Tristan kept his twenty men under the cliff, that they might escape these grinding, hurtling bolts that leapt out of the calm sky into the pass. He had climbed the wall, and lay prone in the angle under the trunk of the great tree. Thence he could watch the stormers on the road beneath and warn his men when the tide rolled up.
Nor was he left long in such a posture, with the flat of his sword under his chin. A clarion wailed in the darkness of the pass, warning those on the heights above to cease from hurling down the rocks. Spear and buckler flashed up once more as the moon’s eye was uncovered by a cloud. With a great shout Tristan sprang up with sword aloft, his men thronging round him on the wall.
Again the moon sank into the west and huge shadows covered the cliffs. About St. Isidore’s Gate the dead lay thick, where Serjabil’s Saracens had recoiled once more. Yet empty of triumph was that desperate rally for those score heroes who held the wall. Tristan stood alone there on the bloody rampart, bleeding from a spear-thrust in his throat as he leant heavily upon his sword.
A voice called to him out of the gloom, and Blanche’s hand was on his shoulder.
“God help you, Tristan,” she said in his ear. “Is it death with you, soul of my soul?”
He staggered back against the cliff, while she held a wine-flask to his lips, then tore the scarf from off her bosom, and strove to staunch the blood from his throat. He leant heavily against the cliff, fighting for his breath, half dead with travail. Blanche’s arms went about his body, and she half bore his weight as she watched him suffer.
“Tristan,” she said, “Tristan, Tristan.”
He turned his head wearily, so that it half rested upon her bosom.
“I am athirst,” he said, “give me more wine.”
She reached down and held the flask again to his lips, drawing his right arm over her shoulder so that he leant his weight upon her.