“Isoult!”
She threw her arms about him.
“Dear heart, I shall go down and make a first fight of it in the hall. Bide here. If they press me too hard I shall take to the stairs.”
A sudden solemnity seized them, a sense of peril, and of the nearness of desperate ends. They had laughed while they had shot their arrows across the mere, but now this scum of outlaws and broken men had floated over, and both Fulk and Isoult knew that Merlin would show no mercy.
She pressed her body against his harness.
“Man, man, whatever befalls we face it together.”
“They shall come at you only over my body.”
“Ah, ah—if death takes you shall I tarry behind? I carry a knife.”
“By God, it shall not be so. Stand here with your bow and succour me if the chance offers. I go to light the torches.”
He hastened down the stairs, and taking a torch that had half burned itself out, he kindled three other torches that were ready in the brackets. Merlin’s men were in the porch. He could hear a scuffling sound like the sound of a pack of dogs sniffing and pawing at a door.