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Limping stiffly, by reason of his cramped muscles, he stumbled onward, while all about him and behind him as about the girl, who followed came the throng of these strange people. Their squinting, pinkish eyes and pallid faces showed ghastly by the torch-glare, as, murmuring among themselves in their incomprehensible yet strangely familiar tongue, they climbed the slope.
Above, upon the great flanking tower of the gate, was Giles with many archers who plied their whizzing shafts amain where, 'twixt outer and inner wall, the assailants sought to storm the barricade; but the place was narrow, and moreover, beyond the breach stout Eric, backed by his fierce townsmen, fought in desperate battle: thus, though the besiegers' ranks were constantly swelled by way of the breach, yet in that confined space their very numbers hampered them, while from sheltered wall and gate-tower Giles and his archers showered them with whistling shafts very fast and furious; so in that narrow place death was rife and in the fitful torch-glare was a sea of tossing steel and faces fierce and wild, and ever the clamour grew, shouts and screams and cries dreadful to be heard.
For, high upon the roof, his mail agleam, his white robe whiter in the torch-glare, stood Friar Martin, while crouched behind him to left and right were many men in ancient and rusty armour, men grey-bearded and white of head, at sight of whom the roar of battle died down from sheer amaze until all men might hear the friar's words: "Come, ye men of Belsaye!" he cried, "all ye that do love wife or daughter or little child all ye that would maintain them innocent and pure follow me!"
And now from that narrow way, dim-lit by lanthorn and torch-glare, there rose a sound more awful to hear than roar of battle, a hoarse and vicious sound like to the worrying snarl of many great and fierce hounds.
And she went to that vicinity, now that the daylight had just changed to evening, and the ruddy torch-glare was glowing everywhere from great pine boughs thrust in the ground, with their resinous branches steeped in oil and flaring alight.
Four paddles dipped and rose as one, the shining drops rolled from their blades like so many diamonds in the torch-glare, and then Guy sprang to his feet with a loud cry. The paddles wavered in mid-air. "Go ahead," he shouted fiercely. "Paddle with all your strength."
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