striking, rushing, slaying, slain.

"Pardex, this is war worth the sharing," said the knight. "And now,
worthy Sexwolf, thou shalt see if the Norman is the vaunter thou
deemest him. Dieu nous aide! Notre Dame!--Take the foe in the rear."
But turning round, he perceived that Sexwolf had already led his men
towards the standard, which showed them where stood the Earl, almost
alone in his peril. The knight, thus left to himself, did not
hesitate:--a minute more, and he was in the midst of the Welch force,
headed by the chief with the golden panoply. Secure in his ring mail
against the light weapons of the Welch, the sweep of the Norman sword
was as the scythe of Death. Right and left he smote through the
throng which he took in the flank, and had almost gained the small
phalanx of Saxons, that lay firm in the midst, when the Cymrian
Chief's flashing eye was drawn to his new and strange foe, by the roar
and the groan round the Norman's way; and with the half-naked breast
against the shirt of mail, and the short Roman sword against the long
Norman falchion, the Lion King of Wales fronted the knight.

Unequal as seems the encounter, so quick was the spring of the Briton,
so pliant his arm, and so rapid his weapon, that that good knight (who
rather from skill and valour than brute physical strength, ranked
amongst the prowest of William's band of martial brothers) would
willingly have preferred to see before him Fitzosborne or Montgommeri,
all clad in steel and armed with mace and lance, than parried those
dazzling strokes, and fronted the angry majesty of that helmless brow.
Already the strong rings of his mail had been twice pierced, and his
blood trickled fast, while his great sword had but smitten the air in
its sweeps at the foe; when the Saxon phalanx, taking advantage of the
breach in the ring that girt them, caused by this diversion, and