He looked at her sadly, knelt down and kissed her hands.
“Come, let me comfort you,” she said.
Lifting his rough face to hers, he smiled, the smile of a man grateful yet not appeased.
“Winter is here,” he said; “as yet there is no peace upon the woods, no singing of birds, no white clouds in the heavens. For me—battle and tempest. I shall not rest till many deeds are done.”
On the morrow they marched from Sanguelac, with pennons tossing over hill and moor. Tristan bore a black dragon on a gilded shield, the device Dame Blanche had decreed to him after her sword had touched his shoulder. Three thousand spears, a strenuous van, pricked with him hotly through the winter wilds. Morose and fierce of face, Tristan held on towards the south, with Blanche the Duchess at his side. They were riding on Marvail to take it by surprise, fall suddenly upon Count Reynaud and his men.
It was well towards evening on the third day of Tristan’s sallying from Sanguelac that the watchers on the walls of Marvail saw scattered knots of horsemen cantering towards the town. The gates were thrown open to take them in. Even in the farther meadows on the rim of the woods the townsfolk could see the flash and glimmer of pursuing spears. Mud-stained, sullen-faced men rode in to Marvail, confessing defeat in every desperate gesture, some with wounded comrades laid across their saddles, their shields splintered, their lances lost. That morning Count Reynaud had sallied out to give the heretics battle. His scouts had found them marching south, and had misjudged their numbers, since Tristan and the Duchess had masked half their companies in the woods. Count Reynaud had cantered out with horns blowing, shields aglimmer, spears aglint. The men of Marvail had watched them sally, promising the Church more victims before the sun should set.
Two leagues from the town, on a hill amid the black billows of the woods, Tristan stood at the head of his main squadrons, gazing round over the place where their hot charge had left the wreckage of Reynaud’s arms stranded on the hillside. The west was afire above the pines, crimson swords smiting through the clouds. It had been a battle of horse, grim, swift, and furious. Tristan had ambushed a thousand spears under Lothaire in the woods. They had charged home on the Papists’ flank, crumpled their squadrons, hurled them back up the hill. Tristan and his men had come in like the sea. Sword and shield were witnesses to this.
Tristan stood amid the wreckage of the fight, with the Duchess beside him on her great white horse. The banner with the black cross drooped amid a grove of spears. Far to the south, through the dusky woods, Lothaire’s spears still flashed and smote at the flying foe. On all sides were the dead and the dying, piled in sheaves, the grim harvest of battle.
At Tristan’s feet lay the body of Count Reynaud thrust through with a spear. Before him among the slain stood some dozen monks guarded by men-at-arms. They had followed Count Reynaud from Marvail to bless his banner and to see the heretics put to the sword.
Tristan le Sauvage leant upon the long handle of his axe. A prisoner had been brought to him, an esquire of Reynaud’s who had been taken in the fight. Tristan’s eyes were fixed upon the man’s slashed face as he questioned him concerning Jocelyn and the main body of the southern host.