“Listen, they are at blows yonder. Let us push forward. Hallo, what have we here?”
Round the edge of the beech wood came the two La Bellière men, whipping up their horses, with Tiphaïne’s woman on her palfrey between them. Hard at their heels cantered the two baggage mules, with halters dangling, a fair omen of an unquestionable rout.
Tinteniac’s sword was up. He put his horse across the road, a hint that the La Bellière men seemed too scared to accept.
“Steady! steady!!”
“Fly, sire, fly—”
They were up and past, maugre the seignorial sword, Tinteniac barely escaping the indignity of being rammed by the near man’s horse. To shout at them was as useless as hallooing after a rabble of frightened sheep. Tiphaïne had caught a glimpse of her serving-woman’s scared face as she was whirled past, clinging to the saddle with both hands. The woman had opened her lips to call to her mistress, but an inarticulate cry alone came from them. The two mules went cantering past with their packs slipping down under their bellies. In the taking of ten breaths the woods had swallowed men, woman, and beasts.
Tinteniac gave a contemptuous laugh.
“It seems that I am something of a prophet. What are we to look for next?”
He was as cool as though exchanging courtesies with a guest in the great hall of his own castle. Tiphaïne saw his lips grow thin, the pupils of his eyes contract like the eyes of a hawk on the hover for a stoop. He glanced this way and that into the woods, setting his shield forward and balancing his sword.
“What do you make of it, sire?” and she matched him for composure.