It seemed a long time before he saw his cousin, bare-headed now, galloping wildly towards them over the meadow. The white signal flew from his hand, and Gilbert could hear his laugh as he pulled Saladin on to his haunches at a few yards distance and waited for them.
“Come on, men!” The excitement gained the ranks, and with the Marquis, sword in hand, at their head, they burst out of shelter and ran across the meadow.
“Dismount—you’ll be hit!” cried Gilbert, as he came abreast of the Vicomte; but Saladin, fresh from his gallop, and maddened by the racing feet behind him, was hard to hold, and Louis paid no heed. On they went, and the Blues on the bridge, seeing this advancing wave with its tip of steel, began to pull themselves together and to concentrate their aim. A peasant or two fell, and Gilbert could not but wonder whether, though his men were following well enough, there might not be a catastrophe when they came face to face with the levelled muskets. If so, then these were his last few minutes on earth. Not that that mattered.
But at last they began to breast the rise to the bridge, and showed no sign of slackening. The Marquis looked round, encouraging them as he ran; Louis, holding in his horse with bridle hand alone, pointed them on with his sword. Now they were nearly abreast of the idle mill wheel. Gilbert glanced round for the last time; the front rank was on his heels, shouting wildly. At that moment, too, he realised that Louis, glad of the excuse perhaps, had let his fretting horse carry him still further in advance. And then the catastrophe came—but not as Gilbert had pictured it. For suddenly, without warning, as Louis turned back in the saddle, Saladin went down beneath him like a stone, pitching him, finished horseman as he was, clean into the road.
Neither horse nor man rose again, and in a moment, when the smoke of the instantly succeeding volley had cleared, Château-Foix saw his cousin lying on his face, motionless, between the ranks of friends and foes. And the men behind were stopping.
A lightning pang tore at Gilbert’s heart. “Good God! come on!” he shouted desperately. “Will you let him be killed before your eyes?”
A roar answered him, and in that moment he knew that he was followed indeed. On they poured, over the dying horse, over his rider’s body—no time to see if he were alive or dead—and hurled themselves on the bayonets. . . . Five minutes of the hottest hand-to-hand fighting ensued—a whirling vision of fierce, convulsed faces, of straining bodies, of red steel, then of a sudden swaying movement as the soldiers gave before the terrible scythe-blades and the scarcely less terrible pitchforks, and fled along the road, mingled with their exultant pursuers. The bridge was won.
At the further end the Marquis paused a moment, sword in hand and panting, to look back. The light had not failed so utterly but that he could distinguish, among the human wreckage on the bridge, the bulk of the dead horse and a little group beside it. A second’s hesitation and he ran back. Louis was lying senseless in the arms of Laurent Robineau, while another man dashed on him the river water from his hat.
“Only stunned, Monsieur le Marquis, praise the saints,” said the latter, looking up; and Gilbert, drawing a long breath, waited for no more but ran on after his men.
But the fight was practically over, for with every moment it turned more and more to rout. Royrand and Sapinaud had driven in the right flank; at the second bridge the double mass of fugitives swept back the defenders with it. In vain De Marcé and Boulard tried to rally them; panic had gripped them, and all night long they streamed through the affrighted villages, till at daybreak even Saint Hermand, seven leagues away, woke to the clatter of the flying cavalry.