"Saints and fiends! Not a drop of wine! Those rascally Wallachians have grabbed my flask; the miserable hen-thieves! Hollo, Turk, or Jew—it is all one—here with a drop of wine!"
"Is it you, Larsson?" said Bertel in a faint voice, for his tongue was also parched with a burning thirst.
"What sort of a marmot is it whispering my name?" replied the voice in the darkness. "Hurrah, boys, loose reins and a smart gallop! Fire your pistols, fling them to the devil, and slash away with swords! Cleave their skulls; peel them like turnips! Grind them to powder! The king has fallen ... Devils and heroism, what a king! ... to-day we bleed. To-day we shall die, but first revenge. That's the way, boys, hurrah ... pitch in, East Bothnians!"
"Larsson," repeated Bertel; but his comrade did not heed him. He continued in his delirium to lead his Finns to the combat.
After a time a ray of the late autumn morning shone through the window of the miserable hut upon Bertel. He could now distinguish the straw upon the bare ground, and two men asleep.
Then the door opened, and a couple of uncouth, bearded men entered, and thrust roughly at the sleepers with the butts of their muskets.
"Raus!" they cried in Low German; "it is the signal to start!"
And outside the hut was heard the well-known trumpet-blast, which at that time was the usual signal for breaking up the camp.
"May they spear me like a frog," said one of the men in a bad humour, "if I can guess what the reverend father wishes to do with these heretic dogs. He should have given them a passport to the arch-fiend, their lord and master."
"Fool!" replied the other; "do you not know that the heretic king's death is going to be celebrated with a great festival at Ingolstadt? The reverend father intends to hold a grand auto-de-fé in honour of the happy event."