It and two more horses, one riderless, caromed into the rest, and that was all we really accomplished before we ran on with premeditated discretion. But the effect, if far from overwhelming, was good. By making the count flounder helplessly within a thumbed nose of his own men we had augmented their uneasy bafflement, the offshoot of having been generally outsmarted.
Some of them broke ranks to follow us but resisted at Chilbert’s savagely voiced command. He had more important projects in mind, and, looking back, I could see him grimly resume his tour of the fort. That completed, he merely ordered his men to stay where they were and remain alert.
He was not so ill off at that. He had been permitted to bring his army up in good order and to mass it before the gates, effectively sealing the abbey. If his footmen arrived before our reserves they need not fear a sortie. As for my men and the monks without the walls, we’d then be wrong no matter what we did. If we left to harry the foot troops his horsemen would have a free hand to storm the stronghold.
As defense for the Abbot’s strategy, beyond the immediate check it had served to bring about, there was the clear point that he was achieving the delay he wanted. And in the minor matter of the villeins’ cabins he had scored, having so far secured them from damage.
So balanced, each side hoping for the help that would mean decisive power, we passed an agonizingly long afternoon. I spent the first part of it with my head over my shoulder, looking for allies, and the second with an eye on Chilbert lest he try to snap me up in a surprise move. With several hours in which to recuperate, his horses might be ready for another swift charge. He wouldn’t abandon his strategic position, but a picked troop might bag my worst mounted men if I allowed it to get the jump on us.
Whether Chilbert actually contemplated such an attack I don’t know, for a shout from the wall did away with that interlude’s curious mixture of boredom and suspense. “Men from the west!” a monk cried joyfully. “Riders!”
With a yelp of pleasure and a sigh of relief, I turned to see. That would be our own vanguard sifting out of the woods in satisfying numbers. I looked excitedly toward the foe again, but, of course, Chilbert, his advantage nullified, was preparing to leave.
The newcomers were led by Conan himself, and when I saw that I hastened to meet him. “I thought I’d better come along with the van to make sure you weren’t bungling the business,” he greeted me.
“Why you might as well have stayed home,” I told him. “Why, we had Chilbert trapped right between us, and—”
He appraised the size of Chilbert’s departing force. “Trapped?” he asked politely.
“Safe as a bear with its tail in the ice.”
“Anything really happen?” he wanted to know.
“Mostly scouting and maneuvering so far, but if he finds his foot troops in amongst those trees there he’ll maybe be back again.”
“Jean should have ours here sometime in the morning,” he said, “and the rest of our horses should be along by dark tonight.”
“The Abbot would like to hear about that,” I suggested, and we cantered toward the gates.
Chapter
Twenty-two
THOSE Chilbert was awaiting did arrive, our scouts reported, but by then night was crowding dusk. So while not relaxing vigilance, we set our minds forward to plan for the morning. Night is only an aid to an attacker if he be unexpected.
At once conferring and observing, a group of us could see the long line of the enemy camp fires flare up one by one against the black rim of the forest. To westward a similar but much smaller series of blazes showed where our own troops were bivouacked.
Conan turned to the Abbot. “I’ll harry them and squeeze them against your wall as best I may; but I don’t want to get tied up in a real melee till my walking boys come along.”
“Understood,” the Abbot nodded. “They’ve got to have adequate horse support when they come into the open.”
As we were trying to join our followers a little later Conan broke a thoughtful silence. “They’ve got more men than I figured they could muster. Chilbert must be reaching way out east.”
“They have a lot more than I’d like them to,” I said. “We’ll have plenty to do trying to check them until the rest of our army arrives—and maybe after that. Still they’ll be well occupied trying to take the abbey.”
“Perhaps. The walls are strong enough, but that place was built as a house of God first and only fortified as an afterthought when times got nasty. There’s neither hill, water, nor rock to abet the defenses. It just sits there like an egg laid on a flat stone. We’re lucky there’s a tough chick inside.”
“There could be better locations,” I admitted. “That level sweep on the north side is an invitation for attackers to gather around and put up scaling ladders.”
“That’s where they’ll operate from in the main,” he agreed. “Though if it’s a clear day they may try the east wall first while the sun’s low enough to be in the monks’ eyes.”
We were up when night started to fade. There was no rain, but it was going to be a gray day. “That means we take our stand to the north,” Conan said as we wolfed our breakfast. “And I don’t think they’ll keep us waiting long.”
The only moving things in a dim forest, we were drifting toward our post when a scout’s report vindicated my friend’s prophecy. The foe was preparing to move, and we speeded up in order to be ready for them. Because of the murk we couldn’t yet see them when we reached the clearing, and even the abbey looked to be no more than a curiously edifice-like arrangement of clouds.
We remained in the deeper obscurity under the trees and held our gazes eastward with the patience of sure expectation. The visibility improved rapidly, but our ears first gave notice of their proximity. Soon then we saw a great wave of them coming over a little rise, mounted men on each side of files of footmen, and another following as the first spilled down into a hollow. It was while they were emerging from this to the level on which the abbey stood that we met them. They heard us running, but though they were forcing their horses we were in the position of riding down hill at them.
We didn’t try to strike their entire front with our inferior numbers but instead attempted to fold up the nearest flank with the force of a phalanx hammering the wings of successive separated lines. It worked well, but all I can clearly remember is feeling my shield jarred by blows and seeing some of the enemy tumble to the ground. Then we were through them, completing a semicircle in our race back to the woods. If they wanted to follow us and put off the storming, well and good.
Some probably were for doing it, but Chilbert bawled orders to close ranks and keep on toward the monastery. Seeing that this was the case, we gathered again, cut an arc through the forest so as to be opposite the vulnerable wall, and approached to see what precautions had been taken against us.
Chilbert’s mounted troops had been augmented, too, since the previous day, and he could afford a considerable force to keep us from climbing on his back while he assailed the abbey. Having spotted us, they were prancing forward to be ready for us if we should choose to strike into the open again, when we suddenly recognized their leader.
The sight of him was too much for Conan’s usually cool head. “Gregory!” he shouted, surging forward with all of us pell mell at his heels. “Do you remember me, kinsman?”
No vituperation could have added anything to what was implied in the tone with which he uttered that one word, and Gregory felt the full, savage impact of it. Perhaps the disastrous results from his original betrayal had made him superstitious. At any rate he was an awed and miserable man who did not want to meet Conan. In place of giving the word to countercharge, as his men were expecting, he just sat there, vaguely fingering a sword he wasn’t going to draw.
Then suddenly Conan’s imminence was too much for him. He whirled and bolted right through his own men, ruining the morale he had already impaired and spreading panic as he went. It was a rout almost before we hit them. Those w
e couldn’t catch to slay fled toward their main body, with Gregory leading them by two lengths. And so it happened that an army which had every right to think it was comfortably protected turned, startled, to find its rear guard thundering toward it, unchecking.
Chilbert, who had been directing preparations for the attack from behind the main lines, swung around, wild-eyed, and roared for them to halt. As I knocked a man from his horse and looked forward for another victim I witnessed an irony whose dimensions I could not then spare the leisure to appreciate. Quickly appraising the extent of the danger, and as swiftly discerning its source, the count dashed to intercept his fleeing lieutenant. As the latter perforce drew rein and hastily started to fabricate explanations, Chilbert heaved up the great axe he was carrying. Without opening his mouth to reprimand, curse, or otherwise give notice of his displeasure he delivered a blow which cleft Gregory’s steel cap and only bogged down somewhere in his chest.
But no measures were stern enough to stop that flight immediately, and Chilbert himself had to side-step or be run down. He tried to make the rest of his followers divide and let the rear guard through, then close in on us as we followed. But it was too late, and the stampeded men we were driving ran on to smash in among the ranks of their fellows and ride down comrades afoot.
Because of the confusion they scattered we were an organized body impinged on individuals who had to shift for themselves. And where they wanted to shift was out of our way. We on our part could no longer retreat. We had to have the wall at our backs before we halted and reversed our direction.
We gained the wall without difficulty, but in so doing we sacrificed the momentum that had been our most potent weapon. Nor could we hope to pick it up again on the charge back. By the time we’d turned to face them they were beginning to form ranks against us once more. Still, though they were in numbers to eat us alive once they had fully gelled, they would be no great danger to us for a few minutes. And if the Abbot was the man I thought he was this period of their disorganization would not be passed by.
Everything had happened so rapidly, with results as amazing to us as to them, that until the moment of our turning I hadn’t entirely comprehended what a blow luck had let us strike them. Having their rear guard routed almost before it took the field must have given them the idea that irresistible power was against them. There must have been something peculiarly unnerving, too, in the experience of being ridden down by their own comrades.
With the wall to keep us from being bothered from the rear, we were able to form an effective wedge and had no trouble in beating off such ill co-operating groups as tried to crush us. Elsewhere, however, Chilbert was doing a masterful job of reestablishing morale. A magnificent, huge figure on a magnificent, huge horse, he was savagely dominant. He didn’t shame so much as cow them into renewed aggressiveness. I think most of them were more afraid of that one man than they were of all of us, their avowed enemies.
Conan had his ear cocked, his face the picture of action waiting to happen. “He’ll come,” I said confidently. Then we heard it.
“Domino gloria!” rang the cry from off to our left, and we knew the monks were boiling out to hammer the enemy into greater uncertainty.
“Come on!” Conan yelled, and we started boring into the mass, hewing furiously.
We were taking a line that would, we believed, unite us with the priests. If our two forces succeeded in meeting, the prefatory havoc would be a great blow in itself. And once combined we would be in position to tear even wider, less repairable holes in their divided array.
Chilbert appreciated the situation, of course, and rushed group after group into the shrinking space between us. The very fellows who were nipping at our heels were called off to take their places in the wedge he was driving. With each yard or so, therefore, the opposition was growing more stubborn. The value of our boldly followed-up opportunism was being abrogated by sheer numbers, cumbering the swift, decisive action which alone can render a markedly outnumbered force effective.
With that impatience with fact familiar to desperate need I wondered why things that were going to happen couldn’t happen when they would be of some use. Now was the moment for Jean to appear. The foe could spare no horsemen to rip into his men, and those men would supply just the added weight we wanted.
But Jean didn’t come, and Chilbert put yet more pressure on us. Satisfied with his marshaling efforts, he was at length, ready to take personal part in the battle; and he waved his heavy axe, shouting for men to follow. After a while, a tiring, winded man, I was no longer sanguine as to the outcome. We were practically stopped, and unless the monks were more successful the enemy might pin us back against the fort and whittle us down. I listened as best I could, but the Abbot’s deep, certain voice seemed no nearer.
Nevertheless, we were holding our own, if no longer accomplishing any more than that, and as long as we could keep from being crushed and scattered there was hope that we could wear them down. And then if our foot troops arrived—
Meanwhile the count was working his way along the battle front. He was striking an occasional blow, but mostly he was searching for something. From the vicious delight of his expression I knew what that something was when Conan abruptly plunged toward him with a challenging cry. Each of them, for this one time, had the same idea, arrived at the same reason: to kill the other would be at least half as good as winning the battle.
But encountering a picked man in a melee is difficult to achieve. It so happened that when Chilbert was finally able to sweep toward us in a surge of men and horses it was I that first encountered him. I slashed at him, missed him for the second time in two days, and cut short the resultant oath to duck under his axe. No doubt my impression was heightened by excitement, but it sounded like a high wind as it passed my ear. By the time I was ready to strike again he wasn’t the man I struck. We had been parted in the turmoil.
Some yards to my left Conan and Chilbert had at last succeeded in meeting and were struggling at once with their horses and each other. I began to fight my way toward them, but too many others were essaying to do the same thing for me to make swift headway. At such instants as I could spare from defending myself I watched a duel in which both men were hampered by the crush. They would be forced apart, then come together again, roaring for their respective followers to make room.
Skill at horsemanship was naturally discounted by the circumstances, but at that the bay nearly ended the fight. To my horror I saw him rear up and overbear Conan’s mount which staggered and fell back on its haunches. This was Chilbert’s moment, and he took a full, two-handed swing with all his tremendous might.
I felt as I had once felt when a wave had picked me off a viking ship and before I knew it was going to put me back. But Conan, instead of trying to keep his seat, had used his hands to vault backward and slide toward the rump. The blow that would have sliced him as a similar effort had split Gregory landed instead on the half-stunned, struggling horse.
The moment that it took Chilbert to pull his weapon from the now totally collapsing animal was his bad luck. Conan stretched out a hand to grip the axe’s handle, and so used Chilbert’s own strength to keep from being rolled on by his dead mount.
With a mighty wrench the count pulled his weapon out of the animal and away from Conan’s grasp, but by then my friend was braced, one foot on the ground and one foot on his fallen horse. Now it was he who was in a position for an overhead, two-handed sweep. He had the start of Chilbert by just that trifling edge that matters. He hewed the count’s left arm where it showed beyond the shield, and slashed again to lay open the thigh. His foeman tried to swing his axe with one hand, but it was easily warded. Conan’s answering cut took him in the face, and the combat was over.
Whether Chilbert was dead when he fell to the ground, or whether some horse’s hoof ground out what life was left in him nobody knew, and we were all too busy to find out. Chilbert’s men who were there to see were at first even too maddened to feel dismay at
his loss. They surged at us in a furious effort to ride Conan under, we flung ourselves in front of him, and there were a bloody few moments before he was safely remounted on a masterless horse.
Once in the saddle he started to shout: “Chilbert’s dead!” And we all took up the cry. “Chilbert’s dead!”
This was not merely a boast of triumph; its purpose was to tell the count’s men they were leaderless, make them think what that meant, begin to wonder what they were going to do. It turned out that they weren’t going to do very much. When we drove at them again they commenced retreating; and I could hear the Abbot absolving the souls of the men he slew as he moved steadily nearer.
We chased them, but, once they had broken, our object was not to kill. Conan and I stopped soon, watching the flight and trying to realize that it was all over. After a few minutes we were joined by the prelate. He, too, was dazed by the suddenness of victory.
“Well, it’s done,” he said. “With Chilbert slain they won’t have another try at us.”
“No,” Conan agreed.
We lapsed into the inertia that follows completed violence. “I still don’t see how it happened,” the churchman said then.
“It was one of those things.” Conan tried to spit, but his mouth was too dry. “If there’d been any other man leading the rear guard it would have been different. “
“Who was he? I saw Chilbert kill him, but I didn’t get a good look at him.”
“Gregory,” I said.
The Abbot’s eyes grew round. I had never seen him laugh before, but he did then. “How Clovis would have enjoyed that,” he remarked wistfully, and all three of us gave a thought to that man before he spoke again. “So Gregory didn’t want to meet you?”
“No, but as I couldn’t foresee that, I didn’t really have any business charging him before the rest of his army was occupied with you at the abbey. Then when he turned, one thing lead to another. At that I wouldn’t have followed in so deeply if I hadn’t been sure of you.”
The Harp and the Blade Page 24
