“Suppose all Logie was for marching straight through Garsykes street? How long should we have to wait till you got well, Michael?”
“A matter of three minutes—or maybe two.”
“You’re always the same, Michael.”
“Well, I couldn’t be different, so long as I’m inside my body—like a bird in a cage, as you might say. Do we bring guns with us, Master?”
The other’s face hardened. “We do—and we fire Garsykes from end to end. There’s to be no quarter.”
“That’s well thought out,” said Michael. “Their thatched roofs will be like tinder in this heat that’s come to the moor. Years out of mind I’ve wanted that sort of clearance, and I hope we start to-morrow.”
“Would God we could,” said Hardcastle, with stormy recollection of the cave—“but we’ve to make our preparations.”
“Well, there’s no harm in giving them a taste of what they put on us. You sent Garsykes the token. Now they can wait, asking each other what’s to come. And naught will come, till they fair get the dithers.”
Michael’s words stayed with Hardcastle, while he conquered his own impatience during the next days. Nothing was overlooked in his preparations for attack. He would have less than fifty to lead against a village that swarmed with men entrenched in their own walls. The more need, he told himself, to see that each of his had his weapons in good order and knew how to use them.
It was tedious work, but he remembered Causleen’s appeal. “Break them outright, Dick,” she had said. “For my sake, break them.” And he had checked his first impulse, to attack at once. There must be no mistake, no hot-headed leaping against odds that might smother them. The Lost Folk should be broken, as she asked.