He blew a blast on his horn, and added, “The knaves will be alert enough if they hope to meddle with honest men’s luggage.”
“See,” and Friedel pointed to the thicket to the westward of the meadow around the stream, where the beech trees were budding, but not yet forming a full mass of verdure, “is not the Snake in the wood? Methinks I spy the glitter of his scales.”
“By heavens, the villains are lying in wait for the travellers at our landing-place,” cried Ebbo, and again raising the bugle to his lips, he sent forth three notes well known as a call to arms. Their echoes came back from the rocks, followed instantly by lusty jodels, and the brothers rushed into the hall to take down their light head-pieces and corslets, answering in haste their mother’s startled questions, by telling of the endangered travellers, and the Schlangenwald ambush. She looked white and trembled, but said no word to hinder them; only as she clasped Friedel’s corslet, she entreated them to take fuller armour.
“We must speed the short way down the rock,” said Ebbo, “and cannot be cumbered with heavy harness. Sweet motherling, fear not; but let a meal be spread for our rescued captives. Ho, Heinz, ’tis against the Schlangenwald rascals. Art too stiff to go down the rock path?”
“No; nor down the abyss, could I strike a good stroke against Schlangenwald at the bottom of it,” quoth Heinz.
“Nor see vermin set free by the Freiherr,” growled Koppel; but the words were lost in Ebbo’s loud commands to the men, as Friedel and Hatto handed down the weapons to them.
The convoy had by this time halted, evidently to try the ford. A horseman crossed, and found it practicable, for a waggon proceeded to make the attempt.
“Now is our time,” said Ebbo, who was standing on the narrow ledge between the castle and the precipitous path leading to the meadow. “One waggon may get over, but the second or third will stick in the ruts that it leaves. Now we will drop from our crag, and if the Snake falls on them, why, then for a pounce of the Eagle.”
The two young knights, so goodly in their bright steel, knelt for their mother’s blessing, and then sprang like chamois down the ivy-twined steep, followed by their men, and were lost to sight among the bushes and rocks. Yet even while her frame quivered with fear, her heart swelled at the thought what a gulf there was between these days and those when she had hidden her face in despair, while Ermentrude watched the Debateable Ford.
She watched now in suspense, indeed, but with exultation instead of shame, as two waggons safely crossed; but the third stuck fast, and presently turned over in the stream, impelled sideways by the efforts of the struggling horses. Then, amid endeavours to disentangle the animals and succour the driver, the travellers were attacked by a party of armed men, who dashed out of the beechwood, and fell on the main body of the waggons, which were waiting on the bit of bare shingly soil that lay between the new and old channels. A wild mêlée was all that Christina could see—weapons raised, horses starting, men rushing from the river, while the clang and the shout rose even to the castle.