"Come!" said Beltane, and speaking, reached out his torch to bed-alcove and tapestried wall; and immediately silk and arras went up in a puff of flame—a leaping fire, yellow-tongued, that licked at gilded roof-beam and carven screen and panel.
"Brother!" whispered Giles, "O brother, 'tis a sin, methinks, to lose so much good booty. That coffer, now—Ha!" With the cry the archer leapt out through the tapestried doorway. Came the ring of steel, a heavy fall, and thereafter a shriek that rang and echoed far and near ere it sank to a silence wherein a voice whispered:
"Quick, brother—the besotted fools stir at last—away!"
Then, o'erleaping that which sprawled behind the curtain, Beltane sped along a passage and down a winding stair, yet pausing, ever and anon, with flaring torch: and ever small fires waxed behind him. So came he at last to the sally-port and hurling the blazing torch behind him, closed the heavy door. And now, standing upon the platform, he looked down into the inner bailey. Dawn was at hand, a glimmering mist wherein vague forms moved, what time Walkyn, looming ghostly and gigantic in the mist, mustered his silent, ghostly company ere, lifting his axe, he turned and vanished, his fifty phantoms at his heels.
Now glancing upward at the rugged face of the keep, Beltane beheld thin wisps of smoke that curled from every arrow-slit, slow-wreathing spirals growing ever denser ere they vanished in the clammy mists of dawn, while from within a muffled clamour rose—low and inarticulate yet full of terror. Then Beltane strode down the zig-zag stair and came forthright upon Roger, pale and anxious, who yet greeted him in joyous whisper:
"Master, I began to fear for thee. What now?"
"To the arch of the parapet yonder. Let each man crouch there in the gloom, nor stir until I give word."
Now as they crouched thus, with weapons tight-gripped and eyes that glared upon the coming day, a sudden trumpet brayed alarm upon the battlements—shouts were heard far and near, and a running of mailed feet; steel clashed, the great castle, waking at last, was all astir about them and full of sudden bustle and tumult. And ever the clamour of voices waxed upon the misty air from hurrying groups dim-seen that flitted by, arming as they ran, and ever the fifty and five, crouching in the dark, impatient for the sign, watched Beltane—his firm-set lip, his frowning brow; and ever from belching arrow-slit the curling smoke-wreaths waxed blacker and more dense. Of a sudden, out from the narrow sally-port burst a huddle of choking men, whose gasping cries pierced high above the clamour:
"Fire! Fire! Sir Fulk is slain! Sir Fulk lieth death-smitten! Fire!"
From near and far men came running—men affrighted and dazed with sleep, a pushing, jostling, unordered throng, and the air hummed with the babel of their voices.