There was a short interval of silence, then a concerted roar of glee, and a dozen men clambered over the rock pile. They shouted his name as they all tried to touch him at once, and there was adoration in their welcome as they pulled and hauled at him.
At length he managed to free himself of their embraces, and as he stood apart, he asked: "What happened? Did I manage to warn enough of our men?"
"Warn us and knock their ambush into a cocked hat. They fell to pieces and ran like scared rabbits when we hit them from all sides. But Mark Smith saw you fall, and he said that the sword which was thrust into you went all the way in to the hilt," one of them said.
"I guess Mark was looking from the wrong angle," Stanton explained. "For sure I'm all in one piece. Got a bloody knock on the head, though. Well, let's get back to quarters. I've got a piece I want to talk over with you all."
A hundred torches made a smoky light of the pitch which otherwise would have been in the vast cavern-like room. Three hundred and ten men stood about in various attitudes of attention, all listening to the tall man perched on a flat piece of concrete, facing them.
"I cannot explain why I feel this way," Bly Stanton was saying. "But this I know, and for sure! No more killing for me. No more hiding in stinking places like this, waiting for the sun to go down so a man can venture out and be a man. No, sirs! Bly Stanton is going out, and in broad daylight. Bly Stanton is going out and bloody well away from this place, out to where the sun hits hills and trees and open spaces. And Bly Stanton is going alone if he has to...."
It was an ultimatum, they knew.
Mark Smith, a short, swarthy-faced man in breeches clipped short at the knees and a leather jerkin for a shirt, stepped forward and waved a casual hand to get his leader's attention.
"I take it, Bly," he said, "that you are bound to leave. Well, that part may be all right. Surely you have a right to leave if you want to. But by the same token you must grant us the right to ask why. We have been together too long for so abrupt a leave-taking."