"Alack!" sighed Giles, "so needs must I come also, since I have twelve shafts yet unsped," and he swallowed the morsel of venison with mighty relish and gusto.
Then laughed Beltane for very gladness, and he looked on each with kindling eye.
"Good friends," quoth he, "as ye say, so let it be, and may God's hand be over us this day."
Now, as he spake with eyes uplift to heaven, he espied a faint, blue mist far away above the soft-stirring tree tops--a distant haze, that rose lazily into the balmy air, thickening ever as he watched.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, fierce-eyed of a sudden and pointing with rigid finger, "whence cometh that smoke, think ye?"
"Why," quoth Roger, frowning, "Wendonmere village lieth yonder!"
"Nay, 'tis nearer than Wendonmere," said Walkyn, shouldering his axe.
"See, the smoke thickens!" cried Beltane. "Now, God forgive me! the while I tarry here Red Pertolepe is busy, meseemeth!" So saying, he caught up his sword, and incontinent set off at speed toward where the soft blue haze stole upon the air of morning, growing denser and ever denser.
Fast and furious Beltane sped on, crashing through underbrush and crackling thicket, o'erleaping bush and brook and fallen tree, heedful of eye, and choosing his course with a forester's unerring instinct, praying fiercely beneath his breath, and with the three ever close behind.
"Would I had eaten less!" panted Giles.
"Would our legs were longer!" growled Walkyn.
"Would my belt bore fewer notches!" quoth Roger.
And so they ran together, sure-footed and swift, and ever as they ran the smoke grew denser, and ever Beltane's prayers more fervent. Now in a while they heard a sound, faint and confused: a hum, that presently grew to a murmur--to a drone--to a low wailing of voices, pierced of a sudden by a shrill cry no man's lips could utter, that swelled high upon the air and died, lost amid the growing clamour.
"They've fired the ricks first!" panted Roger; "'tis ever Pertolepe's way!"
"They be torturing the women!" hissed Walkyn; "'tis ever so Red Pertolepe's pleasure!"
"And I have but twelve arrows left me!" groaned Giles.
But Beltane ran in silence, looking neither right nor left, until, above the hum of voices he heard one upraised in passionate supplication, followed by another--a loud voice and jovial--and thereafter, a burst of roaring laughter.
Soon Beltane beheld a stream that flowed athwart their way and, beyond the stream, a line of willows thick growing upon the marge; and again, beyond these clustering willows the straggling village lay. Then Beltane, motioning the others to caution, forded the stream and coming in the shade of the osiers, drew on his hood of mail, and so, unsheathing his long sword, peered through the leaves. And this is what he saw: A wide road flanked by rows of scattered cottages, rude of wall and thatch; a dusty road, that led away east and west into the cool depths of the forest, and a cringing huddle of wretched village folk whose pallid faces were all set one way, where some score of men-at-arms lolled in their saddles watching a tall young maid who struggled fiercely in the grasp of two lusty fellows, her garments rent, her white flesh agleam in the sunlight. A comely maid, supple and strong, who ever as she strove 'gainst the clutching hands that held her, kept her blazing eyes turned upon one in knightly mail who sat upon a great war-horse hard by, watching her, big chin in big mailed fist, and with wide lips up-curling in a smile: a strong man this, heavy and broad of chest; his casque hung at his saddle-bow, and his mail-coif, thrown back upon his wide shoulders, showed his thick, red hair that fell a-down, framing his square-set, rugged face.