He checked his men, and alone rode to the ruins. Dismounting, he let Noureddin crop the parched grass while he himself entered through a breach in the wall, the gateway being blocked by fallen masonry. All was desolate under the sun. The well had been filled with stones. Climbing a mass of débris, crushed wall and fallen beam and rafter, he attained the interior of the keep. Here had been sword and fire; here now were the charred bones, here the writing that said how had fought Raimbaut the Six-fingered!
Garin came out of the keep and crossed the court, and, stepping through the ragged and monstrous opening in the wall, called to his men. Three hours they worked, making a grave and laying within it every charred body they found, and making one grave for the forms of a giant and of a woman who had fallen beside him.
“I knew this castle,” said Sir Garin. “This was its lord, and he could fight bravely! Nor did he fail at times of kindness done. This was its lady, and she was like him.”
At last they rode away from Raimbaut’s castle. First, came other fields that this storm had struck, then a curving arm, thick and dark, of forest. But, on the further edge of this flowed a stream where the bridge was not broken, and nearby was the hut of one who burned charcoal, and the man and woman and their children were within and living. They fell upon their knees and put up their hands for mercy.
“We are not Montmaure!” said Garin. “Jean Charcoal-burner, have you heard if they have done the like to Castel-Noir?”
The charcoal-burner, of elf locks and blackened skin, stared at the knight, and now thought that he knew him, and now that he knew him not. But he had comfort to give as to Castel-Noir. He had been there within three days, and it stood. It was so small a tower and out of the way—Montmaure’s band had ignored it, or were gone for the time to set claws in other prey. “Sir Foulque?—aye, Sir Foulque lived.”
Garin came to Castel-Noir in the red flush of evening. The fir wood lay quiet and dark, haunted by memory. The stream was as ever it was. Looking up, he saw the lonely, small castle, the round tower—saw, too, a scurrying to it, from the surrounding huts, of men, women and children. They went like partridges, up the steep, grey road, across the narrow moat, and in at the gate. The drawbridge mounted, creaking and groaning.
“Ah,” said Garin with a sob in his throat, “Foulque thinks that we are foes!”
He left his men among the firs, and rode on Noureddin up the path known so well—so well! He rode without spear and shield, and unhelmed. Watchers from loophole or battlement might see only a bronzed horseman, wearing a blue surcoat, worked upon the breast with a bird with outstretched wings. When he came to the edge of the moat, beneath the wall, he checked Noureddin, sat motionless for a minute, then raised his voice. “Castel-Noir!”
A man looked over the wall. “Who and whence, and, Mother of God! whose voice are you calling with?”