Clatter went the horses' hoofs as they were being led towards the door.
"One! Two! Three!" I counted, softly but clearly.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SORTIE
The door was open, and the next I mind was my axe whirling about my head and Jorian rushing out of the other door a step ahead of me, with his broadsword in his hand. I cannot tell much about the fight. I never could all my days. And I wot well that those who can relate such long particulars of tales of fighting are the folk who stood at a distance and labored manfully at the looking on—not of them that were close in and felt the hot breaths and saw the death-gleam in fierce, desperate eyes, near to their own as the eyes of lovers when they embrace. Ah, Brothers of the Sword, these things cannot be told! Yet, of a surety, there is a heady delight in the fray itself. And so I found. For I struck and warded not, that being scarce necessary. Because an axe is an uncanny weapon to wield, but still harder to stand against when well used. And I drove the rabble before me—the men of them, I mean. I felt my terrible weapon stopped now and then—now softly, now suddenly, according to that which I struck against. And all the while the kitchen of the inn resounded with yells and threatenings, with oaths and cursings.
But Jorian and I drove them steadily back, though they came at us again and again, with spits, iron hooks, and all manner of curious weapons. Also from out of the corners we saw the gleaming, watchful eyes of a dark huddle of women and children. Presently the clamorous rabble turned tail suddenly and poured through the door out upon the pathway, quicker than water through a tide-race in the fulness of the ebb.
And lo! in a moment the room was sucked empty, save only for the huddled women in the corners, who cried and suckled their children to keep them still. And some of the wounded with the axe and the sword crawled to them to have their ghastly wounds bound. For an axe makes ugly work at the best of times, and still worse on the edges of such a pagan fight as we three had just fought.
So we went back victorious to our inner doors.
Then Jorian looked at me and nodded across at Boris.
"Good!" was all that he said. But the single word made me happier than many encomiums.