“Ready?”
“Nita spoke truth. There’s no way out of this, except by the mouth they’re guarding. We shall die, and I’d have it that way, if needs must—and if we’re together.”
“Say that again, Dick—if we’re together—and, Dick, fear has gone.”
Quiet absolute held outside, and Hardcastle’s mind went back to many silences that Garsykes had put on him. Those waiting-times at Logie had seemed chill and harsh enough, but not as this was terrible. His own house had been about him then, the forest and the wind-sweet uplands, and he had liberty to come and go.
For a long while no stir of life sounded from without, till the frosty gloaming settled on what little he could see of the brink-field. Then again he fancied himself in a nightmare’s grip, for the two whose bodies lay prone at the entry, blocking the lower half, began to move backward with rough, convulsive twists and turns.
The horror of it—this watching dead men come to life—yielded to stark common-sense as muffled curses stole inward and he guessed that some of the Garsykes sort had crept on hands and knees to draw out his victims. His re-loaded gun was useless, for the living sheltered behind the dead, and he could only wait till the cave-mouth was clear, and all the gloaming pasture empty save for Nita’s voice.
“It is well done. I may tire of waiting till they die of the ghosts and hunger. The way must be free.”
Hardcastle drew Causleen round the first bend of the cave-track. His wits were keen as a razor’s edge, as he stilled Storm’s yearning to be out and at the throats of the besiegers. If they could not live, they three, they must make preparations to die with seemliness.
“There’s one chance left,” he said. “When dark comes, I’ll take Storm, and together we’ll stampede them.”
“And what of me?”