VII
De Landas rides like one possessed away from the scene of his dastardly deed; nor does he draw rein till he has come up once more with the Duke of Parma.
'At any rate, we are rid of him,' he says curtly. 'And next time we attack, it will only be with an undisciplined mob that we shall have to deal.'
All around him the mighty army of Parma is melting like snow under the first kiss of a warm sun. Every man who hath limbs left wherewith to run, flies panic-stricken down the roads, across fields and rivulets and morasses, throwing down arms, overturning everything that comes in his way, not heeding the cries of the helpless and trampling on the dead.
Less than an hour has gone by since France's battle-cry first resounded on the Bapaume road, and now there is not one Spanish soldier left around the walls of Cambray, save the wounded and the slain. These lie about scattered everywhere, like pawns upon an abandoned chess-board. The moat below the breach is full of them. Maître Jehan le Bègue has not far to seek for the master and comrade whom he loves so dearly. He has seen him fall from the parapet, struck by the cowardly hand of an assassin in the very hour of victory. So, whilst de Balagny's chief captains enter Cambray in triumph, Jehan seeks in the moat for the friend whom he has lost.
He finds him lying there with de Landas' arrow still sticking in the wound in his breast. Maître Jehan lifts him as tenderly as a mother would lift her sick child, hoists him across his broad shoulders, and then slowly wends his way along the road back to La Fère.