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Updated: June 18, 2025
Then Beltane arose and lifting high his axe, shook it against Garthlaxton's frowning might, where was neither glint of armour nor gleam of pike-head, and turning, hasted back to that dark and silent company which, at his word, rose up from brake and fern and thicket, and followed whither he led, a long line, soundless and phantom-like within a phantom world, where a grey mist swirled and drifted in the death-cold air of dawn.
The armourer's hammer was the keener, the quicker, the less intermittent, and yet had the most variations of time and note, as he shifted the piece on his anvil, or changed breastplate for gorget, or greave for pauldron or it might be sword for pike-head or halbert.
Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad? What wert thou making there?" "Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it."
There was a steel cap three or four feet below, and a pike-head; and at the sound of the latch a bearded face looked up. "I see you have a sentry there," said Mr. Buxton carelessly. "Ah! that is one of Mr. Maxwell's men." "Mr. Maxwell's!" said the other, startled. "Is he in this affair too?" "Yes; have you not heard? He came from Great Keynes this morning. Mr. Lackington sent for him." Mr.
Now as he stood to scan with purposeful eye donjon and bartizan, merlon and arrow-slit for gleam of light, for glint of mail or pike-head, he grew aware of a sound hard by, yet very faint and sweet, that came and went a small and silvery chime he could by no means account for.
Ever as they clomb, the path grew more difficult, until at last they were come to a parapet or outwork with mantelets of osiers beyond, cunningly wrought, above which a pike-head glimmered and from beyond which a voice challenged them; but at a word from Eric the sentinel stood aside and behold, a narrow opening in the parapet through which they passed and so up another path defended by yet another parapet of osiers.
There followed a splintering sound of a pike-head in the same place. He understood. They were sounding on the woodwork and piercing all that rang hollow.... His turn, then, would come immediately. Talking voices followed the crash; then silence; then the vibration of feet once more.
Hooking the fragment toward him, he thrust savagely with his weapon and was reassured that object was not only metal, but it was metal so hard that his pike-head of space-tempered alloy steel did not make an impression upon its surface. Turning on his helmet light he swung his heavy hammer repeatedly but could not break off even a small fragment. "Found something, Steve?"
Once this figure sank to its knees, but stumbled up again 'neath the vicious prick of a pike-head that left blood upon the bronzed skin, whereat Beltane uttered a hoarse cry. "O Black Roger!" he groaned, "I grieve to have brought thee to this!" "Nay, lord," quoth Roger, lifting high his drooping head, "'tis but my wound that bleeds afresh.
Forthwith, pikemen and archers fell into array with Cnut at their head, while behind the spreading ranks of pikes Prat and his archers were ranged, bows strung and quivers slung before; and presently, at Beltane's word, they swung forth of the sheltering green, fierce-eyed, grim-lipped, bascinet and pike-head a-twinkle.
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