Then did the rival hosts draw near each other with great shoutings; and when they closed, no tongue can tell the fury of their smiting, and the sore struggling, wounds, and slaughter.  Then King Arthur, with his mightiest knights, rode down into the thickest of the fight, and drew Excalibur, and slew as lightning slays for swiftness and for force.  And in the midmost crowd he met a giant, Galapas by name, and struck off both his legs at the knee-joints; then saying, “Now art thou a better size to deal with!” smote his head off at a second blow:  and the body killed six men in falling down.

Anon, King Arthur spied where Lucius fought and worked great deeds of prowess with his own hands.  Forthwith he rode at him, and each attacked the other passing fiercely; till at the last, Lucius struck King Arthur with a fearful wound across the face, and Arthur, in return, lifting up Excalibur on high, drove it with all his force upon the Emperor’s head, shivering his helmet, crashing his head in halves, and splitting his body to the breast.  And when the Romans saw their Emperor dead they fled in hosts of thousands; and King Arthur and his knights, and all his army followed them, and slew one hundred thousand men.

Then returning to the field, King Arthur rode to the place where Lucius lay dead, and round him the kings of Egypt and Ethiopia, and seventeen other kings, with sixty Roman senators, all noble men.  All these he ordered to be carefully embalmed with aromatic gums, and laid in leaden coffins, covered with their shields and arms and banners.  Then calling for three senators who were taken prisoners, he said to them, “As the ransom of your lives, I will that ye take these dead bodies and carry them to Rome, and there present them for me, with these letters saying I will myself be shortly there.  And I suppose the Romans will beware how they again ask tribute of me; for tell them, these dead bodies that I send them are for the tribute they have dared to ask of me; and if they wish for more, when I come I will pay them the rest.”

So, with that charge, the three senators departed with the dead bodies, and went to Rome; the body of the Emperor being carried in a chariot blazoned with the arms of the empire, all alone, and the bodies of the kings two and two in chariots following.

After the battle, King Arthur entered Lorraine, Brabant, and Flanders, and thence, subduing all the countries as he went, passed into Germany, and so beyond the mountains into Lombardy and Tuscany.  At length he came before a city which refused to obey him, wherefore he sat down before it to besiege it.  And after a long time thus spent, King Arthur called Sir Florence, and told him they began to lack food for his hosts—­“And not far from hence,” said he, “are great forests full of cattle belonging to my enemies.  Go then, and bring by force all that thou canst find; and take with thee Sir Gawain, my nephew, and Sir Clegis, Sir Claremond the Captain of Cardiff, and a strong band.”