He found Isoult beside him, and her very nearness quickened his consciousness of their danger.
“Are we to be smoked out?”
“Burnt like rats. The house is all timber and thatch.”
“What’s to be done?”
“Isoult, there is but one thing to be done. Help me to lift this chest aside.”
She put her hands to it, and between them they carried it back into the solar.
“Isoult!”
He caught her and held her almost roughly, for the love in him had come to desperate ends.
“Let us fight rather than burn.”
“That’s the cry. I will give these dogs cold steel in the dark. It is a chance, and nothing more. If I can but clear the hall of them, we can throw faggots across the doorway and hold it. And we can open the shutters and get out of this black pit.”