There was a quick snort of anger. Then, with a burst of relief and pleasure, came the words, "By God, I'll clout him now!" The sound of a mighty buffet succeeded, something cracked like a broken egg, and the clever-tongued young clerk went down on the paving-stones with a clatter, as his torch extinguished itself in the gutter and his sword flew ringing across the street.
"Come on, lads—they have struck the first blow. We are safe from the law. Kill them every one!" cried his companions, advancing to the attack with a confidence born of numbers and the consciousness of fighting on their own ground.
But ere they reached the four men who had waited so quietly, the Scots had gathered their cloaks about their left arms in the fashion of shields, and a blade, long and stout, gleamed in every right hand. Still no armour was to be seen, and, though somewhat disconcerted, the assailants were by no means dismayed.
"Come on—let us revenge De Sillé!" they cried.
"Lord, Lord, this is gaun to be a sair waste o' guid steel," grumbled Malise; "would that I had in my fist a stieve oaken staff out of Halmyre wood. Then I could crack their puir bit windlestaes o' swords, without doing them muckle hurt! Laddies, laddies, be warned and gang decently hame to your mithers before a worse thing befall. James, ye hae their ill-contrived lingo, tell them to gang awa' peaceably to their naked beds!"
For, having vented his anger in the first buffet, Malise was now somewhat remorseful. There was no honour in such fighting. But all unwarned the youthful roisterers of Paris advanced. This was a nightly business with them, and indeed on such street robberies of strangers and shopkeepers the means of continuing their carousings depended.
It chanced that at the first brunt of the attack Sholto, who was at the other end of the line from his father, had to meet three opponents at once. He kept them at bay for a minute by the quickness of his defence, but being compelled to give back he was parrying a couple of their blades in front, when the third got in a thrust beneath his arm. It was as if the hostile sword had stricken a stone wall. The flimsy and treacherous blade went to flinders, and the would-be robber was left staring at the guard suddenly grown light in his hand.
With a quick backward step, Sholto slashed his last assailant across the upper arm, effectually disabling him. Then, catching his heel in a rut, he fell backward, and it would have gone ill with him but for the action of his father. The brawny one was profoundly disgusted at having to waste his strength and science upon such a rabble, and now, at the moment of his son's fall, he suddenly dropped his sword and seized a couple of torches which had fallen upon the pavement. With these primitive weapons he fell like a whirlwind upon the foe, taking them unexpectedly in flank. A sweep of his mighty arms right and left sent two of the assailants down, one with the whole side of his face scarified from brow to jaw, and the other with his mouth at once widened by the blow and hermetically closed by the blazing tar.
Next, Sholto's pair of assailants received each a mighty buffet and went down with cracked sconces. The rest, seeing this revolving and decimating fire-mill rushing upon them as Malise waved the torches round his head, turned tail and fled incontinently into the narrow alleys which radiated in all directions from the Hotel de Pornic.