We have been here nigh a week already, and why should he keep us here
if we are not to be employed?"
It was not very long before it became known that Harold had no intention of
marching away and leaving the Welsh unpunished, and that in the spring a
campaign on a great scale was to be undertaken against them. The thanes of
all the western counties were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to
join with their levies in the spring. The Somerset and Devon men were to
gather at Bristol, and thence to be conveyed by ships to the southern coast
of Wales; the troops at Gloucester were to march west, and Tostig was to
bring down a body of Northumbrian horse, and to enter Wales from Chester.
The housecarls, to their surprise, were ordered to lay aside their ringed
armour and heavy helmets, in place of which leather jerkins and caps were
served out to them; their heavy axes were to be left behind, and they were
to trust to the sword alone. They were to abandon the tactics in which
they had been trained of fighting shoulder to shoulder, with shield
overlapping shield, and were to exercise themselves in running and
climbing, in skirmishing with an imaginary foe, and rapidly gathering in
close formation to resist anticipated attack. Harold himself gave them
these instructions.
"You will have no foe to meet breast to breast," he said; "if we are to
conquer and to root out these hornets it must be by showing ourselves even
more active than they are.
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