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So far as he could judge, the Doomsmen could not be regarded as formidable through mere weight of numbers. Their available fighting force Constans estimated at two hundred, which would indicate a total population of a round thousand. Now Croye alone was a city of full fifteen hundred inhabitants, and the census of the West Inch should show twice that number.
The street, upon which the main elevation of the building faced was an unusually wide one, and directly in front of the entrance to the structure the snow had been cleared away from a circular space whose diameter was about forty feet. In this enclosure were three women whose costume, a dark gray cloak and scarlet hood, proclaimed them to be of the Doomsmen.
Yet, on either side, the men fought as though animated by a common instinct, the Doomsmen striving to force the Stockaders back into the gateway passage, and the latter endeavoring to cut their way bodily through the mass of the defenders and so divide its strength.
Its message was plain to all, for none save the Doomsmen feathered their arrows with the plume of the gray goose. Only now the quills were stained to a darker hue. "It is her blood," he said, and the shaft of polished hickory snapped like a straw between his fingers. "Her blood! and of Doom shall we require it."
She in turn scanned him with attention, and obviously grew at ease in noting his increasing disconcertment. "What are you doing here?" she demanded, abruptly. "You are not of the children of the Doomsmen." "No," he answered, and compressed his lips obstinately. "You are very foolish," she retorted, with a slow shake of her head.
A rain of red-hot cinders fell about him. A shout of terror went up from Doomsmen and Stockader alike, and the fighting ended abruptly. Then began a rush for the gate, victors and vanquished mingled indiscriminately together, constrained only by the one common impulse to seek refuge in flight.
The Doomsmen on the walls renewed the attack with hand-weapons, the slingers and archers hurling their missiles vertically downward and the spearmen watching their opportunity for an effective body-thrust.
Yet hardly had he transferred the last case of cartridges to his boat than he became aware that the Doomsmen were close upon him, and this time he got a bruised shoulder from a spent cross-bolt by way of a parting salute. The canoe was heavily laden, but fortunately the wind had gone down with the sun, and the water was unusually smooth.
Then he remembered that he was wearing a suit of Ulick's clothes and that his hair was cut after the Doomsmen fashion. It was a comfortable assurance of the merit of his disguise that it had passed muster so easily; he had only to guard against talking too much, and detection was practically impossible. So he contented himself with what might pass for an obeisance and some vague words of apology.
Upon it were strung three of the thin brass tokens pierced in the centre by a square hole that were in ordinary use among the Doomsmen as currency, redeemable against the material supplies on hand in the public storehouses. The girl untied the thong and let the coins fall upon the table. She pushed them over to the fellow with a gesture superbly indifferent. "Go now," she said, curtly.
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