“You see him?” roared the lion, glaring down with eyes fire-gold with fury. “You want him? Living? Then draw off! Haul off out of range, out of sight, or I cut his throat now and throw him down.”
Hugh stood holding the sword he had drawn to probe through the yielding chink of the gate, and stared up with a white, fixed face. Yves was stiff as a beam of wood, looking neither down nor up, but straight before him at empty sky. He never made a sound.
“I do not know you, sir,” said Hugh, carefully and low, “but I am the king’s man here, and I say to you, you have now no refuge, here or anywhere. Harm him, and I will be your death. Be advised. Come down, yield yourself and all these your men and trust to find some mercy that way, for otherwise there is none.”
“And I say to you, king’s man, take your rabble out of my sight, now, without argument, or you may have this piglet, bled ready for eating. Now, I say! Turn and go! Shall I show you?” The point of the dagger pricked, in the clear air they saw the little bubble of blood that grew, and burst, and slid down in a fine thread.
Hugh clapped his sword into the scabbard without another word, mounted and wheeled his horse, and waved all his men back from the stockade, back into the trees, back out of sight. Behind him he heard vast laughter that still resembled the hungry roar of a hunting lion.
Archers and all had shrunk far back to be invisible, watching that threat. They drew together in stunned silence, down among the trees. This was deadlock indeed. They knew they dared not advance, and that resplendent wild beast in the tower knew just as surely that they would not depart.
“But I know him, if you do not,” said Josce de Dinan. “A by-blow of the Lacy clan by a younger son of the house. His brother the right side the sheets, after the father married, is a tenant of mine. This one served in France some years, for Normandy against Anjou. They call him Alain le Gaucher, because he’s left-handed.”
Even those who had seen the man now for the first time needed no reminders. It was the left hand that had held the dagger against the boy’s throat, and turned the point quite coldly to pierce the skin.
Yves felt himself hoisted by the small of his back, in the fist that gripped the fullness of his clothes and bruised his spine with hard knuckles, and dumped hard upon his feet on the timbers of the roof. The jarring shock ran up from his heels to his head, and shook his eyes wide open. He had been so intent upon uttering no sound that he had bitten his tongue, the blood ran warm within his lower lip. He swallowed it, and braced his quaking feet into the planks under him. The thin thread of blood trickling down his neck from the prick of the dagger hardly troubled him, and was already drying.
He had never yet been so frightened, as he had never been so rough-handled, suddenly plucked erect by the neck, hauled up confusing staircases in the dark, windowless bulk of the tower, finally dragged up a last vertical ladder and through a heavy trap to the dazzle of daylight on the roof. The lion’s voice had roared in his ears, the lion’s own fist had hoisted him to the parapet, with a furious lunge that might well have hurled him over. By instinct he had held his tongue, and made no sound. Now, suddenly released, he felt his knees give way under him, and stiffened them indignantly. He still had not uttered word or cry. He held that thought to him like an accolade, and stood doggedly waiting for the pounding of his heart to ease. It was an achievement that he stood erect at all.
Alain le Gaucher stood with hands spread along the merlons, grimly watching the besiegers draw off into the gully. The three of his men who had followed him aloft here stood waiting for his orders. So did Yves, bracing himself not to quail when the thick, powerful body swung round on him, and the fiery eyes hung on him with calculating intensity.
“So the brat has his value still, if not in money! Good reason to hold him fast, we may have to make further use of him to the same end. Oh, they’ll not go far out of sight, I know—not yet, not until they’ve tried every roundabout way they can find, and been baulked at every attempt by a small knife at a small piglet’s throat. Now we know they’ll dance to our tune. Imp, you may yet be worth an army to us.”
Yves found no comfort in that. They would not even seek a ransom for him, his value as a hostage being far higher, now that their fortress was known. They could not hide it again, and enjoy the secrecy of their night exploits by wiping out every witness, as before. But for some while, at least, they could go on repeating the threat to kill their prisoner, perhaps even bargain with his life for freedom to march out unchallenged and resume their activities elsewhere. But no, Hugh Beringar would not so tamely give up, nor would he leave a hostage in such hands a moment longer than he must He would find some way, short of frontal assault, of breaking into this lair. Yves did his best to believe that, and kept his face expressionless and his mouth shut.
“You, Guarin, stay here with him. You shall be relieved of the watch before dark, and he’ll give you no trouble. Short of clambering over the parapet and dashing his brains out below, what can he do? And I fancy he’s not yet so mad with fear as to choose that way. Who knows, he may even come to like the life with us—eh, chicken?” He jabbed a hard finger into Yves’s ribs and laughed. “Have your dagger ready. If they come out of hiding, if you see any of them making roundabout to come at us, challenge on the instant, and repeat the threat. And if they persist,” he said, with a sudden snap of large teeth like a trap closing, “bleed him! If it comes to worse yet, I’ll take the knife myself. Me they’ll believe!”
The man called Guarin nodded and grinned, and loosened his dagger in its sheath, suggestively.
“The rest of you, down, and we’ll make better dispositions. I want a watch on every foot of our boundaries. They’ll be probing busily before they give up from the cold. There’s no sheriff born is going to camp in the open up here in such a winter. Not for longer than a night.”
There was a ring set into the trap, by which to lift it. He set his own great hand to it, and heaved it out as easily as lifting a ladle, and dropped it with a hollow thud upon the boards. Below, it could be secured by bolts, the metal rang as it fell.
“We’ll shut you up here, for safety’s sake. Never fret, you shall have your food brought, and quit your watch by twilight, but with this chick fresh from the egg I take no chances. He’s too effective a tool to risk.” He clouted Yves on the shoulder hi passing, as forthrightly as he had stroked the knife across his throat, and plunged through the trap, swinging down the tall ladder to the next floor. His men followed him briskly. Guarin hauled the trap into place, and they both heard the bolts slide into their sockets below, and the last man clambering down the ladder.
The two of them were left in their rough timber eyrie, staring at each other. There was frozen snow under their feet, and frost in the air they breathed. Yves licked dried blood from his lip, and looked about him for the most favorable ground. The tower had been built high enough to command as wide a view as possible, without allowing its own outline to stare too obviously above the line of the rock. The wall surrounding it rose breast-high to him before the merlons began, he could lean between them and look out every way, but to the rear, above the sheer cliffs, he could see only the rim of the escarpment, and beyond, the distant land below. The space up here was too wide and open to be comfortable, wind and weather could make it a bitter ordeal, though this day was better than any that had gone before.
Within his vision nothing now stirred, except for the fierce bustle inside the bailey, where every watch-point was being manned, and every loophole supplied with an archer. The king’s men had gone to earth like foxes. Yves selected the snow-free corner of his ground, backing into the wind, and sat down on the boards there with his back hunched against the timbers and his arms hugging his knees. Every contact nursed a shred of warmth. He was going to need all he could get. But so was Guarin.