XXIX
Little store of sleep had the Lord of Gambrevault that night. War withall its echoing prophecies played through his thought as a storm windthrough the rotting casements of a ruin. He beheld the high hills redwith beacons, the valleys filled with the surging steel of battle.Gilderoy and its terrors flamed through his brain. Above all, like themoon from a cloud shone the face of Yeoland, the Madonna of the Forest.
He was up and armed before dawn, and on the topmost battlements, eagerfor the day. The sun came with splendour out of the east, hurling agolden net over the woods piled upon the hills. Mists moved from offthe sea, that shimmered opalescent towards the dawn. Brine laded thebreeze. The waves were scalloped amber and purple, fringed with foamabout the agate cliffs.
The hours were void to the man till riders should come in with tidingsof how the revolt sped at Gilderoy and Geraint. The prophetic hintsthat had been tossed to him from the tongues of the mob had served todiscover to him his own invidious fame. Gambrevault, on its rockyheadland, stood, the strongest castle in the south, a black mass loomingathwart the perilous path of war. The rebels would smite at it. Of thatits lord was assured.
At noon he attended mass in the chapel, with all his knights, solacinghis impatience with the purer aspirations of the soul. It was even ashe left the chapel that Sir Modred met him, telling how a galloper hadleft the woods and was cantering over the meadows towards the headland.The man was soon under the arch of the great gate, his sweating horsesmiting fire from the stones, dropping foam from his black muzzle. Therider was Godamar, Flavian's favourite esquire, a ruddy youth, with theheart of a Jonathan.
Modred brought him to the banqueting-hall, where Flavian awaited him infull harness, two trumpeters at his back.
"Sire, Geraint has risen."
"Ha!"
"They are marching on Gambrevault."
"Your news, on with it."
Godamar told how the troop had neared Geraint at eve and camped in thewood over night. At dawn they had reconnoitred the town, and seen, totheir credit, black columns of "foot" pouring out by all the gates. TheGambrevault company had fallen back upon the woods unseen, and hadwatched the Gerainters massing in the city meadows about a red bannerand one in armour upon a white horse. Godamar had lain low in a thicketand watched the rebels march by in the valley. They had passed betweentwo hundred paces of him, and he swore by Roland the Paladin that it wasa woman who rode the great white horse.
Flavian had listened to the man with a golden flux of fancy that haddivined something of the esquire's meaning.
"Godamar," he said.
"Sire?"
"You rode with me that day when we tracked a certain lady fromCambremont glade towards the pine forest."
"Sire, you forestall me in thought."
"So?"
"I could even swear upon my sword that it is Yeoland of Cambremont whorides with the Gerainters."
Flavian coloured and commended him. Godamar ran on.
"I threaded the thicket, sire, made a detour, galloped hard and rejoinedour company. The Gerainters were blind as bats; they had never a scoutto serve them. We kept under cover and watched their march. They camedue west in three columns, one following the other. Six miles fromGeraint, Longsword gave me a spare horse and sent me spurring to bringyou the news."
Flavian stroked his chin and brooded.
"Their numbers?" he asked anon.
"Ten thousand men, sire, we guessed it such."
Before Godamar had ended his despatch, a second galloper came inbreathless from Gilderoy. He had left Fulviac's rebels massing in themeadows beyond the river, and had kept cover long enough to see theforemost column wheel westwards and take the road for Gambrevault. Thescout numbered the Gilderoy force at anything between eight and twelvethousand pikes. Fulviac had been on the march three hours.
The Lord of Avalon stood forward in the oriel in the full light of thesun. Sea, hill, and woodland stretched before him under a peerless sky.There was the scent of brine in the breeze, the banner of youth wasablaze upon the hills. A red heart beat under his shimmering cuirass,red blood flushed his brain. It was a season of romance and of lustydaring, an hour when his manhood shone bright as his burnished sword.
Thoughts were tumbling, moving over his mind like water over a wheel.Geraint stood ten leagues from Gambrevault, Gilderoy thirteen. TheGeraint forces had been on the march six hours or more, the men ofGilderoy only three. Hence, by all the craft of Araby, they of Geraintwere three hours and three leagues to the fore. Bad generalship withoutdoubt, but vastly prophetic to the man figuring in the oriel, hisfingers drumming on the stone sill.
Strategy stirred in him, and waxed like a dragon created from some magiccrystal into the might of deeds. The Lord of Gambrevault caught thestrong smile of chivalry. A great venture burnt upon his sword. It wasno uncertain voice that rang through the hall of Gambrevault.
"Gentlemen, to horse! Trumpets, blow the sally! Let every man who canride, mount and follow me to-day. Blow, trumpets, blow!"
The brazen throats brayed from the walls, their shrill scream echoingand echoing amid the distant hills. Their message was like the plungingof a boulder into a pool, smiting to foam and clamour the camp in themeadows. Swords were girded on, spears plucked from the sods, horsessaddled and bridled in grim haste. In one short, stirring hour Flavianrode out from Gambrevault with twelve hundred steel-clad riders at hisback. Those on the walls watched this mass of fire and colourthundering over the meadows, splashing through the ford, smoking away tothe east with trumpets clanging, banneroles adance. There was to begreat work done that day. The sentinels on the walls gossiped together,and swore by their lord as he had been the King.
Gambrevault and its towers sank back against the skyline, its bannerwaving heavily above the keep. Flavian's mass of knights andmen-at-arms held over the eastern downs that rolled greenly above theblack cliffs and the blue mosaics of the sea. A brisk breeze laughed intheir faces, setting plumes nodding, banneroles and pensils aslant.Their spears rose like the slim masts of many sloops in a harbour. Thesun shone, the green woods beckoned to the glittering mass with itsforest of rolling spears.
Flavian's pride whimpered as he rode in the van with Modred, Godamar,who bore the banner of Gambrevault, and Merlion d'Or, his herald. Theman felt like a Zeus with a thunderbolt poised in his hand. A word, theflash of a sword, the cry of a trumpet, and all this splendid torrent ofsteel would leap and thunder to work his will. The star of chivalryshone bright in the heavens. As for this woman on the white horse, theMadonna of the Pine Forest, God and the saints, he would charge thewhole world, hell and its legions, to win so rich a prize.
Turning northwards, with scouts scattered in the far van, they drew towilder regions where the dark and saturnine outposts of the great pineforest stood solemn upon the hills. Dusky were the thickets against thesapphire sky, the cloud banners trailing in the breeze. The veryvalleys breathed of battle and sudden peril of the sword. Rounding awood, they saw riders flash over the brow of a hill and come towardsthem at a gallop. The men drew rein before the great company of spears.Their leader saluted his lord, and glanced round grimly upon the sea ofsteel dwindling over the green slopes.
"Sire, we are well-fortuned."
"Say on."
"Ten thousand rebels from Geraint are on the march two miles away.Godamar has given you the news. We are on the crest of the wave."
Flavian tightened his baldric.
"Good ground to the east, Longsword?"
"Excellent for 'horse,' sire."
"To our advantage?"
"Half a mile further towards Geraint there lies a grass valley, a leaguelong, four furlongs from wood to wood. The rebels will march through it,or I am a dotard. There stands your chance, sire. We can roll down onthem like a torrent."
Flavian took time by the throat, and called on his man of the tabard.
"Make me this proclamation," quoth he: "'G
entlemen of Gambrevault,strike for King and chivalry. Let vengeance dye your swords. As forthe lady riding upon the white horse, mark you, sirs, let her be as theVirgin out of heaven. We ride to take her and her banner. For therest, no quarter and no prisoners. We will teach this mob the art ofwar.'"
The man of the tabard proclaimed it as he was bidden. The iron ranksthundered to him like billows foaming about a rock. Modred claimedsilence with uplifted sword.
"Enough, gentlemen, enough. No bellowing. Muzzle your temper. We makeour spring in silence, that we may claw the harder."
A line of hills lay before them, heights crowned with black pine woods,save for one bare ridge like a great scimitar carving the sky. Flavianadvanced his companies up the slopes, halted them in a broad hollowunder the brow of the hill. A last galloper had ridden in with hottidings of the rebels. The Lord of Gambrevault, with Sir Modred andLongsword, cantered on to reconnoitre. They drew to a thicket ofgnarled hollies on the hilltop, and looked down upon a long grass valleybounded north and south by woods.
Half a mile away came the rebel vanguard, a black mass of footmenplodding uphill, their pikes and bills shining in the sun. Pennons andgonfalons danced here and there, while in the thick of the column flewthe red banner of the Forest, girt about by the spears of Yeoland'sguard. She could be seen on her white horse in the midst of the press.The Gerainters were split into three columns, the second column half amile behind the first, the third somewhat closer upon the second. Theywere marching without outriders, as though thoroughly assured of theirown safety.
Modred chuckled grimly through his black beard, and smote his thigh.
"Fools, fools!"
"Devilish generalship," quoth Longsword under his beaver. "We can crushtheir van like a wheatfield before the rest can come up. What say you,sire, fewtre spears, and at them?"
Flavian had already turned his horse.
"No sounding of trumpets, sirs," he said; "we will deal only with theirvan. Call up our companies. God and St. Philip for Gambrevault!"
Over the bare ridge, with its barriers of sun-steeped trees, steelshivered and spears bristled, rank on rank, wave on wave. With a massedrhythm of hoofs, the flood crested the hill, plunged down at a gallopwith fewtred spears. Knee to knee, flank to flank, a thousand streaksof steel deluged the hillside. Their trumpets throated now the charge;the iron ranks clashed and thundered, rocked on with a rush ofglittering shields.
As dust rolling before a March wind, so the horsemen of Gambrevaultpoured down on the horde of wavering pikes. The storm had come suddenas thunder out of a summer sky. Before the hurtling impact of that boltof war, the palsied ranks of foot crumbled like rotten timber. TheGerainters were too massed and too amazed to squander or give ground, tostem with bill and bow the rolling torrent of death. They were rent andtrampled, trodden like straw under the stupendous avalanche of steelthat crushed and pulverised with ponderous and invincible might.
"God and Gambrevault, kill, kill!"
Such was the death-cry thundered out over the rebel van. The columnbroke, burst into infinite chaos. Yeoland's guards alone stood firm, atough core of oak amid rotten tinder. Over the trampled wreckage thefight swirled and eddied, circling about the knot of steel where the redbanner flapped in the vortex of the storm.
Yeoland sat dazed on her white horse, as one in the grip of someterrific dream. Nord was at her side, snarling, snapping his jaw like awolf, his great iron mace poised over his shoulder. The red bannerflapped prophetic above their heads. Around them the fight gathered, awhirlwind of contorted figures and stabbing steel.
Yeoland's eyes were on one figure in the press, a man straddling a bigbay horse, smiting double-handed with his sword, his red plume jerkingin the hot rush of the fight. She saw horse and man go down before him;saw him buffet his way onward like a galley ploughing against wind andwave. His leaping sword and tossing plume came steady and strenuousthrough the girdle of death.
Fear, pride, a hundred battling passions played like the battle throughthe woman's mobile brain. She watched the man under the red plume withan intensity of feeling that made her blind to all else for the moment.Love seemed to struggle towards her in bright harness through the fight.She saw the last rank of the human rampart pierced. The man on the bayhorse came out before her like some warrior out of an old epic.
None save Nord stood between them, shaggy and grim as a great NorseThor. She watched the iron mace swing, saw it fall and smite wide.Flavian stood in the stirrups, both hands to the hilt, his horse'smuzzle rammed against the opposing brute's chest. The blow fell, agreat cut laid in with all the culminating courage of an hour. Thesword slashed Nord's gorget, buried its blade in the bull-like neck. Heclutched at his throat, toppled, slid out of the saddle and rolled underhis horse's hoofs.
"THE SWORD SLASHED NORD'S GORGET, BURIED ITS BLADE IN THEBULL-LIKE NECK."]
The man's hand snatched at the girl's bridle; he dragged her and herhorse out of the press. She had a confused vision of carnage, ofstabbing swords and trampling hoofs. She saw her banner-bearer fallforward on his horse's neck, thrust through with a sword, while Modredseized the banner staff from his impotent hand. The rebel column haddeliquesced and vanished. In its stead she was girdled by grim andexultant horsemen whose swords flashed in the sun.
Trumpets blew the retreat. A thousand glittering riders swarmed abouther and the knight with the red plume. She had his words confusedly inher ears, strong, passionate words, heroic, yet utterly tender. Theyrode uphill together amid the clangour of his men. In a minute they hadwon the ridge, and were swinging down the further slope with their facestowards Gambrevault.
Love Among the Ruins Page 29
