Even as he spoke, however, his bow twanged loudly, and a cry went up from a dense copse beyond them.
"One!" he shouted, and he and Richard sprang lightly to the earth.
"Well my sword was out!" said the latter as he gained his feet, for bounding toward him were half a dozen wild shapes carrying blade and buckler.
"Down with them!" roared the foremost of the assailants; but Guy the Bow was in front of him, and in his hand was a poleaxe from Wartmont armory.
It was a fearful weapon in the hands of such a man as he, to whom its weight was as a splinter. It flashed and fell, and the lifted buckler before it might as well have been an eggshell for all the protection it gave to the bare head of the robber. He should have worn a helmet, but he would never more need cap of any kind. Useless, too, was the light blade that glinted next upon the shield of Richard, for it made no mark, while its giver went down with a thigh wound, struck below his buckler.
On swept the terrible blows of the poleaxe, and Guy had no man to meet but was nearly a head shorter than himself.
"They are all down!" he shouted. "Mount, my Lord of Wartmont; they in the copse have fled, but there may be more at hand. We will ride hard now. These are thieves from Lancashire, and they have not been heard of in these parts for many a day. I think they have been harried out of their own nests. They are but wolves."
"What kin are they?" asked Richard, as he regained his saddle.
"That I know not, nor do I know their speech," replied Guy. "But among them are no tall men nor many good bows. Ben o' Coventry hath been told by a monk from those parts that they are a kind of old Welsh that were left when the first King Edward smote their tribe to death. They will live in no town, nor will they obey any law, nor keep troth with any. But the monk told Ben that they were not heathen, and among them were men who could talk Latin like a priest. How that could be I know not."