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.