But he knew that flight was hopeless if he let the full company attack him front and rear. One glance he snatched at the open moor behind, and one at the walled enclosure where the sheep had lately been herded for the washing.
"God's life, I'll trick them yet," he muttered, and reined sharp about, outwitting them, and rode hard as hoofs could kick up the peat toward the shelter of the walls.
"Is he a Jack-o'-Lanthorn, this fool from Marsh?" growled Red Ratcliffe, foiled a second time.
He thought that Wayne was trusting to his horsemanship, that he would double and retreat and glance sideways each time they made at him in force, hoping to get a blow in as occasion offered. But Wayne of Marsh had no such idle play in mind; he was seeking only for sure ground on which to stand and meet them one by one. He had marked the opening in the pinfold through which the sheep were driven, and he knew that, if he could once gain the wall, the battle would narrow to a run of single contests.
They saw his aim too late; and as Red Ratcliffe swerved and swooped on him, Wayne backed his horse with its flanks inside the pinfold. He had four stout walls behind him now; the uprights of the gateway were no more than saddle-high, and above them he had free space for arm and sword-swing. It was one against five still—but each of the five must wait his turn, and each must fare alone against the blade which, to the Ratcliffe fancy, was a live, malignant thing in the hand of this witch-guarded lad of Marsh.
Again the red-heads fell back, while the Marsh farm-folk, roused by the Master's pluck, sent up a ringing cheer. And Shameless Wayne, who had chafed under long weeks of farming, laughed merrily to feel his sword-hilt grafted to his hot right hand again, to know that he had cut off retreat and that five skilled swordsmen were at hand to give him battle.
"God rest you, sirs. Wayne and the Dog are waiting," he cried, and laughed anew to mark how they shrank from the old battle-cry.
But Red Ratcliffe, seeing his brave scheme like to go the way of other schemes as promising, lost doubts and shrinking on the sudden. Man to man, he was Wayne's equal, and this time he would settle old scores—would go back to the Lean Man with his tale, and claim Janet as the fruit of victory. A thought of the girl's beauty ran across his mind, a swift, unholy sense that it would be sweeter to take her thus, unwilling and by force, than if she had consented to his wooing; and the thought steadied heart and nerve, while it lent him fierce new strength. No cry he gave, but made straight at Wayne and cut across his head-guard. Wayne shot his blade up, withdrew it, and thrust keenly forward; and Ratcliffe parried; and after that the fight ran hot and swift.
Steel met steel; the blades hissed, and purred, and shivered; up and down, in and out, the blue-grey lightning ran. The men's breath came hard, their eyes were red with prophecy of blood; their faces, that in peace showed many a subtle difference of breeding and of courtesy, were strangely like now, set to a strained fierceness, the veins upstanding tight as knotted whipcord. Sons of the naked Adam, they fought with gladdening fury; and the naked beast in them rose up and snarled between clenched, gleaming teeth. Their very horses—that are full as men of niceties overlaid by breeding—went back to their old savagery, and bit one at the other, and added their shrill cries to the men's raucous belly-breaths.
The farm-folk held their breath and watched. The Ratcliffes, clustered in a little knot, followed each steel-ripple, each cut and counter-cut, and forgot for the moment to take sides from very love of swordsmanship. And then Wayne knocked the other's blade high up in air, and would have had him through the breast had Red Ratcliffe not jerked his left hand on the curb and dragged his horse round into safety. Wayne could not pursue, even had he been minded to leave his shelter, for another Ratcliffe was on him now, offering fight as stubborn as the first.