The Ravens’ Banquet (16 page)

“Aye,” spoke another. “We bought you bastards your leisure. And we were chewed up by the Croats for our trouble.” And he spat toward Balthazar and me.

“How many Croats?” asked Balthazar.

“Plenty left for you, friend,” sneered the trooper, throwing his chin up. “Now piss off and leave me in peace.”

Andreas shot us a glance and we three broke away and rode back to the stream and crossed back again. But Andreas headed toward the regiment’s wagons.

“Where are you going?” I shouted over to him.

Andreas turned his horse for a moment and replied: “Today I am wearing breast and backplate. And I’m stealing an extra pistol.”

Balthazar and I looked at each other but said nothing.

By the time our regiment had ordered itself, five hundred strong and flanked by Freytag’s and Duke Bernhard’s regiments, we saw the standards of the Imperial army across the stream, their companies of cuirassiers and harquebusiers spilling out along the flanks. Some of their Horse rode toward Nauen, while I spied others heading out along their right flank, facing our regiment on our left.

It must have been near mid-morning and the air was grown moist and muggy by the rising sun burning off the ground dew. As I sat in the saddle at the rear of the company, adjusting the chin strap on my pot helm that hung on the pommel, the Lieutenant rode up to me.

“Captain Tischler says the regiment is in reserve so we may be here awhile.”

“Is that good or bad?” I asked.

Tollhagen looked across to the enemy positions which lay about a mile distant. “I would hazard to say, Corporal, that we will
all
get a chance to play today.” He then spied a trooper without his blue armband, the field sign that we all wore.

“Get out your sign, dolt!” he bellowed out. “And you,” he said, directing his nervous wrath back to me, “you keep your squadron well-ordered!”

And then it all began. Nothing in the preceding months had prepared me for what I was about to be thrown into. I heard a loud thump and my mount flinched slightly. A second and then a third followed. Our guns had begun playing upon them. But our volleys were soon answered in kind: I saw puffs of grey smoke and tongues of flame dart out from the ridge that lay above Nauen’s rooftops. What I could not see was where the shot was falling.

Looking down toward the stream that divided the two armies, there was glinting steel for as far as I could see. Squares of pikemen, their poles pointing skywards, stood and waited for the order to advance.

Among the Imperials, countless red standards snapped out in their proud glory. Others danced and twirled, swung about by their Ensigns. I heard a loud hissing sound pass overhead. It was a moment before I realised that it had been cannon shot. I quickly looked behind but could see nothing but file upon file of riders. A moment later I heard a thump followed quickly by screams of horses to my left. Still, I could see nothing of where these cursed shots were falling.

Many braggarts will tell of how they have heard the crack of shot and seen the flames of exploding cannonballs. I tell you that they do not explode. You do not see them until they have stopped rolling – you may
hear
them fly past, but there’s nothing more unless it is strikes you.

We waited there, upon our little rise of a hill, for not less than one full hour. The guns spat at each other steadily but in spite of this barrage, on this field of many thousands of men, little sound was made. And this struck me as most fantastical a scene. I watched Balthazar sitting on his mount, three files inside from me, chewing on a strip of belt leather and fingering his spent musket ball that he wore round his neck as a charm. Andreas was somewhere up in the first squadron, the captain’s squadron, and could not be glimpsed. Jacob too, I could not spy out. And Christoph, dark Christoph, I could just about spy, deep in the third squadron, his body and head rigid as he stared ahead, waiting.

And what of me? I was of a mind most confused. I don’t recall that I was fearful. But I was sore worried indeed. For even as battle was joined, I knew the scale of this engagement was far, far grander than any before. My skirmishes of the past year were nothing more than street brawls compared to this. And I knew not how I would fare. The prophecy of Anya invaded my thoughts. Did she not say that I would fall? Samuel’s whispers on the howling wind at Duderstadt came back to me too. Did he not say there would be but one chance for me to save myself?

I could feel the sweat stinging my loins and my back as I waited. I longed just to be given the order to advance, to let fly, to be done with the gut-wrenching anticipation of the not-doing.

Balthazar called over to me.

“Have you got your luck charm yet? This is the time for it!”

I smiled. I had never told him of Anya’s little gift to me, that linen pouch of crushed flowers and God knows what besides.

“Aye, that I do,” I called back to him.

“Keep a free hand to cover your bollocks, Corporal!” He laughed in his old way, a rolling guffaw deep from his chest.

The crackle of musket volleys carried up from below. I could just make out from my vantage point along our sloped rise, the ordered squares of Tilly’s pikemen and musketeers advancing across the stream. But as the battle commenced upon our side of the water, the scene was lost to me. Smoke began to rise up from Nauen, either by intent or by misadventure; the little village had now been put to the torch. On our left, directly in front of our regiments of Horse, a few barns and sheds smoked furiously too. Surely, with the wind coming from the south, this was a device done to obscure our view and harry us.

But the curling grey smoke of damp straw and wood could not conceal a regiment of Tilly’s cuirassiers as they rode up from behind, wheeled, and then crossed over the stream. They were met by our own, and by God, the sound of steel on steel and the screams of horses carried even up to me high on the slope. And then, the time for observation, for reflections, was at an end. It was time to fight.

Slowly we rode out to the left and down the slope, company after company, some hundred yards between us. Cornet Krebs, the company standard held high in his grip, was several ranks in front of me. Behind, Lieutenant Tollhagen brought up the last squadron. To our rear, after a gap, the next company followed. There’s no time to think. Events roll upon one like waves upon the shore.

We were halted yet again by the trumpeter. And we waited what seemed an age. Then, even I saw we were about to directly engage. In front of us I could make out enemy Horse, rank upon rank, positioning themselves to strike. My heart beat hard under my steel breastplate and I told myself that it would be as all the other engagements – sharp and wide. So long as I held that horse tight between my legs I would be safe. Alas, how mistaken I was. The blast sounded and it was if I had entered a dream, the dreamer passively watching while the world unfolded before him.

Our harness and armour jangled and clanked as we trotted down to meet the enemy. Around me I could hear locks clicking on pistols and carbines. I gathered up my reins and brought my carbine up upon my knee. To my left, I heard a thump and turned my head to glimpse a tumbling mass of men and horses. It was a fleeting look and in an instant I had passed them, but not before I caught sight of a mount torn in two by the piece of cannon shot, its entrails splayed out upon the grass. The rest of the company moved around the heap of dead and did not slow their pace of advance.

At less than a hundred yards from the enemy Horse, we swung the company right and were given the order to make fire on them, giving those of us in the left-hand files an open shot. I fired blindly into the wall of troopers that stood before us, and then the whole of the company swung left and I heard the uneven crackle of carbines from the right. I know not if my bullet found a mark, for in the moment it took our right to give fire and for us to wheel behind again, the enemy was upon us. They fired at much closer range. The trooper next to me had his head flung back and I heard the wet noise of the round as it hit him. He fell forward over the pommel of his saddle yet his mount still kept up with the rest of us.

And then we were swallowed whole. I tried to keep the Cornet in view but all became swirling confusion. No time for one to reload, we were driven in upon ourselves having been so closely packed to begin with and pushed by the momentum of the enemy’s charge. Our company split into two groups and I watched the Cornet go off in one direction while half the troopers turned the other way. Many of the horses pushed into one another as we all slowed. Not much shot was given but instead the clanging of steel grew ever louder, as the Imperialists cut into us, hacking as they went.

As red-sashed horsemen came into view, I let my carbine drop, held in its swivelbelt, and I drew my sword. All was a muddle as we danced in a circle, a serpent coiling unto itself again and again. I caught sight of Cornet Krebs and shouted to the eight or nine comrades that were around me to rally to the standard. I kicked in my spurs and bolted forward, toward Krebs and the rest of the company. Krebs had already drawn the attention of the enemy – a Cornet is a prize most sought – and several of the enemy were bearing down on him and his guard.

I rode in and struck the first Imperial from behind with a cut to his shoulder. He howled and dropped his blade, even as I raised my arm again to engage another. Krebs was shouting and waving his sword. He held the lance-and-flag in his reins hand and turned his mount in circles. I knew we had to break off quickly or risk being overwhelmed. All semblance of order had long since been swept away. I could not spy the Captain or the Lieutenant. Two Imperials charged into me, raining sword cuts on me. I parried, the shock of the contact shooting a bolt of pain up my wrist and forearm. A comrade engaged my enemy from the flank and I snatched my pistol from out of its holster and shoved it into the face of one of them. The pistol lock whirred an instant, then discharged, and my arm and face were sprinkled with brains as the trooper tipped to the side and fell from the saddle.

A new group of horsemen rode into the
melee
. And these I had never seen on any field before. They wore strange pointed helms and cloaks of red and purple. Their blades, long curved Saracen weapons, were raised high as they trotted in to join our struggle. They shouted in a tongue that was not German and I knew then that they were the Croats that all of us had frightened each other with times untold.

And, by Christ’s Blood, they fought like demons.

The Croats waded in toward Cornet Krebs, eager for the prize. Another one of our companies hit them from behind and the whole great seething mass of yelling, cursing men and screaming horses turned yet again under the new shock. I managed to grab hold of Krebs bridle and drag him and a few others out of the worst of it.

We were but for a moment invisible it seemed, in spite of what rolled on around us. Krebs seated his battered helm back down with the pommel of his sword.

“Sweet Lord, what has befallen us? Where’s the Captain?”

I wheeled around trying to find any of our company. A trooper behind me shouted out that we should fly while we could.

Then Krebs cried out again. “There! Look!”

And I followed his gesturing sword. Captain Tischler, the Lieutenant and about forty of the company were engaging the Croat horsemen and Imperial harquebusiers even as more Imperials bore down.

Krebs roared out an oath and kicked his horse forward. Why I followed him I still don’t know. I could have turned the other way and ridden off. Yet the seven of us all went in again.

As I spurred my horse on to catch up with the Cornet, my eyes quickly took in the scene that lay beyond. Thick grey smoke, swirling with sulphurous yellow strands, floated low over the entire plain, drifting into combatants and sweeping them into its folds. Near a hundred standards waved across the field, winking in and out of view as the powder clouds drifted past. Yet I could not tell who was getting the better or worst. All was Chaos.

Like a fool, I charged in again, but now I held only one ready pistol, that being my other wheellock still sheathed in its saddle holster. We hit the squadron of Croats in the flank and dropped two before the others gave alarm. Horses pranced and careened one into another, swords rose and fell, a crashing din rising above all other sounds, even that of the cries of those mortally struck, shouting in their agonies.

Poor Krebs. They came upon him like wasps. A black-bearded Croat pushed his way through the press, working his way to the Cornet. Krebs still held the standard in his left hand with his reins, his sword in his right, and so was at a disadvantage to defend himself. His chosen men, those who are to defend the Cornet, were now separated, and I reined in alongside on his left to come to his aid. The Croat officer (for that he must have been) aimed a murderous cut at Krebs, but Krebs parried the blow high, snapping his wrist around and countering with a blow of his own. The Croat’s cloak, fashioned of a leopard’s pelt, billowed out as they exchanged blows, and in the rush of the fight, it appeared as if Krebs was battling some great mythical beast of the Orient.

Yet in such a fight, when all order dissolves and friend and foe become entwined in close combat, skill-at-arms matters little. Fate has the greater hand in these dread circumstances and so it was here. Even as I reached out to hold tight to Krebs bridle, and thus pull him away, he took a shot in the throat just above his breastplate.

The Croat officer seized the Cornet’s lance with its flapping standard, yet he could not prise it from off Krebs’s shoulder belt. And there we struggled, the Croat and I, each pulling on that lance like two children fighting over a plaything while Krebs dropped his sword and clutched at his neck. The Croat swung his sword at my head but I parried it well enough. Then, with his bridle hand, he tugged at the lance’s haft. Krebs, his face and breast covered in blood, fell forward over the saddlebow. The Croat leaned over to rip the shoulder belt and gain the lance but I punched him full in the face with my sword hilt. He cried out in pain and rage, nose and mouth pouring forth gore.