“If I had my way, you should dangle from one of these merlons for the kites. And never think you’ll escape it in the end. Whatever bargain they strike over you, it can be broken once we’re clear away. What’s to stop you being promised in return for passage, and delivered up carrion? Devil take you, answer me!” He kicked out again viciously, driving his toe deliberately at the boy’s groin. The stab was not quite evaded, as Yves rolled hastily away, and cost him a gasp of pain and rage.
“What’s to stop it?” he flashed, goaded. “Only that your lord still keeps some dregs of his breeding, and puts some small value on his word. And you’d best do his bidding to the letter, for this moment he has far more use for me than he has for you. He could swing you from a merlon with a light heart and nothing to lose.”
He knew he had been a fool, but he was sick of trying to be wise against his nature. He saw the great fist coming for his hair, and dived below it and sprang clear. On this limited ground he might be cornered in the end, but he was lighter and faster than his tormentor, and at least movement was warmer than keeping still. The man came after him, shrewd enough to do his cursing low-voiced, for any bellowing up here was liable to fetch someone up to enquire the cause. He muttered his obscenities as he charged, both thick arms flailing for a hold. “What, you naked chick, use such insolence to me, would you? Big talk from a thrapple I could wring one-handed? If your neck’s safe, is that warrant for your skin? Or a few teeth down your saucy throat?”
In the act of slipping beneath a grasping arm, Yves saw beyond his enemy’s shoulder the heavy trap in the floor beginning to rise. They had been too intent on each other to hear the bolts being withdrawn, even if it had not been done with unusual care and quietness. The head that emerged, though seen only by this late twilight, which below must be already full darkness, was none that Yves knew, and came forth so steadily and silently that his heart leaped with desperate hope. How do you recognize at first sight someone who cannot possibly be a member of an outlaw gang of thieves and murderers? If the guard turned fully about now, he would be looking straight at the newcomer, who was just setting foot to the boards and rising erect. This raving, fumbling wretch must not turn! And if Yves eluded him now he would turn, to follow and punish.
Yves slipped in the frozen snow, or seemed to slip, and the threshing fist had him by the breast of his cotte and slammed him back against the parapet. The fellow to it gripped his hair and forced his head up, as the creature spat copiously in his face, and laughed in triumph. Wrenching aside as best he could from the infamy, and unable to raise a hand to wipe the slime away, Yves saw the invading stranger straighten to his full height, without haste or sound, and lower the trap back into place, eyes fixed all the while on the writhing pair pinned to the wall before him. He did not quit the sensible precaution to rush to the rescue. It was the greatest of praise, and Yves felt his heart swell with gratitude and admiration. For he had just been shown that his act had been understood and appreciated, that he was not a mere victim, but a partner in this secret and splendid war.
He saw the first rapid, silent stride taken towards him, and then his head was buffeted violently aside by a great blow on the cheek, and a second that knocked him back again, and turned him dizzy and faint. To make all sure, he raised his voice in a frantic whine, not too loudly, but enough to cover the movements of one who must be already close: “Don’t! You’re hurting me! Let me go! I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . . don’t hit me . . .” Something of a crow about the tone, and his hackles erected all the time, but this creature did not know the difference, he was chuckling and quaking with merriment.
He was still laughing when the long arm took him about the face, muzzling his mouth, and jerked him backwards top the boards, and a long-legged, agile, youthful body dropped astride him, drove a knee into his belly, and therewith all the wind out of him, and jolting off his conical steel helmet, calmly hoisted him high enough to drive his skull back against the wood with stunning force, laying him out on the floor limp as a landed fish, and just as silent.
Yves dropped ecstatically upon the pair of them, like a half-trained hawk stooping, and fell to unbuckling the belt that held the guard’s sword and dagger. His hands were shaking, but he went about it eagerly, peeled loose the arms, and shoved the belt towards the stranger, who was waiting for it with commending and commendable placidity and patience, and had it drawn tightly round the guard’s upper arms, hobbling them behind his back, before he turned to look closely at his helper. He was smiling. The light here was only from a haze of stars, but very pure and clear, and the smile was unmistakable.
He reached a hand into the ample breast of the brown homespun cotte he wore, hauled out a long white roll of linen, and held it out to Yves.
“Wipe your face,” said a calm, low voice, in which both smile and praise were implicit, “before I use it to make this loud mouth mute.”
Chapter Twelve
Yves scrubbed the slime from his cheek and brow in awed and fascinated silence, round eyes fixed all the while upon the face that fronted him across the sprawled body of his tormentor. The faint starlight caught the gleam of white teeth, and bright eyes that shone like amber. The capuchon had fallen back from ruffled black hair that did not curl, but curved and clasped in a thick cap about a shapely, vigorous head. Every line and every movement cried out his youth and audacity. Yves gazed and lost his heart. He had had heroes before, his own father among them, but this one was new and young, and above all, present.
“Give!” said his ally briefly, and snapped demanding fingers for the length of linen, which Yves hastily surrendered. An end of the cloth was shoved briskly into the guard’s open mouth, the length of it whipped about his head to make him blind as well as dumb, and secured round his shoulders to the belt with which his arms were already pinioned. For want of a cord to bind the prisoner’s legs, the lacings of his leather jerkin were stripped out in a moment, made fast around his ankles, and doubled back to tie his feet to his wrists in the small of his back. He lay like a package made compact and neat to be slung one side of a pony for carriage. Yves watched, great-eyed, marvelling at the economy of the movements involved in the process.
They eyed each other, in the breathing space that followed, with mutual content. Yves opened his mouth to speak, and was hushed by a forbidding finger on lips still reassuringly smiling.
“Wait!” said the deep, serene voice, just above a whisper. Whispers have no identity, but carry alarmingly. This muted murmur reached no ears but the boy’s. “Let’s see if we may leave the way I came.”
Yves crouched, charmed into stillness, ears pricked, listening and quivering. His companion lay flat over the trap, an ear to the wood, and after a few moments cautiously hoisted one edge to peer down into the timber-scented darkness of the tower below. From outside, about the bailey and the guard-walk along the stockade, came the sounds of movements and voices, from a garrison on the alert, but below among the shadowy beams there was silence and stillness.
“We may essay. Follow close and do as I do.”
He lifted the trap and swung himself down the ladder by his hands, agile as a cat, and Yves scurried after him. In the dimness of the floor below they froze again, backs to the darkest wall, but nothing moved to threaten them. There were fixed stairs, rough but solid, from the corner of this level. They had reached the middle of the flight and could hear the hum and bustle of activity in the hall, and see the flickering of torches and firelight round the rim of a great door below. One more flight, and they would be in the base of the tower, and level with the hall, only that door between them and Alain le Gaucher and his outlaws. A long arm drew Yves close, and again held him still to listen and watch.