Up the road came Lothaire of the north, his men racing shoulder to shoulder behind him, panting open-mouthed towards St. Isidore’s Gate. The great rock with its black pinnacles flashed into view, the platform strewn with the Christian dead, the narrow rampart piled with the slain. For one moment Lothaire stood still in the road. Then with a shout he broke away, waving his men on with his sword.
On the rampart, outlined against the sky, stood a single warrior with his shield reared up, while his sword flashed and swept from side to side. A mob of white-robed infidels topped the wall, thrusting at him with their lances, fearing to close. Near by stood a woman wielding a spear, with which she strove to beat down the lance points that were levelled at the man’s body.
“Holy Cross, Holy Cross, God and the Duchess!”
Even as Lothaire’s men charged up, Tristan gave ground, for an arrow had smitten through the rings of his hauberk, and wounded him sorely in the breast. A tall Saracen, seeing him stagger, sprang forward and smote at him with an axe, but fell in turn beneath Tristan’s sword. Yet this was the last blow Tristan gave on the bloody rampart of St. Isidore’s Gate.
Blanche’s arms caught him as he fell; her body shielded him from the spears. Lothaire’s men saw their Duchess stand like a noble mother guarding a son. One outstretched arm pressed the infidels back; the other was round the stricken man’s shoulders.
Then came the roar of the rising tide as Lothaire and his avengers reached the Gate and poured up to save the Duchess there. The stalwart West rolled the Orient back, over the wall and down the road, with bustling shields and screaming steel. Buckler and lance went down in the dust, while the dragon of the North heaved on down the pass, its iron flanks hurling Serjabil’s men over the precipice into the depths beneath.
Tristan lay under the shadow of the cliff with the Saracen’s arrow betwixt his ribs. Beside him knelt Blanche, her noble hands dyed with the blood of the man she loved. Many a rough soldier stood mutely by, gazing on their lady and the man at her knees.
“Wine,” she called to them almost fiercely, “wine, ye fools, and linen, bring them. Ha, Walter, come hither, man, unfasten this hauberk. Thus—thus. Tristan, look up; is it death with you?”
Tristan stared in her face and smiled. They stripped off his hauberk, rent the clothes beneath till the flesh was bare about the barb. Blanche, with her teeth set, snapped off the shaft, but dared not do more, for the blood flowed fast. Her men brought her linen, strips that they had torn from the robes of the dead Saracens who lay around. Two soldiers supported Tristan’s shoulders, while Blanche wound the bands about his body, padding the place where the barb remained, knotting the linen tight to staunch the flow.
Her men made a litter out of a dozen spears with shields and clothing laid thereon. Very tenderly they lifted Tristan up, and bore him slowly down the road from the Saint’s Gate he had held so well. The great peaks glistened in the sun; the streams sang in the ravines beneath. Thus they bore Tristan from the mountains towards the woods that clothed the lower slopes, where they had left a horse litter that they had brought from Agravale for their lady’s use on the homeward road. Reaching the shadows of the trees, they laid Tristan within the litter and took the road towards the north.