"I would gratefully put her under your protection for a few days," said Kabilovitsch. "My duty takes me away from her for a while; dangerous duty, Sire, and if I should fall—"
"If Kabilovitsch falls, Hunyades will be as true father to the lass. Have you any special desire regarding her or yourself, my brave man? You have but to name it."
"But one, Sire," replied Kabilovitsch. "That I may see her safely conditioned at once. For it may be that before the day dawns I shall be summoned. I serve a cause as mysterious as the Providence which watches over it."
"An Albanian mystery? They are generally as inscrutable as a thunder cloud; but are revealed when its lightning strikes!" replied Hunyades, dismissing the old man, accompanied by two guards, who were commissioned to obey implicitly any orders the herdsman might give regarding the party of refugees by his camp-fire.
CHAPTER VII.
The Christian host prolonged the festival of the Nativity from day to day, until the mustering forces of the Ottomans summoned them from dangerous inactivity again to the march and the battle. The latter they found at Mount Cunobizza, where the enemy had massed an enormous force. The Christian army, with its splendid corps of Hungary, Poland, Bosnia, Servia, Wallachia, Italy and Germany, was not a more magnificent array than that of their Moslem opponents. For the most part of the day the field was equally held, but in the afternoon the Turkish left seemed to have become inspired with a strange fury. The Janizaries, at the time renowned as the best disciplined and most desperate foot-soldiers in the world, were rivalled in celerity and intrepidity, in skilful manœuvring and the tremendous momentum with which they struck the foe, by other Moslem corps; such as the squadrons of cavalry collected from distant military provinces, each under its Spahi or fief-holder; and the irregular Bashi-Bazouks, who seemed to have sprung from the ground in orderly array. Their diverse accoutrements, complexions, and movements suggested the hundred arms of some martial Briareus, all animated by a single brain. The war cry of "The Prophet!" was mingled with that of "Iscanderbeg!" In the thickest of the fight appeared the gigantic form of the circumcised Albanian, his gaudy armor flashing with jewels,[17] his right arm bared to the shoulder, his cimeter glancing as the lightning. The Italian legions opposite him, upon the Christian left, were hurled back again and again from their onslaught, and were pressed mile after mile from the original battle site. Hunyades inflicted a compensatory punishment upon the Moslem left, shattering its depleted ranks as a battering ram crashes through the tottering walls of a citadel. The chief of the Christians saw clearly Scanderbeg's plan[18] to leave the victory in his hands, and at the opportune moment he wheeled his squadrons to the assistance of King Vladislaus, thus combining in overwhelming odds against the enemy's centre, which Scanderbeg had effectually drained of its proper strength. As soon, however, as it was evident that the Christians were the victors, Scanderbeg, by superb generalship, interposed the Janizaries between the enemy and the turbaned heads that, but for this, were being whirled in full flight from the field. The rout was changed into orderly retreat. Hunyades found it impossible to press the pursuit, and muttered,
"Scanderbeg commands both our armies to-day. We can only take what he is minded to give."
At length night looked down upon the camps. Few tents were erected. Hunyades sat for hours beneath a tree, waiting for he knew not what developments. On the Turkish side even the Beyler Beys, the highest commanders, were content to stretch their limbs with no other canopy than the three horse-tails at the spear-head, the symbol of their rank and authority. Far in the rear were the few pavilions of the suite of the Grand Vizier, who represented the absent Sultan Amurath. Late into the night the Vizier sat in counsel with the Sultan's Reis Effendi or chief secretary, to whom was entrusted the seal of the empire. He was enstamping the many despatches which fleetest horsemen carried to distant Spahis, summoning them with their reserves to rally for the defence of Adrianople.
Just before the dawn the secretary was left alone. Even he, and, in his person, the empire, must catch an hour's sleep before the exciting and exacting duties of the new day. He reclined among his papers. But a summons awakened him: the messenger announcing Scanderbeg. The guards withdrew to a respectful distance from the outside of the tent.