How They Smote Garthlaxton

And ever as it swung upon the air, it rang a chime upon its little, silver bells; a merry chime and mocking, that seemed to gibe at coming day.

Now in a while, looking upon that awful, dim-seen shape, Beltane spake low-voiced.

"O Beda!" he whispered, "O manly heart hid 'neath a Fool's disguise! O Fool, that now art wiser than the wisest! Thy pains and sorrows have lifted thee to heaven, methinks, and freed now of thy foolish clay thou dost walk with angels and look within the face of God! But, by thine agonies endured, now do I swear this night to raise to thy poor Fool's body a pyre fit for the flesh of kings!"

Then Beltane arose and lifting high his axe, shook it against Garthlaxton's frowning might, where was neither glint of armour nor gleam of pike-head, and turning, hasted back to that dark and silent company which, at his word, rose up from brake and fern and thicket, and followed whither he led, a long line, soundless and phantom-like within a phantom world, where a grey mist swirled and drifted in the death-cold air of dawn. Swift and silent they followed him, these wild men, with fierce eyes and scowling faces all set toward that mighty keep that loomed high against the glimmering stars. Axe and bow, sword and pike and gisarm, in rusty mail, in rags of leather and skins, they crept from bush to bush, from tree to tree, till they were come to that little pool wherein Beltane had bathed him aforetime in the dawn. Here they halted what time Beltane sought to and fro along the bank of the stream, until at last, within a screen of leaves and vines he found the narrow opening he sought. Then turned he and beckoned those ghostly, silent shapes about him, and speaking quick and low, counselled them thus: "Look now, this secret burrow leadeth under the foundations of the keep; thus, so soon as we be in, let Walkyn and Giles with fifty men haste to smite all within the gate-house, then up with portcullis and down with drawbridge and over into the barbican there to lie in ambush, what time Roger and I, with Eric here and the fifty and five, shall fire the keep and, hid within the dark, raise a mighty outcry, that those within the keep and they that garrison the castle, roused by the fire and our shout, shall issue out amazed. So will we fall upon them and they, taken by surprise, shall seek to escape us by the gate. Then, Walkyn, sally ye out of the barbican and smite them at the drawbridge, so shall we have them front and rear. How think you? Is it agreed?"