By My Sword Alone by David Black (ebook reader ink TXT) 📕

under him; power and lightness, like wind under a bird, straight and sure, so, even pressed between the bugler and the cornet, they hardly bumped or touched, the entire line moving headlong together, with its direction now beyond James’ power to control, so that in the leisure now granted he was even able to realise the man he would collide with, to pick him out in the onrushing Russian line, to even guess how many more thundering bounds until their horses smashed together and their steel clashed; and how verdant the trees were behind him, and how blue the sky was, peeking through their upper branches.

James could pick out every detail of the Russian cuirassier’s potato face; the cracked brown teeth told him the man was screaming his battle cry, just as James was, but the yells of over 350 men, the sound of the bugles, and the thundering of their horses was drowning individual sound so that the world was become just an avalanche of noise.

The telescope snapped shut.

All things happened at once.

The deep, reverberating thump of horse flesh impacting at a closing speed he does not want to think of; it is a sickening glancing blow he feels up through every bone in his skeleton as his knees gouge into Estelle and he clings to her for dear life. To his side, James is aware of a figure flying from the crash of horses, then his Russian is in his face, the man’s sword arm drawn back for a downward slashing, killer blow; James, throwing his whole upper body down, flat against Estelle’s neck, sabre arm still outstretched, and the Russian’s blade slicing the air above him as his own sabre connects with the Russian’s cuirass, and glances into the space between his enemy’s throat and shoulder …

… and they are locked.

James’ arm, and the Russian’s, entwined in a grip. Both their tricornes are gone, and the force of this death embrace slews their mounts. The Russian’s head comes toward James in a butt, but the momentum of their horses lets James take the blow on his shoulder. It stuns the Russian. But their arms are still locked. As the Russian writhes, thinking it might break him free – the fool – James has his short pistol in his hand … and presses it against the Russian’s armpit, in the space where the front and back plate of his cuirass buckles, and he pulls the trigger … and in the smoke … so he cannot see … James is free of the wretched man; and Estelle from the Russian’s horse’s tangle.

But they are not free of the fight …

The charging ranks have crumpled into a slashing melee; Estelle and the bugler’s horse jammed tight by the pressure of Russian ranks. Before he knows he has done it, James has raised his sabre to ward off a downward slash against the poor lad’s head. But from the corner of his eye, there is another Russian, pressing against his other side, for some reason his horse turned, so he is facing the same way as James, and he is pulling his sabre back to slash.

James finds he is looking quite candidly into the Russian’s face as the Russian prepares to kill him; he knows he cannot move to avoid the blow, because he is pinioned by his bugler, and by horses behind him and to his front; all of them Russian cuirassiers. But his own sabre arm is in the air, free of all encumbrance; free to be drawn right back and stabbed into the Russian’s guts, long before the Russian’s blow could ever hope to cover all that air between them.

James, his sabre hand now slick with blood and his uniform’s arm saturated in it, from the hole he’s sliced open in the Russian, now turns back to his bugler, who has his own sabre out and is brandishing it wildly about him without tactic. James sees a face mad with panic, and grabs the boy’s free wrist. Words are pointless, the din about them too great. Their eyes meet, and the bugler, his flailing abruptly ceases and he understands, calms, smiles a quite horrible rictus as he realises that his duty now is to defend his colonel. He faces away from James, and they both begin to fight for each other’s backs in slashes and stabs in the heaving mass of men and horses; in the smells of horse and man sweat, and blood; and the noise. Horses’ and men’s noises, that they make when they’re in the grip of fury, or they’re being cut or they’re dying; and the clash of steel. A din without rhythm so that there is no time; on and on, as though it will never end.

And suddenly it is all over around James; he and his bugler are left standing, with no white tunic or burnished cuirass left to slash at. There is only space around them. Eyes bulging, they drink it in, both of them drawing deep, deep breaths; both of them stunned, wheeling their horses to face any new threat. But there is no new threat.

Any semblance of rank or line for both cuirassier and dragoon is gone. Where once were ordered formations, there are random knots of men milling together, still isolated little fights, sabres slashing in the sun. The smothering din has been silenced however, just the odd scream and savage oath. The Russians have broken off, streaming to their rear. And then James sees why; back towards the road, a tight group of Russian officers around their squadron guidon, are rallying their troopers to form up again. If they do, they will charge back, and their formed line will cut down the scattered clots of Dzików still scrapping on.

James has the bugler sound his own recall, and the weeks and months of dunning new drill into them pays off in a moment. Without being