Fulviac sneered, and shook his head.
"There are ten thousand spears on yonder slopes, the l.u.s.tiest blood in the land. Count their banners and their pennons, the stuff tells an honest tale. Pah, they would drive our rapscallions into the river.
Send back and bid our banners halt."
They wheeled and cantered towards the long black columns plodding through the meadows. Far to the west over the green plain they saw spears flash against the sun, a glimmering tide spreading from the river. The Lauretians had crossed the bridge and were hurrying on the rebels" heels. Fulviac"s trumpets sounded the halt. He thundered his orders to his captains, bade them ma.s.s their men in the meadows, and hedge their pikes for the crash of battle.
A shout reached him from his squadrons of horse who had marched on the southern wing. They were pointing to the heights with sword and spear.
Fulviac reined round, rode forward to some rising ground, and looked southwards under his hand. The heights bounding the valley shone with steel. A myriad glistening stars shimmered under the sun. Morolt"s northerners had shown their shields; the hills bristled with their bills and spears.
Fulviac shrugged his shoulders, lowered his beaver, and rode back towards his men. He saw Yeoland the Saint"s red banner waving above the dusky squares. He remembered the girl"s pale face and the hands that had toyed with the gilded silks in the dark chamber upon the cliff.
Though the sun shone and the earth glistened, he knew in his heart that he should see that face no more.
Richard of Lauretia had forged his crescent of steel. South, east, and west the royal trumpets sounded; northwards ran the Tamar, closing the meadows. Fulviac and his men were trapped in the green valley. A golden girdle of chivalry hemmed the mob in the lap of the emerald meadows. All about them blazed the panoply of war.
Fulviac, pessimist that he was, took to his heart that hour the lofty tranquillity of a Scandinavian hero. His courage was of that stout, sea-buffeting fibre that stiffened its beams against the tide of defeat.
He set forth his shield, tossed up his sword, rode through the ranks with the spirit of a Roland. Life leapt the stronger in him at the challenge of the Black Raven of death. His captains could have sworn that he looked for victory in the moil, so bluff and strenuous was his mood that day.
Sforza came cringing to him, glib-lipped and haggard, to speak of a parley. Fulviac shook his shield in the man"s white face, set his ruffians to dig trenches in the meadows, and to range the waggons as a barricade.
"Parley, forsooth," quoth he; "talk no more to me of parleys when I have twoscore thousand smiters at my back. Let d.i.c.k of the Iron Hand come down to us with the sword. Ha, sirs, are we stuffed with hay! We will rattle the royal bones and make them dance a fandango to the devil."
His spirit diffused itself through the ranks of the rough soldiery.
They cheered wheresoever he went, kindling their courage like a torch, and tossed their pikes to him with strenuous insolence.
"My children," he would roar to them as he pa.s.sed, "the day has come, we have drawn these skulkers to a tussle. See to it, sirs, let us maul these velvet gentlemen, these squires of the cushion. By the Lord, we will feast anon in Gilderoy, and rifle the King"s baggage."
As for Richard of the Iron Hand, he was content to claim the arduous blessings of the day. He held his men in leash upon the hills, resting them and their horses after the marchings of the night. Wine was served out; clarions and sackbuts sounded through the ranks; the King made his n.o.bles a rich feast in his pavilion pitched by Sir Morolt"s banner. As the day drew on, he thrust strong outposts towards the meadows, ordered his troops to sleep through the long night under arms. Their watch-fires gemmed a lurid bow under the sky, with Tamar stringing it, a chord of silver. In the meadows the rebel ma.s.ses lay a black pool of gloom under the stars.
Fulviac sat alone in his tent at midnight, his drawn sword across his knees. His captains had left him, some to watch, others to sleep on the gra.s.s in their armour, Sforza the Gonfaloniere to sneak in the dark to the King"s lines. Silence covered the valley, save for the voices of the sentinels and the sound of the royal trumpets blowing the changes on the hills. Their watch-fires hung athwart the sky like a chain of flashing rubies.
Fulviac sat motionless as a statue, staring out into the night. Death, like a grey wraith, stood beside his chair; the unknown, a black and unsailed sea, stretched calm and imageless beneath his feet. Life and the ambition thereof tottered and crumbled like a quaking ruin. Love quenched her torch of gold. The man saw the stars above him, heard in the silence of thought a thousand worlds surging through the infinitudes of the heavens. What then was this mortal pillar of clay, that it should grudge its dust to the womb of the world?
And ambition? He thought of Yeoland and her wounded heart; of Gambrevault and Avalon; of La Belle Foret smoking amid its ruins. He had torched fame through the land, and painted his prowess in symbols of fire. Now that death challenged him on the strand of the unknown, should he, Fulviac, fear the unsailed sea!
His heart glowed in him with a transcendent insolence. Lifting his sword, he pressed the cold steel to his lips, brandished it in the faces of the stars. Then, with a laugh, he lay down upon a pile of straw and slept.
XLII
Dawn rolled out of the east, red and riotous, its crimson spears streaming towards the zenith. Over the far towers of Gilderoy swept a roseate and golden mist, over the pine-strewn heights, over Tamar silvering the valley. A wind piped hoa.r.s.ely through the thickets, like a shrill prelude to the organ-throated roar of war.
The landscape shimmered in the broadening light, green tapestries arabesqued with gold. To the east, Sir Simon"s mult.i.tudinous squadrons ran like rare terraces of flowers, dusted with the scintillant dew of steel. Westwards dwindled the long ranks of the Lauretians. On the heights, Morolt"s shields flickered in the sun. About a hillock in the valley, the rebel host stood ma.s.sed in a great circle, a whorl of helmets, bills, and pikes; Fulviac"s red pavilion starred the centre like the red roof of a church rising above a town.
On the southern heights, Richard of Lauretia had watched the dawn rise behind the towers of Gilderoy. He was on horseback, in full panoply of war, his gorgeous harness and trappings dazzling the sun. Knights, n.o.bles, trumpeters were round him, a splendid pool of chivalry, while east and west stretched the ranks of the grim and gigantic soldiery of the north.
Hard by the royal standard with its Sun of Gold, a corpse dangled from the branch of a great fir. It swayed slightly in the wind, black and sinister against the gilded curtain of the dawn. It was the body of Sforza the adventurer from the south, Gonfaloniere of Gilderoy, whom the King had hanged to grace his double treachery.
As the light increased, sweeping along the glittering frieze of war, Morolt of Gorm and Regis stood forward before the King. He was a lean man, tall and vigorous as a bow of steel, his black eyes darting fire under his thatch of close-cropped hair. The n.o.bles had put him forward that morning as a man born to claim a boon upon the brink of battle.
Fierce and virile, he bared his sword to the sun, and pointed with mailed hand to the rebel host in the valley.
"Sire, a boon for your loyal servants."
The King"s face was as a mask of steel heated to white heat, ardent and pitiless. He had the spoilers of his kingdom under his heel, and was not the man to flinch at vengeance.
"Say on, Morolt, what would ye?"
"We are men, sire, and these wolves have slaughtered our kinsfolk."
"Am I held to be a lamb, sirs!"
A rough laugh eddied up. Morolt shook his sword.
"Give them into our hand, sire," he said; "there shall be no need of ropes and dungeons."
The iron men cheered him. Richard the King lifted up his baton; his strong voice swept far in the hush of the dawn.
"Sirs," he said to them, "take the Black Leopard of Imbrecour for your pattern, rend and slay, let none escape you. Every man of my host wears a white cross on his sword arm. Let that badge only stay your vengeance. As for these whelps of treason, they have butchered our children, shamed our women, clawed and torn at their King"s throne.
To-day who thinks of mercy! Go down, sirs, to the slaughter."
A roar of joy rose from those rough warriors; they tossed their swords, gripped hands and embraced, called on the saints to serve them. Strong pa.s.sions were loose, steaming like the incense of sacked cities into heaven. There was much to avenge, much to expurgate. That day their swords were to drink blood; that day they were to crush and kill.
In the valley, Fulviac"s huge coil of humanity lay sullen and silent, watching the spears upon the hills. Their russets and sables contrasted with the gorgeous colouring of the feudalists. The one shone like a garden; the other resembled a field lying fallow. The romance and pomp of war gathered to pour down upon the squalid realism of mob tyranny.
Beauty and the beast, knight and scullion faced each other on the stage that morning.
Gallopers were riding east and west bearing the King"s commands to Sire Julian, Duke of Layonne, who headed the Lauretians, and to Simon of Imbrecour upon the hills. The King would not tempt the moil that day, but left the sweat and thunder of it to his captains, content to play the Caesar on the southern heights. His commands had gone forth to the host. The first a.s.sault was to be made by twenty thousand northmen under Morolt, and a like force under Julian of Layonne. The whole crescent of steel was to contract upon the meadows, and consolidate its iron wall about Fulviac and his rebels. Simon of Imbrecour was to leash his chivalry from the first rush of the fight. His knights should ride in when the rebel ranks were broken.
An hour before noon, the royal trumpets blew the advance, and a great shout surged through the shimmering ranks.
"Advance, Black Leopard of Imbrecour."
"Advance, Golden Sun of Lauretia."
"Advance, Grey Wolf of the North."
With clarions and fifes playing, drums beating, banners blowing, the whole host closed its semilune of steel upon the dusky ma.s.s in the meadows. The northerners were chanting an old Norse ballad, a grim, ice-bound song of the sea and the shriek of the sword. Sir Simon"s spears were rolling over the green slopes, their trumpets and bugles blowing merrily. From the west, the Lauretians were coming up with their pikes dancing in the sun. The thunder of the advance seemed to shake the hills.
Fulviac watched the feudalists from beneath his banner in the meadows.
His captains were round him, grim men and silent, girding their spirits for the p.r.i.c.k of battle.
"By St. Peter," said the man under the red flag, "these fireflies come on pa.s.sably. A fair host and a splendid. If their courage suits their panoply, we shall have hot work to-day."
"Faith," quoth Colgran, who had returned from Gilderoy, "I would rather sweep a flower-garden than a muck-heap. We are good for twice their number, ma.s.sed as we are like rocks upon a sea-sh.o.r.e."
"To your posts, sirs," were Fulviac"s last words to them; "whether we fall or conquer, what matters it if we die like men!"
Billows of red, green, and blue, dusted with silver, Morolt and his Berserkers rolled to the charge. They had cast aside their pikes, and taken to shield and axe, such axes as had warred in the far past for the faith of Odin. Fulviac"s rebels had ma.s.sed their spears into a hedge of steel, and though Morolt"s men came down at a run, the spear points stemmed the onrush like a wall.