Castaways in Time

by Robert Adams

  And, on that grim day, the Spanish hunger for infighting was fully sated. With a soul-chilling, wolf-like howling and yelping that made fair to drown out all other sounds, de Burgh and his gallowglasses smote the oncoming Spaniards like a thunderclap, and a general melee ensued. Like the Spaniards themselves, the Irish seemed to prefer to make use of lance or spear, ax and sword, saving fusils, carbines, and pistols for emergencies, and the blacksmith symphony was deafening even at a distance.

  Foster, lacking any really high ground from which he could view the battle at large, kept moving up and down the English line, trailed by his staff and bodyguards, which was how his personal involvement in the bloody fracas came about.

  When he spied several hundred of the light cavalry composing the enemy's left wing trotting forward, certainly bound to support the embattled center, he sent the Buckingham Legion to oppose and occupy these reinforcements. However, as that farthest-right unit moved out, the Scots, to the Buckinghams' immediate left, surged forward, bearing their livid, furiously shouting commanders—Foster had been in in-saddle conference with Eliot, at the time—on the crest of their intemperate charge. Loyally, the bodyguards and staff followed the Lord Commander of Royal Horse into the murderous maelstrom of whetted steel which lay ahead.

  Seeing nothing for it, Foster drew his broadsword, let the blade dangle by the knot, and unbuckled the holsters on his pommel and the one on his belt, then he barely had time to lower his visor before he was confronted with an opponent. Ducking the first swing of the opposing sword, he managed to catch three or four jarring buffets on his own blade before he and the Spaniard were swept apart.

  As he traded blows with a broad, stocky, armored Spaniard astride a nimble, dancing roan mare, Foster sensed menace from his left a moment before a shrill scream of equine agony from that very quarter all but deafened him. At that same moment, his shrewd thrust penetrated between the bars of the Spanish helmet and, clapping his bridlehand to his face, the stocky man pitched from off the roan.

  The mare's reins dangled loose but a split second, then they were within the grasp of an armored figure Foster recognized as Sir Ali, and seconds later the Arabian was in the mare's saddle. The dead Spaniard's mount made as if to rear once and twice snapped yellow teeth at Sir All's steel-sheathed legs. Then Foster was faced with another fight and had no more time to watch Sir Ali.

  Furious that, lacking control, the battle might well be on the way to being lost, Foster put that fury into his sword arm and fought aggressively rather than defensively as had been his wont, spurring forward to seek out opponents when they seemed lacking in his vicinity. Abruptly, the supply of Spaniards seemed to run out and those few he saw through the visor slits were either lying dead or had their backs to him. Roaring, he spurred after a foeman and, when he saw that the Spaniard's mount was faster than Bruiser, reined up, drew his belt pistol, and shot the man out of his saddle.

  He sat panting for a time, the smoking pistol hanging from the numb fingers of his suddenly world-weary arm with the fine Tara-steel sword blade—now blood-cloudy from tip to quillions, though still knife keen on every edge—dangling on the swordknot beside it. He became aware that sweat was pouring down his face, that his nose was itchily dribbling blood, and that he harbored a raging thirst. As it was comparatively quiet about him and as no fresh foeman had come into his somewhat limited view since he had pistoled that last man, he bolstered the pistol, then raised his visor before wrapping Bruiser's reins about his pommel and going about the removal of the stifling helmet.

  He first rinsed his mouth, spit out the pinkish fluid, then threw back his head and avidly guzzled at least half the quart of tepid brandy-water, and it was only then that he became fully aware of his surroundings. The familiar terrain of the carefully chosen battlefield was nowhere in sight! And though the smoke of burning Lymeport still sullied the horizon to his left rear, either the fires had died far faster than was normal or the shattered town was many miles farther away. At least a half mile in front of him, five or six armored riders, with men on foot clinging to the stirrup leathers of two of them, were making over the crest of a low-crowned hill at a slow trot, but aside from these and a scattering of still forms here and there no man stood in his sight, only a wounded horse—dragging great, ballooning coils of fly-crawling guts, moving in slow, erratic circles on shaking legs and screaming piteously.

  The stricken beast was within easy range, but when Foster made to shoot it, he discovered that although he could recall firing but the single recent shot, all five of his pistols were empty and thickly fouled and his hands were too tremulous to recharge one.

  Very slowly, jerkily, his big stallion turned to his signal, his speckled hide streaked with foam, his proud, fearsome head hung low in utter exhaustion, his thick barrel working like a bellows as he gasped for air. Fifteen yards behind Foster, Sir Ali drooped in the saddle of his captured mare, both man and mount looking as utterly spent as Foster felt. The Arabian nobleman's unsheathed sword was as gore-clotted as was Foster's own, his armor was blood-splashed from crown to spurs, and the plume had been raggedly shorn from off his helmet. Beyond him, at irregular intervals, were six or seven men that the Markgraf of Velegrad could barely recognize as members of his bodyguard, and, beyond them, some battered gallowglasses and a sprinkling of Scots.

  As the stumbling Bruiser neared, Sir Ali grinned crookedly at Foster around his knocked-askew visor, his entire lower face crusted with blood from a nose canted and obviously broken. "My Lord hides his talents well. So mild is his daily manner that I had not realized just how formidable a paladin he truly is." Slowly, the clearly injured man came erect in his saddle and brought up his hacked and crusty blade to render his commander an intricate, formal salute. "It is my great good fortune to fight behind the banner of Your Worship."

  Sir Ali's solemn salute was the first, but far from the last, for every man or group that Foster passed as he allowed the leopard-stallion to pick his own slow way rendered him such evidences of honors as their conditions made possible—officers and other ranks, English, Welsh, Scots, and even the Irish. Foster had never before been accorded such, nor had he seen any other commander so treated with such awed respect by drooping, exhausted, wounded men.

  Along a slow two miles of human and equine dead and wounded, wherein riderless mounts wandered here and there and the ground lay increasingly thickly littered with swords, pistols, carbines, broken lance shafts, axes, powder flasks, and other oddments of equipment, Foster made his way, trailed by Sir Ali and such others of his force as were capable of the journey. Then he came onto the true battlefield.

  On that stricken field, the dead and dying lay so thickly that a man could have walked from end to end or side to side without once setting foot to the hoof-churned blood-mud beneath them. The phalanxes of circling carrion birds all but blotted out the sun, and flies rose up in a noisome black-and-metallic cloud around the intruders who disturbed their feastings.

  It proved too much. Foster leaned from his saddle and retched until his emptied stomach could yield no more, but still his body heaved and shuddered with his sickness and horror. As he woodenly searched for a bit of rag to wipe his lips, the tears came, cascading, cutting lighter trails down his sweaty, soot-blackened cheeks, and his armored body shook to his wrenching sobs; nor did he care who saw or heard him, as he sat there on an all but foundered charger, with flies gorging on his bloodstained armor, trying to avoid gazing again upon that rye field whereon over two thousand men had fallen.

  That night, in his headquarters in an unburned cottage on the outskirts of Lyme, Earl Howell, who had taken command of the uncommitted forces when Foster was swept into battle on the Scots' unordered charge, rendered his accounting.

  In preface, the grizzled old soldier said sternly, "The Lord Commander of Horse is not expected to lead cavalry charges any more than the King is; both are too valuable to the kingdom to risk in a melee, and if the Lord Commander does elect to take a personal part in a battle, the
very least he should do is to notify his principal lieutenants in advance, not just go galloping off with his bodyguard on the spur of the moment."

  Then he softened his rebuke with a smile. "But your sudden charge, Bass, was what won us the day, both sooner and at much less cost than anyone had expected. Those Irish ruffians met their match in the Spanish heavy horse, they had lost their impetus, the rear ranks of the Spanish center were rapidly reforming, and the countercharge would surely have driven our center back with a heavy loss."

  "Yours was a shrewd blow and delivered at just the proper place and time, Bass. Of course, your position there on the right gave you a perspective which mine own denied me, but I am here to state that you accomplished what was undoubtedly your purpose, accomplished it with a vengeance, I might add, and gallopers were dispatched to the King with news of your victory ere you and your retinue had returned to our lines."

  "But what of the Spanish right?" croaked Foster hoarsely. Two jacks of honeymead trickled down his throat still had not restored his voice, for some reason.

  The old Earl's shaggy salt-and-pepper brows raised into arches. "Why, your charge rolled the center right back into their right, of course. As I said, Bass, 'twas a well-planned and shrewdly delivered stroke. You must tell me someday just who were your mentors, in your salad days; they've produced in you a rare combination of priceless qualities."

  "Who else would have thought of disassembling those little falconets and their carriages and packing the lot on mule-back? Yet they gave our squadrons a hefty edge over the damned Spanishers. I have soldiered the most of my fifty years, Bass, from England to Persia and from Suomy's frozen lakes to the heathenish jungles southwards of Timbouqtu, yet each day I serve under you I learn a new and better way to do something, militarily speaking."

  "Perhaps you were not aware of it, Bass, but Earl Lucius and I were set with you by the King's express command, to watch you and to take over if the post seemed too much for your then-unknown talents as a great captain. Although you did great deeds last year, only the smaller actions of late summer and autumn saw you in an unsupervised, independent command. But this glorious day has proved you in all capacities; this is Earl Lucius' opinion as well, and our gallopers are carrying those very words and more to the King, you may be sure."

  "Bass, Sir Bass, my lord Marquess of Velegrad, please allow me to humbly state that it has been, is and will ever be a signal honor to your servant, Howell ap Owain, to have the privilege of serving under so accomplished and puissant a captain, and this honor will be duly noted in the records that all my descendants may share my justifiable pride."

  There were tears sparkling in the old soldier's faded blue eyes and his voice shook with sincerity. Stiffly, he fell to one knee and, taking Foster's hand, pressed it to his lips.

  When Earl Howell had finally departed into the night, Foster was on the point of arising from his chair and wondering if he could make it the short distance to the bed in the adjoining tiny room when Nugai padded in, wobbling slightly, his head and a large part of his flat, yellow-brown face swathed in bandages.

  "Now, dammitall, Nugai," Foster croaked angrily. "I ordered you to stay flat on your back until morning. You're certain to have at least a concussion, though the way your helmet was sundered, you're lucky as sin to be alive. If you won't think of yourself, man, at least think of me; the Lady Krystal will never forgive me if I don't bring you back alive."

  The oriental just grinned at the reprimand. "Drei Irischer Herren to see My Lord visch. Vill they to admitted be?"

  Foster nodded tiredly. "Might as well see them now as later. Show them in, Nugai, then you get your yellow ass to bed or I'll have you put in it forcibly and tied down."

  The thick-bodied little man answered only with a bob of the head and another grin, before slowly stumbling out the door, to usher in the Irish officers.

  Foster could recall having either met or seen all three, but he could not just then begin to cudgel his weary brain into expelling their guttural, almost unpronounceable Gaelic names and patronymics.

  After nodding welcome and raising a hand to acknowledge their salutes, he croaked, "Please make your business brief, gentlemen. Tomorrow will come early and end late, I am very weary, and, as you can tell, my voice is almost gone."

  The spokesman for the trio bore his right arm in a sling and a dirty-bloody rag was lapped about his left hand. He moved with a decided limp, and the brogue-imbued English that lisped through the gap of new-lost teeth proved indecipherable unless Foster devoted to the speaker his undivided attention.

  "M'lord Markgraf, thith delegathion be representing every living offither and axeman of the squadron of Royal Tara Gallowglaththeth. Pained it wath to poor Baron de Burgh that he could nae lead uth in thith, but wi' hith kneecap thmathed by a domned Thpanither'th mathe, he cannae e'en rithe frae hith blanketth, but he bid uth thpeak in hith name ath well."

  "Ath nane o' uth had e'er theen m'lord thwing thteel, we a' had thought him but anither, cauld-bred Thaththenach, but nae more. M'Lord, if ath the domned, bludey churgeonth thay, Baron de Burgh can ne'er agin lead intae battle, t' thquadron would hae y'r worthip for oor chief. Where'er m'lord may go, whome'er he may war on, t'will be our ane rare honor tae ride at hith back."

  "But . . . but aren't you all pledged to the service of the High King?" Foster asked.

  "Nae." the spokesman shook his head, but gently, for it hurt. "Nae, m'lord. Pledged we a' were tae Baron de Burgh, anely he wath pledged tae Tara." Then, his voice dropping to conspiratorial tones and his hazel eyes gleaming, he added, "An' it'th I be thinkin' a far better king would m'lord be makin' than mony who thtyle themthelveth thuch in Ireland."

  "When onthe they thaw m'lord fight at t' head o' hith gallowglaththeth, it's ivery mon o' any mettle would be after followin' y'r worthipth banner."

  Foster could not resist a chuckle. "Sir Liam, my lands be far to the east, in the Carpathian Mountains; I harbor no designs on any Irish kingdom."

  The wounded knight nodded. "Then it'th eathward we'll be ridin' . . . an' m'lord will hae uth."

  "I am pledged to King Arthur, Sir Liam, until his kingdom be cleansed of his enemies within, and unthreatened from oversea. Only then could I think of seeking my Empire lands."

  "Och, aye, m'lord," the Irishman nodded, smiling jaggedly, "nae doot will gi' uth time tae thee if Baron de Burgh e'er can lead agin, ath well ath tae thend for more gude men frae oot o' Ireland tae fill thothe thaddleth emptied thith day."

  CHAPTER 15

  The royal camp under the walls of besieged London was every bit as noisome and stinking as Foster had imagined it would be; not even the incenses and perfumes with which the interiors of the King's pavilion rooms had been infused could mask the intruding reeks of ordure and corruption from the camp streets outside. Fat flies swarmed everywhere, pigs rooted in the rubbish heaps and wallowed in the fecal-stinking mud, and Foster once more thanked his stars that he had had the foresight to send his seriously wounded either to their homes or to the cavalry camp at Manchester to recover, for precious few of them would have lived long in this royal pesthole.

  He himself had been afforded no opportunity to return to Manchester, the King's summons having reached him a bare week after the battle in the rye fields, while still the survivors of his brigade were being reorganized after burying the plundered corpses of their enemies, rounding up stray warhorses and the like.

  The captain of the resplendent horse guards sent to escort him back to the royal siege camp proved to be none other than that officer of heavy horse who had proved so good a friend on that long-ago day when Foster and Webster had had their near-fatal tiff with William Collier. Captain Sir Richard Cromwell looked no older than Foster recalled him, though his face showed a couple of unremembered scars.

  After Cromwell had formally delivered the summons, he cheerfully accepted Foster's invitation to share some of the bounty of food and wine provided by the Spanish.

  Under the direction of Sir Ali,
Nugai and his new gallowglass assistant had butchered and dressed a kid, stuffed it with a mixture of walnuts, almonds, spices, and its own chopped lights, then roasted it to crackly perfection on a spit over coals, liberally basting it with oil and wine. Preceded by Sir Ali—who had appointed himself majordomo of Foster's field establishment—Nugai and the hulking Samhradh Monaghan bore in the huge platters containing the kid and a quartet of large stuffed and roasted fowls, while trooper-servitors followed behind with crusty loaves of fresh-baked bread, cheeses, bowls heaped high with exotic fruits, spiced bean pasties, sweetmeats, and confections.

  Sir Richard appeared vastly impressed by the lavish board and even more so by the score of rare vintages offered in accompaniment. "Winter in the King's camp was hard, Lord Forster," he admitted. "Almost as hard for us under the walls, I trow, as for those within them, with both food and fuel at a premium and fodder for our beasts all but nonexistent. Too, there was much illness—camp fever, rheums, fluxes and the like, such as always afflict siege lines. This will be the first decent meal I've set tooth to since Christmas, when our good Lord Admiral drove off the escorts of a Papal fleet and captured the victualing vessels intended to succor London."

  Then the stocky captain laughed and slapped his thigh. "On the day after the feast, King Arthur had two-score earthen pots of dung catapulted over the city walls, noting that he was certain his sister-in-law would not mind if hungry men passed her provisions through their bowels before sending them on to her. The camps chuckled for weeks over that rare jest!"

  "Speaking of the Lord Admiral," Foster injected, "I have a present for him in the form of three fine Spanish caravels, of which we shortly shall enjoy part of the cargos. He needs but to send crews to man them, since their previous complements are either dead or occupying a prisoner pen down near the waterfront."