CHAPTER XVI.

NIGEL'S NEW REGIMENT.

On the next day Wallenstein departed as secretly as he had come. Father Lamormain ascertained that he did not return to Eger. One rumour had it that he had gone to his estate in Friedland, which is in the north-eastern part of Bohemia, bordered by Silesia on one side and the kingdom of Saxony on the other, a remote mountainous region, sparsely inhabited. The rumour may well have been true, for that was where the Duchess of Friedland lay at that time, and it had never been said that her lord neglected her for any other dame, unless it were Dame Bellona, who, ugly as she is, has in her time made many good wives jealous, and proved fatal to untold thousands of her wooers.

Three of these wooers, no longer perhaps so ardent or so able as of old, advised the Emperor in warlike matters. Colonel von Falck had taken part in the wars against the Turks in the days of the late Emperor Rudolf, and had lost an eye. He was almost patriarchal, but men said of him that he was a tremendous judge of Tokay, and unerring in his selection of officers. Of the former branch of military knowledge he gave almost daily proof, and his reputation in the latter, like many official reputations, rested on evidence which was quite irrefragable, since no one knew what it was. The second was a retired Master of Camp, a man just past middle age, who had had the misfortune to lose an arm, his left, fortunately, at the Weisser Berge. He was an acknowledged authority on waggons, horses, stores, cannon, and equipment generally. And an officer who has lost an arm by a cannon-ball must be admitted to have some practical knowledge of artillery. The third officer was the Grand Duke Lothar, a blood relation of the Emperor, who, owing to a very real lameness, acquired in his subaltern days, had been obliged to confine his military excursions within the narrow limits of Vienna or Ratisbon. But he had stored up a profound knowledge of Cæsar's 'Commentaries,' and was very well acquainted with the theory of war as it was then understood.

It was the Emperor, usually in consort with the experienced Maximilian, who formed the general plan of campaign. If the Council's opinion coincided with the Emperor's, as it usually did, on a review of the plan, its execution was left in the hands of the general in command of the army, and the function of the council was then to take all possible steps to provide reinforcements, arms, and officers.

Before this sage professional committee Nigel was summoned.

"You have learned the manège, colonel?" was the abrupt inquiry of the oldest officer.

"What is the complete equipment of a trooper?" was that of the camp-master.

"How many troopers do you require in a regiment of dragoons, and what officers? How many squadrons could you make of it? How many troops go to a squadron?" These were Lothar's.

Nigel, greatly wondering, answered all these readily and satisfactorily.

Then followed a catechism of the tactics of cavalry by the Grand Duke Lothar, who drew lines on a sheet of paper to illustrate his meaning. These also Nigel answered, for in a prolonged period of active service little had escaped his eye or his ear of what happened in any department of arms.

The three military councillors exchanged nods and whispers of approval.

"We are going to recommend his Imperial Majesty to cancel your commission in his musketeers and appoint you to the command of a new regiment of light horse!" said von Falck.

"I am forming the regiment," said the camp-master. "Bohemians, Austrians--all riders from their youth--with a sprinkling of old cavalrymen. They will need some shaping!"

"The other officers are being selected," said the Grand Duke. "You will spend the next week or two getting them equipped, and horsed, and drilled. Then your orders will be given you."

"I am at your Excellencies' service!" said Nigel.

Three days afterwards, spent in wearisome discussions, conducted on the one side in half the patois of Europe, and on the other in tolerably good German and an admixture of plain Scots, the subject being horses, Nigel was wishing devoutly that he had never seen Vienna, never become the favoured child of fortune, never----

"Well, Blick, what is it _now_?"

"Magdeburg's wellnigh spent, colonel!"

"Is that so?" was Nigel's rejoinder.

"Never saw such a place as Vienna," said Blick. "The beer is too light!"

"Well!" said Nigel, "you must drink more of it, or less of it."

"Yes, colonel! And the stagshorn dice are too light above and too heavy below!"

"Worse and worse! You'll have to give up play!"

"It'll give me up," said Blick. "And the wenches, colonel!"

"Well? Are they too light also?"

"I am not a bad-looking fellow, colonel! But if I stay here ... they're the very devil ..." groaned Sergeant Blick.

"You want to get back to Count Tilly? Is that it?"

"Not for twenty rix-dollars!"

"Well! Tell me! What is it you want?"

"I want to be sergeant in your new regiment!"

"What do you know of cavalry?" asked Nigel.

"I know men," said Blick stubbornly. "I can drill them. I know horses. I can break them in. My father was a smith, and my uncle a horse-dealer. My grandfather was hung for stealing horses. It's in the blood. In three days I will have that mob of rascals at my heel. I am Sergeant Blick! I say it!"

Nigel looked at Sergeant Blick with a good deal of interest. He had looked at him before, as he had looked at interminable ranks of soldiers, and had never observed that in Blick, as in himself, although Blick knew no reading or writing, grew the stubborn thistle of ambition. He also remembered a dozen instances of good sergeantry which Blick had displayed. It dawned upon his mind that, as it takes years to make a good ploughman, so it takes years to produce the good sergeant; and that without good sergeants it is impossible to make good regiments.

Sergeant Blick, despite his words, stood stiffly at attention, awaiting the settlement of his destiny. There were at least two scars on his face, which were an abiding proof that he had faced both pike and sword, and his complexion, originally fair (he was a North German from Münster), had been tanned and weather-beaten. The light-blue eyes, somewhat hard in the glint, were full of resolution and vigour, if the cheeks and the mouth did smack somewhat of the beer-can, as did the great girth of his waist, hardly counterbalanced by the greater girth of his shoulders.

"Sergeant is it? You can have it! You begin to-morrow; and keep all the corporals sober till we are ready to start, four days from now."

"Four days! The devil himself couldn't bring that mob of wild Zigeuners and half-cooked hinds into the likeness of a regiment in four days."

"Nevertheless it must be done!" said Nigel.

The new sergeant grunted some guttural remarks, which Nigel took in good part, as they were hurled less at himself than at things in general, which, as every one knows, are always deserving of the extreme of objurgation. Then the sergeant paused.

"Well? You want something else?"

"Yes, colonel! This little bodkin that the lady at Magdeburg tried to push through your steel cap! I tried to bargain with a dirty Jew for a crown or so. He said it was good silver, but he asked how I came by it. I hit him a buffet, but he only snarled that neither he nor any other dealer in Vienna would buy it because of something or other, arms or what not, on the hilt."

"Oh! Let me look at it! So! It is a curious device. Well, I'll give you a crown for it. At all events I have a good right to it if any one has. The point was meant for my head."

Sergeant Blick took his crown with thanks, saluted, and went out. To realise one's ambition and a crown, albeit a silver one, in the same half-hour, is always worth while.

It was true that to Nigel the weapon, which, had it been used otherwise, might have slain him, was a possession of interest. But a further look at it, or rather at the ornamentation of the haft, which was good silversmith's work, revealed to him what it had revealed to the Jew, who was too careful to buy that which might put a rope round his neck, something, in his opinion, stolen from some dangerously high place.

Again he asked himself, "Who is Ottilie von Thüringen?"

"By Saint Andrew!" he exclaimed as some one entered.

"Heilige Frau!" the other cried in equal astonishment. "So you are my new colonel, Charteris?"

"And you, Hildebrand?"

"I am to be your major, it seems, by the grace of General von Falck with one eye, Camp-Master von Pratz with one arm, and his Highness the Grand Duke Lothar, to whom regiments are sheets of paper and the officers numbers."

Major Hildebrand von Hohendorf did not seem altogether gratified.

"Dear old comrade!" said Nigel warmly, shaking him by the hand, "it would have given me greater pleasure to have been your major than it does to be your colonel. You were buried in Hradschin. Now you may conclude by becoming Field-Marshal."

Nigel knew that Hildebrand was not one to nurse small jealousy, and was amenable to the gentle influence of a bottle and an honest friend taken together. The bottle was soon forthcoming, and so was Hildebrand's pipe.

"Comes of helping to sack Magdeburg and carrying despatches, I suppose," said Hildebrand, a twinkle becoming apparent in his eyes. "Or have you been making love to Lothar's wife. They say she names most of the colonels! Ha! What's this pretty thing?"

He picked up the tiny dagger, which for the moment Nigel had forgotten.

"That's a little trifle a noble lady in Magdeburg tried to stick into my neck!" said Nigel. "My sergeant picked it up."

"Pretty thing!" said Hildebrand, examining it. "Bears the arms of the Habsburgs, too!" The peculiarity did not seem to strike very deep, for he went off to another topic--

"Now, what have we got to do? It seems to me we've got to make a regiment and then constitute ourselves free companions for a few weeks, maybe months, and then join Tilly!"

"Listen!" said Nigel. "We have to cross Southern Bohemia, the Upper Palatinate, enter Würzburg, then Hesse Cassel, to frighten the Landgrave, ride eastward to the Elbe, and find Gustavus. Having satisfied ourselves of the direction of his march, we are to hang on to the advance-guard, and give early and constant information to Count Tilly and Pappenheim. When the two armies come into touch we are to place our regiment under Tilly's orders."

"Lord, what a riding and camping and sleeping under the trees," said Hildebrand.

"Make us the most serviceable regiment of cavalry in the whole army," Nigel consoled. "You'll be as thin as a pikestaff and as hard! No Tokay in the Thüringerwald!"

"The beer might be worse!" rejoined Hildebrand. "I've tasted it."