He rode at the head of his men that day with a fine light playing in his deep-set eyes. His very soul seemed enhaloed about his face; his voice rang clear as a trumpet cry as he gave his orders and cheered on his men. As the reeking ashes smoked under their horses’ hoofs, the bronzed veterans jested together, bartered their rough gibes, caught their captain’s spirit. They loved Tristan for his fiery strength, his huge activity, his undaunted zeal. The story of the Lady of Joyous Vale had gone round the camp fires on many a night.
Tristan was guided by the distant hills, for he had noted their shape that summer day when he rode with Ogier to the Forest Hermitage. To the south, gaunt crags rose above the trees, three towering pinnacles, huge, natural obelisks cleaving the blue. Tristan kept to the higher ground. It was well past noon before he saw water glimmering in a blackened hollow, the island swimming fresh and green in the glassy waters of the mere.
A great silence wrapped the valley, and there was no smoke rising from the house, no boat moving over the lake. The ruinous woods were dark and still. Yet as they rode down through the trees, Tristan’s man, a youth whose kinsfolk had been slain in the province of the Seven Streams, held up a hand, with a warning cry. A long, low howl came pealing over the water, a note in keeping with the desolation of the scene.
“Sire, a wolf’s howl!”
Tristan drew rein, and scanned the island under his hand. A swift shadow had fallen upon his face, wiping out the radiance, dimming the light in the eyes. His men halted around him, their spears towards the sky, their shields shining in the sun.
“Sire, look yonder.”
A brown thing trotted out from a small thicket on the island, stopped with nose in air with one paw up, and broke into a wild howling that woke the hills. Wolves, brown and grey, came hustling out from the yawn of the great gate. They cast about from side to side, snarling and snapping at each other, filling the valley with their uncouth clamour.
“Wolves, in truth,” said Tristan, looking grim.
He shook his bridle and, shouting to his men, cantered off over the scorched meadowland towards the water. The brutes upon the island, catching sight of him, gave tongue more fiercely, and howled in chorus. Tristan’s horse pricked up its ears, snorted, swerved, and would not go forward. He slipped out of the saddle, and, stopping his men with uplifted sword, bade them tether their horses.
They passed down to the mere on foot, and took counsel there, for old Nicholas’s boat was moored fast by the wooden stage that ran out from the island into the water. Tristan’s eyes searched the silent house. Of a sudden he pointed with his sword to a window overlooking the garden, where a white cloth waved under the red tiles.