“Keep your place and take what measures you please, but pray let me choose my own position. That need not interfere with you in the least.”
And Kemeny, with a few other gentlemen, remained at table.
Wenzinger had scarcely made the necessary preparations when word was brought to the Prince that the army was in battle array. Then Kemeny stood up with imperturbable sangfroid and buckled on his sword, but refused to wear armour.
“Why should I?” cried he. “Do you suppose that the heart beats more courageously behind a coat of mail?”
So they brought him his most stately charger, whose restive head two stalwart grooms could only hold with difficulty. The coal-black, fiery-eyed steed plunged and reared; its nostrils snorted steam; white frothy flakes fell from its mouth all over its breast; its long waving tail reached almost to the ground.
Kemeny swung himself into the saddle, drew his sword, and galloped to the front. Everyone was amazed at his skilful horsemanship; he seemed to have been grafted on to his stallion, so perfectly did all his movements correspond with its gambols. On reaching the front, the stately charger fell into a mincing pace, sharply striking the ground behind it with its prancing hoofs, and nodding its head as if saluting the host, which broke with one accord into a loud shout of “Eljen!” At the same instant the Prince’s horse stumbled and plunged violently forward on both knees at once. The silver bit in its mouth snapped in two, and it was only his extraordinary skill and dexterity which saved the Prince from flying headlong.
His suite came hastening to his side.
“That is a bad omen, your Highness!” stammered Alexius Bethlen. “Your Highness should mount another horse.”
“ ’Tis not a bad omen,” replied Kemeny, “for my horse has not thrown me.”
“Nevertheless, your Highness, it would be well to change your mount. That horse is frightened, and will do nothing but rear.”
“I mean to keep my seat, if only to show that omens have neither meaning nor terror for me,” said Kemeny defiantly; and he ordered the broken bit to be replaced by another. At the same instant Kucsuk Pasha’s trumpets sounded a charge.
The Turkish cavalry formed a half-moon with the horns turned outwards. Kucsuk himself rode in the centre.
The Pasha on this occasion wore an unusually splendid costume. His kaftan was of rich-flowered silk wrought with gold; beneath the kaftan peeped forth a dolman of cloth of gold; a costly oriental shawl encircled his loins; his scimitar, buckled on behind, sparkled with gems; a gerfalcon’s plume, fastened by a diamond agraffe, waved from his turban. His charger, a fiery barb with slender head, long, twisted mane, and black flying tail, threw back its head proudly and shook its richly-fringed saddlecloth. A sort of gold netting surrounded its whole body, from the fringes of which depended numbers of large, jingling, golden half-moons.
As soon as Kucsuk Pasha perceived Kemeny’s troops, he dismounted, threw himself with his face to the ground, thrice kissed the earth, thrice raised himself on his knees, uplifted his face devoutly to heaven, and called upon the name of Allah. Then he remounted his horse; sent for his son; tore one of the falcon feathers out of his turban, and sticking it in the youthful hero’s, said—“Go now to the left wing of the host, and fight as becomes a man of valour! For ’tis better that thou shouldst fall by the hand of the enemy, and lie dead before me, than that thou shouldst fly, and this my sword” (here he smote the scimitar by his side with his fist) “should slay thee!”
Feriz Beg reverentially bowed his head, kissed the hem of his father’s kaftan, and proudly galloped to the post assigned to him, feeling that every eye was fixed upon the falcon’s feather which his father had fastened to his turban.
The Pasha now rode along the ranks and addressed these words to his cavalry—
“My brave fellows! the enemy is before you! I say not whether they be many or few—you can see for yourselves. They are indeed many times more numerous than we; but trust in Allah, and fight valiantly! It is more honourable to die here sword in hand than to fly like cowards. We are in the midst of Transylvania. He who flies will fall by the sword of the pursuer ere he reaches the frontier, and he who escapes the pursuer will fall by the bowstring of the Padishah. We have no other choice but victory or death!”
Then he turned to the Wallachs. Them he addressed with harsh and wrathful words.
“You dogs, you! I know right well that you are ready to bolt at the first shot; but know that I have ordered the troops behind you to instantly cut every one of you down who so much as looks backward.” Then the Pasha, placing himself at the head of his host, waved his naked sword for the trumpets to blow, and glancing once more along the lines, saw the Moorish troops who stood behind him, with melon-shaped, copper-plated helmets, making ready to fire their long muskets.
“What are you doing?” growled the Pasha. “Away with your muskets! The enemy has more of them than we. We shall only need our swords. Let everyone charge boldly upon the foe, ducking his head down over his saddlebow the moment I give the signal, and then gallop forward without hesitation!”
The host did as it was commanded. The Moors slung their funnel-shaped muskets over their shoulders, drew their broad scimitars, and trotted forward in the footsteps of the Pasha.
Kemeny’s troops, like a wall of steel confronted them, the musketeers in the first line, the landsknechts behind. In the centre stood Wenzinger, on
