There are pauses even on the battlefield when a few words can be exchanged, and the prince, flushed with the foretaste (as it seemed to him) of a glorious victory, turned to Paul with kindling eyes.
"War is a glorious game in all truth, Paul. I would not have been elsewhere for all the world. But you bleed--you are wounded. Tell me where. I knew not that you were hurt. You must ride back to the town and be tended there."
"Nay, it is nought; I do not even feel it. I know not who struck me, nor when. I will bind this scarf about my arm, and all will be well. And think you not, my liege, that it were well to return to the lines ourselves? I promised your royal mother and the Lady Anne that you should not adventure yourself too much today within the enemy's lines. But all such charge passed from my memory in the heat of the fight."
"Ay, and my place was here, in the midst of my good soldiers. Oh, it has been a glorious day! 'Lancaster will remember it ever. And see, Paul--see how they fly on yonder height! See how the battle rages and becomes a flight! It is the same everywhere. The Red Rose triumphs. Proud York is forced to fly. Shall we join them, and lead again to victory? They are chasing them to the very walls of the town."
Paul looked in the direction indicated, and a change came over his face. He had the wonderful long, keen sight which often comes to those who have grown up in the open air, and have been used from childhood to the exercise of hunting and hawking. The prince saw only the flying rout, which he concluded to be the soldiers of York; but Paul could distinguish more. He could see the colours, and the badges they wore, and he recognized with a sinking heart the terrible fact that it was the followers of the Red Rose who were flying before the mailed warriors of Edward of York.
The change in his countenance did not escape young Edward's keen eye, and he at once divined the cause, The bright flush faded from his own face, and his gaze was turned in the same direction again.
Alas! it was but too plain now; for the rout was plainly in the direction of the town, and it was easy to understand that had it been the Yorkists who had fled they would have taken an opposite direction, in order to reach their own lines.
For a moment prince and subject sat spellbound, watching that terrible sight in deep silence. But then the peril of their own position, and the deadly danger that menaced the prince if the situation should be realized by their foes surrounding them here, flashed across Paul like a vivid and terrible lightning gleam.
He turned and laid his hand upon the shoulder of the prince.
"My liege," he said, "we may not linger here. We must regain our comrades, and see if we may rally them yet. All may not be lost, but it were madness to remain here. Let me call our followers together, and we will charge back through the foe to our own lines. It is not safe to be here."