“Enemy advancing crescent shape in loose formation,” he remarked. “Your men capitally entrenched. Masked guns, too, and cavalry in reserve. Your Majesty, how long have they been shelling the trenches?”
“All day,” Ughtred answered, with a faint smile. “Our losses are less than fifty wounded. This is their second advance. The first cost them a thousand men.”
An A. D. C. galloped up the hill with a report. Ughtred gave a few rapid orders and retired for a few minutes to consult with his officers. Below, the din of battle grew louder. Through the films of smoke multitudes of grey uniformed men could be seen creeping across the plain like ants, now hesitating and dropping, now running on from shelter to shelter. To Brand they seemed as numberless as the pebbles on the seashore. His face grew grave as he saw how near they were to the long zigzag line of entrenchments. The Thetian firing, too, had certainly slackened. A horrible idea flashed into his brain. If the weakening fire were due to lack of ammunition Theos was doomed.
He looked around. Ughtred and his staff were specks in the distance. They were hastening down to be nearer the scene of action. Brand caught his horse, and galloped after them. The battle fever seemed to be in the atmosphere. The afternoon heat was rendered more oppressive by a murky vapour rising from the valley. Below, it was difficult to see anything save the swarm of Turks creeping steadily on across the plain. Above their heads screamed the shells which were to pave the way for their advance. Brand hastened on, filled with misgivings.
At last he reached a spur of the hill from which an easy descent led down into the valley. From here he could see into the trenches, and his spirits revived. They were swarming with men, there were no signs of any panic. The King and his staff had halted almost within shouting distance, and protected from the enemy’s fire only by a little clump of trees. Then Brand knew that there was method in this silence.
A long, clarion-like bugle-call, and then—a sudden upheaval of all the forces of destruction. From the heights above the pom-poms and Maxims sent down a murderous rain, the trenches from end to end belched forth red fire. Brand held his breath, it was an epoch—for a looker-on a marvellous experience—a page in the chapter of his life. The firing-line of the Turks was within four hundred yards of the trenches, and in thirty seconds they were wiped out of existence. The next line and the next shared the same fate. The Turkish officers galloped to the front with drawn sabres, the Mohammedan battle-cry, solemn and inspiring, rang fiercely out. It was useless. No living thing could face that zone of destruction. A dust rose from the bullet-riven ground. It was like a hail-storm upon an ocean. The Turks wavered and broke, and the Thetian cavalry rode them through and through, passing out of their broken ranks with blood-stained sabres and hearts aflame.
Ughtred, watching, saw the first signs of danger, and signalled for their withdrawal. But the lust of blood was awake in them, and they were drunk with the joy of fighting. They followed and followed till the Turks, out of that awful avalanche of death, became conscious that a thousand Thetian horsemen were not an invincible force. Their fight was checked, they were almost immediately surrounded, their leader fell shot through the heart, and a miracle was required to save the flower of the Thetian army.
A miracle which happened. For of a sudden a horseman, who had ridden in the ranks, his face shaded by a helmet, leaped to the front.
“A Reist! A Reist!” he cried, “for God and Theos,” and once more the fear of numbers passed away. They fought like heroes, and in the mêlée without serious loss. They fought their way almost to the open, and their path was an avenue of blood. But how it might have gone with them no man could tell, for at the critical moment the whole cavalry reserve, with Ughtred himself at their head, fell upon the enemy’s right flank, and the triumph of the day was assured. The Turks fled, and no further pursuit was attempted.
The man who had led that wonderful rally rode slowly back to his place in the ranks. But Ughtred, from whose left temple the blood was streaming, and whose arm was helpless, put his horse to the gallop and intercepted him.