"Lord, the court is swarming with them!"... "They have cut through the
palisade on the forest side!"... "They had brush laid ready--"... "Waited only
for him--"... "Holy saints, what is the meaning of that?"..."Something else
has taken!"
From the stairway above them came a piercing cry: "The storehouses! They have
fired them from inside! The lead is melting like ice!"... "The grain!"... "The
grain!"
In their midst the young lord stood in helpless fury; and the hand he had
grasped around his sword-hilt gripped it so hard that blood started under each
nail. But his page bent and kissed the clenched fist with a cry of fierce
exulting.
"You will never get out to find your lily-fair lady. You will never have a
lady wife, lord! We shall die together."
Chapter XIV
How The Fates Cheated Randalin
There is a mingling of affection
Where one can tell
Another all his mind.
Ha'vama'l.
After that night the deep-set windows of Ivarsdale looked out upon some grim
sights. The first morning it was a skirmish in the meadow beyond the
foot-bridge, when the three-score farmer-soldiers came loyally to their
leader's aid. Though Kendred of Hazelford marched bravely at their head, they
were practically uncaptained; with any kind of weapon in their hands and no
kind of armor over their home-spun. What chance had they against sixty picked
warriors, led by the fiercest chief of a race of chieftains? They met, and
there was a moment of clash and of clangor, a moment of awful commotion; and
when the whirling dust-clouds settled, the only homespun that was moving was
that which was flying, sped by Danish arrows.
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