A fire was kindled with that ceremony which was requisite. The banner of the great fellowship was burned, and the lords of the Silver Stallion now broke their swords, and they cast these fragments also into this fire, so that these swords might never defend any other standard. It was the youth of these nine men and the first vigor and faith of their youth which perished with the extinction of that fire: and they knew it.
Thereafter the heroes left Storisende. Each rode for his own home, and they made ready, each in his own fashion, for that new order of governance which with the passing of Dom Manuel had come upon Poictesme.
4.
Fog Rises
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NOW Guivric and Donander and Gonfal rode westward with their attendants, all in one company, as far as Guivric’s home at Asch. And as these three lords rode among the wreckage and the gathering fogs of November, the three talked together.
“It is a pity,” said Gonfal of Naimes, “that, while our little Count Emmerick is growing up, this land must now be ruled by a lame and sallow person, who had never much wit and who tends already to stringiness. Otherwise, in a land ruled over by a widow, who is used to certain recreations, one might be finding amusement, and profit too.”
“Come now,” said loyal Donander of Évre, “but Madame Niafer is a chaste and good woman who means well!”
“She has yet another quality which is even more disastrous in the ruler of any country,” returned Guivric the Sage.
“And what hook have you found now to hang a cynicism on?”