Tristan and the Heretic rode south-west towards the sea with their
hundred lances aslant under the summer sky. They were as men challenging
a kingdom with their swords, and they tossed their shields in the face
of fate. The fine audacity of such a venture set the hot blood spinning
in their hearts. To raise the banner of liberty aloft against Pomp and
Power! To hurl damnation in the mouth of the Church!
The Papists had left garrisons in many of the strong places of the Seven
Streams. The main host had recrossed the river known in those parts as
the Lorient, and had camped about Agravale, ducal city of the Southern
Marches. They had raided the province of the Seven Streams into a
desert, so far that life seemed absent. A great silence had descended
over the land. Hamlets were in ashes; towers stood mere blackened shells
upon the hills. As to the lords and gentry of the province, they had
either fallen or taken like outlaws to the woods. It was such desperate
men as these that Samson coveted to swell his company.
They pushed on warily, avoiding such places as were garrisoned by the
Bishop’s men. Samson was as a merchant who possessed one ship; he would
not imperil her as yet in troublous waters. Men gathered slowly to him
as he made his march, grim, stony-faced men whose silence seemed fiercer
than their words. Blood was thicker than dogmas and decretals; they had
one common bond, these children of heresy, one common vengeance. They
had suffered, all of them, in home and heart. In three days Samson’s
company had increased to the number of two hundred spears.
As for Tristan, he was as a hound in leash; his sword thirsted in its
scabbard; he had tasted blood, and was hot for a tussle. His sinews were
taut despite the southron’s spear, and his strength seemed greater than
of yore, perhaps because his heart bulked bigger. Nightly when they
camped in the woods he would wrestle with any man whose ribs could bear
his hug. He could take Samson by the hips, burly man that he was, and
hold him high above his head. The fellows would gather round and gape at
the giant. Tristan began to know his power the more as he found strong
men mere pygmies in his grip.
They held westwards towards the sea, through grassy plains where streams
went winding ever through the green, and poplars threw their towering
shadows on the sward. Samson had trudged the land through in the days of
his preaching. He knew each hamlet, each road, each ford. The Papists
had padded through this same region like a pack of wolves, and Tristan
and the Heretic found no life therein.
On the fourth day they came upon the ruins of a small town set upon a
hill in a wooded valley. Vultures flapped heavenwards as they rode into
the gate; lean, red-eyed curs snarled and slinked about the streets.
Tristan smote one brute through with his spear that was feeding in the
gutter on the carcass of a child. In the market square the Papists had
made such another massacre as they had perpetrated in Ronan’s town. The
horrible obscenity of the scene struck Samson’s men dumb as the dead.
The townsfolk had been stripped, bound face to face, left slain in many
a hideous and ribald pose. The vultures’ beaks had emulated the swords.
The stench from the place was as the breath of a charnel house, and
Samson and his men turned back with grim faces from the brutal silence
of that ghastly town.
Near one of the gates a wild, tattered figure darted out from a
half-wrecked house, stood blinking at them in the sun, a filthy tangle
of hair over his dirty face. The creature gestured and gibbered like any
ape. He fled away when Samson approached, screaming and whimpering as
though possessed with a devil. The man was mad, had lost his reason in
the slaughter of children and kinsfolk. Save the dogs and the vultures,
he was the one live thing they found in the town.
When they were beyond the walls and under the clean shadows of the
trees, Samson lifted up his hand to the heavens like one who called on
God for help.
“Brother, shall such deeds pass?” he said. “Before God, I trow not.
Heaven temper our swords in the day of vengeance.”
Tristan’s thoughts were beyond the mountains, hovering about a golden
head and the ruffian priests who ruled the south. What might her fate be
at the hands of the Church? His manhood rose in him like a sea
thundering up in the throat of a cavern.
“Samson,” he said, with iron mouth, “God be thanked for the strength of
my body.”
“Brother, thank God for it,” said the Heretic, grimly enough. “Would I
had the power of a hundred men. My strength should be a hammer to
pulverise these dogs.”
“Ha, Heaven see to it, when I have Jocelyn by the throat, I will break
his back as I would break a distaff.”
Hard by the sea there was a certain strong place set upon a rock, Tor’s
Tower by name. It was a wild pile of masonry clinging to naked stone,
wind-beaten and boisterous. The place had fallen by treachery into
Papist hands, so Samson gathered from men who joined him on the march. A
Papal garrison had been established there, some of the bloodiest
ruffians in the south.
Tor’s Tower stood a mile from a great arm of the sea. Between the rock
and the shore were treacherous marshes, while on the landward side wild
heathland dipped to a waste of woods. Dull skies hurried over the place;
the wind piped keen from over the sea. A narrow causeway led to the
tower, winding round the flank of the rock. It was the very aerie Samson
coveted till he had hatched a flight of goodly eagles.
Tristan rode through the woods and reconnoitred the tower, saw that
weeks would be needed to starve such a place. Even as he lay hid in the
woods, some two-score spears rode home from a foray, passing close by
Tristan’s lair. They had wine skins and spoil laid over their shoulders,
also two young peasant girls bound back to back, and tied together on a
horse. The men’s rough jesting reached Tristan’s ears, he heard their
oaths and their unclean talk. His fingers itched for the pommel of his
sword; he kept cover, however, and bided his time.
Tristan and Samson were soon agreed in the matter. When dark had fallen,
they marched over the moor, left twenty men to guard the causeway,
climbed up with the rough ladders they had hewn in the woods. The sky
was of ebony, sealed up against the stars. Half the Papists were drunk
in the place when Samson’s men planted their ladders against the wall.
Tristan was the first to leap down into the court. He slew two guards
who kept the gate, hurled down the bar, shot back the bolts. Samson’s
men came in like a mill-race, and there was bloody work in court and
hall. When they had made an end of the vermin, they cast their bodies
down the cliff, remembering Joyous Vale and the town in the valley.
Tristan and Samson watched the dawn streak the eastern sky with gold
above the woods. They were masters of Tor’s Tower and the wild wastes
that glimmered towards the sea, while fifty dead men were wallowing in
the marshes at the foot of the rock. The tower was well victualled,
could be held for months by loyal and wary men. Samson was for making it
a rocky refuge to the scattered companies of the Seven Streams.
“Give me but one sure pinnacle,” he said, striking the battlements with
the scabbard of his sword, “one high place where we may rear up our
flag, and the sheep will take courage, gather, turn to a pack of wolves.
Tor’s Tower shall be our beacon height. Give me till the spring, and the
southrons shall find no feeble rabble for their swords.”
Tristan had a more passionate quest within his heart, and his thoughts,
like swift swallows, pinioned south. He had sworn solemnly to his own
honour that he would follow Rosamunde and set her free.
“Brother,” he said, “hold Tor’s Tower till I come again; send out your
riders through the countryside. Men will gather when a flag’s unfurled.”
“Go where you will,” said Samson, grasping his shoulder; “the star leads
towards the south. Ha, good rogue, have I not hit you fair? God keep you
on such an errand.”
“I ride south,” said Tristan, with a smile.
“Take ten men with you. I can spare no more.”
“Brother,” said Tristan, “I am content with my own carcass.”
“What devil’s scheme has caught your heart?”
Tristan laughed, spread his great chest.
“Samson,” he said, “believe me no traitor when I go to take service in
the Bishop’s guard. I shall prove a good smiter, doubt it not. Master
Jocelyn shall not complain of my sword.”