern grew to a troubled conviction. The numbers of those opposing them were decidedly augmented. Nonetheless, there was no cause for real worry, Geoffrey told himself. The English wing was still advancing. The driving spearhead of their attack was Salisbury. The earl was fighting like a demon, as if he had cast off twenty or thirty years. He struck and slashed, seemingly tireless, and his blows were so powerful that no man could withstand him. Behind and around him, his vassals kept pace, completely caught up in the heat of what seemed a tide running strongly toward the haven of victory. All they saw was that the men facing them were fewer, that they moved forward slowly but surely and the French fell back before them. |
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Geoffrey's party was still separated from his father's, but not by much. So intense was his intention of combining their groups that he gave no mind to the general situation. It was, after all, his father's responsibility to consider the army as a whole; Geoffrey's duty was only to follow where Salisbury led. In the heat of the fighting, Geoffrey had forgotten that he was more than twenty years younger than his father, that if his body ached with effort Salisbury's condition must be worse. The glimpses Geoffrey caught of his father between blows given and received were so heroic that he slipped back to boyhood when Salisbury was a kind and invincible giant a thousand feet tall, never weak, worried, or tired. |
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Roger of Hemel was not so caught up in the fever of advancing. However, he needed to give all his attention to the immediate situation. As Lord Geoffrey grew fatigued, he tended to guard himself less efficiently, although he did not abate a whit of his ferocity. The castellan of Hemel had all he could do to protect his lord and himself without concerning himself with what others were doing. |
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