“And as to tearing out our hearts,” cried Alric, feeling emboldened now that the stout door stood between him and his foes, “if ye do not make off as fast as ye came, we will punch out your eyes and roast your livers.”
The reply to this was a shower of blows on the door, so heavy that the whole building shook beneath them, and Alric almost wished that his boastful threat had been left unsaid. He recollected at that moment, however, that there was a hole under the eaves of the roof just above the door. It had been constructed for the purpose of preventing attacks of this kind. The boy seized his bow and arrows and dashed up the ladder that led to the loft above the hall. On it he found one of the old retainers of the stede struggling up with a weighty iron pot, from which issued clouds of steam.
“Let me pass, old Ivor; what hast thou there?”
“Boiling water to warm them,” gasped Ivor, “I knew we should want it ere long. Finn is gone to the loft above the south door with another pot.”
Alric did not wait to hear the end of this answer, but pushing past the old man, hastened to the trap-door under the eaves and opened it. He found, however, that he could not use his bow in the constrained position necessary to enable him to shoot through the hole. In desperation he seized a barrel that chanced to be at hand, and overturned its contents on the heads of the foe. It happened to contain rye-flour, and the result was that two of the assailants were nearly blinded, while two others who stood beside them burst into a loud laugh, and, seizing the battle-axes which the others had been using, continued their efforts to drive in the door. By this time old Ivor had joined Alric. He set down the pot of boiling water by the side of the hole, and at once emptied its contents on the heads of the vikings, who uttered a terrific yell and leaped backward as the scalding water flowed over their heads and shoulders. A similar cry from the other door of the house told that the defence there had been equally successful. Almost at the same moment Alric discovered a small slit in the roof through which he could observe the enemy. He quickly sent through it an arrow, which fixed itself in the left shoulder of one of the men. This had the effect of inducing the attacking party to draw off for the purpose of consultation.
The breathing-time thus afforded to the assailed was used in strengthening their defences and holding a hurried council of war. Piling several heavy pieces of furniture against the doors, and directing the women to make additions to these, Christian drew Alric into the hall, where the ancient retainers were already assembled.
“It will cost them a long time and much labour to drive in the doors, defended as they are,” said the hermit.
“They will not waste time nor labour upon them,” said Ivor, shaking his hoary head. “What think ye, Finn?”
The women, who had crowded round the men, looked anxiously at Finn, who was a man of immense bulk, and had been noted for strength in his younger days, but who was now bent almost double with age. “Fire will do the work quicker than the battle-axe,” answered Finn, with grim smile, which did not improve the expression of a countenance already disfigured by the scars of a hundred fights, and by the absence of an eye—long ago gouged out and left to feed the ravens of a foreign shore! “If this had only come to pass a dozen years ago,” he added, while a gleam of light illumined the sound eye, “I might have gone off to Valhalla with a straight hack and some credit. But mayhap a good onset will straighten it yet, who knows?—and I do feel as if I had strength left to send at least one foe out of the world before me.”
Ivor the Old nodded. “Yes,” he said; “I think they will burn us out.”