THE DIN OF BATTLE
It was a strange uncouth band that Joan had got together in a handful of
minutes in order to accompany her to the field upon which, sullenly
retiring before a vastly more numerous enemy, Conrad and his little army
stood at bay. Raw lathy lads, wide-hammed from sitting cross-legged in
tailors' workshops; prentices too wambly and knock-kneed to be taken at
the first draft; old men who had long leaned against street corners and
rubbed the doorways of the cathedral smooth with their backs; a
sprinkling of stout citizens, reluctant and much afraid, but still more
afraid of the wrath of Joan of the Sword Hand.
Joan was still scouring the lanes and intricate passages for laggards
when Boris and Jorian entered the little square where this company were
assembled, most of them embracing their arbalists as if they had been
sweeping besoms, and the rest holding their halberds as if they feared
they would do themselves an injury.
The nose of fat Jorian went so high into the air that, without intending
it, he found himself looking up at Boris; and at that moment Boris
chanced to be glancing at Jorian down the side of his high arched beak.
To the herd of the uncouth soldiery it simply appeared as though the two
war-captains of Plassenburg looked at each other. An observer on the
opposite side would have noted, however, that the right eye of Jorian
and the left eye of Boris simultaneously closed.
Yet when they turned their regard upon the last levy of the city of
Courtland their faces were grave.
"Whence come these churchyard scourings, these skulls and crossbones set
up on end?" cried Jorian in face of them all. And this saying from so
stout a man made their legs wamble more than ever.
"Rotboss rascals, rogues in grain," Boris took up the tale, "faith, it
makes a man scratch only to look at them! Did you ever see their
marrow?"
The two captains turned away in disgust. They walked to and fro a little
apart, and Boris, who loved all animals, kicked a dog that came his way.
Boris was unhappy. He avoided Jorian's eye. At last he broke out.
"We cannot let our Lady Joan set forth for field with such a compost of
mumpers and tun-barrels as these!" he said.
Boris confided this, as it were to the housetops. Jorian apparently did
not listen. He was clicking his dagger in its sheath, but from his next
word it was evident that his mind had not been inactive.
"What excuse could we make to Hugo, our Prince?" he said at last.
"Scarcely did he believe us the last time. And on this occasion we have
his direct orders."
"Are we not still Envoys?" queried Boris.
"Extraordinary!" twinkled Jorian, catching his comrade's idea as a bush
of heather catches moorburn.
"And as Envoys of a great principality like Plassenburg--representatives
of the most noble Prince and Princess in this Empire, should we not ride
with retinue due and fitting? That is not taking the Palace Guard into
battle. It is only affording due protection to their Excellencies'
representatives."
"That sounds well enough," answered Boris doubtfully, "but will it stand
probation, think you, when Hugo scowls at us from under his brows, and
you see the bar of the fifteen Red Axes of the Wolfmark stand red across
his forehead?"
"Tut, man, his anger is naught to that of Karl the Miller's Son. You
and I have stood that. Why should we fear our quiet Hugo?"
"Aye, aye; in our day we have tried one thing and then another upon Karl
and have borne up under his anger. But then Karl only cursed and used
great horned words, suchlike as in his youth he had heard the waggoners
use to encourage their horses up the mill brae. But Hugo--when he is
angry he says nought, only the red bar comes up slowly, and as it grows
dark and fiery you wish he would order you to the scaffold at once, and
be done with it!"
"Well," said Jorian, "at all events, there is always our Helene. I
opine, whatever we do, she will not forget old days--the night at the
earth-houses belike and other things. I think we may risk it!"
"True," meditated Boris, "you say well. There is always Helene. The
Little Playmate will not let our necks be stretched! Not at least for
succouring a Princess in distress."
"And a woman in love?" added Jorian, who, though he followed the lead of
the long man in great things, had a shrewder eye for some more intimate
matters.
"Eh, what's that you say?" said Boris, turning quickly upon him. He had
been regarding with interest a shackled-kneed varlet holding a halberd
in his arms as if it had been a fractious bairn.
But Jorian was already addressing the company before him.
"Here, ye unbaked potsherds--dismiss, if ye know what that means. Get ye
to the walls, and if ye cannot stand erect, lean against them, and hold
brooms in your hands that the Muscovite may take them for muskets and
you for men if he comes nigh enough. Our Lady is not Joan of the
Dishclout, that such draught-house ragpickers as you should be pinned to
her tail. Set bolsters stuffed with bran on the walls! Man the gates
with faggots. Cleave beech billets half in two and set them athwart
wooden horses for officers. But insult not the sunshine by letting your
shadows fall outside the city. Break off! Dismiss! Go! Get out o'
this!"
As Jorian stood before the levies and vomited his insults upon them, a
gleam of joy passed across chops hitherto white like fish-bellies with
the fear of death. Bleared eyes flashed with relief. And there ran a
murmur through the ragged ranks which sounded like "Thank you, great
captain!"
* * * * *
In a short quarter of an hour the drums of the Plassenburg Palace Guard
had beaten to arms. From gate to gate the light sea-wind had borne the
cheerful trumpet call, and when Joan returned, heartless and downcast,
with half a dozen more mouldy rascals, smelling of muck-rakes and damp
stable straw, she found before her more than half the horsemen of
Plassenburg armed cap-a-pie in burnished steel. Whereat she could only
look at Boris in astonishment.
"Your Highness," said that captain, saluting gravely, "we are only able
to accompany you as Envoys Extraordinary of the Prince and Princess of
Plassenburg. But as such we feel it our duty in order properly to
support our state, to take with us a suitable attendance. We are sure
that neither Prince Hugo nor yet his Princess Helene would wish it
otherwise!"
Before Joan could reply a messenger came springing up the long narrow
streets along which the disbanded levies, so vigorously contemned of
Jorian, were hurrying to their places upon the walls with a detail of
the Plassenburg men behind them, driving them like sheep.
Joan took the letter and opened it with a jerk.
"From High Captain von Orseln to the Princess Joan.
"Come with all speed, if you would be in time. We are hard
beset. The enemy are all about us. Prince Conrad has ordered a
charge!"
The face of the woman whitened as she read, but at the same moment the
fingers of Joan of the Sword Hand tightened upon the hilt. She read the
letter aloud. There was no comment. Boris cried an order, Jorian
dropped to the rear, and the retinue of the Envoys Extraordinary swung
out on the road towards the great battle.
Outnumbered and beaten back by the locust flock which spread to either
side, far outflanking and sometimes completely enfolding his small army,
Prince Conrad still maintained himself by good generalship and the high
personal courage which stimulated his followers. The hardy Kernsbergers,
both horse and foot, whom Maurice had brought up, proved the backbone of
the defence. Besides which Werner von Orseln had striven by rebuke and
chastening, as well as by appeals to their honour, to impart some
steadiness into the Courtland ranks. But save the free knights from the
landward parts, who were driven wild by the sight of the ever-spreading
Muscovite desolation, there was little stamina among the burghers. They
were, indeed, loud and turbulent upon occasion, but they understood but
ill any concerted action. In this they differed conspicuously from their
fellows of the Hansa League, or even from the clothweavers of the
Netherland cities.
As Joan and the war-captains of Plassenburg came nearer they heard a low
growling roar like the distant sound of the breakers on the outer shore
at Isle Rugen. It rose and fell as the fitful wind bore it towards them,
but it never entirely ceased.
They dashed through the fords of the Alla, the three hundred lances of
the Plassenburg Guard clattering eagerly behind them. Joan led, on a
black horse which Conrad had given her. The two war-captains with one
mind set their steel caps more firmly on their heads, and as his steed
breasted the river bank Jorian laughed aloud. Angrily Joan turned in her
saddle to see what the little man was laughing at. But with quick
instinct she perceived that he laughed only as the war-horse neighs when
he scents the battle from afar. He was once more the born fighter of
men. Jorian and his mate would never be generals, but they were the best
tools any general could have.
They came nearer. A few wreaths of smoke, hanging over the yet distant
field, told where Russ and Teuton met in battle array. A solemn
slumberous reverberation heard at intervals split the dull general roar
apart. It was the new cannon which had come from the Margraf George to
help beat back the common foe. Again and again broke in upon their
advance that appalling sound, which set the inward parts of men
quivering. Presently they began to pass limping men hasting cityward,
then fleeing and panic-stricken wretches who looked over their shoulders
as if they saw steel flashing at their backs.
A camp-marshal or two was trying to stay these, beating them over the
head and shoulders with the flat of their swords; but not a man of the
Plassenburgers even looked towards them. Their eyes were on that distant
tossing line dimly seen amid clouds of dust, and those strange wreaths
of white smoke going upward from the cannons' mouths. The roar grew
louder; there were gaps in the fighting line; a banner went down amid
great shouting. They could see the glinting of sunshine upon armour.
"Kernsberg!" cried Joan, her sword high in the air as she set spurs in
her black stallion and swept onward a good twenty yards before the rush
of the horsemen of Plassenburg.
Now they began to see the arching arrow-hail, grey against the skyline
like gnat swarms dancing in the dusk of summer trees. The quarrels
buzzed. The great catapults, still used by the Muscovites, twanged like
the breaking of viol cords.
The horses instinctively quickened their pace to take the wounded in
their stride. There--there was the thickest of the fray, where the great
cannon of the Margraf George thundered and were instantly wrapped in
their own white pall.
[Illustration: "The sturdy form of Werner von Orseln, bestriding the
body of a fallen knight." [_Page 351_]]
Joan's quick glance about her for Conrad told her nothing of his
whereabouts. But the two war-captains, more experienced, perceived that
the Muscovites were already everywhere victorious. Their horsemen
outflanked and overlapped the slender array of Courtland. Only about
the cannon and on the far right did any seem to be making a stand.
"There!" cried Jorian, couching his lance, "there by the cannon is where
we will get our bellyful of fighting."
He pointed where, amid a confusion of fighting-men, wounded and
struggling horses, and the great black tubes of the Margraf's cannon,
they saw the sturdy form of Werner von Orseln, grown larger through the
smoke and dusty smother, bestriding the body of a fallen knight. He
fought as one fights a swarm of angry bees, striking every way with a
desperate courage.
The charging squadrons of Plassenburg divided to pass right and left of
the cannon. Joan first of all, with her sword lifted and crying not
Kernsberg now, but "Conrad! Conrad!" drave straight into the heart of
the Cossack swarm. At the trampling of the horses' feet the Muscovites
lifted their eyes. They had been too intent to kill to waste a thought
on any possible succour.
Joan felt herself strike right and left. Her heart was crazed within her
so that she set spurs to her steed and rode him forward, plunging and
furious. Then a blowing wisp of white plume was swept aside, and through
a helmet (broken as a nut shell is cracked and falls apart) Joan saw the
fair head of her Prince. A trickle of blood wetted a clinging curl on
his forehead and stole down his pale cheek. Werner von Orseln, begrimed
and drunken with battle, bestrode the body of Prince Conrad. His
defiance rose above the din of battle.
"Come on, cowards of the North! Taste good German steel! To me,
Kernsberg! To me, Hohenstein! Curs of Courtland, would ye desert your
Prince? Curses on you all, swart hounds of the Baltic! Let me out of
this and never a dog of you shall ever bite bread again!"
And so, foaming in his battle anger, the ancient war-captain would have
stricken down his mistress. For he saw all things red and his heart was
bitter within him.
With all the power that was in her, right and left Joan smote to clear
her way to Conrad, praying that if she could not save him she might at
least die with him.
But by this time Captains Boris and Jorian, leaving their horsemen to
ride at the second line, had wheeled and now came thrusting their lances
freely into Cossack backs. These last, finding themselves thus taken in
the rear, turned and fled.
"Hey, Werner, good lad, do not slay your comrades! Down blade, old
Thirsty. Hast thou not drunken enough blood this morning?" So cried the
war-captains as Werner dashed the blood and tears out of his eyes.
"Back! back!" he cried, as soon as he knew with whom he had to do. "Go
back! Conrad is slain or hath a broken head. They were lashing at him as
he lay to kill him outright? Ah, viper, would you sting?" (He thrust a
wounded Muscovite through as he was crawling nearer to Conrad with a
broad knife in his hand.) "These beaten curs of Courtlanders broke at
the first attack. Get him to horse! Quick, I say. My Lady Joan, what do
you do in this place?"
For even while he spoke Joan had dismounted and was holding Conrad's
head on her lap. With the soft white kerchief which she wore on her helm
as a favour she wiped the wound on his scalp. It was long, but did not
appear to be very deep.
As Werner stood astonished, gazing at his mistress, Boris summoned the
trumpeter who had wheeled with him.
"Sound the recall!" he bade him. And in a moment clear notes rang out.
"He is not dead! Lift him up, you two!" Joan cried suddenly. "No, I will
take him on my steed. It is the strongest, and I the lightest. I alone
will bear him in."
And before any could speak she sprang into the saddle without assistance
with all her old lightness of action, most like that of a lithe lad who
chases the colts in his father's croft that he may ride them bareback.
So Werner von Orseln lifted the head and Boris the feet, bearing him
tenderly that they might set him upon Joan's horse. And so firm was her
seat (for she rode as the Maid rode into Orleans with Dunois on one side
and Gilles de Rais on the other), that she did not even quiver as she
received the weight. The noble black looked round once, and then, as if
understanding the thing that was required of him, he gentled himself and
began to pace slow and stately towards the city. On either side walked
tall Boris and sturdy Werner, who steadied the unconscious Prince with
the palms of their hands.
Meanwhile the Palace Guard, with Jorian at its head, defended the slow
retreat, while on the flanks Maurice and his staunch Kernsbergers
checked the victorious advance of the Muscovites. Yet the disaster was
complete. They left the dead, they left the camp, they left the
munitions of war. They abandoned the Margraf's cannon and all his great
store of powder. And there were many that wept and some that only ground
teeth and cursed as they fell back, and heard the wailing of the women
and saw the fear whitening on the faces they loved.
Only the Kernsbergers bit their lips and watched the eye of Maurice, by
whose side a slim page in chain-mail had ridden all day with visor down.
And the men of the Palace Guard prayed for Prince Hugo to come.
As for Joan, she cared nothing for victory or defeat, loss or gain,
because that the man she loved leaned on her breast, bleeding and very
still.
Yet with great gentleness she gave him down into loving hands, and
afterwards stood marble-pale beside the couch while Theresa von Lynar
unlaced his armour and washed his wounds. Then, nerving herself to see
him suffer, she murmured over to herself, once, twice, and a hundred
times, "God help me to do so and more also to those who have wrought
this--specially to Louis of Courtland and Ivan of Muscovy."
"Abide ye, little one--be patient. Vengeance will come to both!" said
Theresa. "I, who do not promise lightly, promise it you!"
And she laid her hand on the girl's shoulder. Never before had the
Duchess Joan been called "little one!" Yet for all her brave deeds she
laid her head on Theresa's shoulder, murmuring, "Save him--save him! I
cannot bear to lose him. Pray for him and me!"
Theresa kissed her brow.
"Ah," she said, "the prayers of such as Theresa von Lynar would avail
little. Yet she may be a weapon in the hand of the God of vengeance. Is
it not written that they that take the sword shall perish by the sword?"
But already Joan had forgotten vengeance. For now the surgeons of
Courtland stood about, and she murmured, "Must he die? Tell me, will he
die?"
And as the wise men silently shook their heads, the crying of the
victorious Muscovites could be heard outside the wall.
Then ensued a long silence, through which broke a gust of iron-throated
laughter. It was the roar of the Margraf's captured cannon firing the
salvo of victory.