“There is no hope for us, in truth,” growled the third man, “for five hundred men (and we number but that) cannot make good such a circuit of wall against five thousand. We are lost, unless aid come from without, and I see not how that can be.”
“It cannot,” said Pierre, whose set, grim face, lit for a moment by the glare of the watch-fires below, showed how utterly he had given himself up for lost. “There is no army of friends at hand, and, without an army to back him, there lives but one man in Brittany this day who could break through yon English host, and he is far away.”
“Thou mean’st our Bertrand du Guesclin. Would to Heaven he were here, for he alone would be worth an army.”
“Ay, that would he!” cried the third Breton, forgetting his own peril in his simple, honest exultation at his countryman’s prowess. “Well may they call him ‘The Grim Knight,’ for grim hath he truly been to his country’s foes. Heard ye what he did at the siege of Dinan, a year agone? He was returning with his men from a sally against the English camp, and was already nigh to the town gate, having broken his way through their host, and all seemed safe for him, when suddenly he missed from his neck a rosary that he ever bare, the gift, men say, of the fair lady to whom he is betrothed, Tiphaine de Raguenel, whom they call ‘the Fairy.’”
“And what did he?” asked both listeners at once.
“What did he? Why, he turned his horse, and back he dashed into the midst of the pursuing English. One of their archer-knaves had already found the chain, and snatched it up; but scarce had he touched it, when his head was swept from his shoulders, and Messire Bertrand, turning on the others, smote them down with his axe as the hail beats down the corn. But the knaves laid on load stoutly, and sore was the fray, when up came one who seemed a captain among them, and cried, ‘Shame on ye, lads! let the gallant gentleman pass free! for so good a knight deserveth all the honour we can pay him.’ So the fray was stayed, and our Bertrand came safe to the town.”
“Why, then,” cried Pierre, in surprise, “there is some courtesy even among these English! But, having warred so long in France, belike they have learned good manners here.”
“Doubtless,” said Gaspard; “but we, at least, have no mercy to hope from them. Commend your souls to God, comrades, for we shall never, I trow, see another sun go down.”
The same gloomy conviction was in the mind of every man in that doomed fortress; and, even in an age when men cast away their own lives or those of others as lightly as children their broken toys, the most reckless of these rough soldiers could not be wholly unmoved by the thought that, strong and bold as they stood there, full of life and health and daring, they would all, ere another sun went down, be lying cold and dead. Many a hard hand, still red with recent slaughter, was uplifted to heaven that night in heart-felt supplication; and many a rude man-at-arms strove to call to mind some long-forgotten prayer.
Slowly and wearily the dismal night wore on, and as dawn drew nigh, the sentinels on the walls, looking toward the English camp, strained their eyes and ears for any sign of the fatal assault that was to end all. The moon had set, and the only light was from the dying watch-fires; but their faint glow sufficed to show to a keen-eyed young soldier on the tower above the Dinan Gate a strange and ghostly sight.