Clash of Arms: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

But it was above that fire that the real horror was, for there, swinging from the lowest branch of the young oak by a cord, head downwards, and perilously near the flames as they leaped up, was the body of the Englishman whose cries they had heard--that body being swung backwards and forwards by his struggles and convulsions, the arms thrown wildly about, and the hands clutching at space.

With a shout, Andrew, who led the way, was amongst some twenty wild Rhenish Bavarian peasants, the bright sword flashing now like a streak of phosphorus in the moonlight as it darted here and there--through one man's throat and another's breast--while the horse he bestrode flung the boors asunder as a ship's forefoot throws off the waves, and while behind him came Debrasques and the dragoons, themselves dealing blows right and left, and their steeds trampling down those who had fallen. Then, dropping the reins upon his horse's neck, Andrew's great left hand seized the swinging man by the belt and dragged him to one side of the flames, one touch of the rapier sundered the rope, and, a moment later, the Bavarians' would-be victim was lifted up in front of him and thrown across the animal's shoulder--he was saved.

Meanwhile, those of the avengers--for such, indeed they were--men driven to madness by the destruction of their homes and crops--who were not already on the ground and dead, or senseless from their wounds, had fled into the darkness of the surrounding woods, and Andrew and his party were left in possession of the glade.

"Speak, man," said he to the Englishman he had saved, while he cut away from his feet the end of the rope that bound them together, and Debrasques held to his lips a dram from a flask, carried by one of his followers, "speak! How came you to this pass; how fell into the hands of these crazed fiends?"

"I--I"--the soldier murmured, looking round wildly, and gazing up fearfully at the great cavalier--who now towered above him since he had been laid on the grass--as though he did not recognize him as his saviour, "I--I--Oh! save me, save me!"

"You are safe, my man. Yet speak, let us know what else is doing. Are there more being served as they nearly served you?"

"Worse," the man muttered, "if worse can be. There were two of us caught by them, we were sent out to seek for the incoming cavalry--oh! the other. The other! My comrade, Roger Bates!" And he raised his hands to his eyes, all smarting and burning with the smoke that had got into them, and rubbed the lids from which the flames of the fire had singed the lashes, as it had his eyebrows and hair. "My comrade!"

"What of him?" asked Andrew solemnly, knowing that some more fearful atrocity was to meet their ears, more fearful even than this their eyes had seen. "What of him?"

"They took us together, and he--he," turning his glance to the body of an enormous peasant lying close by, with his glassy eyes turned up to the sky, while in his throat was the great stab Andrew's rapier had made, "he who laughed so at our shrieks--directed our tortures. Listen. They dug his eyes out with their knives--they are lying somewhere about--then, blinded, they turned him into that wood to find his way back to the army as best he might, or stumble in the river, or fall down and die."

Swiftly Andrew translated to Debrasques this last horror--shuddering as he did so, and causing his hearers to shudder too, all soldiers as they were!--and soon the wood re-echoed with the cries of two of the troopers as they went forth to seek the mutilated man, and, haply, to find him if still alive.