Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [136]
They suffered their first major losses there by the curtain, and by God’s grace only, he and the two men with him were unhurt. Then, immediately, they had to face the first assault in strength by the enemy. At first they came in twos and threes, moving out of the trenches to investigate. Then came the Swiss in close order, stepping into the ditch and marching up to the breach without faltering.
He had done what he could. Twenty of his best shots were in Webb’s, and on the other side, a score of Spaniards hidden inside the outworks set up a crossfire when the hand-to-hand fighting was at its worst. And it sufficed, for after an hour with no advance and heavy cost to both sides, the enemy blew the retire and the Swiss left as they had come, and withdrew behind the town’s wicker ramparts. Then the bombardment restarted.
Two salvoes brought down Webb’s Tower, and killed or maimed all the curriers—his best—who were in it. The firing continued: regular, deliberate shots aimed at the Spaniards still left in the outworks and covering the resting-up and reforming of the assault troops. It was a time for recharging weapons and dragging out balls and powder; for clearing the dead and hurriedly binding the wounded: for the bustle of men obeying and carrying orders, and for everywhere words of encouragement, of commendation, of exhortation before the next big attack should befall them.
He put two hundred fresh men into the bulwark just as the lines of steel helmets appeared again over the counter-scarf and began to move down to the moat. Many more than last time, and well slept and well armed and well led. Then, with pike and bill, it was man to man, face to face and body to body, as the afternoon wore on to dusk. All round, the human voice in all its keys from aggression to anguish to anger, supported by all the music made by metal striking on metal, or the resonance of metal on stone; or the tuneless percusssion of metal on hide, flesh and marrowbone.
The fortress held. With his supporting hackbutters dead, his fire weapons finished, his munition boxes made inaccessible, Grey saw his men giving way inch by inch as the French, attracted by the easy fighting, began to cross the ditch unappointed and assail the widening breach. It was then that he thrust hackbuts into the hands of Austin and Harry Palmer and showed them where, concealed by the stonework, they could pick off the enemy.
He knew Harry’s trained eye, and his determination. He had watched, over and over again, Arthur’s chagrin at his cousin’s God-given brilliance with firearms.
Against that, Arthur was a soldier by instinct, and had killed his first man (over a dice game) at eighteen. Whereas Austin, in cold or hot blood, had never taken a life on a battlefield.
Harry Palmer was worried too. His shoulder hurt. From where he crouched, he could see Allendale’s dark, delicate profile, bent on to the task of loading powder and shot into his weapon. The boy was a perfectionist. Knew every trick of army strategy from the time of the Caesars, and would talk about them for hours. Rode; jousted; used a bow and a sword; mastered every skill he was set to, like a tradesman. And hated slaughtering men.
Not the person Harry Palmer would choose to trust his life to, out there in the buffeting cold of his niche, bearing down on a scrambling horde of invaders: for if Austin gave way, there would be nothing to protect Harry Palmer when they outflanked