He drilled his men, mapped out each detail of the coming fight. Aloof from any care except to make an end of Garsykes—pitiless, save for the women and children harbouring there—he lived for the one purpose.
While they drilled, the men growing restless to be into Garsykes street, the sun blazed each day from a sky that showed nowhere any cloud of mercy.
“It’s drying their thatches nicely,” Michael Draycott would growl, with a glance across the valley. “Let’s pray that no rain comes before the Master lets us loose.”
And now a rumour spread through the Logie country. First it was whispered that a stranger had come into Garsykes and died there of the plague. That was sinister enough, but soon news followed of further deaths, till dread took hold of all folk—a colder and a stealthier dread than ever Garsykes brought on Logie until now.
Hardcastle drilled his men relentlessly, to keep their minds from brooding. The thicker the rumours spread, the less he credited them. The Lost Folk, learning somehow of the coming onslaught, had spread the news themselves, and under its cover were preparing an attack in force. This was what he told his people, and by night they doubled the number of their scouts about the hills.
None was eager now, except the Master, to press through Garsykes street; for the very name of plague set each looking at another for the tell-tale blotches to appear.
Then a morning came when Hardcastle, looking across the valley, saw a black shape hovering in the molten sky. It was joined presently by another, and yet another, and suddenly he understood.
“We can ease our drilling, Michael,” he said. “Garsykes has not lied this once—for the corbie-crows are waiting.”
Garsykes—those still alive in it—saw the same three crows poised above its sweltering street. Rumour at its wildest could have pictured no scene more stark with horror; for the stranger who had brought Hardcastle’s challenge had brought gaol-fever, too, and it had spread like flame throughout a village ready to receive it.
The sun beat down from the shelterless fells till the cobbles of the street were hot to tread. Each festering refuse heap bred flies beyond number, and in the roadway lay the body of a man that none dared touch. Gaol-fever, quick to strike, had taken him as he neared home, and he had found no strength to journey further. It was for him the corbies watched.