"It must be if we're to live. There is no food for a siege," Stefan answered.
Meanwhile the men had unsaddled, and a fire was already crackling on the old hearth. There was promise of comfort for the night, and they were not disposed to grumble. While some looked to the horses, others made haste to prepare a meal. A kid caught earlier in the day suggested a feast. Others, finding a broken door, made shift to set it on four stones, improvising a table, on which they set out the wine flasks and the food they carried with them, while one man paced up and down the edge of the plateau watching the mountains opposite and the pass beneath.
Kid's flesh, even when roasted over a wood fire, may not be to the taste of all who can choose their viands, but it is honest food for all that, and no one round that improvised table uttered a word against it. More logs had been piled on the fire, and the blaze threw dancing shadows on the stone walls and lit up the rough faces of the men. They were silent for a while, their sharp set appetites fully occupying them, but a draught of wine set the tongues wagging again.
"A song, Stefan: I've heard you roar a good stave ere this."
"Not a love song, surely?" said Grigosie.
"No, of wine."
"In all the verse I ever heard love and wine strangely go together," said the boy.
"Proving that the joys of both are transitory, perhaps," said Ellerey, who sat beside him. He spoke only to Grigosie, but Stefan heard him.
"Love, Captain—a snap of the fingers for love; but wine's the very heart of life. There's wisdom and truth in wine, there's valor in it, and it's powerful enough to make even good sound men fall in love. There's a stave I've heard which you may have if you will." And with much sound but little music Stefan broke into song.
It was a tavern ditty, and not too nice in its sentiments, as, indeed, why should it be, to please its hearers? There was a lilt in its chorus which even Stefan's unmusical voice could not hide, and it set the men's heads nodding in time as they roared it out together, waking the echoes with the declaration that—"The eye of a maid may sparkle, And the fools may for love repine, But the wise man knows As his road he goes That the best of life's gifts is wine."