Nevertheless, I saw them muster again boldly and come at us. I caught the trampling of their horses as they gathered speed. The fire of our musketeers flickered out here and there adown the line, for it was a dark afternoon and the flashes could clearly be seen. I saw sundry horses go down and heard men fall, the iron plates of their mail clashing on the frost-firmed ground. Some of those who started most gallantly reeled in their saddles, threw up their arms and fell backwards, while their horses galloped riderless away, for that is the manner of men's falling who are smitten by the bullet as they ride.
The Wolf of Drummurchie was down. I hoped that he would rise no more, for he was a most cruel beast and the bane of many lives. Indeed, from before the fire of our musketeers, all trained marksmen, the riders of Bargany who had been so proud, fairly melted away. Thus was Earl John justified of his dependence upon powder and lead.
CHAPTER XXV
MARJORIE BIDS HER LOVE GOOD-NIGHT
I was just rejoicing that the battle was well over, and that the victory remained with us without great shedding of blood, when to my infinite astonishment I saw a little dark cloud of five or six men disengage them from the deray, and charge straight at the thickest of us. They seemed to come suddenly out of the midst of the battling snowstorm, for the driven flakes beat so in their faces, that had it not been shed from their armour they would have been fairly sheeted white in it, as indeed were the trappings of their horses.
In a moment more they were amongst us—Bargany himself first of all, with Cloncaird and James and Andro Bannatyne, and behind them, with his sword bare, Auchendrayne himself. Yet I opine he came not willingly, but that his horse, unaccustomed to noise, ran away with him. By what freak of madness they resolved thus to charge, as it had been an army in position, it is beyond me to tell. In a moment these five were in the midst of the slicing steel and the flame of ordnance—the snow-flakes driving in their eyes and their swords cutting a way through the white drift to reach the foe.
Never was there such a fight—at least, not in this land, for there were but five of them to near a hundred of us! So that I saw no honour in the battle, and besides, it went hard with me to have to smite that Gilbert Kennedy, at whose side I had ridden so blithely all the way to the house of the Inch.
But I spurred Dom Nicholas forward with a kind of joy, toward the mound where Auchendrayne had managed to stay his horse just outside the heady rush of the fight. I saw that he meant to watch what the end might be, but I was determined that I should give him more than he bargained for. So I couched lance, and crying, 'A Kennedy!' held at him, swinging a pistol point-blank as I came, and throwing it away as I gripped the spear. And this time at least I might well have been called Spurheel, for I rowelled Dom Nicholas most vigorously. I came upon John Mure with a surge, so that I clean overbore him with a lance-thrust in the thigh. I cared not a jot that he was old. The devil was older than he, and besides, if he wanted not to stand the chance of battle, he might even have bided at home for the quarrel was none of his.
And it had been telling all of us if I had stayed to finish him. When I think of the ill the man did afterwards, and how for years he had been bringing many to their deaths, I can bite my thumb for letting him off scot-free.
But, like a fool, I contented myself with the lance-thrust and the chance pistol bullet I sped at him in the heat of the fight. For I never could abide the cruel slaying of the wounded, which is practised even more in these private wars than in the great affairs of nations. And this over delicacy has often stood in the way of my advantage.