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.