They pushed on warily, avoiding such places as were garrisoned by the Bishop’s men. Samson was as a merchant who possessed one ship; he would not imperil her as yet in troublous waters. Men gathered slowly to him as he made his march, grim, stony-faced men whose silence seemed fiercer than their words. Blood was thicker than dogmas and decretals; they had one common bond, these children of heresy, one common vengeance. They had suffered, all of them, in home and heart. In three days Samson’s company had increased to the number of two hundred spears.
As for Tristan, he was as a hound in leash; his sword thirsted in its scabbard; he had tasted blood, and was hot for a tussle. His sinews were taut despite the southron’s spear, and his strength seemed greater than of yore, perhaps because his heart bulked bigger. Nightly when they camped in the woods he would wrestle with any man whose ribs could bear his hug. He could take Samson by the hips, burly man that he was, and hold him high above his head. The fellows would gather round and gape at the giant. Tristan began to know his power the more as he found strong men mere pygmies in his grip.
They held westwards towards the sea, through grassy plains where streams went winding ever through the green, and poplars threw their towering shadows on the sward. Samson had trudged the land through in the days of his preaching. He knew each hamlet, each road, each ford. The Papists had padded through this same region like a pack of wolves, and Tristan and the Heretic found no life therein.
On the fourth day they came upon the ruins of a small town set upon a hill in a wooded valley. Vultures flapped heavenwards as they rode into the gate; lean, red-eyed curs snarled and slinked about the streets. Tristan smote one brute through with his spear that was feeding in the gutter on the carcass of a child. In the market square the Papists had made such another massacre as they had perpetrated in Ronan’s town. The horrible obscenity of the scene struck Samson’s men dumb as the dead. The townsfolk had been stripped, bound face to face, left slain in many a hideous and ribald pose. The vultures’ beaks had emulated the swords. The stench from the place was as the breath of a charnel house, and Samson and his men turned back with grim faces from the brutal silence of that ghastly town.
Near one of the gates a wild, tattered figure darted out from a half-wrecked house, stood blinking at them in the sun, a filthy tangle of hair over his dirty face. The creature gestured and gibbered like any ape. He fled away when Samson approached, screaming and whimpering as though possessed with a devil. The man was mad, had lost his reason in the slaughter of children and kinsfolk. Save the dogs and the vultures, he was the one live thing they found in the town.
When they were beyond the walls and under the clean shadows of the trees, Samson lifted up his hand to the heavens like one who called on God for help.
“Brother, shall such deeds pass?” he said. “Before God, I trow not. Heaven temper our swords in the day of vengeance.”
Tristan’s thoughts were beyond the mountains, hovering about a golden head and the ruffian priests who ruled the south. What might her fate be at the hands of the Church? His manhood rose in him like a sea thundering up in the throat of a cavern.
“Samson,” he said, with iron mouth, “God be thanked for the strength of my body.”
“Brother, thank God for it,” said the Heretic, grimly enough. “Would I had the power of a hundred men. My strength should be a hammer to pulverise these dogs.”