The squire made a funnel of his hands and gazed at the flag. "A moline cross, if I see aright," he said, "but it does not matter. Roger's flag eke his coat-armour, are what he has a mind to use, not what he useth by any right of birth."
"Can'st see what they are doing out by the carts—by the edge of the orchard?"
"Yes, sir. They be working on the mantelets, and anon they will wheel them up to protect those who would raise a palisade on the moat's edge. But come, Master Richard, we must be on the rounds. Much must be looked to. Now look you, Sir Brian, in a siege the hoards are your defender's chief stand-by. Now we are going into each one, for it is in those defences that we must trust in time of attack. When your hoards are breached, then your castle is like to fall."
He spoke with the technical assurance of a veteran—a sergeant-major respectfully imparting his own riper knowledge to a brace of subalterns.
The "hoards" were wooden structures, little pent-house forts, run out from the curtains, standing on great beams which fitted into holes in the masonry. From behind the breastwork of thick wood the archers could shoot with a freedom—this way and that—which was denied them by the long oblique openings in the wall itself. They commanded all points.
The group walked out along the narrow gangway, which stretched out over the black moat below, and entered the temporary fort of wood. It was built for the accommodation of four or five men, sharp-shooters, who were practically safe from everything but heavy artillery fire from mangonel and catapult.
They surveyed the scene before them in silence. The morning had risen clear, calm, and hot. For weeks the morning had been just as this was, and they had strolled along the battlements to catch the cool air and sharpen an early appetite. But on those other days the meadows beyond the moat, which ran to the forest edge, had been silent and empty, save for herds of swine and red peaceful cattle. Now, but two hundred yards away, scarce more than that it seemed in the clear keen air of dawn, were the tents, the dying fires, the litter and stir, of a great hostile camp.
The lines of men, horses, and carts, stretched away right and left in a long curve, till Outfangthef hid them on one side, and the gateway towers, with their pointed roofs, upon the other.
They could hear the trumpets, the hammers of the carpenters, a confused shouting of orders, and the hum of active men, as the besiegers began to prepare the manifold engines of attack, which—perhaps before night fell—would be creeping slowly towards the walls of Hilgay.
That great low shed which lay upon the ground like a monstrous tortoise, would presently creep slowly towards them, foot by foot, until it reached the edge of the moat, and the men beneath it would build their great fence of logs and empty carts of rubbish into the sullen waters.