My Lady Rotha Part 59

This evening all my lady's horses were requisitioned and carried off, to mount the King's staff, it was said, of whom some were going afoot.

A third day rose on the anxious city, and yet a fourth, and still the armies stood inactive. Communication with the new camp was easy, but as each day, and all day, a battle was expected, such news as we heard rather heightened than relieved our fears. On this fourth morning, I received a message from the Waldgrave, asking me to come to him in the camp; that he had something to say to me, and could not leave.

I was not unwilling to see for myself how things stood there; and I determined to go. I did not tell the Countess, however, nor Marie, thinking it useless to alarm them; but I left Steve in charge, and, bidding him be on his guard, promised to be back by noon at the latest. As I had no horse, I had to do the journey on foot, and soon was down in the plain myself, threading the orchards and plodding along the trampled roads, where so many thousands had preceded me. The ground in some spots was actually ploughed up; dust covered everything; the trees were bruised, the fences broken down. Old boots and shattered pike-staves marked the route, and here and there--saddest sight of all--dead horses, fast breeding the plague.

The sky, for the first time for days, was clouded, and making the most of the coolness I gained the river bank by nine o'clock, and crossing found myself close to the new camp.

The army had just marched out, yet the lines seemed full. The King had strictly forbidden all women and camp-followers to cross the Rednitz; but an army in these days needs so many drivers and sutlers that I found myself one among thousands. I asked for the Waldgrave, and got as many answers as there were men within hearing. One said that he was with his regiment of horse on the left flank; another, that he was with Duke Bernard's staff; a third, that he was not with the army at all. Despairing of hearing anything in the confusion, I was in two minds about turning back; but in the end I took heart of grace and determined to seek him in the field.

Fortunately, the last regiments had barely cleared the lines, and a few minutes' rapid walking set me abreast of the rearmost, which was hastening into position. Here also at the first glance I saw nothing but confusion; but a second resolved the ma.s.s into two parts, and then I saw that the King's army lay in two long lines facing the heights. An interval of about three hundred paces divided the lines, but behind each was a small reserve. In the first were most of the German regiments, the second being composed of Finns, Swedes, and Northerners. The cavalry were grouped on the flanks, and seemed stronger on the left flank. In the rear of all, as well as in gaps left between the pikes and musketmen, were the King's ordnance--drakes, serpents, falcons, and cartows, with the light two- and four-pounders for which he was famous.

Such an array--so many thousand men, gay with steel, and a thousand pennons--seemed to the eye to be invincible; and I looked for the enemy. He was not to be seen, but fronting the lines at a distance of three or four hundred paces rose the Alta Veste--a steep, rugged hill, scarred and seamed, and planted thickly with pines and jagged stumps and undergrowth. Here and there among the trees great rocks peeped out, or dark holes yawned. The dry beds of two torrents furrowed this natural glacis; and opposite these I noticed that our strongest regiments were placed. But of the enemy I could see nothing, except here and there a sparkle of steel among the trees; I could hear nothing, except now and then the fall of a stone, that, slipping under an unseen foot, fell from ledge to ledge until it reached the plain.

Everywhere the hush of expectation stirred the heart; for in the presence of that great host silence seemed a thing supernatural. As the regiment I had joined, the last to arrive, wheeled into position in the middle of the right wing, I asked one of the officers, who stood near me, if the enemy had retired.

'Wait!' he said grimly--he spoke with a foreign accent--'and you will see. But to what regiment do you belong, comrade?'

'To none here,' I said.

He looked astonished, and asked me what I was doing there, then.

I had my lips apart to answer him, when a trumpet sounded, and in an instant, all along the line, the Swedish cannon began to fire, shaking the earth and filling the air round us with smoke, that in a twinkling hid everything. This lasted for two or three minutes with a deafening noise; but as far as I could hear, the enemy were still silent. I was wondering what would happen next, and hoping that they had given up the position, when my new friend touched my arm and pointed to the front. I peered through the smoke, and saw dimly that the regiment before us, a German brigade about eight hundred strong, was moving on at a run and making for the hill. A minute elapsed, the smoke rolled between. I listened, trembling. Afterwards I learned that at the same moment two other parties sprang forward and dashed to the a.s.sault.

Then, at last, with an ear-splitting roar that seemed to silence our guns, the enemy spoke. The hill in front, hidden the second before by smoke, became in a moment visible, lit up by a thousand darting flames. Dark ma.s.ses seemed to topple down, rocks hung midway in air, and involuntarily I stepped back and uttered a cry of horror. Out of that h.e.l.l of fire came an answering wail of shrieks and curses--the feeble voice of man!

'Ach Gott!' I said, trembling. My hair stood on end.

'Steady, comrade, steady!' muttered the man who had before spoken to me. 'Presently it will be our turn.'

He had scarcely spoken, when a man came riding along the front with his hat in his hand. He rode a white horse, and wore no back or breast, nor, as far as I could see, any armour.

'Steady, Swedes, steady!' he cried in a loud voice--he was a big, stout man with a fine presence. 'Your time will come by-and-by. Then remember Breitenfeld!'

It was the King of Sweden. In a moment he was gone, pa.s.sing along the lines; and I drew breath again, wondering what would happen next. I had not long to wait. Men came straggling back across our front, some wounded, some helping their comrades along, all with faces ghastly under the powder-stains. And then like magic a new regiment stood before us, where the other had stood. Again the King's guns pealed along the line, again I heard the hoa.r.s.e cry 'Vorwarts!' waited a minute, and once more the hill seemed to be rent by the explosion.

From every cave and ledge guns flashed forth, lighting up the smoke.

The roar died away again--slowly, from west to east--in cries and shrieks; and presently a few men, scores where there had been hundreds, came wandering back like ghosts through the reek.

'This looks ill!' I muttered. I was no longer scared. The gunpowder was getting into my head.

'Pooh!' my friend answered. 'This is only the beginning. It will take men to fill that gap. Wait till our turn comes.'

By this time the Waldgrave and my errand were forgotten, and I thought only of the battle. I watched two more a.s.saults, saw two more regiments hurl themselves vainly against the fiery breast of the hill; then came a diversion. As the scattered fragments of the last came reeling back, a sudden roar of many voices startled me. The ground seemed to shake, and right across our front came a charge of horse--out of the smoke and into the smoke! In an instant our stragglers were trodden down, cut up, and swept away, before our eyes and within shot of us.

The men round me uttered shouts of rage. The line swayed, there was an instant's confusion. Then a harsh voice cried above the tumult, 'Steady, Gothlanders, steady! Pikes forward! Blow your matches!

Steady! steady!' and in a twinkling, with a crash, such as the ninth wave makes when it falls on a pebbly beach, the horse were on us. I had a glimpse through the smoke of rearing b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and floating manes, and grinning teeth, and of men's faces grim and white, held low behind the steel; and I struck out blindly with my half-pike. Still they came on, and something hit me on the chest and I fell: but instantly a clash of long pikes met over my body, and I scrambled to my feet unhurt! Then a dozen spurts of flame leapt out round me, and the hors.e.m.e.n seemed to melt away.

Into the smoke; but before I had time to know that they were gone, they had wheeled and were back again like the wind, led by a man on a black horse, who came on so gallantly to the very pike-points, that I thought it must be Pappenheim himself. He wore the black breastplate and helmet of Pappenheim's cuira.s.siers; and it was only when his horse reared up on end within a pike's length of me, and he fired his pistol among us, wounding two men, that I espied under the helmet the stern face and flashing eyes of Tzerclas. He recognised me at the same moment, and hurling his empty pistol in my face, tried to spur his horse over me. But the long pikes meeting before me kept him off, his men vanished, some falling, some flying, and in a moment he stood almost alone.

Even then his courage did not fail him. Scornfully eyeing our line from end to end, he hurled a bitter taunt at us, and wheeling his horse coolly, prepared to ride off. I think that we should have let him go, in pure admiration of his courage. But a wounded man on whom he trod houghed the horse with his sword. In a moment he was down, and two men running out of the line, fixed him to the earth with their pikes.

I confess, for myself, I would have spared him for his courage; and I ran to him to see if he was dead. He was not quite gone. He recognised me, and tried to speak. Forgetting the dangers round me, the uproar and tumult, the dim figures of men and horses flying through the smoke, I knelt down by him.

'What is it?' I said. After all, he was my lady's cousin.

'Tell him--tell him--the child! He will never get it!' he breathed.

With each word the blood-stained froth rose to his lips, and he clutched my hand in a cold grip.

He strove to say something more, and raised himself with a last effort on his elbow. 'Tell her,' he gasped, his dark face distorted--'tell her--I--I----'

No more. His eyes turned, his head fell back. He was dead. What he would have said of my lady, whether he would have sent her a message or what, no man will know here. But I fancied it like the man, who might have been great had he ever given a thought to others, that his last word was--"I."

His head was scarcely down before I had to run back within the pikes.

A fresh charge of horse swept over him, we received them with a volley; they broke, and a Swedish regiment, the West Gothland horse, rode them down. Meanwhile our man[oe]uvres had brought us insensibly into the first line. I found that we were close under the hill, and I was not surprised when a handful of horse whirled up to us out of the _melee_, and one, disengaging himself from the others, rode along our front. It was the King. His face was stained with powder, his horse was bleeding, a ball had ripped up his boot; it was said that he had been placing and pointing cannon with his own hands. But as the regiment greeted him with a hoa.r.s.e cheer, he smiled as if he had been in a ball-room.

He raised his hand for silence; such silence as could be obtained where every moment men shot off a cannon, and at no great distance a mortal combat was in progress.

'Men of Gothland!' he cried, in a clear, ringing voice, 'it is your turn now! You are My children. Take me this hill! Be steady, strike home, flinch not! Show these Germans what you can do! The word is, G.o.d with us. Remember St. Bartholomew's, and Forward! Forward! Forward!'

My heart beat furiously; but there was no retreat. Rather than be left standing on the ground, I would have died there. In a moment we were moving on elbow to elbow, with a stern, heavy step. Some one struck up a Swedish psalm, and to the thunder of its rhythm we strode on--on to the very foot of the hill; on, until we reached the rough shale, and the rugged steep stood above us. With a gallant shout an officer flung his hat on to the slope, a score of Ritt-Meisters sprang forward together; and then for a moment we and all things seemed to stand still. The wood above us belched fire, the eyes were blinded, the ears stunned, rocks and stones rolled down, all creation seemed to be falling on us in fearful ruin. Men were hurled this way and that, or fell in their places, or, reeling to and fro, clutched one another.

For an instant, I say, we stood still.

But for an instant only. Then with a shout of rage the Swedes sprang forward, and grasping boughs, stumps, rocks, swung themselves up, doing such things in their fury as no cool man could do.

A row of jagged stakes barred the way; men set their naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s against them, and others climbed over on their shoulders. Bleeding, wounded, singed, torn by splinters, all who lived climbed. To get up--up--up--higher, in face of the storm of shot and iron; up, over the bursting mines and through the smoke; up, to where they stood and butchered us, was the only instinct left.

And we did get up--to a bastion, jutting from the hillside, where a company of picked men with pikes and three cannons waited for us behind a breastwork. They thought to stop us, and stood firm; our men were mad. Flinging themselves against the mouths of the cannon, they scaled the work in a moment, and left not one defender alive!

G.o.d with us!

Stern and high the shout rang out; but breath was everything, and the scarp still rose above us and the shot still tore our ranks! On! Up a torrent bed now, round one corner and another, to where we were a little out of the line of fire, and an overhanging shoulder covered us. Here we had room to take breath; and for the first time, some hope of life, of ultimate escape, entered my breast. The officer who led us--I learned afterwards that he was the great General Torstensohn--cried, 'Well done, Swedes!' and with the confidence of giants we were once more breasting the ascent, when a withering volley, poured in at short range, checked the head of the column.

Before we could recover way, a body of pikes rushed to meet us, and in an instant, having the vantage of the ground, rolled us, still fighting desperately, down the steep. The general was swept away, the Ritt-Meisters were down. Once we rallied, but ineffectually. The enemy were reinforced, and in a moment the rout was complete.

At the moment the tide turned and our men fell back, I happened to be against the rock-wall, in something of a niche; and the stream pa.s.sed me by. I had two slight wounds, and I stood an instant, giddy and confused, taking breath. The instant showed me my comrades in the act of being slaughtered one by one, and a great horror seized me. I found no hope anywhere. Below were the cruel pikes, in a moment their savage bearers would be reascending; above were the enemy. But above, if I climbed on, I might live a little while; and in that desperate hope I scrambled out of the torrent bed and up the sheer hill on the right.

Two or three saw me from the torrent bed, and fired at me; and others shouted, and began to follow. But I only pressed on, right up the scarp, which was there like the side of a house.

A dozen times I all but fell back; still in a fever of dread I kept on. The sweat poured down me; I had no hope or aim, I thought only of the pikes behind. Presently I came to a jutting shoulder that all but overhung me; to pa.s.s it seemed to be impossible. But in my frenzy I did the impossible. I swung myself from root to root; where one stone gave, I clutched another, and yet another; I hung on with tooth and nail. I flattened myself against the rock. I heard the pursuers rail and curse, heard the bullets strike the earth round me, and then in a moment I was up.

Up; but only to come instantly on a wall crossing the steep and barring my way, and to find a dozen pikes levelled at my breast.

Desperate, giving up hope at last--I had long dropped my weapon--I cried mechanically, 'G.o.d with us!' and threw up my arms.

I nearly fell backwards--for what did it matter? But the men were quick. In a moment one had me by the collar. 'And G.o.d! They were friends! They were friends, and I was saved.

One of the first faces that I saw, as I leaned breathless against the wall, unable for the time to answer the questions that poured upon me, was the Waldgrave's--the Waldgrave's, with the light of battle in his eyes, a laugh of triumph on his lips. He was wounded, bandaged, blackened, his fair hair singed; but he was happy. Presently I understood why; and why I was safe and among friends.

'A little earlier,' he said--he seemed in his exaltation not a whit surprised to see me--'and you would have had a different reception, Martin. We only turned them out of this an hour ago!'

All his superior officers had fallen, and his had been the voice that had cheered on the forlorn, to which he was attached--acting from the right flank--and heartened them, just when all seemed lost, to make one more effort, ending in the capture of this sconce. Joined to the ma.s.s of the hill only by a narrow neck, it commanded the enemy's position.

'We only want cannon!' he said, and in a moment I was as one of the garrison. 'Three guns, and the day is ours. When will they come? When will they come?'

'You have sent for them?'