and tumult. And ever the clamour
of voices waxed upon the misty air from hurrying groups dim-seen that
flitted by, arming as they ran, and ever the fifty and five, crouching
in the dark, impatient for the sign, watched Beltane--his firm-set lip,
his frowning brow; and ever from belching arrow-slit the curling
smoke-wreaths waxed blacker and more dense. Of a sudden, out from the
narrow sally-port burst a huddle of choking men, whose gasping cries
pierced high above the clamour:

"Fire! Fire! Sir Fulk is slain! Sir Fulk lieth death-smitten! Fire!"

From near and far men came running--men affrighted and dazed with
sleep, a pushing, jostling, unordered throng, and the air hummed with
the babel of their voices.

And now at last--up sprang Beltane, his mittened hand aloft.

"Arise!" he cried, "Arise and smite for Pentavalon!" And from the gloom
behind him a hoarse roar went up: "Arise! Arise--Pentavalon!" Then,
while yet the war-cry thundered in the air, they swept down on that
disordered press, and the bailey rang and echoed with the fell sounds
of a close-locked, reeling battle; a hateful din of hoarse shouting, of
shrieks and cries and clashing steel.

Axe and spear, sword and pike and gisarm smote and thrust and swayed;
stumbling feet spurned and trampled yielding forms that writhed,
groaning, beneath the press; faces glared at faces haggard with the
dawn, while to and fro, through swirling mist and acrid smoke, the
battle rocked and swayed. But now the press thinned out, broke and
yielded before Beltane's whirling axe, and turning, he found Roger
beside him all a-sweat and direfully besplashed, his mailed breast
heaving as he leaned gasping upon a broadsword red from point to hilt.

"Ha, master!" he panted,--"'tis done already--see, they break and fly!"

"On!" cried Beltane, "on--pursue! pursue! after them to the gate!"

With axe and spear, with sword and pike and gisarm they smote the
fugitives across the wide space of the outer bailey, under the narrow
arch of the gate-house and out upon the drawbridge beyond. But here, of
a sudden, the fugitives checked their flight as out from the barbican
Walkyn leapt, brandishing his axe, and with the fifty at his back. So
there, upon the bridge, the fight raged fiercer than before; men smote
and died, until of Sir Pertolepe's garrison there none remained save
they that littered that narrow causeway.

"Now by the good Saint Giles--my patron saint," gasped Giles, wiping
t