Then began as mad a fight as any fire-eater could have desired.
The stairway was not more than three feet broad; there was no handrail
to it, and it went up steeply, yet Merlin’s men tried to rush it in a
body, only to cumber each other and help the man with the sword. Isoult
had passed Fulk his shield, and he held it slantwise before him, and
used the sword-point under it, knowing that such thrusts were more
deadly than any slashing.
One fellow fell full length, run through the body, and those who were
crowded together behind him tried to thrust at Fulk with their pikes or
hack at him with axe or sword. There was no room for so many weapons at
once, and Fulk’s shield was a pent-house that was not to be beaten down.
He stabbed at the men from under it, giving swift, fierce thrusts that
they could not parry. Two more went down, one rolling over the edge of
the stairs; those in front, pressed by Fulk’s sword, fell back on those
behind, till the crowd upon the stairs lost its foothold and went
tumbling down in confusion.
But these footpads, horse-thieves, and deer-stealers were no sheep;
their blood was up, and the devil roused in them. The dead men were
taken by the heels, and dragged down the stairs out of the way. They
hurled stools at Fulk, benches, fire-irons, the halves of the broken
door, even crockery, and iron pots that they brought from the kitchen.
It was as though all the cooks and scullions in a king’s castle had gone
mad. Three of them seized the daïs table and dragged it up beside the
stairway, and so made a kind of fighting platform to take Fulk in the
flank. The first who climbed it had an arrow through his throat, for
Isoult was ready with her bow. Fulk stabbed the second as he reached up
and tried to seize his ankle. The third fellow jumped down again, and
two more dead men were lying amid the pile of wreckage on the stairs.
Merlin’s men held back. Two had been slain at the door, three on the
stairs; two more were wounded; in all there were but nine of them left
standing. They had drawn away to the far end of the hall, where Merlin
gnashed his teeth at them and cursed them for cowards.
One of them bethought him of his bow and of the last of the arrows that
he had left in the porch. He ran for it, pushed to the front, but was
slain by Isoult as he bent his bow. The arrow shot up into the roof of
the hall, struck a beam, turned, and dropped back upon the floor.
Fulk glanced anxiously at the torches, for they were burning low. The
fools had not thought to put out the lights and to attack in the dark,
but Merlin thought of it at that moment.
“Out with the torches.”
Then Fulk did a rash thing. He leapt on to the daïs table, and from it
to the floor, and charged the men at the end of the hall. They stared at
him stupidly, and then, turning like sheep before a sheep-dog, tumbled
out of the great doorway with Merlin at their heels.
Fulk had left three spare torches in the solar. He called to Isoult,
bidding her throw them down, and as he waited he could hear Merlin
cursing his men outside the porch.
“What, eight to one, and no fight left in you!”
They answered sullenly.
“The man is a devil.”
“And that harness of his is too good.”
“As for the woman—hell take her!—she shoots like Robin of Sherwood.”
Fulk kindled fresh torches and set them in the brackets, and, returning
to the stairway, climbed over the wreckage and the dead men, and sat
down on the topmost step.
“Well fought! well fought!”
She came and knelt behind him, her bow laid ready.
“Those arrows of yours saved us. By Heaven, I am thirsty.”
She went into the solar, found a piece of clean linen, and, soaking it
in wine, took it to him so that he might quench his thirst.
“They are accursedly quiet out yonder. Merlin is dangerous when he is
quiet.”
“I would have put an arrow through him, but he kept behind his men.”
Silence held, yet it was a silence that was not absolute, but rather a
cautious suppression of sound that hinted at movement going on out
yonder in the darkness. The two on the stairs strained their ears,
knowing well that some fresh mischief was brewing.
Isoult held up a hand.
“Did you hear that?”
“This helmet muffles things.”
“It was like the sound of dry sticks breaking.”
Fulk started up.
“Faggots! There is a big pile behind the house.”
As he stood listening something flew from the porch across the hall,
struck one of the torches, and knocked it out of the bracket. It was a
cunning hand that had thrown the stick—a hand that had knocked over
many a pheasant roosting low down on a tree on a windy night. A second
stick brought down the other torch. One flared on the floor; the other
went out instantly. Luckily, it was a stone-paved floor, or the house
would have been alight. They still had a torch burning outside the
doorway of the solar.
Then they heard Merlin’s voice. He stood in the porch, just screened by
the door-post from one of Isoult’s arrows.
“Fulk Ferrers, a word with you and with the woman.”
“Stand forward like a man.”
Merlin laughed.
“I take no risks, since this business must be ended. Fulk Ferrers, you
are dead already. We shall use cunning, my friend; we shall not rush
like fools on your sword. Since you must die, I come to speak with you
and with Isoult.”
“Say your say.”
“The doom has gone out against you, Fulk Ferrers, but not against this
woman. Let her choose, or choose you for her. Shall she die or live? For
if she bides with you, by all the saints, she shall not be spared.”
Fulk felt Isoult’s hand upon his arm.
“It is my right to answer Merlin. Merlin—you lean cur out of hell, hear
me. I bide here, if it be for death; nor shall death be your gift to
me.”
He did not answer immediately.
“Good, so be it. But before dawn I will ask you the same question. Think
well of death, Isoult. Look in his cold eyes, and think of the worms and
the clay.”
The torch on the floor spluttered and went out, and the great hall sank
into sudden darkness, for the closed shutters kept out the moonlight.
Fulk knew that Isoult was very close to him.
“Heart of mine, we will face it out together.”
“They shall not have thee, Isoult, I swear it. Now that the lights are
out we may have these heroes crawling up to take us unawares.”
“There are two oak hutches in the solar. We can pile them one on the
other, at the top of the stairs.”
“Well thought of.”
“Hallo, our last torch in there is out.”
They had to grope their way into the solar, feel for the oak chests, and
carry them out into the gallery. They set one upon the other, jamming
them slantwise across the entry at the head of the stairs.
Fulk went to the window of the solar, guided by chinks of light. It had
a central mullion, and two shutters, and there was a drop of about
fifteen feet to the ground. He opened one of the shutters noiselessly,
and looked down over the window ledge. Something black showed below,
three or four faggots laid across two casks that had been set on end. He
heard two men whispering in this pent-house, where they were safe from
arrows shot from above.
Merlin had had this bolt-hole guarded, and Fulk closed the shutter and
went back into the gallery, where Isoult kept watch behind the two oak
chests.