Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/192

178 gloom. Fear seemed to create sounds from the void of silence. He remembered with a twinge of hunger the red warmth of the guard-room fire, the fumes of roast meat and ale, even drunken Croquart, sleeping behind the half-shut door. Black Fulk of the Forest with his lurid hounds, viewed erstwhile with a mischievous glee, began to bulk with a more terrific realism that was not comforting. Alain stared at the great tree with the fascination of a gradual fear. He could hear his heart cantering, his breath whistling between his teeth. Each moment he expected to behold the black trunk open with a glare of flame and a sound as of thunder, to see the eyes of the hell-hounds burning like live coals over the snow.

Magic or no magic, some sound came to him from the forest, setting his ears tingling, his mouth agape. It was a queer metallic sound, thin and eerie in the vast void of the night. He crouched low behind the fagots like a frightened rabbit, listening, and staring into the gloomy vistas of the woods. A noise as of muffled hoofs waxed gradual in the distance—a sinister under-chant like the galloping of a pack of wolves, save that there was no tonguing, no howling under the moon. Now and again there came a clear, half-musical note as of steel smiting steel.

The boy's heels were itching for flight, and he grew cold with a most brisk and holy terror. None the less there was some comfort in the fagot screen, and he clung to it with a flicker of latent courage. As he crouched, gazing into the wood, the darkness ahead of him under the trees seemed to grow alive with fitful light, transient flashes as of armor moving under the moon. Shadows, huge and ominous, drew out of the black tunnels of the trees. Alain, stiff with wonder, saw armed men pour from the forest and gather round Fulk's Oak.

They gathered round in a great circle, their horses trampling the snow, their harness shining brilliant in the moonlight. A steaming vapor ascended from them into the frosty air. They were spectral enough, in all truth, and yet too real to cheat the boy's fancy. Their utter silence astonished him. Whence came they, and for what end? Fifty spears gathered round the Fairy Oak on St. Stephen's eve at midnight. A strange company, wizard and ghostly, wandering through the woods over the silent snow.

He heard a gruff voice break the quiet. A knight on a black horse, standing under the great oak, was speaking. He seemed to be giving orders in an undertone. Alain, with his eyes fixed on the figure, saw a pennon stream out black against the sky. It was trebly dentate at the "fly," and pierced in the centre by a hollow star. The lad by the fagots caught a sudden quick breath, doubled his knees under him, like a bird crouching for flight.

The pennon of Guiscard of Avray!

The whole scene grew eloquent in the twinkling of a snowflake. The riders of the Red Valley massed about the Fairy Oak one mile from Terabil! The knowledge of a century's bloody feuds streamed athwart the lad's mind. A silent march over the snow, a night attack, Sire Bertrand absent at court, his young wife housed in Terabil, behind the useless swords of a drunken garrison. The postern in the great gate open. Alain saw all this in a flash of fear. He had crept forth to catch Fulk of the Forest at his midnight hunt; he had seen the raiders of Avray gather about the great oak for the surprise and sacking of Terabil in the Mere.

Superstition evaporated on the instant. The lad was all warm flesh and eager sinew; his heart quickened, but grew steady; he tucked his cloak up under his girdle, slipped from his hiding-place, and ran.

Never a glance back did he give as he skimmed silently over the snow. The branches of the trees flew back above his head; the keen air whistled in his ears. Even as he ran he could catch the muffled tramp of horses at the trot. The sound stirred him like a trumpet-cry. Panting, wide-mouthed, he reached the open, and scurried on over the snow.

Terabil, with its silver girdle of water, lay before him in the moonlight; he could see the towers black and saturnine under the sky. The white plain seemed to heave endless under his feet. Once he stumbled over a knot of heather, fell, picked himself up, and ran the harder. He was half-way to the water, when he