Quillifer

CHAPTER THIRTY

ord Utterback took the news calmly. He frowned a little, and looked off into the sun, and after a moment said, “How many?”

“We could not tell, my lord,” Frere said. He was a big man, large for a dragoon, with a black spade-shaped beard. “Their column curved out of sight below us. Yet they have foot and horse, and I counted the flags of half a dozen regiments. So they have at least as many as we, and very likely more.”

Utterback’s calm was so absolute that it began to seem unnatural. I could see his eyes making little jumps left and right, as if he were reading written instructions hanging before him in the air.

“I shall have to fight them,” he said. “I must fight them, then.”

I interrupted Utterback’s reverie with a question. “How long before they come?”

“Their advance guard, within the hour,” Frere said. “The main body will be two hours or more. My men will try to delay them, but dragoons can’t fight proper cavalry in the field.”

I wondered, as I so often had during the course of the campaign, what dragoons could fight, since they seemed unable to match either foot or horse. Lord Utterback, however, received this latest information with another long silence.

I turned again to Frere. “Can we drive in their advance guard? Be on them with the cavalry before they know we’re here?”

Frere’s bushy eyebrows closed in thought. “Ay, that is possible. But we must be right speedy, and be prepared to retire smartly if those infestulous custrels prove ready for us.”

Hearing this, Lord Utterback made up his mind, and turned to me. “I’ll go forward with the horse,” he said. “You must ready the foot and artillery for when we must fall back.”

“My lord?” I said, but a whirlwind had now taken Utterback’s soul, and he stood in his stirrups, turned, and waved the cavalry on. He trotted back to join them, then led the column off to the left so that all the elements could wheel and come into line, and the air was suddenly full of trumpet calls and shouted orders. “Ranks by threes! Farriers to the rear! Right wheel! Halt, dress! Walk! Halt, dress! By the standard—walk! Halt! Dress your lines!”

The Utterback Troop was experienced at this sort of thing by now, and managed the maneuver well, and as speedily as Captain Frere could have hoped. Soon, Lord Utterback had his troop formed in two lines facing down the slope to the east, with Lord Barkin’s Troop just behind them. The infantry, having received no orders, stood in their column and watched these maneuvers in some surprise.

Lord Utterback, now unable to be still, trotted back and forth in front of the lines as they dressed, then placed himself in front of the standard.

“Ready to advance! Walk!”

From the sidelines, I watched in complete astonishment as the cavalry walked on down the field. In his eagerness to strike the enemy, Lord Utterback had abandoned us, along with most of his army. Frere, who stood with me, turned to me.

“I should gather up my lads. Do what you can here.” His tone was not unkind.

I rode back to where the infantry stood in their marching column, and finding Coronel Ruthven and his party with their lead regiment, I asked him to have his trumpeter make the officers’ call.

I looked over the ground while waiting for the officers to come up, and tried to see it as an experienced soldier might. The flat pasture was nearly as smooth as a bowling green, for any trees or bushes were grazed away by sheep while they were mere sprouts. South of the narrow field, the ground fell away into a ravine, and on the north the land rose into steep cliffs until the escarpment bent away to make a passage to Exton.

The road to Peckside ran east and west down the length of the pasture, but closer to the south side of the field than to the north. At the crossroads, the road to Exton branched off to the north.

Erosion by wagons and other traffic had sunk the roads anywhere from three to six feet below ground level, and thick blackthorn hedges, where tender new leaves were mingled with last year’s black, half-rotted sloes, lined both sides of the roads, broken only occasionally by a wooden gate. The roads were intended as chutes to guide flocks of sheep and cattle to new grazing, but now after the rains, the roads were bogs of mud, and in some places were under water.

I could only think that the hedges and sunken roads that cut across the sett would aid the defense.

“An enemy force is coming on,” I told the officers when they arrived. “Lord Utterback has gone with the horse to attack their advanced body, but he expects he’ll be obliged to retire, and wants us to prepare to fight here.”

Coronel Ruthven was a man of fifty, in elaborate armor of boiled leather sculpted to look like the muscles of an ancient hero. He stroked his gray, pointed beard as he looked with narrowed eyes over Exton Scales. “Yon thick-pleached hedge will make a fine barrier,” he said. “This is a good field for defense, and no way around us.”

My friend Captain Lipton took off his bonnet and scratched his balding head. “I know not where to put the guns,” he said.

I ventured an answer. “In front, I suppose.”

“In front of the hedge? They will be overrun.” He closed one eye and looked over the sett with his remaining eye, as if pretending to view the ground with a telescope.

“We’ll find a way to site your guns,” I told him, “but first we must place the foot.”

That business went more quickly than I’d expected. I was as inexperienced in battle as Lord Utterback, but the customs of war made many of the decisions for me. Ruthven, commanding one of the Trained Bands of Selford, had by custom the position of honor on the right. Bell, as the senior of the two mercenary commanders, took the second position of honor, on the left. That left Grace’s Trained Band inside of Ruthven, and Fludd’s mercenaries between Grace and Bell.

While the sergeants-major ordered their companies on the field, Lipton and I rode off to view the ground, and found a place for his demiculverins on the far left, where the ground rose as it neared Exton. Were the eight guns placed here, they would overlook the entire field, and shot would be fired over our soldiers’ heads to land among the enemy.

From this point of vantage I could see the hedges and the roads winking with water, the flat brown ground, the companies marching to their places with shouldered pikes and hackbuts. Below Exton Scales, the road curved off to the right as it followed the line of the mountain, and from this point of vantage I could see well down the track, far more than I could see from the level ground.

Lipton brought out his telescope and peered down the road. “See you,” said he. “Our demilances return, sure.”

He offered me his telescope and I looked to see horsemen coming up the road. Not lines of disciplined troops such as Lord Utterback had led down to meet the enemy, but small groups, moving slowly. I felt my stomach clench at the sight, and I looked in some desperation for the standards and saw none.

“Is it some disaster?” I asked.

Lipton cackled. “You cannot ask too much of horsemen,” he said. “It is too easy for them to run away. Not like we gunners who must stand by our pieces though hell and hailshot come at us.”

I looked at him. “Do you really do that?” I asked.

“Nay,” he said. “We run. But not as fast as the cavalry.”

“I’ll go down and speak to the horse,” I said.

I rode down to the field while Lipton trotted off to bring up his guns. Passing by the soldiers, who were still deploying, I rode to discover a group of Frere’s dragoons wearily riding along, their bell-mouthed firelocks lying across their saddles. They told me that they had been skirmishing with the advance guard, and were being chased away by cavalry, when Utterback’s horse had arrived, and driven the enemy cavalry back. Captain Frere had then arrived and told them to withdraw and re-form behind the infantry.

The last they had seen of the fight, things were going well for Utterback.

The next groups of horsemen were also dragoons, with much the same story. It was another few minutes before I met demilances of Utterback’s Troop, and these were weary men, some wounded, some with hacked swords and dented armor. Their horses were worn, and walked along with their heads drooping. These said they were driving the enemy, but were then assaulted by fresh forces and forced to fly. None of them knew what had become of Lord Utterback, Lord Barkin, or Captain Snype.

A few more interviews and I understood what had happened. Utterback’s Troop had come upon the dragoons being pursued by enemy horse, who had while chasing split into small bands. Utterback ordered a charge, and faced by the formed troopers, the enemy were driven back until they came up to the first bodies of foot, who formed pike-hedges and held off the attackers while firing hackbuts and calivers into them; and as the Troop milled about in confusion, another enemy unit of horse formed and charged; and this time it was Utterback’s disorganized demilances who were driven back. They fell back upon Lord Barkin’s Troop—and Barkin, because he had kept his men in order, was able to countercharge successfully and knock the enemy back, and that enabled our people to withdraw without pursuit.

I was relieved at this, for it seemed the greater part of our horse had survived, but still I felt an anxious gnawing because I saw not a single officer, not Lord Barkin, or Frere, or Snype, or any of their lieutenants, nor our Captain General Lord Utterback. None of the standards had returned, and the horse were leaderless. Some had lost their horses and were on foot. I told them all to go to the pond and water their animals, and then rally behind the infantry; but I knew not what to do with them after, as they seemed exhausted and beaten.

I was wondering how we would fare without a commander, and whether I should pretend that I was in charge, and whether more experienced soldiers like Ruthven would accept my leadership. It is not without precedent for me to assume an authority that I do not possess, but there was so much at stake, hundreds and perhaps thousands of lives, that command seemed less a pleasure than a dark, approaching pall of cloud swollen with the promise of death and slaughter.

I returned to the lines to view our foot and speak with the coronels. Pikes and pollaxes lined the west side of the hedge four deep, with calivers and hackbuts in the interstices. The standards waved bravely overhead. Behind the line, a few reserve companies loitered on the grass.

In battle, the soldiers with hackbuts and calivers would descend into the sunken road, splash across, and fire through the hedge into the enemy as they approached, then fall back as the rebels came near. Any attackers would have to fight their way through the hedge, then jump down into the sunken road only to fight their way up through the hedge on the other side, with our pikes stabbing down at them.

The only exception to this was on the far right. Most of the foot were lined up behind the road to Exton, but this road ran only to the juncture with the Peckside road, which left fifty yards of clean smooth turf between the Peckside road and the ravine falling away on the south. It was such a narrow front that an advance along it couldn’t be decisive, but Coronel Ruthven had put a company of pikes there, just to discourage any attempt.

I was viewing this area with Coronel Ruthven when a group of straggling dragoons was walking past, and I turned to him and said, “The enemy will attack along our main front, I assume?”

Ruthven was amused. “They can scarce attack anywhere else.”

“Let’s put dismounted dragoons here, ahead of the main body. When the rebels advance, the dragoons will be able to fire into their flank. And if the enemy attacks them, the dragoons can find safety behind the pikes.”

Ruthven considered this. “Ay,” he said. “For what else can we do with dragoons on such a field as this?”

“Or any field,” said I. “For I know not what dragoons are for.”

“Today,” Ruthven said, “we may find out.”

I rode up the scales to find the dragoons where they were rallying by the pond, and sent them down to the field. Then, from my higher position on the pasture, I could look down over the hedge, and I saw a body of horsemen approaching from the east, riding under three standards. My heart gave a leap as I recognized Lord Utterback’s blue standard among them, and I urged my horse down the gentle slope to join them.

Lord Utterback rode abreast with Lord Barkin and Captain Frere, each beneath his own banner, and followed by fifty or so horsemen drawn from the three units. Utterback rode perfectly straight in the saddle, his eyes fixed to the front, lower lids drooping to show a lot of white below the pupils. He still held his straight sword in his right fist, and the steel cage that protected his face was lowered. His plume had been clipped short, and I saw fresh dimples on his breastplate where bullets had rebounded.

“You should congratulate your armorer, my lord,” I said as I reined up and joined the party. “Proofs you bear now that his steel is proof indeed.”

Utterback gave me a strange white-eyed look, as if he did not comprehend my words. His right hand clenched on the hilt of his sword. Perhaps, I thought, he was not in the humor for such badinage. I essayed again.

“I am heartily glad to see you, my lord,” I told him. “I have tried to put the soldiers in order, and I hope my dispositions will meet with your approval.”

Utterback said nothing, and Lord Barkin spoke up instead.

“We have been trying to sweep up as many of our men as we can,” he said. “Have many come ahead of us?”

“Indeed,” I said. “I’ve told them to water their horses at the pond, then rally behind the foot. The dragoons I have put on the far right, to harass the enemy as they advance. But they have had no horse-officers till now.”

“We shall set them in order,” said Barkin.

Coronel Ruthven met us as we rode into our lines, and saluted Lord Utterback with a cheerful smile. “Would you come and inspect us, my lord?”

For the first time, Utterback spoke. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I shall do that.” He reined up. “Let me see your brave fellows, coronel.”

Lord Barkin and the others streamed up the slope as Ruthven and I guided Lord Utterback over the field. He returned the soldiers’ salutes with a brandish of his sword, and spoke little, but approvingly, of everything he saw.

We ended on the far left, just under the rise where Lipton had drawn up his guns. We turned our horses toward the guns, and Lord Utterback leaned toward me.

“I know not what happened when we met the enemy,” he said.

“My lord?”

“I know not what happened. I could not see.” His helmet rattled as he gave a shake of his head. “The enemy were not there, and then they were all about us. I tried to give orders, but there were precious few to hear. I fought—I struck at them. Then I seemed to be all alone, with troops of enemy horse charging, and I had to fly. I clashed with some of them, then Lord Barkin found me and took me back.” He shook his head again. “I know not what happened.”

“You drove them in, my lord,” I said. “And most of the men have come back. So, that is a victory.”

“Is it?”

I put on my sincere face. “I believe it is, my lord.”

“I know not. I hope that is so, but I know not.”

He rode up the slope toward the guns. They had all been placed, and the limbers and wagons withdrawn. Lipton and his men had taken off their boots, had opened barrels of powder, and were pouring the powder out onto tarpaulins.

“Captain!” said I in surprise. “What is this?”

Lipton looked up from his work, then came toward us in his bare feet, holding out his hands. “Keep back, your honors,” he said. “You don’t want your horseshoes striking sparks near that powder.”

I hastily drew my horse back. “What are you doing with the gunpowder?”

“The powder has separated, sure,” said Lipton. “Days of rattling up and down these mountains has shaken the serpentine powder in its barrels, and the nitre has come adrift from the sulphur and charcoal.” He made heaping gestures with his hands. “We must remix the powder by hand and return it to the barrels before we can use it.” He looked up at the sky. “Gods be thanked, it is not raining.”

“Gods be thanked,” I repeated. “You will finish this task before the battle begins?”

“Fear not, your honors,” said Lipton. “Once the powder is remixed, you can count on each gun firing every four or five minutes, sure.”

That seemed not such a good pace. “Is that the best you can manage?” asked I. “When I was on a privateer, the powder was in premade linen bags that were stuffed down the muzzle. Can you not use such cartridges, instead of ladling the powder into your weapons?”

Lipton put on a dignified expression. “It is part of our art to know exactly how much powder to ladle into the gun, so that the ball may land exactly where intended.”

“Yet if you could more than double your rate of fire, would that not compensate for a certain amount of inaccuracy?”

“Yet the powder would still separate, whether it was in linen bags or no,” said Lipton. “Can you imagine us opening hundreds of those bags, remixing the powder, and then stuffing it into the bags again and sewing them up?”

“The privateer needed not to do this.”

Lipton looked over his shoulder at the powder, and then shook his head.

“A privately owned ship may buy good corned powder,” Lipton said. “Corned powder does not separate. But that is not permitted to us.”

I looked at him in surprise. “Why may you not have corned powder?”

“The royal army is required to purchase its powder from the Royal Powder Mill outside Selford, and the Royal Powder Mill does not make corned powder—has no reason to, you see, because they are guaranteed to sell to the army and navy whether their powder is good or no. So, they make this inferior serpentine powder, and we gunners must suffer.”

Lord Utterback showed no surprise at this revelation. “Well,” said he. “You may return to your mixing.”

“Very well, your lordship.”

When Lipton returned to his task, Lord Utterback remained unmoving, sitting very straight on his horse with his sword still in his hand.

“My lord,” I said. “You can put your sword away.”

He looked at the sword in his fist as if seeing it for the first time, and then drove it into the scabbard.

“My lord,” I said. “You can see the enemy from here.” I pointed down the slope, to where the road curved away to the right.

I had bought a cheap cardboard telescope in Selford, and I drew it from its scabbard and put it to my eye. The rebels had resumed their advance down the road, and the lead elements of horse were already filtering up onto the scales, and were in sight of our force. I could see light winking from the enemy telescopes as they viewed our line, all drawn up behind the hedge with their flags flying above.

Farther down the road was nothing but long dark lines of men marching beneath a waving succession of banners. Occasionally the sun winked off a spear-point or a piece of armor, but of particulars I could make out nothing.

“Perhaps, my lord,” I said, “you can see more than I can.”

Lord Utterback brought out his own telescope, a far more useful device than my cardboard toy, and tried to use it, but then realized his face-cage was in the way. He raised the cage, then applied the glass to his eye. His face remained expressionless as he viewed the marching enemy, and then I could see his lips move as he counted regimental flags. Then he stopped counting, and leaned forward.

“Lipton!” he said. “Bring us your glass!”

The gunner hastened to us, drawing his brass-mounted telescope from its case as he came. Utterback made an impatient gesture.

“Give it to Quillifer!”

I tucked my own glass under my arm, took Lipton’s instrument, and put it to my eye. The enemy force appeared in much greater clarity than previously—and my heart sank as I realized their numbers were greater than I had imagined.

“Look about a third of the way back,” Utterback said. “See you that white banner?”

“Ay.”

“It is carried on a cart, is it not? Drawn by white oxen?”

“Ay.”

“Can you see what badge it bears?”

I looked, but with the distance and the banner’s rippling in the wind, I could see little. “I believe it carries a shield.”

“The Pilgrim save us,” Utterback breathed. He lowered his glass. “I believe it is the Carrociro.”

My heart sank. “The royal standard,” I said.

“It is flown only in the presence of the monarch,” said Lord Utterback. “Or in this case the Regent, who is Clayborne. And Clayborne would not be here were this not his main force.”

At once I understood the situation. The Knight Marshal had intended to descend from the mountains and strike at Clayborne’s left, while Clayborne planned to march over Exton Pass to strike at the left of the Queen’s Army. If both succeeded, they would swing round each other like couples at a dance, each ending in the other’s rear. But if Clayborne broke through us while his improvised entrenchments at Peckside held off the Marshal, then he would be in the Marshal’s rear and in perfect position to destroy him.

I turned to Utterback. “My lord,” I said, “you must send to the Marshal for aid.”

He blinked at me, then nodded. “I will write him a message. You stay here and count the enemy and see how many regiments are coming at us, then report to me.”

“I will, my lord.”

Lord Utterback galloped away, clods of mud flying from his horse’s hooves, and I returned Lipton’s glass to my eye. It was difficult to count the enemy, to distinguish regimental flags from guidons carried by individual companies, the ensigns used to mark administrative units, or from the personal banners of knights and lords and other persons of quality.

Lipton’s voice came near my elbow. “It is a pity that the Captain General threw away the cavalry too soon.”

I clenched my teeth. “The charge delayed the enemy. We must hope for more delay.”

“Oh, ay.” Lipton’s voice was meditative. “But you will scarce get two charges out of cavalry in a day. Even if the troopers prove willing, sure the horses may not.”

I was all too familiar with the wayward perversity of horses. I looked down at him. “You are full of cheer this day.”

He grinned up at me. “Fear not, youngster. You have a fine horse, and may run away at need. Those other cavalry, their horses are tired and they will all be cut down before you.”

Cut down because Utterback, at my urging, had thrown away the one charge our horse could be counted on to make.

I wondered if I had lost the campaign, or possibly the entire war, with that single suggestion.

“But this field—” Lipton waved a hand in the direction of the enemy. “This will be different. It will be decided by push of pike. For enemy horse may not attempt those hedges, and the hedges conceal our soldiers from the firelocks. The rebels must drive their pikes at us till we break, or they give up, or our succor arrives.”

Our succor was at least twelve hours away, or so I calculated. “Have you any more of these cheerful little posies to scatter before me?” I asked.

He rubbed his unshaven chin with a powder-blackened hand. “You must hearten the foot, that they not run. Tell them help is on its way, and hope the gods may forgive your lie.”

I raised the telescope again, and made another attempt to count the flags that swarmed before my eyes. I made my best approximation and handed the telescope back to Lipton. His men were madly refilling the powder barrels with wooden scoops.

“Do your best to kill the enemy today,” I said. “And if you knock off Clayborne’s head, I’ll buy you a nice bottle of claret.”

Lipton doffed his cap in mock humility. “I’m sure that is the best a common soldier such as I can hope for or deserve.” I rode on after Utterback, and found him by the stone huts where we had spent the night, dismounted and writing on his camp table.

“I counted ten regiments of foot,” said I, “and two of horse, and in addition three batteries of guns. And there are more enemy behind them.”

This last statement was the only one in which I had confidence. I had done my best, but all I could say for certain was that we were severely outnumbered. For we had four regiments of foot, the equivalent of a regiment of cavalry, and Lipton’s eight field pieces.

Lord Utterback duly added my numbers to his message, then sanded and sealed the paper. “I pray the Knight Marshal credits the report.”

“So do I.”

He gave the message to Oscar, and detailed one of his own troopers to ride alongside the boy. “As fast as ever you can, now,” he said. “And give it right to the Marshal’s hand.”

“Ay, sir.” Oscar touched his brow, vaulted onto one of Lord Utterback’s spare chargers, and made off at a trot.

I turned to look at the cavalry, which were regrouping under the expert guidance of Lord Barkin. The troopers had sorted themselves out into their units, and were dismounted and for the most part spending their time caring for their horses.

“You might wish to move the cavalry back,” I said to Utterback. “Here they will be exposed to artillery.”

“You may order that, with my authority.” So, I trotted up to Lord Barkin, and told him that he could draw the cavalry back to where our wagons had been grouped.

“You and all the horse have the Captain General’s compliments!” I said, in a voice loud enough for those near to hear. “You have struck the enemy hard, and they will be a long time recovering!”

This seemed to cheer the weary troopers, and I hoped it was at least partly true. I leaned closer to Lord Barkin and said in a voice for him alone. “Move them back and put some heart into them, for if the foot give way, you must retrieve the situation.”

He nodded. “Ay,” he said. “I shall try to have them ready.” His expression told me he didn’t expect the foot to hold out for long.

I returned to Lord Utterback, who I found sitting heavily on his camp chair with his helmet in his lap. His eyes were fixed on the mountain peaks to the north, as if he were expecting something from that direction, a message or a sign or a rescue.

“Are you all right, my lord?” I asked him. “You are not wounded?”

“No, I am well.” He searched himself with his hands, as if assuring himself of his own well-being. “I am ready to fight,” he said. “I will fight. But I am a little tired right now.”

“Will you join me in a glass of cider?” It was all I could think to say.

He considered my question. “Brandy would be better.”

I dismounted and found the cask and a pair of silver glasses, took the stopper out of the bunghole, and poured. I handed Lord Utterback his glass, and squatted by him. I raised my glass.

“To victory,” I said.

He looked at me as if the word “victory” were a stranger to him, but then he raised his glass.

“Whyever should I not?” he said. “To victory, then.”

He drank half the brandy in one gulp, then sat for a moment contemplating the glass in his hand. The first stirrings of wind began to sigh down the pasture.

“This is all so unlike what I expected,” he said. He looked sidelong at me. “Is it the same for you?”

“I don’t know what I expected,” I said. “But I rather thought war would be better organized.”

He offered an amused smile. “I thought that once the fighting began, it would be over quickly. Victory or defeat, like the last act of a play. Instead, it just seems to continue.”

I sipped my brandy, and the harsh fumes stung the back of my throat. “My lord, the men are standing behind the hedge with nothing to do but watch the enemy come in large numbers onto the field. They must be told what is happening.”

Lord Utterback slowly nodded and sipped his brandy. “Yes,” he said. “They must. I see that they must.”

“They must be told that help is coming, that the whole army is coming. That they must fight on until the Marshal comes.”

Utterback gave another slow nod, then drank off the rest of the brandy and handed the empty glass to me. He clapped his hands to his knees and heaved himself upright in a clatter of armor.

“Hold Amfortas for me, will you?”

I rose and took the charger’s bridle. Lord Utterback put on his helmet and tied the chin strap, then got a foot into a stirrup and hauled himself into the saddle.

“I shall give the men some good cheer,” he said. “You keep the rebels under observation, and report to me when necessary.”

And off he trotted, while his flag-bearer scrambled to get into his seat. I pulled the flag from the ground and handed it to the ensign, who raced off after Utterback, the blue flag snapping in the wind.

Lord Utterback was developing the habit of leaving his people behind whenever he made up his mind to take some form of action.

I finished my brandy, then mounted Phrenzy and returned to the knoll where Lipton was remixing more gunpowder. I looked at the enemy with my cardboard telescope, and I could see them filing onto the far end of Exton Scales, huge dense blocks of men glittering with weapons. Rebel scouts and officers ranged forward to try to get a look at what was behind the hedges. The royal banner of the Carrociro had not yet reached the field on its cart.

The pot helmet was murdering my skull. The sun had warmed my breastplate and back, and between that and the thick buff coat, I was growing hot. I took the helmet off and wiped my forehead.

Then I heard cheering from the far end of the field, and I turned my glass to see Lord Utterback on his horse, addressing Ruthven’s soldiers. As he came into focus, I saw him brandish a fist, and cheers roared out again.

He seemed to be raising their spirits. I wished someone would raise mine.

Lord Utterback progressed down the field, addressing each group of soldiers in turn. He sent the bandsmen back to the wagons for their instruments, and soon there was music, pipes and drums, sackbuts and trumpets, each of the bands playing in turn. The morning took on a jaunty air, and I thought it was well that the soldiers had things to occupy their minds other than their own present doom.

Doom, on the other hand, was very much on my mind as I watched the enemy come onto the field.

The diversions continued for another two hours, in which I relieved Phrenzy of my weight and searched the saddlebags for biscuits to gnaw on. By now, the Carrociro was on the field, and the growing breeze rippled the great white flag so that I could see the shield on it, with the tritons of Fornland quartered with the griffons of Bonille, the shield supported by the horses of the Emelins. I began to feel an echo of Lord Utterback’s impatience: war seemed mainly to consist of standing and waiting.

The sun was nearing noon when a great trumpet blast echoed over the sett, followed by the boom and rattle of drums, and the first attack began to move forward: three dense squares of pikes, flags flaunting overhead, each square flanked by men carrying hackbuts. At the sight and sound a warning sensation prickled along my skin, as if my hair were rising like that of a frightened cat. My heart began to pound in time with the drums.

Our band music died away, as the musicians dropped their instruments and ran to their places in the line.

I could see the dense oncoming formations easily enough without my glass, so I put my telescope in its case, tied on my burgonet, and jumped aboard my horse. Lord Utterback’s flag rippled down at the crossroads, and so I spurred down the slope to him, finding him on the far right, with the dismounted dragoons, peering through the hedge at the approaching enemy, his gauntlets holding back the thorns.

“Three squares coming for us, with the hackbuts in between,” I reported.

He nodded. “I will abide here on the right. Go you to the left, and hearten the men. If things go amiss, let me know.”

“Very well, my lord.”

At least he was not likely to wander off and leave me behind.

While the enemy drums thundered across the field, I rode left to Fludd’s regiment of mercenaries, and leaving my horse in the care of a boy I joined the commander in the muddy Exton road. He was a small, excitable man, with a close-cropped gray beard and a patch over one eye.

He had filled the mucky road with his handgunners, all armed with calivers. The first rank had thrust their firelocks through the hedge and awaited the word to fire. Fludd himself kept peering out through the hedge, only to turn his head and shout aloud to his companies.

“Hold fast ’gainst these salt-butter soldiers!” he cried in a high tenor. “Those mouse-eaters cannot stand up to our mad regiment of fire-eating bawcocks! Ha! Look you, their faces are pale as quicklime, and they will fall apart like maggot-ridden pies when they taste your fire!”

Lord Utterback had sent me to hearten the soldiers, but Coronel Fludd was doing a better job of it than ever I could. I waited for him to draw breath, then spoke. “Coronel,” said I, “I am sent by Lord Utterback to make certain you lack nothing.”

My last words were drowned out by a blast, followed by a tearing, shuddering sound overhead, like shrieking, chimerical fiends flying out of the western sky. I ducked, seeking shelter in my cuirass like a startled tortoise in his shell. Fludd looked at me as laughter burst from his throat.

“Take heart, whey-guts!” he said. “Have you never stood beneath a bombardment?”

For it was Lipton’s demiculverins, firing over our heads into the enemy, the solid iron shot tearing apart the air. More shots followed, and Coronel Fludd again peered through the hedge.

“Fair shot!” he said. “That has opened their files, by the Pilgrim’s nose!”

I counted eight shots, and knew the demiculverins would take another four or five minutes to reload. I made a hole in the hedge, wedging aside the thorns, and looked through it. The enemy was still coming on, perhaps two hundred yards away, their armor glowing in the sun, their bright banners still flying. They looked as terrifying and unstoppable as a cold spring tide rolling over the breakwater.

Fludd drew his sword. “Stand by, my keen-eyed bullies! Blow on your matches, and mark your prey! Your shot will mow ’em!”

I heard shots from elsewhere on the field, and my heart leaped. I could see very little from my hole in the blackthorn hedge, and whoever was shooting was out of my sight.

“Aim, my sweet lambkins!” called Fludd. And then, “Let fly!”

The calivers cracked out, white smoke gushing onto the field. Through the haze I saw a few rebels fall, and some others who clutched at arms or legs, or who let their pikes droop when struck in the hand or arm.

Coronel Fludd’s high tenor voice sang over the battlefield. “First line, back! Step up, second line!

The well-drilled mercenaries did not wait for the order. Those who had fired fell back to reload, and more men rushed up to the hedge and leveled their weapons. Shots cracked out, and more enemy fell. And as the third line rushed up to the hedge, I saw, to my complete amazement, that the enemy column had come to a halt.

Another rattling volley dropped more of the enemy. And now the first rank of the enemy hackbuts dropped their pieces into their rests and returned fire, and shots filled the air like drumbeats. Leaves and twigs fell from above, and I realized that the enemy didn’t understand that the Exton road had sunk below the level of the ground, and they were all firing over our heads. It was the pikemen behind us who were in danger, and anyone foolish enough to ride a horse behind the hedge.

The first row of enemy hackbuts turned and fell back, and the second row advanced to plant their rests and fire. More twigs and sloes dropped on our shoulders and helmets, and I saw that the wind was blowing the gunsmoke back into the rebels’ faces. They were far more blind than we.

Fludd’s men were all madly reloading. I continued to stare out through the hedge at the enemy force, which seemed so close that I could almost reach out and touch them. They continued to stand as Fludd’s calivers thrust again through the hedge, and more of the front ranks of enemy fell.

Their own firearms were now all reloading. The hackbuts were long weapons that had to be fired from a rest, and because of their length, possessed greater range and were more like to penetrate armor, but they took longer to load than Fludd’s calivers, and at this short range the effect of the bullets was much the same. Fludd’s marksmen fired steel shot to pierce enemy armor, and even though the front ranks of the great squares were made up of the best-armored men, and much of the armor proof, the calivers nevertheless had their effect, and soon there was a line of bodies to mark the front of the enemy formation.

My ideas of warfare were formed by literature, and I had expected the enemy to hurl themselves on us in one great mass like poetical heroes; but instead they stood and let us shoot at them, replying only with the hackbuts on the flanks. While I had learned that much of warfare consisted of simply standing about waiting for something to happen, I could not imagine why this spirit of the waiting-room would prevail even under fire.

While I watched, there was another roar and shriek overhead as a demiculverin fired, and I saw a blur as the ten-pound shot plunged into the enemy mass and reaped a bloody path through its ranks. Pikes whipped in the air, and I saw arms and heads flailing as if they were saplings tossed by a tempest. More great gunshots followed, but I saw no strikes, possibly because most of the guns were firing at the enemy closest to them, the regiment to my left, and I could see but little of it through my little hole in the hedge.

The enemy line had been standing there long enough for Lipton’s guns to reload. I had not thought this test of fire had gone on so long.

After the last of Lipton’s battery had finished shattering the air, I heard a perfect racket of fire rising from the right, and I put my head farther into the hedge to try to discover what was happening. Such was the sea of gunsmoke that I could see very little, but at that moment trumpets blared, and drums rolled, and the rebel regiment on my right lurched forward, the flags dipping forward as if leaning into a great storm. The pikemen crossed the sward to the hedge in just a few seconds, and I could see the pikes dip to skewer anyone in the sunken road.

I pulled my head back and looked down the road, and I could see our handgunners surging away from the attack, diving to safety through the hedge or running up the road toward me. There followed a pause as the rebels fought their way through the blackthorn and into the road, and then a clattering, thrashing din, as pikes and pollaxes and war hammers began to batter steel. The sight was horrifying, as the enemy struggled forward against the pikes stabbing down to pin them against the mud surface of the road. They had to fight their way between the pikes as if through a forest, and all the while shorten their own pikes to stab blindly up into the hedge. Our handgunners, crowded to the sides, fired point-blank into their flanks. It was like a scene from a giant abattoir, where hundreds of animals had been brought down chutes to slaughter at once, and a vast machinery of blades and death were unleashed on them. Yet the enemy came on, leaping and stumbling and falling into the sunken road, fighting their way forward until they were hacked and stabbed and pinned screaming to the mud, where they would drown in mere inches of bloody water.

I tore my eyes away from the scene and thrust my head again through my little hole in the hedge, for I could not believe that the regiment to my front would not charge to support its comrades. But still the enemy hung back, their front marked by a growing line of their fallen.

Then I heard a great cheer—“Hur-rah, hur-rah, hur-rah. Howel! Howel! Howel!”—and I turned to my left to see the enemy regiment on our left lumber forward into a charge. Roaring like madmen, they struck the hedge, and fought their way through the blackthorn as Bell’s handgunners fled or hurled themselves through the friendly hedge to safety on the other side.

And then there was a great blow to my head, and I fell back into the road stunned. My ears rang like temple bells, and I found myself sprawled at the bottom of the road, foaming water rising to my mouth and nose. A terror of drowning seized me, and I gasped for breath as I struggled to my feet against the weight of my armor. My helmet had been knocked down across my forehead, and I could barely see; and so I wrenched the helmet off and saw then the bright crease on the crown where the bullet had struck me a glancing blow. Perhaps I’d been unlucky, or maybe an enemy had seen me peering through the hedge and taken aim with his hackbut.

I gasped for air and tried to calm the furious drumming of my heart. Bullets continued to fly overhead, clipping blackthorn twigs and last year’s withered sloe, and it occurred to me to put my helmet back on.

The fighting to the left and right went on, men dying by the dozens in the sunken road. Ten-pound shot shredded the air overhead, and I heard them plunge into the enemy without any desire to peer again through the hedge and observe. That fire from Lipton’s guns seems to have decided the commander of the regiment in the center, for suddenly there were trumpets and drums and roaring to our front, and Fludd turned away from the hedge with a mad gleam in his one eye.

“Back, my rampallions!” he cried. “The ill-faced cullions come, and bring their nut-hooks!”

I realized we were at last to be charged. I felt and new and desperate fear of being caught in the killing ground of the sunken road, and I turned to make my escape. Some tunnels had been cut into the hedges for just this purpose, and I was first to leap like a salmon for one of the openings. I crawled through on my belly, and then friendly hands seized my armpits, pulled me to safety, and then flung me down on the brown grass.

My face burning with cuts from the hedge-thorns, I crawled away past the forest of legs in my path, then rose to my feet. Handgunners were diving through the blackthorn with their calivers, and the roar to the front was increasing. I returned to the hedge to help draw the refugees through, pulling in one grinning soldier after another, until I grabbed the last and pulled, only to see hear his laugh turn to a shriek as he was stabbed from behind, a pike going up between his buttocks and through his bowels. I pulled him free but he left a bloody trail on the grass, and by that time the great clanging noise had gone up as the butchery in the road commenced.

I dragged the victim to safety, but his face was white and he was already unconscious, and I thought he had but moments to live. Images of the dead of Ethlebight came flooding into my mind, phantoms whose bloody aspect were strengthened by the shrieks and sounds of war. I reeled under the onslaught of remembered horror, and I realized I would go mad if I continued to stand there like a fool. I had to do something. So, I drew my sword and charged to war.

It was not an excess of courage that sent me to the slaughter, for I was driven on by fear, fear of being overtaken by my own terrors. The reality of the slaughterhouse was preferable to the phantoms of my own mind.

Battle wasn’t hard to find. The blocks of pikemen had dissolved and spread across the entire front, and I ran to one area that seemed more lightly held than the rest, right on the boundary of the regiments of Fludd and Grace. I shouldered my way between pikemen till I came to the hedge and stabbed down with my sword at figures seen only dimly through the blackthorn. Thrusts came back at me, and I seized a pike and tried to cut at the hand that held it, but the blackthorn hedge itself repelled me. My sword lacked the length to reach the enemy, and all I could do was defend myself; and then one of the pikemen near me reeled back from a thrust that had gone through his armpit into his shoulder, and he dropped his weapon.

I caught the ash pole in my free hand. I thrust my sword into the turf, picked the pike up in both hands, and thrust it overhand at a barely seen enemy, almost hurling it. I felt the blade strike home, in who or what I do not know, and raised the pike to stab again. An enemy weapon grated against my breastplate, and I knocked it away with an elbow and thrust down at the man who held it. I felt the impact as the pike’s twelve-inch steel blade drove through the rebel’s cuirass, and the pike that had struck at me sagged from nerveless hands. To keep an enemy from using it against me, I seized it with one hand and threw it behind me.

The fighting went on, the pikemen hammering down into the sunken road while our handgunners ducked and dodged around us, firing into the enemy when they could. The sound around me was deafening, clattering and hammering and shouts and grunts and screams, and I could not hear when I struck something. I could rarely see the enemy for more than an instant, and though I could feel the impact when I struck them, I rarely knew whether I was hitting hand or foot or chest or shoulder, or whether I merely scraped the armor. As I kept on stabbing down, my untrained arms and shoulders grew tired, and I felt the breath sobbing in and out of my throat.

In time, the fighting died away. No one had called a halt, but the enemy had run out of soldiers willing to dive into the sunken road. Instead, the handgunners of both sides fired half-blind across the gap while our men jeered the rebels’ cowardice, and I leaned on my pike and gasped with exhaustion, the sweat coursing down into my eyes. Eventually, the trumpets on the other side blew a retreat, and the enemy shouldered their weapons and marched away. Our handgunners leaped into the ditch and pursued them with shot, and then Lipton’s guns began roaring at the retreating mass. Men swarmed into the ditch to loot the bodies.

I wished not to view this work, and began to think I should report to Lord Utterback; and so, I retrieved my sword, found my horse in the care of the boy to whom I had entrusted it, and rode to where I could see the blue flag still flying near the crossroads.

Silence had fallen over the field, though my ears still rang. It was strange to hear the thud of Phrenzy’s hooves and the creaking of my leather saddle after the overwhelming noise of battle.

I found Utterback already in conference with Ruthven. “It will be an hour or more before the bastard Clayborne comes again,” Ruthven said. “We should make the most of our time.”

“Should I have the bands start playing again?” asked Lord Utterback. He was panting a little for breath, as if he’d run a hundred yards, and his eyes darted over the field, as if he were searching for something he could not find.

Ruthven raised his eyebrows. “Wherefore should the bands not play? Though I had in mind making sure the men had food and drink.”

“Yes. Of course. An excellent idea.”

Lord Utterback turned his horse and set off at once for the commissary, leaving a bemused Ruthven in his wake. I followed, along with the ensign and his flag. Utterback rode to the commissary and ordered a wagon loaded with biscuits and cheeses brought down to the field. From there we rode to the pond, where we waded our horses into the water and let them drink. Watering parties arrived from the regiments, men each carrying a dozen or more water bottles to be refilled, and so at least they had water.

I took off my helmet and rejoiced as the fresh air cooled the sweat that soaked my hair. I hadn’t realized until I’d come up the slope how heavy was the murk of gunpowder below, and I joyfully filled my lungs with crisp, bracing air.

While the horses drank their fill, I reported to Lord Utterback of the fight on the left.

“Were our casualties heavy?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think we did very well, and no one ran away.”

“That’s also what happened on the right.” He nodded at me. “The dismounted dragoons hurt them badly, firing into their flank. That was a very fine idea of yours.”

“They’ll be ready for the dragoons, next time,” I said. “We should try to think of a way to counter it.”

We stopped by our camp at the stone huts for some biscuit, cheese, and a crock of goose-liver pâté. We each took another glass of brandy, and after we finished he took my arm.

“I know not what I’m doing,” he said. “My mind is like an empty piece of paper, and I can’t think what to write on it.”

“You’re doing very well,” I told him. “No commander could do better.”

I spoke with perfect truth, for I could not see aught we could do but what we were already doing. But he seemed not to credit my words.

“I wish I were anywhere but here,” he said. His eyes stared into an abyss.

He went back to the lines, to speak to the commanders and congratulate the soldiers, and I returned to Lipton’s battery, where I could best spy the enemy. As I rode up, Lipton walked out to meet me. There was a streak of gunpowder across his face.

“You’ve stopped shooting,” I observed.

“The range is long,” he said, “and the supply of powder and shot is limited. I can fire some more if you insist, but the results will be dubious.” A grin broke across his powder-streaked face. “The shooting was fine while it lasted, sure. As a rule, after such rains as we have had, the shot would dig into the muddy ground when fired as we do from above, but the field falls away in the same degree as the course of the ball, and so we are knocking them down like lawn skittles.” He offered me his glass. “As you can see.”

I put the telescope to my eye, and I could see at once what he meant. Dead bodies were stretched out on the field in lines that seemed to radiate from the battery. The demiculverins were knocking them down six or eight at a time. The enemy regiment nearest the guns had suffered the most, but some of the guns at least had targeted the regiment in the center, with the result I had glimpsed from my position in the hedge.

I did not want to look at the bodies too closely, and I lowered the glass.

He laughed. “A heartening sight, is it not?”

I looked at where the enemy had stood, the lines of corpses stretching out where the artillery had found them, other rows of dead at the front of the pike formations where they had halted under fire.

“Why did they stand so long without charging?” I asked.

“Ah.” His mouth twisted. “I think each coronel wanted one of the others to charge first, and watch how he fared. It was their first good look at our position, and none of them liked it.” He gestured broadly with one hand. “They charged home first on our right. That was where the flank fire was galling them, and there they had to retreat or go ahead.”

I put the glass to my eye again and looked farther down the sett. The disorganized mob of men that had withdrawn were sorting themselves out into their companies again. Behind them, dark masses of men stood unmoving beneath bright flags.

Time passed. I got off my horse and sat on the brown grass. The wagon of cheese and biscuits arrived for the soldiers, and later a wagon of beer. The bands played again. The great royal banner flew over the Carrociro. Lord Utterback progressed along the line, as he had before, and the soldiers cheered him when he told them how brave they were. The bright sun warmed me and made me drowsy, and the entire world seemed to be drowsing with me.

The drowse ended with motion at the far end of the field, and still sitting, I propped Lipton’s glass on one raised knee and looked to see artillery coming up the lanes between the enemy soldiers. I rolled to my feet—the easiest way to rise in armor—and went in search of Lipton.

“Enemy guns,” I said.

He took his glass, looked briefly, and called an order to his men. “Stand by your pieces!” Then he looked again, and frowned, and lowered his glass.

“Three batteries of demiculverins, and another battery of culverins. Those last are properly siege guns and will make things warm for us, sure, and so you may wish to stand apart.”

“Can you defeat them?”

“I will try, but if those crews are trained members of my guild, most like I will have to run.”

I looked at him in surprise. “Oh, ay,” he said. “For what would you have, all of us killed at our stations, and for naught? We shall retire out of the enemy’s sight, only to return later, when we are needed. Our guild rules permit this.”

“Can you not bring up the horses and take the guns to safety?”

“Nay.” He seemed amused. “Know you not that the Guild of Carters and Haulers is not obliged to endure the enemy’s fire? They have placed our guns, and will retrieve them when the battle is over and the field is safe.”

“And yet we pay them full guild rates? No wonder the expense of wars is so ruinous.”

“I cannot speak against them. Guildsmen must stand together.” Though he said it without conviction.

I mounted and rode to report to Lord Utterback, and before the words left my mouth, the first of Lipton’s guns fired. It was the brave opening shot in an unequal contest, one that the rest of both armies could watch from their positions on the sidelines. For not another ten minutes had passed before the first of the enemy guns was firing, and soon solid shot was kicking up earth near Lipton’s battery. I could foresee the inevitable outcome, and I clenched my teeth.

“Can these guns not be suppressed?” I asked.

Lord Utterback looked at me. “But how?” he said. “Our own guns are outnumbered.”

“Rock-paper-scissors,” I said, and leaving my horse with Utterback’s party sought out Fludd and Colonel Grace. “Can we not send out our handgunners, and shoot us some of these gunners?”

“Those odious pizzle-brains have no supports,” Fludd said. “Ay, we may pink ’em, to be sure.”

“Presently, they are firing at our guns,” said Grace. “Should they drive in the quoins and lower the barrels to aim at you, you must fly before they cut you up with hailshot.”

I passed the word and spoke also to Ruthven and Bell, and all agreed to send their handgunners out under my direction. Captured armor and weapons, and those belonging to the wounded or the dead, lay on the grass behind the lines, and so I found a caliver for myself on the ground. I took a powder horn for priming, and a box with compartments for bullets and wads, put a bandoleer over my shoulder from which dangled the little wooden bottles holding a premeasured charge of powder, and placed myself with Fludd’s men.

The hedge that stood between the road and the enemy had suffered in that first contest and, though it still stood as a considerable barrier to a louting great host of men, was porous enough to take a small number through at a time. Still, passing the hedge was the worst moment of all, for all the dead rebels, naked or stripped to their small-clothes, had been drawn out of the sunken road and left to lie before the hedge, both to get them out of the way and to deter the enemy, who would have to pass a host of their own dead before they could attack us.

I moved gingerly into the field of corpses and then froze in my tracks at the sight of a dead woman, stripped and flung out on the field with the rest. She was young, and I wondered what had brought her to this end, whether she had come for love of a man, love of adventure, or love of Clayborne. Whatever dream had brought her here, it was to end in her being stabbed in a muddy ditch by pikes, drowned in bloody water, and then flung naked on the winter grass.

One of the other handgunners brushed past me, and it broke the spell. I lifted my eyes ahead, to the rebel batteries, and kept them there as I walked through the field of dead. The enemy, standing by their guns two hundred fifty yards away, were wholly occupied with firing up at our battery, and furthermore the wind was still blowing their own powder-smoke in their faces, and so they did not see us as we loped toward them across the sward. Gunshot howled over our heads. At a hundred yards the hackbuts were laid in their rests and aimed, and the calivers brought to the shoulder. I raised my own caliver, blew on the match till it glowed red as a cherry, and peered along the smooth round surface of the barrel, to aim at an officer holding a telescope.

“Mark your men!” I called, but some were already firing, and so I pressed the trigger. The serpentine dropped into the pan, the powder ignited, and the caliver kicked like a donkey against my shoulder. I didn’t see that officer again, but I doubt that it was I who hit him, as I had but little practice with shoulder weapons.

The scent of gunpowder clung to the back of my throat. I dropped the caliver’s butt to the ground and reached for one of the little wooden powder bottles dangling from my bandoleer, then opened the bottle and poured the powder down the muzzle. The box for bullets had compartments for steel and lead shot, and because the gunners wore no armor, I chose a lead bullet and dropped it down the barrel, then rammed all down with a wad on top. After which I primed the pan and lifted again the weapon to my shoulder.

Being unused to the weapon, I was slow in reloading, and the other handgunners fired their second shots before me, and as they loaded again, they laughed and catcalled our targets, who crewed such mighty bronze weapons yet could not reply. The rebel gunners ran back and forth, shouting and conferring, and then I saw frantic gunners driving the quoins beneath the breeches of their guns, to push the barrels low to fire at us.

“One more shot!” I called. “Then back to the hedge!”

I fired my final shot and so far as I could tell did no execution, and then I set an example by moving away from the enemy, trotting backward while still facing the rebels, and as the others took their shots, they followed. Certainly, it was time to retire, as I saw the gunners driving into their long barrels the canvas bags of hailshot.

Once the whole mass began to retire, I turned and ran, waving my caliver overhead as a signal, and we all ran back whooping, and had overleaped the dead and were at the hedge before the first shots came after us, the hailshot making wild, wailing cries in the air. Hailshot is any kind of small iron stuff, musquet balls, small iron balls such as are fired by falconets, nails, wire, or simply odd pieces of iron cut up or broken, then stuffed in canvas bags. The sound this odd iron makes as it tumbles through the air is eerie, and it raised the hairs on my arms; but at this range, none of us were hurt, and we leaped laughing back into the sunken road, almost drunk with our adventure.

All this time Lipton’s battery continued firing, the shot plunging among the enemy guns, and so we had bought him time, and had done harm to the batteries that would oppress him.

As for myself, I felt my heart afire in my chest, and my mind was alive to the possibilities inherent in the game of rock-paper-scissors. I wished I’d had the horsemen instead of the handgunners, for with a charge of our demilances I could have killed them all.

The rebel guns continued to fire at us, the weird, wailing hailshot clipping the leaves overhead. I felt in my exuberance that I was not done making mischief—I thanked the coronels who had let me use their men, and I joined Lord Utterback on the right. I reported to Utterback of my adventure, and told him what I intended to do next.

“Do you think that would prosper?” said he. “Well, go ahead.”

Frere’s dragoons were for the most part dismounted and in and around the east-west Peckside road, near the crossroads, ready with their bell-mouthed pistols to fire again into the flank of any attacker. Frere came with me as I took one company creeping down the road to the east, and we ended up right on the flank of the artillery line.

The enemy guns were still flailing the hedge with hailshot, and my heart lifted at the knowledge that they were not aware of their danger. “You lead this one company forward,” Frere told me, “and I will have the other ready to support you.”

As I and the first company bludgeoned our way through the thick-pleached blackthorn. I received more slashes on my face, and thorns even pierced the thick suede of my buff coat. I mopped away drops of blood from my cheeks, drew my sword, and led the dragoons, trotting in their heavy cavalry boots, across three hundred yards of ground toward the nearest battery.

We sped the distance so swiftly that we seemed to have taken wing, and suddenly we were there, the crew of the nearest culverin grouped around each to his task, the crew only beginning to become aware of us as the first fire from the dragons caught them. Some gunners fell, and other gunners stared at us in horror. Besides their inaccurate pistols, the dragoons were also armed with a miscellany of other weapons, hangers and bilbos, hammers and cuttles, and so without reloading, the dragoons drew these and ran at the enemy.

The surviving crew of the first gun broke and ran, and I dashed after them, and was then surprised to discover an enemy who had no intention of running. Instead, the gunner—a small, slight man my own age—had drawn his short sword and faced me with terror and determination warring for control of his features. I felt an alarm clatter in my blood.

I was running and could scarce slow down before I encountered him. I hacked at the sword that thrust at me and knocked it aside, and then I drove my armored chest straight at him. I was bigger, and stronger, and the armor added weight—there was an impact, and I knocked the man sprawling. I made a cut at him as I ran past, but I don’t think I hit him. I imagine one of the dragoons behind me finished him off.

I ran on, slashing at the backs of the flying gunners, but as I ran, I tried my hardest to keep my wits. I was all too aware that we were outnumbered—my company, counting its casualties and without its horse-holders, numbered about forty, and the full complement of the battery was nearly a hundred. But we were in a group, and they were scattered among their guns and completely surprised, and so we overwhelmed them.

But I was also aware that an entire army was standing just a few hundred yards to the east of us, and that they would react once they perceived my small party through the drifting smoke. And so I kept an ear cocked for the sound of hooves, or trumpet calls, or drums, for once Clayborne’s army began to move, we would have scant time to find safety.

While I listened, we overran the battery completely, cutting down anyone who tried to resist, and then ran in for the next set of guns, and now there was a pack of men in front of us, armed with short swords and their gunners’ gear, the ladles and rammers and handspikes they used in their craft. I slowed in my career to allow the dragoons a chance to catch up with me, so that we could attack in a mass. I took a few seconds to catch my breath, during which those who had not yet discharged their dragons took good aim and shot. Gunsmoke stained the air, men fell, and then I cried the dragoons on.

I ran right at center of the enemy, and I found myself facing a swordsman who stood in a balanced posture, knees flexed, his right arm before him cocked at an angle to direct his point at my breast, the left hand propped on his hip—the very posture that Lance-pesade Stringway had sought to instill in me during our long hours of practice. And I knew, from the ease and confidence of the man’s posture, and the impassivity of his features, that he was a far greater master of defense than I. And I knew as well, from the powder-stained white sash over one shoulder, that he was captain of the battery, and that his defeat might well dishearten his crews.

I slowed that I might not impale myself on his point, and brushed his sword aside as I came on. He retreated, back leg first, front leg after, and his blade came into line again in just the manner that Lance-pesade Stringway had recommended. Then I ducked as one of his gunners swung a rammer at my head, then took a step back to slice that gunner’s arm to the elbow. The captain shuffled forward to thrust at me, and I beat his sword aside again and foined at him, then had to jump clear at a lightning riposte aimed at my throat. My heart leaped, but my enemy had in the next instant to parry a tompion that one of the dragoons had thrown at him, and before he could bring the sword back into line, I seized the enemy blade in my gauntleted hand, and stepped in to smash him in the face with the basket hilt of my sword. The impact went all the way to my shoulder. As he staggered, I hacked him in the head with all my strength, which brought him down dead or dying—for this was not a fencing match, but earnest combat, with fights broiling up all around us, and I using my sword as a bludgeon rather than a weapon of art. The enemy captain’s tactics were too dainty for this field.

When their captain fell, the gunners ran, and we cut half of them down as they turned. I plodded after, for my wind was gone and I could no longer keep up such a racking pace; and it was well that I did, for soon I saw that the enemy had turned one of their culverins about, and were crowing it around with handspikes to lay it on us. I saw the gun-captain with his linstock and match hovering over the touch-hole, and I saw an intent look blaze up in his face.

“ ’Ware the gun!” I shouted, and darted as fast as I could to the side while ducking my head so that the bill of my helmet should cover my face. The gun roared—spat in my eye, it seemed—and I was punched in the left shoulder while the eerie wail of hailshot fouled the air. Two escaping gunners in front of me blazed up in showers of scarlet, killed by their own side.

We were too close, and the hailshot had not the room to disperse.

“Charge!” I called. “Charge, charge, charge!” I ran for the battery before they could reload, and the dragoons followed and slashed the gunners down.

But then my half-deafened ears heard a trumpet call, and I looked eastward to see plumes bobbing as cavalry advanced through the thinning gunsmoke.

“Retreat! Retreat! Follow me!”

Two of the dragoons had been wounded by the hailshot, and their fellows picked them up and helped them from the field. Frere and the other dragoons were by now too far away, and so I led the dragoons directly toward the hedge, two hundred and fifty long yards away.

We ran. Even the wounded ran. I had been out of breath in the enemy battery, exhausted with chasing down the fleeing enemy, but when the air began to rumble with the sound of approaching horses, my weariness vanished, and I felt uplifted as if by great invisible wings. The hedge grew nearer, the hoofbeats louder, and I ran all the faster. Handgunners in the hedge fired, mostly on the flanks where we were not in the way. I dared to cast a look over my shoulder, and I saw a demilance right behind me, a towering figure in armor with his straight sword aimed at my vitals. I dodged first to the right, and then to the left, so that his horse’s own neck would be in the way of the rebel’s blade, and the rider would have to shift his sword up for a backhand cut. I did not give him the time, for as I ran, I flung out my own backhand to slash his horse in the mouth. The horse shrieked and turned away to the right, confirming all my prejudices against horses, and the horseman lost his seat and slid down his mount’s flank to strike the turf with a great clatter.

I wished I’d had time to finish him off, for I found his attempt to kill me a great offense. Instead, I just ran the faster, the hedge ahead of me blossoming with gunsmoke as the handgunners picked their targets. Bullets whirred past me, and behind I heard the cries of wounded men and injured horses. Then I was leaping over the enemy corpses stretched before the hedge, and the blackthorn whipped my face as I leaped into the sunken road.

“Lovely work, my beautiful assassins!” cried Coronel Fludd. “Pilgrim save us, but you have dealt a great knock to those soulless mechanicals!”

My knees were suddenly weak, and I leaned against the far wall of the road as the dragoons tumbled into the road around me. My heart felt as if it would burst, and my chest heaved inside my unfeeling cuirass. On the far side of the hedge I could hear and glimpse the cavalry reining up, in wrath and confusion. They milled about for a time, firing their pistols at us while the handgunners pot-shotted them, until in frustration they withdrew, leaving a score of their number lying on the field.

“My braves, that was a thing of glory!” rejoiced Fludd. “Never again will I view the dragoons as an ungainly chimera, neither one thing nor ’t’other, but instead will clasp them by the neck and call them ‘brother.’ ”

We had lost not a man, though some suffered wounds. After I recovered my strength, I led them down the sunken road to the crossroads, where Lord Utterback waited with Captain Frere. I returned to Frere his men, and praised them all as heroes.

“Are you hurt?” Lord Utterback asked me.

I’d had so much to occupy my attention that this question had not yet occurred to me, but upon inspection, I proved to be largely intact. There was a sharp pain in my left shoulder when I tried to move my arm, and my face seemed somehow constrained, as if someone had stitched up bits of my flesh that did not quite belong together.

“I seem sound enough, my lord,” I reported.

“Your face is bleeding,” said Utterback. I touched my face gingerly, and my gloved fingers came back scarlet. “Here,” said Utterback, and very courteously handed me a handkerchief.

I dabbed at my face. “You look quite the old soldier now,” Utterback said. “Bleeding, streaked with powder, and battered armor and helm.”

It would seem churlish to point out that my face had been cut by the hedge, not by the enemy. Now that the high excitement was over, I had begun to feel battered indeed. My entire body ached. Captain Frere fingered the dent in my cuirass. “You should go to the armorers,” he said. “Have this beaten out.”

I looked at the dent and realized that the bent metal was digging into my left shoulder and restricting movement. I looked up at Lord Utterback.

“Can you spare me for the while, my lord?”

Frere spoke first. “It will be some while before there is fighting. He may as well go.”

Lord Utterback gave permission, and I wearily climbed atop my horse and rode to the rear, where the armorers and farriers had set up their anvils. I was delighted to relieve myself of the weight of the cuirass, and I threw off as well the buff coat and doublet and stood in my shirtsleeves to let the mountain breeze dry off the clammy sweat that had soaked my linen. The armorers had broached a cask of barley wine which they were willing to share, and while I waited I drank at least three pints, and so spirited and high-fettled was my constitution at that moment that I felt no intoxication at all.

The repair did not take long, and so I reluctantly dragged on the buff coat and let the armorers strap the cuirass over it, and then returned to the war. I stopped along the way at Lord Utterback’s camp by the stone huts, and devoured another pâté, scooping it up with hard bread and wishing I’d had more barley wine to accompany it.

During this entire time, the guns continued their work. I had overrun only two of the rebels’ five batteries, and the rest had continued their duel with Lipton uninterrupted, if a bit shorthanded after my attack with the handgunners. I had been unable to damage the guns or other gear of the batteries I had captured, and they had been reoccupied as soon as we’d been forced to withdraw. Eventually, all five batteries were back in operation, though only a few guns were firing from the batteries that I had taken, and their fire was slow. Lipton seemed to have dismounted a couple of enemy guns, but their crews were detailed elsewhere, and the fire kept up uninterrupted.

Despite the damage I had done to the enemy, the numbers told. Lipton fought on until a dozen of his men were killed and one of his guns was dismounted, but then he withdrew, and he carried his flag from the field to make it clear to all that he had abandoned his battery. Enemy jeers wafted up from the field, and the gun barrels were lowered to begin firing into our men behind the hedge.

At this point I rode down to rejoin Lord Utterback, thinking I might be needed. He looked at me as I rode up. “We are about to have some pounding, I fear.”

“The men in the road will be safe,” I said. “But the pikemen standing behind may suffer.”

“I fear so.”

His fears were proved at that instant, as one of the enemy’s batteries opened their fire, and I saw a ball plow through one of Bell’s companies on our left, bodies and pikes flying. It struck me as a purposeless sacrifice, and I turned to Utterback.

“Why should they stand and receive the enemy’s fire to no purpose? May we not have them lie down?”

Lord Utterback seemed surprised by the question. “It is not the custom,” he said. “Our men take heart when they can see the enemy.”

“They can see nothing, standing behind the hedge. They only know they are being killed by something they cannot fight.”

Lord Utterback considered the matter, then flapped a hand. “The men may lie down.”

I rode to each regiment in turn to give the order. In this I met some resistance, as many of the men—and all of the officers—considered it best to stand in the face of peril and bid defiance to the enemy. But the shot, howling through the air and beating down the hedge, made them reconsider, and in time the entire line was stretched upon the turf, and the reserve companies as well. I also bade the bands to play, as a way to keep the soldiers’ minds from descending too far into a contemplation of their own mortality, and I told the standard-bearers and their escorts, who could not lie down without neglecting their duty, to march about, so as not to become stationary targets.

After seeing the order obeyed, I rode up to Lipton’s abandoned battery, where I could see the whole field, and found there the captain himself with a few men, quietly loading the demiculverins one by one and training them down on the field. “ ’Twill save a few minutes when we return,” he said.

“You are a practical fellow,” I said.

“And so you are, sure. With my glass I saw you leading those attacks. It was fine work, and you saved many of my men.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. I smiled. “Rock-paper-scissors.”

He gave a weary laugh. “Never before has anyone listened to, let alone profited by, my ramblings.”

I looked down at the field, the guns firing out of a pall of their own smoke, the iron shot bounding over the field, lofting higher than a man. “If you can ramble us out of this fight,” I said, “I will buy you another bottle of claret.”

The rebel artillery continued their barrage, the shot bashing its way through the hedge and for the most part flying far over the heads of the soldiers. The hedge suffered, but little blood was spilled. Deep in the pall of gunsmoke I could see movement, and deployed my cardboard telescope—I saw that the cavalry supporting the guns was being withdrawn, and their place taken by solid blocks of foot soldiers. The same regiments, I thought, that had attacked the line last time.

We were well into the afternoon when the guns fell silent—not all at once, but slowly, as they exhausted their ready ammunition. There was silence, and then the foot broke their formations and began to filter forward through the guns, to re-form on the other side.

It was worth informing Lord Utterback of this, so I spurred down the scales, and as I rode, Lipton called his men to the guns and opened fire, his shot plunging down into the thick hedges of forming pikes, creating bloody ripples in the swelling sea of enemy bodies. I found Lord Utterback aware of the enemy movement, and he bade me tell the soldiers to rise and prepare to repel a charge. This I did, riding down the line, but the regimental commanders had seen the enemy preparing to come on and had anticipated me.

Nor did the enemy wait long. There was a great roll of drums and blare of trumpets, and hundreds of male voices cried, “Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, the King!,” cheering the infant that Clayborne had placed upon the throne. This cheer was repeated thrice, and then the pikes came on.

They did not pause, as they had before, but charged straight in, the first four lines of pikemen with their weapons leveled at the charge. Our own handgunners had a chance to fire but a single shot before they were forced to fly from the sunken road. The rebel regiment on our right, receiving flanking fire from the dragoons behind the hedge on the Peckside road, shied away and sidled toward the center, but elsewhere the enemy hurled themselves through the hedge and into the road and slaughter.

It was a repetition of the first attack, but this time the enemy were more determined, and the fight went on longer, the sunken road filling with blood and bodies. I did not participate this time, but followed Lord Utterback’s example and rode behind the lines, shouting encouragement.

The attackers on the right failed first, caught between our spears to the front and a hail of flanking fire, and they began to grudgingly give way, and the other regiments followed their example, their pikes dragging on the ground as they backed from the fight. We cheered then, our drums beating and our trumpets blaring out Lord Utterback’s tucket while Lipton’s guns saluted their withdrawal with murderous iron shot.

His lordship and I rode up the field to look over the hedges and spy what the enemy next intended. The foot withdrew past the guns, drifting into the gaps between new enemy columns that were coming on. These were cavalry, and as I watched them deploy behind the guns, they formed into a long, shimmering wall of steel.

I heard Utterback give a cry of something that might have been surprise, yet may have been despair. “It is the Gendarmes,” he said.

The Gentlemen-at-Arms of the Royal Household, familiarly the “Gendarmes,” were men of good family sworn to guard the sovereign, the knightly equivalent of the Yeoman Archers, and who had joined Clayborne’s rebellion at the behest of Lord Rufus Glanford, their general. They were encased in steel cap-a-pie, all polished to a perfect gleam, and they rode enormous horses who were themselves plated in proof. From their lances floated pennons, each bearing the device of the rider, and they wore brave cloaks of leopard or lion skin.

Lipton’s artillery began to fire, but the Gendarmes were not so thickly packed as those deep squares of pikemen, and if he struck them, I failed to see it.

I stared at the enemy. These Gendarmes were impressive, pricking along under their banners, but I found myself clinging to a degree of skepticism.

“Surely these are relics of a former time,” I said. “Playing at being knights of old, like the Court of the Teazel Bird at home.”

A sardonic smile played about Utterback’s lips. “You may so inform them, if you like.”

“But,” I protested, “but it’s rock-paper-scissors. Cavalry cannot attack our pikes.”

“Again,” said Utterback, “it is the Gendarmes themselves whose knowledge of this point seems to be deficient.” He looked down at our soldiers, and sadness touched his expression. “I wish our men were not so tired.”

“We should tell them to be prepared to receive cavalry,” I said. I was about to spur down the scales to our men, but another thought occurred to me, and I turned to Utterback.

“If they break through,” I said, “you must lead our own horse against them.”

He looked uneasily over his shoulder, far up the sett to where our demilances had rallied. “Ay,” he said. “I’ll have to do that.”

The Gendarmes were coming forward, breaking ranks, like the pikemen, to filter through the artillery, then re-forming on the other side. Lipton’s fire kept plunging down, and this time I saw horses and riders fly. Lord Utterback and I rode down to the line to tell them what was coming.

“They send their horse against us!” Utterback scorned. “We’ll turn the road into their grave, and the hedge their monument!”

In this business of raising the heart of the soldiers, it has to be said he did well.

The pikemen, who had been engaged in looting the enemy dead, clambered out of the road and readied their long spears. I rode to the far right to warn both Ruthven and Frere that Frere’s dragoons might soon have to take shelter behind Ruthven’s pikes. For I had seen the enemy begin to stretch out to the far right, beyond the Peckside road, and the dragoons were unlikely this time to have their unmolested flank shots into the enemy.

Frere pulled out his spyglass, and looked at the horsemen forming up opposite his men. “Ah,” he said. “The Esquires.”

The Esquires were the servants to the Gendarmes and apprentice knights, as well-born as the latter. The riders were fully armored, but their horses lacked the barding that protected them against shot and spear.

Two full regiments now opposed us, the Gendarmes and the Esquires, each of two squadrons composed of two troops. We had three troops to oppose them, none as well armored, and the dragoons having no protection but their buff coats, and their dragons a dubious weapon at best.

“I’ll bring my men back,” Frere decided. “No vantage in getting ’em skewered.”

The dragoons were happy to leave the sunken lane that was no longer a sanctuary, and they retired behind Ruthven’s pikemen, where the horse-holders had been stationed with their mounts. Frere had them in the saddle just as the trumpets blared, and sixteen hundred elite rebel horsemen began their advance in their shining, blinding armor, the Gendarmes in the center, and flanked by the two squadrons of Esquires.

The earth shook to the trampling hooves, and hackbuts and calivers cracked from the hedges. The handgunners leaped to safety just as the big horses broke through the torn hedge and plunged down into the sunken road. Again there rose that great hammering sound as steel met steel, but this time with the nightmare screams of horses added to the din.

On the far right, I was compelled to withdraw as the Esquires rode in to meet the company of pikes that had been standing, unmolested, since the battle began. The horsemen swarmed around the bristling square, jabbing with theirs lances or firing their pistols, while the foot fought grimly back, thrusting at the unprotected faces and chests of the horses while handgunners, sheltered in the square, shot into the mass of cavalry. I had worried that the Esquires would ride clear of the pikemen and attack our line from the rear, or ride on to plunder our camp; but Frere’s dragoons, drawn up two hundred yards to the rear—and who probably looked more menacing than in fact they were—deterred any such adventures.

I rode on down the line to where Lord Utterback was shouting encouragement at the men. “Well struck! I saw that blow, there! Admirable!” As if he were cheering a game of bats-and-balls.

I rode ahead and added my own voice to the din. And then, mere yards in front of me, one of the Gendarmes broke out of the hedge, his red-eyed steed trumpeting a challenge as it heaved itself from the road in a clatter of armor. The rider swung a battle-hammer at the foot soldiers, who reeled away from the rider, or from the horse with its flashing iron-shod hooves. Spear-points flashed as they thrust at him, and either he dodged them or they skated off his steel. A pikeman dropped to the turf, his helmet crushed beneath the hammer’s spike.

I felt my blood surge, and I drew my sword and dug my spurs into my courser, and the animal, responding to the neighing challenge of the rebel’s stallion, leaped forward. We, Phrenzy and I, crashed into the enemy charger just behind the shoulder, all our combined weight driving into the enemy. The impact threw me forward over the saddle, but I managed to keep my seat. The rebel rider and his animal, wrapped in heavy steel, lurched to the side as the horse took a frantic step to regain its balance. The step missed. The great weight of the armor carried with it both horse and rider, and the two were dragged down like a mariner drawn into the sea by a siren. There was a vast crash, and Phrenzy made a leap, dainty as a dancer, to spring over the fallen foe.

The Gendarme was helpless now, trapped by the weight of steel and the great horse that pinned his leg. The pikemen closed in, drawing swords and daggers for the final act of butchery, and I rode on out of the press and turned about to view the line, and only then could I spare a moment for amazement, both at myself for what I had done, and at my horse for following my commands.

Fights between horsemen are won more by the spur than by the sword. I had known that—I had heard it, at least—but how had Phrenzy known it?

But I had little time to contemplate these mysteries, for in another part of the line I saw more armored horsemen breaking through the hedge and our line, and I rode for the nearest reserve company. They were a battered group, for they’d been pulled out of the line after having withstood two attacks, but they understood the gravity of the Gendarmes’ breakthrough, and had already assumed a defensive formation, hedged in all directions with pikes.

“That way! That way! To your left!”

I did not lead them so much as drive them, but once in motion, they understood well enough what I intended, and pikes were lowered to the charge as the company came to close the gap through which the Gendarmes were vaulting. There was a crash as pikes met armor, and a steel-clad horse ran free as its master was lofted by pikes from the saddle and fell to his present doom. Pikemen swarmed the hedge and the passage swung shut, barring further entry.

But those Gendarmes who had already got through the hedge now turned to cut a new path for their comrades, and my company was beset front and rear. As the only defender on horseback, and outside the circuit of pikes, I found myself assailed and so I with a murmured apology to the horse, I slipped from the saddle and sought shelter within the company of foot. There I found my sword unable to reach the enemy, and sheathing it, found on the sward a pollaxe, and I picked it up only to feel its weight settle into my hands like an old lover. For a pollaxe was a weapon I’d wielded all my life, and I knew its usages as well as I knew the poems of Tarantua.

“Hold them! Hold them!” I cried as the horsemen swirled around us, and as one Gendarme fenced with his lance against a brace of pikes, I left the shelter of the company and swung the axe with all my strength, letting the haft slide through my top hand as the blade rose, until I held onto the very end of the shaft and the blade blurred through the air. The steel crescent on the end of the haft took the enemy in the armpit and sheared right through the armor. He gave a cry and dropped his lance, the blood already staining the shining steel of his armor as I drew my weapon back, and as he clutched at the wound with his free hand, one of the pikemen put the point of his weapon through the slit of his helmet and into his eye. The horse bounded away, its rider already a corpse, and I retired again into the safety of the formation.

I found two more opportunities to attack with the underarm strike, and succeeded once and missed cleanly the other; after which I realized the pollaxe was best used to hamstring the horses, slicing below the skirts of the armor; and so I brought a pair of enemy down, the giant noble horses lamed and destroyed by the weapon of a Butcher’s apprentice.

Then I heard Lord Utterback’s trumpet call, and on the echo of the tucket came another of the reserve companies led by Utterback beneath his blue flag, so that now the Gendarmes were caught between two lines of pikes. Some died, and the rest scattered. I saluted Lord Utterback from my place in the ranks, and he saw me and waved at me in the most pleasant, gentlemanly way, so strange to see on a battlefield.

The combat rattled on between the hedges for a time. A few more horsemen broke through, were hunted down or set to flight. In time, the fight reached a point of exhaustion, like a clock with its spring run down, and then the two sides glowered at each other while handgunners fired over the gap; and by and by, the Gendarmes and their Esquires drew back, and then rode their heavy, weary horses back the length of that long, sere field.

We were too tired to cheer. Behind the hedge, for the first time, I could see a long unbroken line of our own dead, and there was a steady swarm of wounded limping up the slope toward the tents of the surgeons. As I trudged with them, I feared we would not survive another attack.

I found my horse quietly grazing a hundred paces up the slope, and while I dragged myself after the beast, Lord Utterback came riding past, and as I mounted, he came riding back, and I joined him. I still had the pollaxe in hand.

“I’ve ordered up more food down to the men,” he said.

“We have earned our dinner, to be sure.”

He cocked an eye at me. “None of that blood is yours, I hope.”

“Is my face bleeding again?”

“I can’t tell what is bleeding exactly. But there is a good deal of scarlet on you. And on that poll-cutter of yours.”

I took a mental inventory of my parts. “I seem reasonably intact. Though I am hungry and thirsty both, and if I may stop by our camp . . .”

“I think we may both spend a pleasant hour there, an Clayborne permits.”

And so, we took off our armor and our buff coats and had more of the hard biscuit with preserved tongue and brawn, and slathered with the jelly and fat that by now we desperately craved. We opened a jar of pickles and a package of smoked sausages and a bottle of wine, and I ate ravenously, and Utterback with scarcely less appetite. I more than half expected that Clayborne would interrupt our feast with another attack, because he had little choice—he had staked the entire war on this march over Exton Pass, and if he failed here, he might be lost.

But Clayborne’s men did not come, and I began to feel the wine dragging at my limbs, and my eyelids began to fall. But Utterback jumped to his feet.

“Once again I must cheer the soldiers,” he said. “And my praise shall not be feigned.”

“Truly,” I said.

I put on my gear and rode up to Lipton’s battery. The captain, drinking from a leather jack filled with what looked and scented like malmsey, greeted me.

“The enemy are doing nothing,” he said, “and that suits Bill Lipton, Esquire.”

“Long may they suit you thus,” I said. I dropped off my horse and stuck my pollaxe in the ground. My entire body ached. When I viewed the enemy with my glass, I found nothing of note. The Gendarmes and Esquires were gathered in dispirited clumps, and I supposed they were done for the day. Some handgunners were thrown forward of the battery to protect it, but the cannoneers simply stood near their guns without firing. I suspected that the Guild of Carters and Haulers were resisting the idea of bringing up more powder and ammunition, or the reserve ammunition was caught so far back in the train that the road would have to be cleared ahead of it before it could come up.

Seeing nothing worthy of my attention, I dropped my armor and burgonet to the ground, took off my buff coat, and sat on the turf with my glass to my hand.

Now, sated, my worn body and exhausted mind could afford the luxury of emotion, and as I observed our poor battered soldiers clustered about their dinner, or tending their injured, the feeling that rose in me was disgust. What was Queen Berlauda to me, or to any of these people? What was Clayborne, or his ambitious mother? Who were they to bring about the ignoble death of thousands, death by gunshot, or pike-thrust, or by the surgeon’s knife, or by drowning in the sunken road?

And who, for that matter, was I? My own ambition had brought to here, to this killing-place, and all my cleverness had accomplished was to add to the great accounting of the dead. That we had killed more of the enemy than they of us made little difference to the worms that would consume the bodies.

If I possessed true wit, I would be bent over my law-books in Selford.

The world seemed to whirl before my eyes, and I remembered Orlanda’s words: Love you will have, but it will thrive only in the shadow of death, and the grave will be its end. I wondered if I would find my end here, and lie rotting beneath the turf of Exton Scales while the sheep cropped the grass above my eyeless head.

Weariness took me, and I stretched out on the ground, measuring myself perhaps for my grave.

“Let me know if aught occurs,” I said.

“Why should I stay awake?” Lipton said. I did not answer him, but closed my eyes.

Hours passed. The sun was hanging low over Exton Pass by the time Lipton nudged me awake with his foot.

“Lo,” he said. “The ill-fledged didappers come.”

I could hear drums rattling over the sett. Lipton offered his telescope, and I saw masses of men moving forward, pikes aloft and shining in the setting sun as they arranged themselves behind the enemy guns.

I felt soreness in every limb as I donned my armor again, and the burgonet settled on my head like a permanent headache. The plates that covered the back of my neck clanked as they fell into place. I returned Lipton’s glass and mounted my horse.

“Do them mischief if you can,” I said, but his gunners were already busy laying guns on the enemy.

“At this range,” Lipton said, with something approaching cheer, “they can see the balls coming at ’em, and it’s most diverting to see them jump about.”

Again I reported to Lord Utterback what he already knew perfectly well, and so we went up the scales to have a better view of the enemy. More and more men kept coming onto the field, and I saw no less than six regiments formed against us, nearly a solid block of pikes that stretched from the bluff on the north to the ravine on the south. Lipton began to fire, and indeed the enemy tried to dance away from the falling shot, and I could hear the sergeants-major bawling at them to stay in line.

“I must fight them,” Utterback murmured. “I must hold here.” He was giving orders to himself, and behind his eyes I could see the cogwheels of his mind spinning free, unable to find or hold or turn an idea. For he was unable to think of a way to save his army from the attack that was to come, and I, similarly bereft, could not help him.

I touched his arm. “It will be the same as before. We must hold out till night, and the sun is already setting.”

“Ay,” he said. “Ay, we must fight.” And shaking off my arm, he rode down to the crossroads, and there we awaited the onset.

The field was in shadow by the time the enemy made their assault, but even though we were in twilight, the sky above remained a brilliant, cloudless blue, as if reflecting the majesty of an unseen god, and we were wrangling with the enemy in the great cockpit of heaven. The enemy thrice intoned their battle-cry, “Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, the King!” and then the pikes came down and the great mass of men swung forward. Again our handgunners got off but a single shot before the enemy were in the ditch, and wading across that river of corpses that awaited them in the sunken road. Again the clamor rose, as steel met steel, or pike-haft clattered against pike-haft, or blade plunged into flesh, and men staggered away from the fight screaming and clutching their vitals.

Our line was breached on the left, and I rode out to bring up a reserve company and seal the rift, but the truth was that we were in danger everywhere. Our men were worn down by their long day, and they were too few.

The enemy’s first true success was on the far right, where Ruthven’s pikemen broke and fled. Frere’s dragoons fired into the advancing enemy from the saddle, but could not stop the advance, and the dragoons fell back. Under pressure from the right, our whole line peeled away from the hedge and staggered back as the enemy cheered and came on. Drums beat, trumpets called, and I saw Lord Utterback, beneath his blue flag, galloping up the slope ahead of a thicket of pursuing pikes.

He has left us behind again, I thought. Well, he could scarcely do aught else.

I managed to rally our soldiers at the foot of the knoll just below Lipton’s guns, and there we held on while the demiculverins fired their balls right over our heads. The field before us was filled with enemy troops swarming up the slope toward our camp, their eyes alight with the prospect of plunder. Few of the enemy seemed interested in fighting those of us clustered below the guns, not when there was loot to be found in the camp; but some of the enemy officers raced over the darkening field, trying to maneuver unwieldy formations of pikes so as to assault us from front and flank. These bulky squares suffered greatly from the fire of Lipton’s guns, but those before us managed their change of front, and I saw the first ranks of pikes come down to the charge as they readied themselves for an attack.

“Ready, men!” I had shouted myself hoarse. “Hold them! Hold on till nightfall!”

Trumpets called, and I readied myself to dismount and fight on foot with my pollaxe. The earth rumbled, and I rose in the stirrups and readied one leg to kick over Phrenzy’s back and drop to the earth, and suddenly I saw Utterback’s blue flag again, this time coming down the slope, and behind him Utterback’s Troop, a long dark line of dire troopers riding out of shadow, their long, straight swords pointed at the enemy. Captain Lipton had been wrong, and our horse were game for a second charge.

Clayborne’s men had no chance, for in their triumph and their greed to get to our camp, they’d broken ranks, and they turned and ran and died howling. The enemy formations preparing to charge my position were barely aware of the approach of danger before the horsemen struck them in flank and rear, and their formation dissolved into a mob, hundreds strong, all clawing at each other in panic as they fled back across the sett.

“Hurrah for Lord Utterback!” I shouted. “Cheer, you tawdry knaves!”

As we cheered, Lord Utterback’s advance continued, and left a trail of sprawled corpses behind. Utterback pushed the enemy all the way back to the tattered blackthorn hedge, and then as the enemy flight continued, our troopers crossed the road, re-formed, and pressed their advance. Behind came Lord Barkin with his own troop cantering over the grass, ready either to throw himself at the enemy, or to be a firm wall for Utterback to rally behind.

Lipton’s guns fell silent, for in the growing darkness he could no longer see an enemy to fire at. Frere’s dragoons, obscured by the falling twilight, advanced on the far right, and then drawing their miscellaneous cutlery hurled themselves against the enemy’s flank and broke them decisively. A great distant roaring, like the tumult and thunder of a furious ocean, sounded across the field, as the thousands of fleeing pikemen overwhelmed their supports, and the entire mass of Clayborne’s army was thrown into confusion, despair, and terror.

“Back to the hedge!” I shouted, and waved my pollaxe overhead. “Re-form our line! We shall advance.”

Drums beating, we crossed the hedge and the road filled with dead and dying, and re-formed again on the far side. We advanced to the enemy battery, which we found deserted. There was no reason to stop there, and so we marched forward into the growing night, our banners turning black against the shrouded sky. On the ground we found nothing but corpses, some wounded trying to crawl to safety, and abandoned standards dropped by their bearers. We collected the banners as trophies, and ere long we found the Carrociro, the cart and its white oxen abandoned, the royal banner flapping listlessly overhead. I dismounted and lowered the flag, and rolling it up, tied it over my shoulder. With its heavy silk, gold thread, and bullion fringe, the standard was a weighty mass, and must have neared twenty pounds.

Captured guns and standards, the two marks of a victory. We had both in plenty.

We marched on in silence, half a league or more, as the world darkened around us. The road turned to the right and the sett narrowed. The hedge dwindled away to a few unkempt blackthorns standing alone by the road, and the pasture gave way to scrub and falls of gravel from the cliff above. Stars appeared overhead, and in their uncertain light we discovered our cavalry madly engaged in looting the enemy train. Abandoned wagons stood crowded on the road, a line of vehicles that stretched on for a league or more, all abandoned by the teamsters, quartermasters, and camp followers who had brought them to the field. All I could see was our troopers, hundreds of them, plundering the train of everything they could find.

No officers recalled the men to their duty, for the officers led the looting. And no sooner had the foot soldiers seen what was toward, than they broke ranks and ran to seize their share of the booty. I soon found myself commanding nothing at all.

I rode along the train, asking for Lord Utterback. Half the men were already drunk of wine or spirits looted from the train, and these barely understood my words. Some ill-tempered louts threatened me with violence; and the rest had no answer to my question. I wondered if Utterback had simply ridden on, so centered on the pursuit that he left his whole army behind, a possibility that did not seen entirely out of character. At last I found an old Lance-pesade, so drunk that he had to be supported by a wagon wheel, who waved an arm in the direction I had come.

“There, in the field where it narrows. Though you will not like what you find.”

“What mean you by that?”

He gave me a scornful look. “I mean what I mean. I am not a man to teach a babe to suck his mammy’s tit, nor a jackass to ride a pony.”

In a temper, I wrenched Phrenzy around and returned the way I had come. By now, the moon had come up and cast its opal light on the field. I reined up, seeing nothing but bodies lying dark on the sere grass, and then I saw the moon glimmer on Lord Utterback’s flag, which was planted in the ground near the foot of the cliff to the northeast. There I saw two horses standing, and recognized one as Utterback’s courser; and as I came close I saw Purefoy, the ensign, bent weeping over the body of our Captain General.

I dropped to the ground and looked at Lord Utterback’s face shining pale in the moonlight, his eyes closed, his expression suggesting that he had already accommodated himself to the demands of Necessity. I pulled off Utterback’s glove, took his hand, and found it already cold. Between sobs the ensign told me that there, where the way narrowed, the flying enemy had slowed and grown close-packed, so terrified and helpless that the pursuers’ arms and shoulders ached with the trouble of killing them; and that but few tried to resist, but one of these had fired a pistol and shot Lord Utterback in the throat. Utterback, choking, had then ridden madly through the press to this place of partial shelter, and here pitched out of his saddle dead. Purefoy had stayed by the body to prevent it from being looted by the baying mob that had once been our army.

Still holding Lord Utterback’s hand, I sat by the body and tried to think what to do. The army was beyond control and would continue their riot all night. In the morning, a reveille might be possible.

In the meantime, the body might as well stay where it was.

Then I remembered Lipton’s battery, left behind on its knoll, and thought that we might fetch Lord Utterback back to the camp on a caisson. I told Purefoy of my intention, and then I took the heavy royal flag from over my shoulder, unrolled it, and placed it on the body. I mounted again my horse, and began the long ride through the night.

I had ridden only a few minutes before I heard the pounding of advancing horses, and drew up to see a column of demilances riding in by moonlight. Our relief had come at last, exhausted men on weary horses. As they approached, I saw at the head of the column the Count of Wenlock. As he halted the column, I rode up and saluted.

His eyes glittered with what might have been anger, what might have been fierce anxiety. “Where is my son?” he asked.

“He fell as he led the last charge that broke Clayborne’s army,” I said. “He lies yonder, at the foot of the cliff.”

“Bring me to him,” said Wenlock.

I brought Wenlock to where his son lay, and we dismounted. The count looked down at the body, then bent to draw the flag away from the corpse.

“It is the royal banner,” said I, “taken from the Carrociro. I thought it a fitting shroud for so brave a man.”

I watched as lines of grief carved deep into Wenlock’s hawk-like profile. He seemed lost for a moment in his own sorrow, and then he gave a start, as if he recollected where he was. He looked up at me, eyes glittering.

“My son needs you no longer,” he said. “You are dismissed from the troop. And if I find that you have stolen aught from the troop’s funds, I will slit your throat myself.”