“I had an item of news from Stockholm when last I heard,” said the Count, as they turned their horses’ heads. “Viktoria Falkenberg is dead. It seems that she had long concealed a fatal complaint.”
The King’s expressionless face did not alter; he was skilfully guiding his horse over the rough ground, already white with snow.
“The signal for the charge,” he remarked, “will be two shots—the passwords—‘God with us.’”
A darkness enclosed the world with the soft descent of the snow; the flakes hung in the folds of the King’s mantle and in his curls; his hat was covered; the ground was frozen, the tops of the gaunt pines hidden in the whirling storm; the rigid ranks of Sweden showed a darkness amid the dark; facing them were the black gaping cannon of the vast army of the Czar; even beneath their fur caftans the Russians were numb; Marpha, wrapped in skins and wools, stared at a picture of St. Nicholas Mentchikoff had thrust into her hands, but she was not praying but thinking of the absent Czar; she wished he was back in the dirty tent where she could minister to him and prepare him for the fight.
“I wonder if he is afraid of that boy?” she thought, then suddenly crouched low as the sound of the Swedish cannon scattered the storm; Karl and his eight thousand were hurling themselves on the ranks of Muscovy; Marpha crept to the tent door and looked out, but the snow swirled in and blinded her; again the cannon and distant shouts; she sat huddled and silent, hating her lover for not being there.
CHAPTER II
“IF you do not believe that I shall redeem Narva you are a fool,” said Peter rudely. “The Swedes themselves will teach us how to defeat their own armies.”
It was three months after his bitter failure when the King of Sweden had scattered his immense forces in a few hours, and he himself, coming with the reinforcements from Pskov, had withdrawn from the path of a conqueror with troops so greatly inferior to his own; Karl was spending the winter encamped near Narva and Peter had come to Birsen, a little town in Lithuania, to meet informally (indeed it might be said that the Czar never did anything formally) his ally, Augustus, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, on whose trained troops Peter still relied, though Augustus had shown to but little advantage in the war, and had done nothing since he had gracefully submitted to necessity in raising the siege of Riga.
It was to Augustus whom Peter spoke now; the King Elector’s heart was hardly in the war that for him had been mainly an excuse to keep a standing army with which to overawe Poland, and that he had never intended to go to these extreme, expensive lengths, and he had several times referred, with that calm elegance that irritated Peter, to the disastrous day of Narva, so fatal to the Russian arms that the terrified inhabitants of Moscow, on hearing of the news, had not hesitated to attribute it to magic on the part of the Swedes. And Peter had suddenly broken out into violence.
“Perhaps you are a fool,” he added loudly.