Into the smoke; but before I had time to know that they were gone, they had wheeled and were back again like the wind, led by a man on a black horse, who came on so gallantly to the very pike-points, that I thought it must be Pappenheim himself. He wore the black breastplate and helmet of Pappenheim's cuirassiers; and it was only when his horse reared up on end within a pike's length of me, and he fired his pistol among us, wounding two men, that I espied under the helmet the stern face and flashing eyes of Tzerclas. He recognised me at the same moment, and hurling his empty pistol in my face, tried to spur his horse over me. But the long pikes meeting before me kept him off, his men vanished, some falling, some flying, and in a moment he stood almost alone.
Even then his courage did not fail him. Scornfully eyeing our line from end to end, he hurled a bitter taunt at us, and wheeling his horse coolly, prepared to ride off. I think that we should have let him go, in pure admiration of his courage. But a wounded man on whom he trod houghed the horse with his sword. In a moment he was down, and two men running out of the line, fixed him to the earth with their pikes.
I confess, for myself, I would have spared him for his courage; and I ran to him to see if he was dead. He was not quite gone. He recognised me, and tried to speak. Forgetting the dangers round me, the uproar and tumult, the dim figures of men and horses flying through the smoke, I knelt down by him.
'What is it?' I said. After all, he was my lady's cousin.
'Tell him--tell him--the child! He will never get it!' he breathed. With each word the blood-stained froth rose to his lips, and he clutched my hand in a cold grip.
He strove to say something more, and raised himself with a last effort on his elbow. 'Tell her,' he gasped, his dark face distorted--'tell her--I--I----'
No more. His eyes turned, his head fell back. He was dead. What he would have said of my lady, whether he would have sent her a message or what, no man will know here. But I fancied it like the man, who might have been great had he ever given a thought to others, that his last word was--"I."
His head was scarcely down before I had to run back within the pikes. A fresh charge of horse swept over him, we received them with a volley; they broke, and a Swedish regiment, the West Gothland horse, rode them down. Meanwhile our manœuvres had brought us insensibly into the first line. I found that we were close under the hill, and I was not surprised when a handful of horse whirled up to us out of the mêlée, and one, disengaging himself from the others, rode along our front. It was the King. His face was stained with powder, his horse was bleeding, a ball had ripped up his boot; it was said that he had been placing and pointing cannon with his own hands. But as the regiment greeted him with a hoarse cheer, he smiled as if he had been in a ball-room.
He raised his hand for silence; such silence as could be obtained where every moment men shot off a cannon, and at no great distance a mortal combat was in progress.
'Men of Gothland!' he cried, in a clear, ringing voice, 'it is your turn now! You are My children. Take me this hill! Be steady, strike home, flinch not! Show these Germans what you can do! The word is, God with us. Remember St. Bartholomew's, and Forward! Forward! Forward!'