The battle—if battle it could be called, thought Foster— had taken place a few miles east of Blackburn. The cavalry had been dispatched to prevent any large number of the fleeing Irish from reaching the Mersey, wherein lay their fleet.
“And we’ve been in the saddle damned near every hour since,” ruminated Foster.
He realized that he and his men should have long since dismounted and begun walking their mounts, but he knew that to do so would be, for him at least, to fall flat on his face. Pulling listlessly at yellowed wisps of dune grass, Prideful, his bay gelding, appeared anything but, his pride and his spirit run out, like Foster’s, in three grueling days of hack and slash and shoot and stab, of a few brief moments of sleep snatched fully clothed and armed on wet ground, too tired to heed the icy drizzle or the pains of a stomach wrestling with wolfed-down hunks of hard, stale bread, moldy cheese, and
stinking stockfish, the whole washed down with mouthfuls of muddy ditchwater.
Foster licked his parched tongue over his cracked lips, dropped the reins on the neck- of the played-out horse, and fumbled for his canteen. Found the empty cover.
“Foster, you dumb shit!” he muttered. “Now where in hell did you drop it?”
Then his dulled, fuzzy mind dredged up the memory. The memory of throwing back his head to suck greedily at the glorious water, only to have it ripped from his hand with a deafening clang, sent spinning through the air, to bounce cra-zily along the rocky ground, observed for but the split second before he and his men spurred for the copse from whence had come the shot, to hack the two mercenary musquetiers hiding there into bloody bundles of flesh and rags that steamed as the hot life fluids met the cold air.
Locating the brass chain and pulling the police whistle from the pocket of the chamois cloth shirt under his buffcoat, he blew a long, loud blast, followed by two short ones, a pause, then another long—his signal to dismount.
He kicked his right leg free of the offside stirrup and painfully swung it over the pommel and the drooping head of Prideful. But when he slid to the ground, his legs buckled beneath him. Kneeling on the damp sand, he knew that he had reached the very end of his strength, knew that in another eyeblink he would be stretched full-length, sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion. He could already feel the waves sweeping over him, covering all thought, all sensation, nestling him, cuddling his weary body, soothing his aches and worries and cares. The soft, warm waves crooned a lullaby.
“Sleep” they whispered, “sleep. Forget the cold, the pain, the world. Forget all and sleep.”
“Dammit, the men … my men, the horses! Got to find powder … find the army.”
He took his lower lip between his teeth and bit it, bit harder, furiously. The hot, salt blood oozed over his coated teeth, wetted his parched tongue. He found himself gulping his own blood, avidly.
Grasping the stirrup leathers, he slowly hauled himself onto his clumsy, unfeeling feet, found the broadsword still hanging from his wrist and sheathed it, bloody or no. But it took him three tries to get the point of the blade between the lips of the scabbard, so tremulous were his hands.
He took hold of the cheekpiece of Prideful’s bridle and began to walk the weakly resisting animal in a slow, erratic circle, wincing and mumbling curses as each new ache and agony made itself known. Gradually, one or two at a time, the troopers and officers up and down the strand commenced to emulate him . . . most of them, anyway. Some still sat on their horses or had fallen off and lay huddled beside them. Up to Foster’s left, a horse had fallen and both horse and rider lay motionless.
Trudging up the shallow beachfront because the sand was there firmer and did not drag so heavily against his still-unsteady legs, he consciously focused his red-rimmed eyes on each man he passed, croaking a greeting to those he knew. Not all were his; other units from Sir Francis’ Horse were intermixed, as well as strays from the North Wales Dragoons, the Glamorgan Lancers, slant-eyed mercenaries of the To-tenkopf Schwadron of Reichsherzog Wolfgang—King Arthur’s brother-in-law, furious with grief at the murder of his youngest sister—and even a few King’s Own Heavy Horse— their gilded armor nicked and dented and spotted with rust, now, their showy finery tattered and sodden and as filthy as Foster’s own clothing.