"Seignior," said one of the esquires, "I hear the tramp of many feet, but no voices at all."
"The English!" cried William, and Richard the Scrob sprang to his feet. "They think to surprise us. It were best parley with them in the open, in peaceable guise. Boy, I will carry thee behind me."
Osbern clambered on to the Earl's steed.
"Sir, have I your leave?" asked Richard of Sir Walter de Lacy, who rode on the left of his master. Lacy nodded, and instantly Richard was astride behind him. He had scarcely mounted, when a strange, seething hiss resounded from one side of the street, and above their heads. Another hiss, and another: a splutter, then a crackle; and the thatch of the maltman's dwelling, which adjoined his barn, burst into steadily-spreading flame.
"O Mary! happy thought!" they heard in the fatuous tones of the maltman's son Oswin. "Hem them right well about, and watch them cook alive!"
"Thank God for burning pitch!" and in the indignant voice of Grim:
"Thou oaf! Would thou had been born dumb! We had them snared!"
A horse neighed shrilly; the other horses echoed the warning sound.
"Quick, ere terror benumb them!" the Earl shouted. "Right about—a dash for it!"
A bucketful of hot pitch streamed from one roof, hot charcoal cinders showered from another; some one flung a lighted torch. Another thatch was already on fire. The English were formed in a thin ring all round Ludford. The Norman charge scattered those at the bottom of the street, and the horsemen poured out.