“What are you proud of?”
“There is so little, Lolyngton, so very little. There has not been time, that remorseless word. What have I done? Nothing! Oh, I have dreamed great dreams; I have moved across the land; I have learned so very little, but yes, I am proud that I hold a blade well; I am proud that I have read, and yes, that I am the son of Kerbouchard!”
They came then, a pageant of martial beauty in the stillness of morning; they came mincing their horses through the dagger-sticks, weaving and changing as though to some strange drill or unheard music, and we let them come.
One hundred archers crouched below the barricade; one hundred men with slings crouched among them, and back by the secondary defenses one hundred horsemen waited in reserve. Along the wall were pikemen and swordsmen and some with battle-axes. There was no fear, I think, but only waiting, and then the explosion of the charge, the horses suddenly gathering speed, the men hurling themselves at our wall!
“Now!” shouted the Hansgraf, and his raised arm came down, and the archers arose as one man and shot their arrows into the teeming mass. They shot at riders, for no man willingly would kill a horse.
“Now!” Again the command, and the slingers arose and hurled their stones, and then there were no more commands for each knew what to do. Around us were downed men and charging horses, arrows and stones flying, a crash and clash of weapons upon the wall. A horse screamed, and a man went flying and was impaled like a bug on a pin, arms and legs flailing against the death that came too soon.
A dark rider leaped his horse at the wall and came down beside me, and I swung at his face with my blade and felt the edge bite through his nose-bridge, and the man fell toward me, dagger in hand. Stepping back, I ran him through. An arrow tore through my clothes, and then all incident was lost, and there were only the terrible screams of battle, cries of agony, shouts, the clash of blade on blade, the whiplike sound of arrows.
They came and they came again, and there was no surcease. We fought and fought. My blade crossed steel with a dozen blades. Arrows whipped close; one stabbed my side, but ripping it loose, I fought on, all unaware.
They charged, retreated, then charged again. Some got into our circle, and died there. Many fell by the wall. We drove them back and pursued them with arrows, we hurled stones and threw Greek fire among them, but still they came. They fought like snarling dogs and died with teeth bared and blades still moving in the awful reflexes of muscles commanded by a mind now gone.
A man lunged at me with a sword who had cheered me a few days ago, and I thrust at his throat, and he yelled, recognizing me, “Yol bolsun!”
“This is your road!” I shouted, and ran a yard of steel through his chest, and his eyes flared, close to mine. He tried to stab me with a shortened sword, but I pushed him off. Knocked to my knees by a horse that leaped the barrier, I glimpsed an acrobat take a flying leap and land astride the rider’s shoulders and go careening off across the field, the rider atop the horse, the acrobat atop the rider, cutting and slashing.
Johannes died beside me, and I killed the man who slew him. Guido fell, choking on his own blood. Lucca, grim and terrible, fell back and fought beside me, and together we drove a dozen riders back from the barricades.
And then the attack broke, and it was over…for the time.
41
SOME SAT DOWN where we stood, and some went for water, others to have wounds bandaged. I myself treated the worst of these.
We had a dozen killed, twice that many wounded, and some horses were dead.
When there was breathing space I leaned on the barricade and rested my head on my arms. We had killed them well, but they died hard, and we knew what had happened was a mere skirmish that hurt them little, although they had lost four times our losses.
Suzanne brought a wineskin. The Petchenegs had come so quickly the women could not get away in the boat. “You are bleeding,” she said as I drank.
Remembrance came to me, and I put my hand to my side, but the blood had already dried. There was a place where my hauberk was slit so I could ride, and when it was hiked up an arrow had hit me, but not hard. A glancing blow, no doubt. Later my side might stiffen, but there was no time to do more now, for they would be coming once more.
“It is bad, isn’t it, Mathurin?” She had taken to calling me that, a name my mother had used for me.
“It is very bad,” I agreed.
Several men were throwing caltrops out on the grass, but nobody was talking except in commonplaces, for there was nothing to talk about.
The acrobat, a dwarf, who had been carried away on the shoulders of an enemy, had returned. He had a nasty cut on his foot, which I treated, but he had killed his man.
The sun was high; a light breeze ruffled the water; a fish splashed, and a Calandra lark sang in the meadow where death lay, oblivious of the corpses.
“Mathurin…look.”
Suzanne pointed upward, and my eye followed her finger to a great circling column that must have reached thousands of feet into the air, a column of pelicans flying, their white wings catching the sunlight. It was a lovely, peaceful sight.
“It is better than war,” I said.
We stood together, holding hands, and I felt the sweat drying on my body and wondered if I would outlive the day. It was very good to live, to feel her hand in mine.
A steppe eagle circled nervously overhead. Perhaps its nest was out there in the thicket.
The Hansgraf said, “Be ready, my people. They come!”
This time they came with their ropes, of which we had heard, and with hooks on long poles, and they pulled up some of our sharpened sticks beyond the reach of our arrows.
Their short, strong bows that needed two men to string sent arrows among us, but we kept low, and waited.
Suddenly, they charged on the oblique, hitting our wall where it joined the forest. They thought to find a weakness there, and several tried charging into the forest itself, but they were thrown back by hidden barricades or were trapped and killed by our men.
We lost another man, pierced by an arrow.
The afternoon drew slowly on, and we dozed by the barricade, enjoying the sun. Careful to avoid attention, I went to examine the boat. It was wide of beam but a good sea boat. There was a cask of water and a sack of bread and meat.
It came to me then that we were not going to get out of this, and the Hansgraf knew it. He had known it all the time.
He stopped me as I came to where he stood, but he said nothing, and we simply stood together. “If you get out of this,” he said after a bit, “I hope you find your father.”
Our food had been divided and placed in the forts that were our secondary defenses.
They were oval in shape, one set slightly ahead of the others, and all were earthworks with sharpened poles pointing outward from them and walls of woven brush with earth packed inside. They would be hard to take, for an assault on one exposed the attackers to fire from the other.
There was another attack before sundown, and we lost two more men, and a dozen were wounded. It was long after dark before I could come to the fire and be seated. Suzanne had hot wine for me, and it tasted good. For a little while then, I slept.
Darkness came and in the night we heard the cries of birds, occasionally something stirring in the thickets. Nobody felt inclined to talk. We wished only to rest, for tomorrow would come the hardest attacks, and we were bone weary and exhausted now.
Sooner or later they would find how shallow the water was and ride around us, and we had too few men to protect ourselves and no time to build defenses there.
That would mean retiring inside our secondary defenses and a long, bitter fight.
The archers went about gathering what arrows had fallen inside our barricade. Nobody suggested surrender or bargaining with the enemy, had that been possible. The Petchenegs did not barga
in, they killed. In fact, we had nothing to offer them, for they wanted nothing they could not carry on a horse. There was but one way, win or die.
So we slept, took turns on watch, talked in a desultory fashion or nibbled at food. Suzanne rubbed oil on my tired muscles.
“When we retreat to the forts,” I warned, “go to the boat and waste no time getting away. Somebody must be in command there; let it be you, but trust to Khatib, for he has wisdom in all matters.”
“You believe it will be necessary?”
“Yes, Suzanne, it will be necessary.”
“I shall not see you again until Constantinople? Or Saône?”
“One or the other. Expect me, but protect yourself. Count Robert may be there, or another such as Yury.”
“You killed him for me.”
“I do not know if it was for you. Maybe it was because we wished to test our strength. Mostly it was for time. The Hansgraf needed time.”
The fires burned low, only a few lingering flames that coveted the fuel.
“If some of the others cross your path,” I said, “help them. Lolyngton and his people. They are only actors, you know, and much put upon. They are but shadows of the roles they play, and often there is only the shadow.”
“Not Lolyngton.”
“No, not Lolyngton.”
“The best actor of them all is not an actor,” Suzanne commented. “I mean Khatib. He performs on the stage of the world. I think he might have been a king or a vizier…in another life he may have been. He is a man of many faces and but one soul.”
We were conscious of a presence, the Hansgraf looming over us. We arose and stood beside him.
“Do you know?” He spoke suddenly. “I was born but a few miles from here.”
Somehow I had believed him Flemish, or a Bavarian.
“I am nobody.”
“You are the Hansgraf.”
He paused, then slowly nodded. “Yes…there is that.”
He stood silent, watching our shadows on the earth where in a few minutes no shadows would be. “It is day, I think. It is morning.”
“They will come soon,” I said.
“Go!” He spoke angrily. “Do not be a fool! What is bravery? It is a sham!”
“Why do you not go?”
“I am the Hansgraf.”
“And I am the son of Kerbouchard.”
“You are both fools,” Suzanne said, “but I love you for it.”
* * *
—
THEY CAME WITH the first light, not the mad charge that had swept so many enemies from the field, but carefully because of our defenses, and we met them at the wall, knowing it might be for the last time.
This time I, too, used a bow, taking up one dropped by a fallen archer. My first arrow took a man in the throat at seventy yards. Two more hits and a clean miss before they reached the wall.
Swords in hand, we met them at the barricades, and the fighting was desperate. A shout arose from behind us, and glancing around, I saw the Petchenegs were swimming their horses around to take us from the rear. For some, there was even wading water.
We fell back then, fighting every inch of the way. Men fell, horses reared and plunged, cries of pain, shouts of fury…it was madness. Behind us the walking drum was calling us back.
A man came at me, swinging a falchion, one of those broad-bladed swords that will slice through bone as if it were cheese. I parried his blow, thrust, and parried again. He lunged at me, and only the fact that my foot rolled on a stone saved my life. I fell, and the thrust that killed Prince Yury saved me again. Rising, I joined the flight into our islands of defense.
Suzanne! Had she gotten away? Was she safe?
The enemy charged, circling our forts and shouting, but the earth and brush walls were strong, and we drove them off.
Again I seized a bow and, manning the walls, took aim at the attacking riders. Twice we drove them off. Their dead littered the ground. How many were slain? How many died in those fierce attacks?
An arrow struck me on the helm, and it rang with the force of the blow. Stunned, I momentarily fell back. However, Toledo steel was no makeshift stuff, but the best, made by the finest craftsmen, and again it saved my life. The wound in my side opened again and was bleeding. A stone grazed the bridge of my nose, and my eyes were swelling shut because of it.
We fought on the walls, driving them back, holding them. Our horses fled back and forth, mingling with those of fallen Petchenegs, and the scene was one of bloody confusion.
The Hansgraf was here, there, everywhere, never showing fear, never weakness, always in cool command.
The attack broke, and they retreated, tearing down more of our wall as they left. Now they would prepare for the attack that would finish us off.
Many of ours had fallen. Many were wounded. I could treat only those in our island.
A cry went up. “The boats! The boats!”
And they were there, the boats that were to pick up our goods and ourselves.
They were out there, not three hundred yards off, and upon them was escape, on them was safety, on them lay our future, if we could make it.
We would be men on foot, fighting against horsemen, but we had no choice.
Within our fort there were perhaps two hundred men, few of them without wounds. There must be nearly as many in the others. To remain meant death, eventually; yet to go out and face those fiendish horsemen, magnificent fighters, those devil riders from the steppes…
“How many pikes are there?” the Hansgraf demanded. He glanced about, counting them. There were no more than forty. Against horsemen, pikes were the best defense. He lifted a pike to signal the others. In reply the men of Sarzeau lifted a forest of pikes…perhaps sixty. But there were no more than twenty among Flandrin’s men.
Rescue lay off the shore. Rescue, safety, Suzanne.
“We will try. Here all will die, out there some may live.”
The Petchenegs had drawn off, regrouping and preparing another attack. Because of dunes along the shore back where they were, they had not seen the boats.
Suddenly, the walking drum began to beat, and we poured from the forts, surrounded by a wall of pikes. The drum began the beat double-quick, and we started on a trot for the beach, holding our tight formation.
How much distance did we gain? Forty yards? Fifty?
They came like the wind.
Low in their saddles, they threw themselves into our pikes, dying while they drove our men in upon themselves. Men went down and were trampled into earth. An acrobat whom I had known went down, his face obliterated a moment later by the hoof of a charging horse; yet he came up and threw his sword like a spear into the back of the rider.
We fought inch by inch. Men fell; we helped them up, and now the months of working together told, for men fought to save each other as only brothers fight. And we reached the shore.
Dense reeds and brush crowded our right flank, and eagerly we used that flank to aid us.
A shout went up, and we saw more Petchenegs riding in the water, coming to cut us off.
In the wild abandon of that fight I forgot who I was, where I was; thoughts of escape were laid aside. Grasping a heavy pike from the hands of a fallen man, I hurled it into the breast of a charging horseman. My sword cut a swath around me. A hand grasped my leg as an enemy tried to pull me down, and I kicked him viciously. He fell back, his neck broken.
We fought. A body fell from a horse and knocked me flat. Struggling to rise, I glimpsed the Hansgraf surrounded and cut off, laying about him with a falchion, handling the heavy blade with the ease of a dagger.
An arrow took him in the breast, and he wrenched it free and fought on. Lucca went down. Lolyngton I could not see anywhere.
Blood was running into my eyes, and a horseman charged at me, lance at rest
. My blade turned his lance and thrust into his side, but the rush of his horse slammed me back and into the water. A horse fell near me, his hooves threshing in agony.
Struggling to rise, I gulped bloody salt water. Somebody struck at me with an ax, but my swinging sword slashed through his ear and deep into the side of his head. He fell into the water, and I put my foot on his chest to pull my sword free.
The drum was still beating, a heavy throb, pounding in my skull. Something struck me, and I fell back into the water. A horse leaped over me, his hooves missing me by inches.
Plunging riders were all about me, as our men fought deeper into the water. Some were already swimming for the boats.
Sarzeau, Flandrin, and others were bunched together; some were archers, some pikemen. One of the Petchenegs snaked out a loop, catching Sarzeau and jerking him from the crowd. Sarzeau’s knife slashed the rope, and then he threw the knife with such force that it drove to the hilt between his attacker’s eyes. The man and his horse plunged by me, his eyes blazing with fury still, the knife sunk to the hilt above his nose.
A wave of riders swung around and past me, a blow on the helm sent me again into the water. Consciousness ebbed, but I fought like an animal to live. A stirrup struck water near me, and I grasped the stirrup and leg and was pulled up. Dragging the man from the saddle, in the grip of a terrible fury, I charged the nearest horseman, knocking him from his saddle with the power of my momentum. I grasped his sword as it flew from the rider’s hand. A rider was coming at me, and I struck his head from his body with one sweep of my sword.
A cold flash of reason swept over me, and turning, using the thicket for a flank, I rushed back into the water.
If I could just get to the boats! Men were swimming wildly for them; others were being hauled in. I thought I saw Suzanne in one of them. I clapped spurs to my horse, and then suddenly he seemed to trip. I went over his head into the water, and it closed over me as I sank. Coming up, I glimpsed a hole in the wall of the thicket, such a hole as is made by wolves or other game. Desperately, I clawed my way into it and lay gasping.
The Walking Drum (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 32