They came to a huge buttress springing inward from the city wall, almost spanning the way between it and the moat. Here, in the angle was what they sought. From somewhere sprang a dim light and showed a low and narrow opening, a gate more obscure even and masked than that by which they had left the castle. Here, too, awaited men; a word was given and the gate opened. A portcullis lifted, they passed under, passed outward. There was a sense of a gulf of air, and then of Montmaure’s watch-lights, staring up from the plain. As without the gate in the castle wall, so here, they stood upon a ledge of rock, masked by a portion of the cliff and by a growth of bush and vine. Behind them was Roche-de-Frêne, castle and town; before them the rock fell sheer for many feet to a base of earth so steep as to be nearly precipitous. This in turn sank by degrees to a broken strip, earth and boulder, and to a wood of small pines which merged with the once-cultivated plain.
The dragon that lay about Roche-de-Frêne watched less closely here to the north. He could not get at Roche-de-Frêne from this side: he knew that no torrent of armed men could descend upon him here. His eyes could not read the two small, ambushed doors, out of which, truly, no torrent could come! Perhaps he was aware that the besieged might, some night-time, let down the cliff spy or messenger striving to make a way north to that distant and deaf King of France. If so, that daring one might not at all easily pass the watch that the dragon kept. Gaultier Cap-du-Loup and his Free Companions encamped in this northern quarter.
Those who stood without the wall of Roche-de-Frêne looked from their narrow footing forth and down upon the fields of night and the flickering tokens of the dragon their foe. The men who had handled the rope-ladder at the moat now knelt at the edge of this shelf, made fast a like stair but a longer, weighted the free end with a stone, and swung it over the cliff side. It fell: the whole straightened itself, hung a passable road to the foot of the rock. That attained, there would rest the rough and broken hillside that fell to the wood, the wood that fell to the plain where the dragon had dominion. The night was still, the waning moon pushing up from the east.
That one who alone had used the phrase “Saint Martin’s summer” spoke to Garin: “Go you first,” and then to Stephen the Marshal: “Now we say farewell, Lord Stephen!”
Garin, at the cliff edge, heard behind him the marshal’s low and fervent commendations to the Mother of God and every Saint. He himself set his feet upon the rope-stair, went down the rock-side, touched the stony earth at the base, stood aside. That other, that strange companion of this night, came lightly after—not hurriedly, with a light deliberateness—and stood beside him on the moon-silvered hill. The moon showed a woman, slender and lithe, with a peasant’s bodice and ragged, shortened kirtle and great mantle of frieze. At her word he loosened the weighting stone, drew at the rope three times. Those at the top of the rock receiving the signal, the ladder was drawn slowly up, vanished. Above the two soared the clean rock, and loftier yet, the bare, the inaccessible wall of Roche-de-Frêne. Black Tower and Eagle Tower seemed among the stars. There was a gulf between them and those small, hidden, defended entrances. The strained gaze could see naught but some low, out-cropping bushes and a trailing vine. Up there the men who had brought them to that side of the gulf might yet be gazing outward, listening with bated breath for any token that that dragon was awake and aware; but they could not tell if it were so. Up there was the friendly world, down here the hostile. Up there might be troubadour-knight and princess, down here stood jongleur and peasant.
They stood yet a moment at the foot of the crag, then she who was dressed as a worker among the vines or a herd to drive and watch the flocks turned in silence and began to descend the moonlit boulder-strewn declivity. She was light of foot, quick and dexterous of movement. Garin, who was now Elias of Montaudon, moved beside her. They came down the steep hill, bare and blanched by the moon. The dragon had no outpost here; did he plant one, the archers upon the town wall might sweep it away. But the shafts would not reach to the wood—there perhaps they might hear the dragon’s breathing. They went without speech, and with no noise that could be helped of foot against stone.... Here was a slight fringe of pine and oak. They stood still, listened—all was silent. They looked back and saw Roche-de-Frêne and the castle of Roche-de-Frêne bathed by the grey night.
“Cap-du-Loup and his men hold in this quarter,” said the woman in a low voice. “We had a spy forth who got back to us three days since. Cap-du-Loup’s tents and booths are thrown and scattered, stony ground and seams in the earth between the handfuls. He does not keep stern watch, not looking for anything of moment to descend this way. Hereabouts is the ravine of the brook of Saint Laurent, and half a mile up it a medley of camp-followers, men and women.”
She had not ceased to move as she spoke. They were now in the midst of a spare growth of trees, under foot a turf burned by the sun and ground to dust by the tread, through half a year, of a host of folk. Some distance ahead the night was copper-hued; over there were camp-fires. They were now, also, in the zone of a faint confused sound. They moved aside from the direction of the strongest light, the deepest, intermittent humming, and came, presently, to the brook of Saint Laurent. It flowed through a shallow ravine with rough, scarped banks. Down it, too, came faint light and sound, proceeding from the camp of followers.
“Our aim,” said she in peasant dress, “is to be found at dawn among that throng, indistinguishable from it, and so to pass to its outermost edge and away.”
They were standing above the murmuring stream. Overhead the wind was in the pine-tops. There were elfin voices, too, of the creatures of the grass and bush and bark. All life, and life in his own veins, seemed to Garin to be alert, awake as never before, quivering and streaming and mounting like flame.