CHAPTER II

Karl, returning to his camp after having beaten one of the advanced detachments of the Czar’s army, was noticed by General Rehnsköld to be colorless as a man of stone, and when he came to dismount at the door of his tent, those who accompanied him observed that his boot was dripping blood, and the side of his horse soaked.

The Prince of Wurtemberg ordered his servant to run for a surgeon, and General Lewenhaupt caught the King’s arm.

“Sire, you are wounded!” he exclaimed.

Karl, in his proud obstinacy and his desire to endure everything in silence, would have denied the fact even now, but the pain was so intense that he could not conceal it any longer, nor could he put his foot to the ground.

“A ball struck my heel,” he said sternly.

“How long ago, sire?” asked General Rehnsköld anxiously.

“Soon after I left the camp,” replied Karl.

The officers glanced at each other; they knew that this meant that the King had been over six hours on horseback since his wound, giving orders as usual, and not in any way betraying his pain.

Leaning on General Lewenhaupt’s arm he entered the tent, his officers crowding in after him. It was still only early summer, but the air was dry and arid, and in the tent hot and close and full of a fine dust.

Karl seated himself on the plain folding-chair he always used, pulled off his gloves, and asked for a glass of water.

“This is an ugly mischance,” he said coldly. “I should have liked to have met the Czar on horseback.”

No groan or sigh passed his pallid lips, but his left hand gripped the side of the chair, and beads of agony stood on his broad forehead.

The surgeon entered, a little man with an eager face, one Neumann, well known for his great skill and learning in his profession; he was closely followed by two others, and the King’s personal domestics.

“Gentlemen,” said the King, lifting his blue eyes now dark with pain, “let us see how far I am unlucky.”

He held out his foot to the servant as if he wished him to draw the boot off, but Neumann was instantly on his knees, and had taken the injured limb delicately between his capable hands.

It was necessary to cut the boot from the leg; when this was done it was found that the heel had been completely shattered, and that gangrene had set in; the instant opinion of the surgeons was that there was nothing but amputation to save the King’s life.

Karl sat silent, his foot covered with towels, and resting on a chair; the pain was beginning to make him giddy, and, for the first time in his life, he was realizing what it might be to be unfortunate.

Hitherto he had deemed himself immune from such a chance as this; he had never conceived of his splendid body as in any way failing him, and now perhaps he was a maimed man for life.

The officers looked dubiously at each other; to them this came as a crowning misfortune; only the spirit, presence, and fame of the King had kept the army together amid all its miseries, and now, at the climax of their disasters, when their very existence depended on the taking of the stores and ammunition of Poltava, the King was struck down.

Count Piper came hurrying to his master’s side; the minister felt that his worst prognostications, that for a time had been silenced by the steady successes of Karl, were now about to be realized, and he felt a deep inner anger at the obstinacy that had landed them in this lost country, cut off from help, without resources of any kind, threatened by an enemy who was in his own country, and three times their number.

Karl perhaps read some of these thoughts; he looked at his minister with his usual coldness.

“Piper,” he said, “they want to take my leg off.”

Neumann looked sharply at the King, who he knew must be suffering torture.

This self-control will cost him something later on, thought the surgeon.

He lifted the towels and looked again at the wound from which the purple blood was welling, and staining the piles of linen laid beneath.

“If one cut, and cut deep enough, the leg could be saved, sire,” he said boldly.

Karl looked at him straightly; it was one brave man facing another; the great King and the great surgeon met on the common ground of fortitude and daring.

“Do your work then at once, M. Neumann,” said Karl. “Cut deeply and fear nothing.”

M. Neumann bowed, and directed his assistant to bring him his case of instruments.

Karl asked for another glass of water, and leaning back, drank it slowly.

Several other officers had now entered the tent including Poniatowski, the commander of King Stanislaus’ Swedish guards, who had followed Karl into the Ukraine out of affection for his person.

Karl showed some pleasure at his arrival, and held out his hand.

“Any news?” he asked.

“Nay, sire, the last scouts sent out have not returned.”

“To-morrow we will attack again,” replied Karl. “We must,” he added, with an unusual earnestness in his tone, “take Poltava.”

“If we do not,” thought Count Piper cynically, “we are dead and damned.”

He left the tent and passed to his own more luxurious quarters; he was much too sick a man to be able to watch the operation to which the heroic King was so calmly submitting, and too full of an increasing agitation and consternation to be able to command his feelings.

“Yet why should I care?” he asked himself, “Patkul was shattered like that sixteen times.”

The news of the King’s wound had now spread through the army, and there was a growing uneasiness among these hitherto invincible veterans, now ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-armed.

Returning presently to the King’s tent Count Piper met General Rehnsköld with whom he was on bad terms, but who now stopped to tell him that the incisions had been made in the King’s foot, which was now being dressed.

The minister, pale, restless, and dispirited, passed again into the presence of the King.

Karl, who had held the limb steady with his own hands while the surgeon used the knife, and had displayed not the least emotion, now sat on his bed while Neumann bandaged the leg.

He had just given orders for an assault on the morrow; his voice had not shaken or his hand trembled, but his face was pallid and damp, his lips curved in a slightly distorted smile.

Count Piper advanced, but before he could speak the Prince of Wurtemberg entered the tent with every sign of agitation.

“Sire,” he said briefly, “I have just been informed that the Czar is advancing on us with his entire army.”

Karl, with unshaken calm, looked at Rehnsköld.

“How many will that be, General?”

“We think, sire, about 70,000 men.”

Karl had known this; he had merely spoken to gain time; the intolerable pain was making it difficult for him to think clearly, and he realized that never had he needed to think clearly as he needed now.

Even his haughty spirit was forced to face the fact that he was in a desperate position, and one which most men would have judged as hopeless.

Cut off from all reinforcements or supplies, lacking everything, half his troops starving or sick, many bandits, untrained and unreliable, shut in between two rivers with no shelter or cover in a country so desolate and barren--and now helpless with a hideous wound--it might well seem that he was about to lose the fruits of nine years’ victories, and be deprived, in one sharp moment, of that glory for which he had sacrificed himself and his country.

“Seventy thousand men,” he repeated; he had himself but 32,000, of which only 16,000 were trained troops, but he remembered Narva, where the odds had been greater, and forgot the genius of Peter that in nine years had created a nation.

There was no council of war.

When Count Piper came to see the King that night he found him on his camp-bed, fully clothed, even to the boot on his uninjured foot, with sword and pistols, and a lamp on the table beside him.

The night was hot and breezeless; the sky cloudless, behind Poltava the moon was rising.

Karl lifted his eyes to glance at it as the tent flap was lifted.

“Are you wondering when you will see Stockholm again, Count?” he asked irrelevantly.

“I dream no more of Stockholm,” replied Piper. “I came to see how your Majesty does.”

“Very well,” said Karl.

He moved the lamp so that the rays did not fall fully on his face; he was shivering and burning with fever, and knew it; he did not wish Piper to notice his condition.

“Have you seen Rehnsköld?” he asked.

“Yes, sire.”

“He told you nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Karl put his hand to his head, pushing back his short locks of fair hair that were wet with sweat; his whole body ached with pain, and his wounded foot was a fiery agony.

“Ah, well,” he said, “I will tell you myself. We give battle to-morrow.”

Count Piper lifted his head and looked sharply at his master; so desperate a resolution was what he might have expected from the King, yet it startled him, as a general may be startled by the trumpets sounding the retreat he has himself ordered.

In silence the minister stared at the King, whose noble face was in the shadow beyond the deep glow of the oil lamp.

“At last we are face to face!” cried Karl, with an excitement that he would never have shown but for the fever in his blood. “Peter Alexievitch and I, after nearly ten years! He has always fled from me--ever since Narva.”

Sitting up in his bed, Karl reached out his hand for his sword, then let it drop while he stared at Piper.

“I met a man crying because he could get no news from his wife,” remarked the King, “and another who was sad for fear he should not see Stockholm again; those who follow me must learn to forget family and country--” pausing, he again put his hand to his forehead. “Aurora von Königsmarck once foretold disaster for me,” he added. “Had I been a greater prince if I had spared Patkul?”

Piper thought that the King must be delirious to talk like this; never had he known him to so unbosom himself, or to refer to these personal matters, or to speak in this tone of excitement; it frightened him to see his stern monarch thus reduced to ordinary humanity, and he went up to the bed and caught Karl’s hand, which was burning hot.

The King, however, had again perfect command of himself.

He gazed at Count Piper with the usual serenity in the blue eyes now hot and blood-flushed with pain.

“I am still Karl XII,” he said grimly, “and my men are still Swedes. Go to your prayers, Count, and leave me to my rest.”

With this he lay down, and put his head on the hard pillow.

A faint, half-stifled sigh escaped him, then he lay silent and still, and either was or feigned to be asleep.

Count Piper did not leave the tent, but stood at the open door, looking sometimes at the tall figure of the King stretched on his narrow bed, and sometimes at Poltava, dark against the paling midnight sky up into which the moon was rising.

A sadness was on Count Piper and yet a calm; at that moment his was the clear vision of a man who has a premonition that his work is over, and looks back quietly and steadily on his life.

How differently he had dreamed it all!

What had he not meant to do for Sweden. Karl XI, his beloved master, had left his country greater than she had ever been before, and Count Piper had resolved to continue his work, to carefully add stone to stone till the fair edifice was complete--to do in his way and with his means what Peter was doing for Russia.

Instead there had been this nine years’ war, empty of all but that glory that a day’s mischance might eclipse forever.

Nothing had been done for Sweden--she had been drained of men, of money, left unprotected, her King a mere name.

There was no direct heir; it seemed as if a grandson of Karl XI would never rule in Stockholm, as if the fine line was at an end.

The King began to toss in the heat of the fever, and in his sleep a groan of pain now and then escaped him.

“Ah, you, what have you done for all of us with your heroic deeds?” muttered Count Piper; he came into the tent and looked at the tall figure in the blue coat, with the flushed fair face and loosened neck-cloth, sleeping the heavy slumber of an utter fatigue that was stronger than the torture of his wound.

Count Piper was certain of complete disaster on the morrow; he did not believe that there was the least chance of a success against the Czar.

He saw better perhaps than his master, how Peter had labored towards this moment, how he had learnt bitterly and painfully the art of war from many defeats; he knew that the Russians at Poltava would not be as the Russians at Narva.

He was aware also in what a desperate condition were the forces of Karl, how two winters in this terrible country had tamed their pride and lowered their faith in their own good fortune.

And if this bubble of Karl’s invincibility was pricked, what then?

Nine years’ brilliant success would be, in a moment, valueless; Europe but yesterday at Karl’s feet would soon forget him, and Sweden, depleted of her men, penniless and abandoned by her King, would be a prey to the vengeance of her enemies.

Peter, bitterly offended by Karl’s brief “peace in Moscow,” and with many humiliations to avenge, would be no gentle foe.

In that moment Count Piper almost hated the King.

He was foolishly glad of the twinges of agony that caused Karl to moan in his slumber, and when the King gave a half-unconscious murmur for water the minister made no movement.

It had been his own wish that he should be left alone till the dawn when he was to be roused for the battle.

“I will not interfere with his Spartan habits,” thought the minister grimly.

He went to the door again and looked out on the fair night, opal pale, and the long encampment, colorless light and dark shade under the moon.

Count Piper thought as he had never thought before on the eve of any of the many battles at which he had been present, of the men sleeping now for the last time, of the distant homes they would never see again, of the Swedish blood that would water this arid soil to-morrow, and the Swedish bones that would crumble into the dust of this lost country.

Already the camp was full of movement; the beautiful horses of the Kalmucks and Cossacks could be seen moving among the tents, and here and there the moonlight fell on the steel of cuirass or the bosses of leather trappings, as the Swedish officers rode from one point to another fulfilling General Rehnsköld’s orders.

Count Piper was preparing to go to his own tent for an hour’s rest, if indeed his body could repose when his heart was so heavy, but a sudden exclamation from the King startled him into turning.

Karl was sitting up, his right hand flung out and grasping his sword.

His face showed ghastly in the mingled lamp and moonlight, his wet hair looked dark on his forehead, and his eyes were staring and congested from fever.

“I thought I was being broken on the wheel,” he muttered in a low tone.

He tried to move, and the pulsing anguish the effort brought him made him remember his crushed limb.

“Faugh!” he exclaimed, in a tone of angry disgust. The sword dropped from his hand on to the earthen floor; he started, then peered at the silent figure by the door.

“Is that the dawn, Piper?” he asked, in a quiet, natural voice.

“No, sire, the moon.”

“Send one to bid Neumann come and dress my wound. I would sooner be abroad than abed to-night.”

“I, too, could not rest, sire.”

“There will be time enough to rest when we are in Poltava,” replied the King; there was a note of wildness in his voice foreign to his character; he seemed aware of this himself for he added fiercely: “Curse this fever--I have Peter’s devils on me to-night. Fetch Neumann.”

Count Piper bowed and turned away.

Thus, without a word or handshake parted King and minister on the eve of the Poltava fight.