Count Hannibal

"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 heart grew

sick as she heard, as she waited, as she judged him by the fast-failing

light a horse's length before his men--with only Tignonville beside him.

She held her breath--would the shock never come? If Badelon had not

seized her rein and forced her forward, she would not have moved. And

then, even as she moved, they met! With yells and wild cries and a

mare's savage scream, the two bands crashed together in a huddle of

fallen or rearing horses, of flickering weapons, of thrusting men, of

grapples hand-to-hand. What happened, what was happening to any one, who

it was fell, stabbed through and through by four, or who were those who

still fought single combats, twisting round one another's horses, those

on her right and on her left, she could not tell. For Badelon dragged

her on with whip and spur, and two horsemen--who obscured her

view--galloped in front of her, and rode down bodily the only man who

undertook to bar her passage. She had a glimpse of that man's face, as

his horse, struck in the act of turning, fell sideways on him; and she

knew it, in its agony of terror, though she had seen it but once. It was

the face of the man whose eyes had sought hers from the steps of the

church in Angers; the lean man in black, who had turned soldier of the

Church--to his misfortune.