“Not that he would not make the same foul use of you,” said Olivier, sheathing his sword, “if he could but get his hands on you. But if he spends time on hewing you out of your lair, he will already have lost what your throat might save. He’ll seek to fight off this attack before he troubles you again.”
“He will not do it!” said Yves, glowing. “Listen! They are well within. They’ll never give back now, they have him in a noose.” He peered out from behind a merlon over the confused fighting below. All the space of the bailey seethed and swayed with struggling men, a churning, tumultuous darkness like a stormy night sea, but lit by fiery glimpses where the torches still burned. “They’ve fired the gatehouse. They’re leading out all the horses and cattle—and fetching down all the archers from the walls . . . Should we not go down and help them?”
“No,” said Olivier firmly. “Not unless we must, not until we must. If you fell into the wrong hands now, all this would be thrown away, all to do again. The best you can do for your friends is to stay out of reach, and deny this rogue baron the one weapon that could save him.”
It was good sense, though none too welcome to an excited boy longing for prodigies to perform. But if Olivier ordered it, Yves accepted it.
“You may be a hero some other day,” said Olivier drily, “where there’s less at stake and you can put only your own neck in peril. Your part now is to wait in patience, even if it cost you more. And since we have time now, and may be mortally short of it before long, listen to me carefully. When we are loosed from here, and all over, I shall leave you. Go back to join your sister at Bromfield, let your friends have the satisfaction of uniting you in safety. I have no doubt they would send you with a good escort to your uncle in Gloucester, as they promised, but I have a fancy to finish my work and deliver you myself, as I was sent out to do. This mission is mine, and I’ll complete it.”
“But how will you manage?” Yves wondered anxiously.
“With your help—and certain other help which I know where to find. Give me two days, and I will have horses and supplies ready for us. If all goes well, two nights from this night that’s wearing away under us, I will come to Bromfield for you. Tell your sister so. After Compline, when the brothers will be bound for their beds, and you will be thought to be in yours. Ask no more questions, but tell her I shall come. And should I be forced to have speech here with the sheriff’s men, or should you be asked about me after I vanish—tell me, Yves, who was it made his way in here to find you?”
Yves understood. He said at once: “It was Robert, the forester’s son who brought Ermina to Bromfield, and happened on this place while he was searching for me.” He added dubiously: “But they’ll wonder at such a deed in a forester, when all the sheriff’s men were already searching. Unless,” he went on, curling a disdainful lip, “they think that every man living will risk his life for Ermina, just because she is handsome. She is handsome,” he conceded generously, “but all too well she knows it and makes use of it. Don’t ever let her make a fool of you!”
Olivier was peering out over the battlefield below, where a long tongue of fire had sprung from the burning gates and reached the roof of one of the byres. His dark and private smile was hidden from the boy. “You may let them think me her besotted slave, if it convinces them,” he said. “Tell them what you please that will serve the purpose. And bear my message, and be ready when I come for you.”
“I will!” vowed Yves fervently. “I will do all as you tell me.”
They watched the fire spread along the stockade from roof to roof, while the fighting within continued as fiercely and confusedly as ever. The garrison had poured out to the defence greater numbers than anyone had suspected, and all to many of them experienced and powerful fighters. Yves and Olivier looked on from their eyrie intently, as the serpent of fire began to burn uncomfortably near to the corner of the hall itself. If it touched the tower, all that draughty, beam-braced interior would act as a chimney, and they would be isolated at the top of a ferocious blaze. Already the crackling and exploding of burning beams threatened to drown out the din of fighting.
“This grows too hot,” said Olivier, frowning. “Better brave the devil below than wait for the one that’s coming to us here.”
They hauled the ladder aside, and heaved up the mangled trap. Splinters jutted and fell, and a thin curl of smoke, hardly a breath as yet, coiled up out of the recesses of the tower. Olivier did not wait to lower the ladder, but slid through to hang by his hands, and dropped lightly to the floor below, and Yves followed him valiantly, to be caught neatly in mid-air by the waist, and set down silently. Olivier set off down the staircase, a hand extended behind him to hold the boy close. The air here was still cold, but from somewhere smoke was drifting steadily, obscuring the edges of the steps so that they were constrained to feel their way at every tread. The babble of battle grew more distant, a constant buzzing from without the thick walls. Even when they reached the rock floor of the tower, and saw by the dim remains of torches and firelight the outline of the great door to the hall, standing ajar, there was no stir of foot or sound of voices within. Every man must be out in the bailey, battling to fend off the sheriff’s forces, or else, by this time just as possibly, to break through the circle somehow and make his escape.
Olivier made for the narrow outer door by which he had entered in the first place, lifted the heavy latch and tugged, but the door did not give. He braced a foot against the wall and heaved again, but the door remained fast shut.
“The devil damn them! They’ve barred it without, after they treed us. Through the hall, and keep close behind me.”
The very act of thrusting the great door open wide enough for them to slip through, as silently as possible, for fear some cautious or wounded outlaw should still be lurking, brought into play a cross-draught, and a sudden tongue of fire leaped up in the far corner of the hall, licked its way up the beams of the roof, and spat burning splinters below to smoulder in Alain le Gaucher’s tapestried chairs, and bring to life three or four new buds of flame that opened marvelously into great crimson flowers. Those red and gold blazons were all they could see clearly through the smoke that thickened as abruptly as the fire had burst in. They groped and stumbled through a deserted wilderness of overturned benches and trampled and spilled dishes, trestle tables fallen aslant, hangings dragged down, torches burned out and adding to the pall of smoke that stung their eyes and was drawn chokingly into their throats. Before them, beyond this obscure and perilous wilderness, the pandemonium of struggle and violence blew in on a freezing draught through the half-open main door of the hall. At the top of the sliver of open air thus uncovered, a single star showed, unbelievably pure and distant. They covered their mouths and nostrils and made for it, with eyes streaming and smarting.
They were almost at the doorway when a ripple of flame flowed suddenly along the surface of a roofbeam, peeling off the unplaned surface in a flurry of sparks, and caught the coarse homespun curtain that served to shut out the cold wind when the doors were closed and the household home at night. The dry, hairy cloth went up in a gush of flame, and fell in their path, a great folded cushion of fire. Olivier kicked it furiously aside, and swung Yves before him round the billowing bonfire towards the doorway.
“Out! Get to the open, and hide!”
If Yves had obeyed him to the letter, he might well have escaped notice, but having reached clear air, with the sweep of the steps and the loud turmoil of the bailey before him, he turned to look back anxiously, for fear the fire, blaming now to a man’s height, had trapped Olivier within. The pause cost him and his friends all that they had gained together, for more than half the bailey was then in Beringar’s hands, and the remnant of the garrison driven back into a tight knot of fighting round the hall, and while Yves’ back was turned upon his enemies, and he hung hesitating whether to rush back to stretch a hand to his friend, Alain le Gaucher, hard-pressed at the foot of the steps to his own hall, cut a wide swathe before him to clear his ground, and leaped backwards up the wide timber stairway. They all but collided, back to back. Yves turned to run, too late. A great hand shot out and gripped him by the hair, and a roar of triumph and defiance rose even above the clamor of arms and the thunderous crackling of bursting beams. In a moment le Gaucher had his back against the pillar of his doorway, secure from attack from the rear, and the boy clamped to his body before him, with a naked sword, already red, braced across his throat.