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.
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