And, on that grim day, the Spanish hunger for infighting was fully sated. With a soul-chilling, wolflike howling and yelping that made fair to drown out all other sounds, de Burgh and his gallowglasses smote the oncoming Spaniards like a thunderclap, and a general melee ensued. Like the Spaniards themselves, the Irish seemed to prefer to make use of lance or spear, ax and sword, saving fusils, carbines, and pistols for emergencies, and the blacksmith symphony was deafening even at a distance.
Foster, lacking any really high ground from which he could view the battle at large, kept moving up and down the English line, trailed by his staff and bodyguards, which was how his personal involvement in the bloody fracas came about.
When he spied several hundred of the light cavalry composing the enemy’s left wing trotting forward, certainly bound to support the embattled center, he sent the Buckingham Legion to oppose and occupy these reinforcements. However, as that farthest-right unit moved out, the Scots, to the Buck-inghams’ immediate left, surged forward, bearing their livid, furiously shouting commanders—Foster had been in in-saddle conference with Eliot, at the time—on the crest of their intemperate charge. Loyally, the bodyguards and staff followed the Lord Commander of Royal Horse into the murderous maelstrom of whetted steel which lay ahead.
Seeing nothing for it, Foster drew his broadsword, let the blade dangle by the knot, and unbuckled the holsters on his pommel and the one on his belt, then he barely had time to lower his visor before he was confronted with an opponent Ducking the first swing of the opposing sword, he managed to catch three or four jarring buffets on his own blade before he and the Spaniard were swept apart.
As he traded blows with a broad, stocky, armored Spaniard astride a nimble, dancing roan mare, Foster sensed menace from his left a moment before a shrill scream of equine agony from that very quarter all but deafened him. At that same moment, his shrewd thrust penetrated between the bars of the Spanish helmet and, clapping his bridlehand to his face, the stocky man pitched from off the roan.
The mare’s reins dangled loose but a split second, then they were within the grasp of an armored figure Foster recognized as Sir AH, and seconds later the Arabian was in the mare’s saddle. The dead Spaniard’s mount made as if to rear once and twice snapped yellow teeth at Sir All’s steel-sheathed legs. Then Foster was faced with another fight and had no more time to watch Sir Ali.
Furious that, lacking control, the battle might well be on the way to being lost, Foster put that fury into his sword arm and fought aggressively rather than defensively as had been his wont, spurring forward to seek out opponents when they seemed lacking in his vicinity. Abruptly, the supply of Spaniards seemed to run out and those few he saw through the visor slits were either lying dead or had their backs to him. Roaring, he spurred after a foeman and, when he saw that the Spaniard’s mount was faster than Bruiser, reined up, drew his belt pistol, and shot the man out of his saddle.
He sat panting for a time, the smoking pistol hanging from the numb fingers of his suddenly world-weary arm with the fine Tara-steel swordblade—now blood-cloudy from tip to quillions, though still knife keen on every edge—dangling on the swordknot beside it. He became aware that sweat was pouring down his face, that his nose was itchily dribbling blood, and that he harbored a raging thirst. As it was comparatively quiet about liim and as no fresh foeman had come into his somewhat limited view since he had pistoled that last man, he bolstered the pistol, then raised his visor before wrapping Bruiser’s reins about his pommel and going about the removal of the stifling helmet.
He first rinsed his mouth, spit out the pinkish fluid, then threw back his head and avidly guzzled at least half the quart of tepid brandy-water, and it was only then that he became fully aware of his surroundings. The familiar terrain of the carefully chosen battlefield was nowhere in sight! And though the smoke of burning Lyme-port still sullied the horizon to his left rear, either the fires had died far faster than was normal or the shattered town was many miles farther away. At least a half mile in front of him, five or six armored riders, with men on foot clinging to the stirrup leathers of two of them, were making over the crest of a low-crowned hill at a slow trot, but aside from these and a scattering of still forms here and there no man stood in his sight, only a wounded horse—dragging great, ballooning coils of fly-crawling guts, moving in slow, erratic circles on shaking legs and screaming piteously.
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