“Stand, every man! Down arms and draw off!” bellowed the lion, his tawny man bristling and glaring in the flickering light of the fires. “Back! Further, I say! Let me see a clear space before me. If any man so much as draw bow, this imp dies first. I have got my warranty again! Now, king’s man, where are you? What will you pay for his life? A fresh horse, free passage out, and no pursuit, on your oath, or I slit his throat, and his blood be on your head!”
Hugh Beringar thrust through to the fore and stood, eyes levelled upon le Gaucher. “Draw back,” he said without turning his head. “Do as he says.”
The entire circle, king’s men and outlaw’s men together, drew back inch by inch and left a great space of trampled and stained snow before the steps of the hall. Hugh moved back with them, though keeping his place in front. What else could he do? The boy’s head was strained back against his captor’s body, the steel touching his stretched neck. A false move and he would be dead. A few of the garrison began to edge out of the press, backwards towards the stockade and the gate, in the hope of finding a way out while all eyes were on the pair isolated at the top of the steps. The guard on the gate would deal with them, but who would deal with this ruthless and desperate creature? Everyone retreated before him.
Not everyone! Through the press, unnoticed by any until he reached the open space, came lurching a strange and solitary figure, limping and wavering, but marching ahead out of the crowd without pause, straight towards the steps. The red light of the fires trembled over him. A tall, emaciated man in a black habit, the cowl dropped back on his shoulders. Two puckered scars crossed his tonsured head. There was blood on his sandalled feet—he left stains on the snow as he trod— and blood on his brow from a fall in the rocky ground. Great, hollow eyes in a livid face stared upon Alain le Gaucher. A pointing hand accused him. A loud, imperious voice cried out at him:
“Leave go of the boy! I have come for him, he is mine.”
Intent upon Hugh Beringar, le Gaucher had not seen the newcomer until then. His head jerked round, astonished that anyone should break the silence he had imposed, or dare to cross the neutral ground he had exacted.
The shock was brief, but shattering while it lasted, and it lasted long enough. For one moment Alain le Gaucher saw his dead man advancing on him, terrible, invulnerable and fearless, saw the wounds he himself had inflicted still bloody, and the face he had murdered corpse-pale. He forgot the hostage. His hands sank nervelessly, and the sword with them. The next instant he knew past doubt that the dead do not rise, and recovered himself with a scream of rage and scorn, but too late to recover his ascendancy. Yves had slid from between his hands like an eel, dived under his arm and darted away down the steps.
Running blindly, he collided with a welcome solidity and warmth, and clung panting and spent, his eyes closed. Brother Cadfael’s voice said in his ear: “Softly, now, you’re safe enough. Come and help me with Brother Elyas, for he’ll go nowhere without you, now he’s found you. Come, let’s get him out of this, you and I together, and do what we can for him.”
Yves opened his eyes, still panting and trembling, and turned to stare back at the doorway of the hall. “My friend is in there . . . my friend who helped me!”
He broke off there, drawing in breath to heave a huge, hopeful, fearful sigh. For Hugh Beringar, the instant the hostage was free, had darted forward to do battle, but another was before him. Out of the smoke and fire-shot blackness of the doorway surged Olivier, soiled and singed and sword in hand, sprang past le Gaucher to find elbow-room, and in passing struck him on the cheek with the flat of the blade, by way of notice of intent. The tawny mane flew as le Gaucher sprang round to face him. The silence that had exploded in shudderings of wonder at the apparition of Brother Elyas fell again like a stone. Everyone heard clearly the voice that trumpeted disdainfully: “Now have ado with a man!”
There would be no moving Yves now, not until this last duel was resolved. Cadfael kept hold of him thankfully, though he need not have troubled, for the boy’s small fists were clenched in his sleeve for mortal reassurance. Brother Elyas, his bearings lost, looked about him for his boy, and came limping painfully to touch, to comfort and be comforted, and Yves, without for an instant taking his worshipping eyes from Olivier, detached one hand from his hold on Cadfael to accept Elyas’ clasp just as fiercely. For him everything now depended on this man to man encounter, from head to foot he was quivering with partisan passion. Both Cadfael and Elyas felt it and were infected by it, and stared as he stared upon this tall, agile, slender person poised with spread feet at the top of the steps. For all his smoke-soiled visage and common country garments, Cadfael knew him again.
And no one meddled, not even Hugh, who might have intervened by virtue of his office. Between his men and these thieves and murderers there would be no more fighting until this fight was over. There was that about the challenge that forbade interference.
It did not appear a very even combat, le Gaucher double his opponent in age and weight and experience, if not in reach and agility. And it did not last long. Le Gaucher, once he had viewed his challenger, came on confidently in a steady, battering onslaught, bent on driving the young man from his stance and backwards down the steps. Yet after long, increasingly furious attacks the boy—a mere half-trained peasant, at that!—had scarcely shifted his balance, not given back a pace, and everywhere the hacking blade crashed in, his sword was there to turn it aside. He stood and seemed at ease, while his adversary flailed at him and wasted energy. Yves gazed with huge, praying eyes, rigid from crown to toe. Elyas clung mutely to the hand he clasped, and quivered to its tension. Brother Cadfael watched the young man Olivier, and recalled disciplines he had almost forgotten, a manner of sword-play bred from the clash of east and west, and borrowing from both.
There was no moving this swordsman, if he gave an inch one moment he regained it the next, added to it the next. It was le Gaucher who was being edged back by degrees to the rim of the steps, while he wasted his strength to no avail.
The lion lunged once more, with all his weight. His heel was too near the edge of the icy stir, his lunge too reckless, the forward pressure slid his rearward foot from under him, and he hung out of balance, struggling for recovery. Olivier sprang forward like a hunting leopard, and drove down with all his weight, clean through the disrupted guard and into the exposed breast. The sword went in halfway to the hilt, and he braced both feet and leaned back on his heel to hoist his blade clear.
The lion’s carcase dropped from the withdrawing point, arms spread, flew outwards on its back, landed three steps lower, and rolled ponderously, with an awful dignity, from stair to stair, to come to rest on its face at Hugh Beringar’s feet, and bled what was left of its life away into the defiled snow.
Chapter Fourteen
It was over, once their leader was dead, and seen to be dead. They broke in all directions, some running to try and find a way of escape, some fighting to the death, some bargaining vainly, some having the sense to surrender and hope to make a passable case for themselves thereafter. There were over sixty prisoners to be rounded up, besides the dead, any amount of plunder to drag out from hall and stores before all went up in fire, a passable flock of stolen sheep and herd of cattle to feed and water until they could be driven down to better lodging. Dinan undertook the custody of the prisoners, captured within his lordship. No need to doubt his adherence to law where his own writ was challenged.
The fire spread, and when all that was savable was brought out, they spread the flames of intent. The castle stood solitary, clear of the trees, on solid rock, it could burn to the bone and threaten nothing else. It had been a stain upon the countryside in its short and ignoble life, it might well be a passing blemish in its death.