Away rearward from the field, out of all range of musketry and cannon, Cecil's maddened horse—maddened by the agony of a mighty wound—swept at a furious rate, while he—blinded with equal agony and unable to guide or control it—clung to his holsters or the pommel of the saddle, as it bore him on he knew not whither; but it rushed in its wild career down a wooded valley, actually treading on its own entrails by the way, till it fell heavily with its rider in the depth of a coppice, and there both lay, to all appearance, dying, unseen by mortal eyes.
Down sank the sun beyond those mountains which are spurs of the Balkans, a globe of fiery flame in an angry and cloudy sky; the day was done, and with it many a human life!
Cecil fainted soon after being thrown from his horse, but ere he did so there came over him a strange dreamy wonder of how the battle was progressing, or rather how the tide of war was going, for in the distance he could still hear the cannon on the heights of Djunis.
Anon the din of the battle passed away, and on his partially recovering consciousness the stillness of death surrounded the place where Cecil lay helpless beside his dead horse—a stillness broken only by the voice of the vila, or when the damp dewy wings of the night-birds brushed his cheek when whirring past him.
The snow-clad summits of the lofty hills that overlook the valley of the Morava on one side, and that of the Timok on the other, shone pale and white in the light of the uprisen moon.
At times, not far from him, he could hear the snort of a wild boar or the cry of a wolf, scared by the recent din of battle perhaps; and now he became conscious of the rush of a mountain runnel that ran near him, but which, sorely athirst though he was, loss of blood had rendered him too feeble to reach.
Close by him, with holsters, housing and gilded martingale, lay the dead body of his caparisoned horse, the blood of which was freely mingled with his own.
The hours of the night passed slowly on. The moon waned; but the stars grew brighter. Tender thoughts of Mary and all their mutual past, and of the future which now too probably would never be, came to him at times; and in imagination he more than once thought that her voice—but curiously mingled with that of Margarita—came to his almost death-drowsy ear.
Cold and clammy fell the dew of night on his white and upturned face; his breathing was long, deep, and laboured, for the ball that so nearly finished him had deeply pierced his breast. He lay well-nigh lifeless. Would he ever be found—on the farthest skirts of the field as he was—till too late; till death had come first and claimed his own, ere the birds of the air, the wolves and wild dogs made a banquet of him?
The moaning of the night-wind in the giant pines was heard at times; but it brought no sound, save the snarling voices of the beasts of prey, busy perhaps elsewhere. The flow from his wound had stopped; he must have perished otherwise; a species of bloody paste had sealed up the wound for a time; but Cecil's mind had become a chaos now, and he could remember nothing but the agony in his chest and the intensity of his thirst—an intensity to which the murmur of the cool runnel close by added tantalisation.
Would a cooling draught ever moisten his lips again? Even the heavily falling dew had failed to do so.
At last he became alive to all the dire realities of the situation—that he was lying in a lonely and untrodden spot, done nigh unto death; far from aid or succour, unable even to drive away the insects that, when morning came, would be battening in his blood, and when his sole watcher would be the greedy and expectant carrion crow. It would be so. He would die in solitude, and never find a grave until even that might be found when too late!
Around him, at times, the solitude was awful.
He must have slept or been senseless, for after a certain space he found the sun shining above the tree-tops, and some of the ravenous kites, that were croaking and wheeling above him in circles, had already begun to settle on the body of his horse, and dig their sharp beaks into it—something of life and volition in his face alone preventing them from assailing him, though they eyed him greedily, viciously, and askance from time to time.
A cry of great horror escaped him. Then his wound burst forth afresh, and he became completely senseless and oblivious of all around him.
After all—after all he had undergone, was he at last to find an unknown grave under the eternal shadow of this vast Servian forest!
As the third day of the battle was drawing to a close, an enterprising Briton, well mounted and armed with holster-pistols at his saddle, was galloping with headlong speed along the road that led from the north towards the camp at Deligrad; but evening fell ere he reached the scene of operations, and only in time to see the last red flashes of the loud artillery pale out in the darkness on the lofty heights of Djunis.
The heavy odour of gunpowder pervaded all the air, and every yard of the way now was encumbered by wounded men.
'I thought to have seen some of the sport,' muttered the horseman, who was a well-built soldier-like fellow, with a heavy moustache, and though clad in a coarse and warm tweed suit, wore a handsome Indian helmet secured by a gilt chain under his firm and resolute-looking chin; 'and now I have only arrived in time to be in at the death—the death of thousands, no doubt!' he added with a sigh; 'I wonder which way the day has gone, and who has won—Slav or Turk—not that it matters very much to me. A three-days' battle! Pray God that he may have escaped in them!'
In the moonlight he reached the entrance to the camp at Deligrad; but there, and over all the ground that lay between it and the two wayside hospitals above which the white flags with red crosses were always flying, there were crowds of wounded and dying men, whose moans, cries, and supplications loaded the air, and made the heart of the stranger sicken.
At the entrance to the camp the word Stoe! (halt!) was shouted in his ear, and he was stopped by the guard which was under arms, and allowing only ambulance waggons and men in uniform to pass—and the stranger had neither the parole nor counter-sign.
'Are you in the service of Prince Milano?' asked the officer commanding, in French.
'No.'
'You are a traveller, then?'
'Yes—monsieur—every man travels, nowadays,' replied the other, tossing away his cigar. He then inquired anxiously for the head-quarters or where-abouts of General Tchernaieff and his staff; but no one could say whether the gallant old Muscovite had, or had not yet left the heights of Djunis.
'Have you come from Belgrade?' asked the Servian officer, raising his voice, for the number and cries of the wounded were increasing every moment.
'Yes—monsieur—on the spur.'
'Then, perhaps you have despatches from the King.'
'What king?'
'The devil! here is a fellow who never heard of the King of Servia—Milano Obrenovitch!'
'A spy!' said several voices, in Servian and German.
'Spy, be hanged!' exclaimed the stranger.
'We have taken one already, and hanged he shall be on the morrow—-the rascal Guebhard!' said the Servian captain, exultingly.
'I know nothing about all this—I have my passports, which show that I am an officer in her Britannic Majesty's service.'
'Bravo! can I serve you?' asked a wounded officer, who was limping past, supported by a soldier.
'Thank God, here is a fellow who speaks English!' exclaimed the stranger to Stanley, for the wounded man was the latter, come down from the heights with a ball in his leg.
'And you wish to see the general?'
'I wish rather to see one who is, or was, on his staff—Cecil Falconer, a brother officer of mine. Allow me to introduce myself—Captain Fotheringhame, of the 26th Foot!'
For he it was—brave, honest, and friendly Leslie Fotheringhame, who had obtained leave, and come all the way to Servia in search of his absent comrade.
'Ah—the old Cameronians!' said the other, as they shook hands. 'I am Captain Stanley, late Foot Guards, and now, for my sins, Major of the 5th Servians. I know Falconer well. He was with the cavalry that went forward to support a brigade of guns. Since noon, I have seen and heard nothing of him—sorry to say so. I am enduring agony with my wound. We have had a terrible day of it. I came here in search of a new sensation; and, by Jove, I have got it—this ball in my leg! The carnage has been great—and I doubt if poor Falconer has escaped—all the more that—that——'
Stanley paused, and hesitated.
'What?'
'His death was curiously predicted.'
'Predicted!' repeated Fotheringhame in a tone of incredulous surprise; 'by whom?'
'A brother aide-de-camp—an officer of rank.'
'The deuce—do you, an Englishman, think such things possible?'
'When you have been a few months in Servia you will think any devilry possible,' replied Stanley, with a grimace as his wound stung him; 'I wish you every success in your inquiries for Falconer, and I shall be glad to hear of them from yourself at my hut in the lines. Make your inquiries where the cavalry charged on the right front of the position, and—till we meet again—good-bye.'
And with his head reclining on the shoulder of the Servian soldier who supported him, Stanley, who was evidently in great pain, limped away, while Fotheringhame, knowing not exactly what to think of all this—for, though he might have scouted any predictions at another time, he could not fail to be impressed with doubt and dread, from the terrible sights and sounds on every hand—took his way towards the part of the field indicated by Stanley, walking his horse onward, and upward, from the camp at haphazard in the darkness of a now moonless night.
We need neither refer to fully, nor attempt to describe, the endless scenes of horror that met the eye of Leslie Fotheringhame, as he stumbled on vaguely over the starlit field of battle—the arena of the three-days' conflict round the fatal heights of Djunis—scenes which redoubled in their harrowing intensity as the cold grey dawn stole in over the faces of the dead and the dying.
By industriously prosecuting his inquiries among the wounded and the men of the ambulance corps who were conveying them, he discovered the exact ground where the brigade of guns had gone into action, and Cecil's squadron had charged. The brown uniforms of 'Tchernaieff's Own' were lying there thick, but thicker lay the awful heaps of the Osmanlies, whom the fuse-shells, grape, and canister had mowed down as a scythe mows the grass.
From a sergeant of Cecil's regiment—a sergeant who spoke German, and was the same good fellow who had shared with him the flask of raki on the night before the battle—he learned how his friend had been wounded, as well as his horse, and how the latter had borne him out of the field, and been lost to sight in the ravine that opened away deep down on the rear of the right flank.
The prediction spoken of by Stanley seemed terribly near verification now, as Fotheringhame searched all the woody ravine, with his heart heavy as lead, for he remembered the farewell messages of Mary Montgomerie, and how, when he left her, the kisses of intense gratitude she bestowed on his cheeks were scarcely less tender than those of his own Annabelle.
He searched all the valley, but beneath the deep shadow of the pines, and amid all the wild undergrowth of years, he could see no sign of man or horse—only some croaking kites wheeling lazily in circles—and he turned away, thinking that it was among the blood-splashed wards of the hospitals and ambulance tents, or by the pits where the dead were to be interred, his sorrowful search could only be prosecuted now.