Sam Gibbs was a good man to have on his side. A day that might break a man, but not Sam. Hard on the body, hard on the mind, hard on the faith. Messages from the battle's progress were sparse and rarely made it to the common soldiery, and Richard had done his best to calm some of the younger men after they'd claimed that they saw men retreating back in flashes of lightning. They'd been standing in ranks for nearly twelve hours, unable to see any of what was happening outside of the defile that hid them from their enemy throughout the day, and then unable to see anything much more than thirty feet in front of them for the last hour thanks to the dark and the rain, save for the occasional flash of lightning. It was just after sundown, and none of them had eaten a proper meal since breakfast. He was glad for Sam's easy nod to that, since it meant he'd judged the nature of the man's doubt rightly. We will win this day, and with it the north for Parliament, and for God." God will not suffer his elect to die in vain, least of all against Papists and idolators.
"It is no mistake that we have met them on this day, Sam. Richard took a few quick steps out of rank to clap him on the shoulder. Richard turned to look at him and thought through what he'd learned about the man standing next to him all day. If he's in trouble, then we are lost." His voice was pained, as if already resigned to defeat. They resumed chatter with their steps, though Richard could only hear the man on his immediate right. Richard felt his heart start to beat faster.
Richard still didn't hear full sentences from his position in the third rank, but he got the point quickly enough when the men around him had began to move. They paused their discussions for a moment when their Scottish lieutenant called for quiet and relayed their new orders, his practiced voice carrying relatively well over the cacophany of sounds that followed an army wherever it was: the rattling of weapons and armour, the clinking of bandoliers, the latent chatter. The men had almost immediately begun to speculate on what that might mean for the course of the battle, though Richard found it difficult to make out any one voice over the howl of the wind and rain. Richard reckoned it had been about an hour since the battle started when the Bradford company were called to reinforce the left.