Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/345

Rh Even after that he hung an instant trying to meet the Countess’s eyes, despair in his own; but it was not to be. She had turned her head, and was looking back, as if thence only and not from him could help come. It was not to him she turned; and he saw it, and the justice of it. And silent, grim, more formidable even than old Badelon, the veteran fighter, who knew all the tricks and shifts of the mêlée, he spurred to the flank of the line.

“Now, steady!” Badelon cried again, seeing that the enemy were beginning to move. “Steady! Ha! Thank God, my lord! My lord is coming! Stand! Stand!”

The distant sound of galloping hoofs had reached his ear in the nick of time. He stood in his stirrups and looked back. Yes, Count Hannibal was coming, riding a dozen paces in front of his men. The odds were still desperate—for he brought but six—the enemy were still three to one. But the thunder of his hoofs as he came up checked for a moment the enemy’s onset; and before Montsoreau’s people got started again Count Hannibal had ridden up abreast of the women, and the Countess, looking at him, knew that, desperate as was their strait, she had not looked behind in vain. The glow of battle, the stress of the moment, had displaced the cloud from his face; the joy of the born fighter lightened in his eye. His voice rang clear and loud above the press.

“Badelon! wait you and two with Madame!” he cried. “Follow at fifty paces’ distance, and, when we have broken them, ride through! The others with me! Now forward, men, and show your teeth! A Tavannes! A Tavannes! A Tavannes! We carry it yet!”

And he dashed forward, leading them on, leaving the women behind; and down the sward to meet him, thundering in double line, came Montsoreau’s men-at-arms, and with the men-at-arms, a dozen pale, fierce-eyed men in the Church’s black, yelling the Church’s curses. Madame’s