Love Among the Ruins Part 50

"I have so determined it."

"And why?"

"Need you doubt my discretion?"

The flames flashed and gleamed upon his breastplate, and deepened the shadows upon his face. His eyes were sorrowful, yet full of a strenuous fire.

"The sky darkens," he said to her, "and the King's hosts watch the forest. I had thought to draw them into the wilds, but the fox of Lauretia has smelt a snare. Our stores lessen; we are in the last trench."

She moved away into a dark corner of the room, raised the carved lid of a chest, and began to draw clothes therefrom, fingering them listlessly, as though her thoughts wavered. Fulviac leant with folded arms upon the settle, seemed even oblivious of her presence under the burden of his fate.

"Fulviac," she said at last, glancing at him over a drooping shoulder.

He turned his head and looked at her.

"Must I go then to Gilderoy?"

"The road is open," he answered, with no obvious kindling of his sympathy; "there will be b.l.o.o.d.y work here anon; you will be safer behind stone walls."

"And the King?" she asked him.

He straightened suddenly, like a man tossing some great burden from off his soul.

"Ha, girl! are you blind as to what shall follow? Richard of the Iron Hand waits for us with fivescore thousand men. We shall fight--by G.o.d, yes!--and make a b.l.o.o.d.y end; there will be much slaughter and work for the sword. The King will crush us as a falling rock crushes a scorpion.

There will be no mercy. Death waits. Put on that cloak of thine."

She stood motionless a moment, listening to the moaning of the wind.

The man's grim spirit troubled her. She remembered that he had bulwarked her in her homeless days, had dealt her much pity out of his rugged heart. He was alone now, and shadowed by death. Thus it befell that she cast the cloak aside upon the bed, and stood forward with quivering lips before the fire.

"Fulviac."

"Little sister."

"Ah! G.o.d pardon me; I have been a weak and graceless friend. You have been good to me, beyond my grat.i.tude. The past has gone for ever; what is left to me now? Shall I not meet death at your side?"

He stood back from her, looking in her eyes, breathing hard, combating his own heart. He loved the girl in his fierce, staunch way; she was the one light left him in the gathering gloom. Now death offered him her soul. He tottered, stretched out his hands to her, s.n.a.t.c.hed them back with a great burst of pride.

"No, this cannot be."

"Ah!"

"I have dared the storm; alone will I fall beneath its vengeance. You shall go this night to Gilderoy."

She thrust out her hands to him, but he turned away his face.

"Ah! little sister, this war was conceived for G.o.d, but the devil leavened it. I have gambled with fire, and the ashes return upon my head. I give you life; 'tis little I may give. Come now, obey me, these are my last words."

She turned from him very quietly in the shadow, hiding her face with her arm. Picking up her cloak, she drew it slowly about her shoulders, Fulviac watching her, a pillar of steel.

"They wait for you in the forest," he said; "go down the stair. Colgran rides with you to Gilderoy. He is to be trusted."

She drooped her head, staggered to the door, darted back again with a low cry and a gush of tears.

"Fulviac."

"Little woman."

"G.o.d keep you! Kiss me, this once."

He bent to her, touched her forehead with his lips, thrust her again towards the door.

"Go, my child."

And she went forth slowly from him, weeping, into the night.

XLI

The prophecies of the King proved the power of their pinions before fourteen suns had pa.s.sed over the Black Wild's heart. Richard of Lauretia had plotted to starve Fulviac into giving him battle, or into a retreat from the forest upon Gilderoy. The royal prognostications were pitiless and unflinching as candescent steel. It was no mere battle-ground that he sought, but rather an amphitheatre where he might martyr the rebel host like a mob of revolted slaves.

Whatever tidings may have muttered on the breeze, riders came in hotly to the royal pavilion towards the noon of the fourteenth day. There was soon much stir on the hills hard by Geraint. Knights and n.o.bles thronged the royal tent, captains clanged shoulders, gallopers rode south and west with fiery despatches to Morolt and Sir Simon of Imbrecour. Battle breathed in the wind. Before night came, the King's pavilion had vanished from the hills; his columns were winding round the northern hem of the forest, to strike the road that ran from Geraint to Gilderoy.

The royal scouts and rangers had not played their master false. A river of steel was curling through the black depths of the wild, threading the valleys towards the east. The King's scouts had caught the glimmer of armour sifting through the trees. They had slunk about the rebel host for days while they lay camped in their thousands about the cliff.

Colgran and his small company had pa.s.sed through unheeded, but they were up like hawks when the whole host moved.

That midnight Fulviac's columns rolled from the outstanding thickets of the wild, and held in serried ma.s.ses for the road to Gilderoy. The King's procrastination had launched them on this last desperate venture.

They would have starved in the forest as Fulviac had foreseen; their hopes lay in reaching Gilderoy, which was well victualled, throwing themselves therein, making what terms they could, or die fighting behind its walls. Thus under cover of night they slipped from the forest, trusting to leave the King's men guarding an empty lair.

The brisk forethought of Richard of Lauretia had out-gamed the rebels, however, in the hazardous moves of war. They were answering to his opening like wild duck paddling towards a decoy. Ten miles west of Gilderoy there stretched a valley, walled southwards by tall heights, banded through the centre by the river Tamar. At its eastern extremity a line of hills rolled down to touch the river. The road from Geraint ran through the valley, hugging the southern bank of the river after crossing it westwards by a fortified bridge. Fulviac and his host would follow that road, marching betwixt the river and the hills. It was in this valley that Richard of Lauretia had conceived the hurtling climax of the war.

Forewarned in season, Sir Simon of Imbrecour and his bristling squadrons were riding through the night on Gilderoy, shaping a crescent course towards the east. Morolt and the giants of the north were striding in his track, skirting the southern spires of the forest, to press level with the rebel march, screened by the hills. The King and his Lauretians came down from Geraint. They were to seize the bridge across the Tamar, pour over, and close the rebels on the rear.

It was near dawn when Fulviac's columns struck the highroad from Geraint, and entered the valley where the Tamar s.h.i.+mmered towards Gilderoy. Mist covered the world, shot through with the gold threads of the dawn. The river gleamed and murmured fitfully in the meadows; the southern heights glittered in the growing day; the purple slopes of the Black Wild had melted dimly into the west.

The mist stood dense in the flats where the Geraint road bridged the river. The northern slopes seemed steeped in vapoury desolation, the road winding into a waste of green. Fulviac and his men marched on, chuckling as they thought of the royal troops watching the empty alleys of the forest. Fulviac took no care to secure the bridge across the Tamar. With the line of hills before them breasted, they would see the spires of Gilderoy, glittering athwart the dawn.

The columns were well in the lap of the valley before two light hors.e.m.e.n came galloping in from the far van, calling on Fulviac, who rode under the red banner, that the road to Gilderoy had been seized. Fulviac and Sforza rode forward with a squadron of horse to reconnoitre. As they advanced at a canter, the mists cleared from the skirts of the encircling hills. Far to the east, on the green slopes that rolled towards the Tamar, they saw the sun smite upon a thousand points of steel. Pennons danced in the s.h.i.+mmering atmosphere, s.h.i.+elds flickered, armour shone. A torrent of gems seemed poured from the dawn's lap upon the emerald bosoms of the hills. They were the glittering hors.e.m.e.n of Sir Simon of Imbrecour, who had ridden out of the night and seized on the road to Gilderoy.

Fulviac halted his company, and standing in the stirrups, scanned the hillside under his hand. He frowned, thrust forth his chin, turned on Sforza who rode at his side.

"Trapped," he said with a twist of the lip; "d.i.c.k of the Iron Hand has fooled us. 'Twas done cunningly, though it brings us to a parlous pa.s.sage. They hold the road."

The Gonfaloniere tugged at his ragged beard, and looked white under the arch of his open salade.

"Better advance on them," he said; "I would give good gold to be safe in the streets of Gilderoy."