CHAPTER XXXVI
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.