“Who fears at such a season?”
“By my sword, madame, not your servant; I am but careful of your safety.”
“Fear for me, Brastias, when I fear for myself.”
“Methinks, madame, that would be never.”
“Brastias, I believe you.”
Igraine’s courage had risen to too high an imperiousness for the moment to brook baffling or to endure restraint. She had been lifted out of herself, as it were, by the storm-cry of battle, and by the splendour of the scene spread out before her eyes. A furlong or more down the hillside a little hillock stood up amid a few wind-twisted thorns, proffering rare vantage for outlook over wood and dale. She was away like a flash, and several lengths ahead before Brastias had roused up, put spur to horse, and cantered after her. The man saw the glint of her horse’s hinder hoofs spurning the sod, and though the wind whistled about his ears, he was left well in the rear for all his spurring. Igraine, with her hair agleam under her tossed-back hood, and her cheeks ruddied by the wind, headed for the rising ground at a gallop, gained it, and drew rein on the very verge of a small cliff that dropped sheer to the flat below. The hillock was like a natural pulpit, its front face a perpendicular some twenty feet high, while its hinder slope tailed off to merge into the hillside. Gorlois’s mailed masses stood but a hundred paces away, and Igraine could see him clearly in his gilded harness under the banner of Tintagel.
Brastias galloped up to her with a mild bluster of expostulation.
“You court danger, madame.”
“What if I do, Brastias, to be near my lord.”
“Your sanctity lies upon my conscience.”