“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.”
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 F
ludd’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.
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