A King's Comrade Part 11

"Do you know the road to Thetford?"

"My man here does. But you will not leave us--at least yet?"

"We are seeking the same road," I answered. "Now our horses are at the service of the lady and yourself. I suppose we are not far from the town, if we cannot find it;" and I laughed.

"Matter of ten or twelve miles, lord," said the housecarl.

"Why, then, the sooner we go the better. Lucky that the May twilight is long."

"We have met you in the nick of time," said the old thane courteously. "From your dress I take it that you are one of the Frankish paladins we were on the way to see. But do they always talk good Wess.e.x at the court of King Carl?"

"No," laughed Werbode. "Sometimes they talk old Saxon--as I do."

The thane bowed, and let that matter rest. Then he looked ruefully at the two crippled horses, and set his arm round the lady, who had risen and was leaning on him.

"I thank you for that offer of a horse," he said. "I had twelve good men with me when we started across this moor, and you see all who are left. One after another they have been shot by unseen men as we rode, until these swarmed out on us as you saw."

"Who are they?" I asked, rolling up my cloak to set it pillion-wise behind my saddle for the lady.

"The flintknappers, I suppose," he said. "But I am a stranger to these parts, and I have but heard of them as dwelling about these heaths."

Then I would have the thane mount my horse; and I lifted the maiden up behind him, and wrapped Werbode's cloak round her, having a smile and thanks for the service. And when they were ready I whistled for Erling, and he came back to us at a canter, looking behind him now and then. But there was no sign of any follower.

"Ten miles from the town," I said to him, "and more heath to cross.

We must hurry. But we cannot leave those horses to suffer."

"Our horses; and I have tended them, lord," said the rough housecarl, with a bit of a shake in his voice. "Leave that to me."

He drew his seax, and we went on. The poor beasts could never rise again, and that was the only way. The thane knew, and rode round the wood end, and we went with him. Then Erling lifted the wounded man on his own horse, and walked beside him.

"You and I will ride in turn," said Werbode. "As I am mounted, I will take first turn for a mile or two. It will be all the same in the end."

Presently Erling came alongside me, leaving the housecarl to mind his comrade. He held out a broken arrow to me.

"I said they were trolls," he remarked. "See, this is an elf shot."

And truly the arrow which he had drawn from one of the horses had as well wrought a flint head as I have ever seen--l.u.s.trous black, and covered with tiny chippings.

"It is a better made head than usual," I said; "but many a thrall has naught but flint-headed arrows in his quiver as he tends the swine in the forest. They are good enough against the forest beasts."

Erling laughed. "Maybe. But they have slain ten of this party. I have no mind to hear them whistling about my ears again."

"Again?" said I.

"Oh ay; they had a shot or two at me yonder. The arrows came from nowhere and missed me, so it did not seem worth while to call you.

I could not see any one."

Now it seemed to me that I had found a cool and valiant man in this Dane.

"I think that I should have wanted to take cover," I said. "These are perilous folk to have to do with. I wonder what became of them?"

"Gone into the mounds we saw," said he. "Betimes in our land men have seen such mounds raised, as it were, on pillars at night, and under them halls full of dancing trolls. But if the seer will go near them, all is gone. And mostly thereafter he dies."

"Not many trolls could get under those mounds we saw," I said.

"See, there are more here; they are too small for dwellings."

There was indeed one of the heaps of earth close at hand to us, and Werbode rode toward it to see that none of the wild men lurked in its shelter. He reached it, and then his horse started and leaped aside, almost falling; and through a rattle of falling stones my comrade called to the steed to "hold up."

Whereon we supposed, of course, that he had been served as the horses of the thane had been crippled, and Erling and I ran to him, sword in hand, bidding the others go on. But when we came to the side of Werbode, we found him staring into a pit which seemed to have opened under the weight of his horse; and there was no sign of other danger.

"Strange folk these," he said. "I suppose this is a trap. The ground over it was as solid as anywhere, to all seeming. I was nigh into it."

The pit was ten feet deep or so, and it was plain that out of it had come what made the mound, though one could not see how. When I looked in I saw that the ground had given way over the roof of a pa.s.sage hewn in the soft chalk, and that the opening of it must have fallen in long ago. The twisted stems of the spa.r.s.e heather on the mound and all around it told of years, if not of long ages, that had pa.s.sed undisturbed.

"There is the trolls' house," said Erling, shrinking back somewhat.

The level sunlight showed me walls of dull gray chalk, with the marks of the pick on them still. There was a layer of black and white flints bedded in either wall, halfway up, and on the floor were piled stones chosen from it carefully. I wondered who had handled them, and when. Erling moved a little aside, and a shaft of sunlight darted down the pa.s.sage and reached its end, and showed me those who had wrought here.

Two white skeletons sat against the wall, with a pile of flints between them. There was a lamp hewn from chalk on the top of that, and the stain of its smoky flame was on the wall behind it. One man had a pick made of the brow tine of an antler, greater than any which the red deer carry nowadays, across his knees, and another like pick lay by the bones of the other skeleton. That one had a broken thigh, and he seemed to bend over it in pain.

"Holy saints," said Werbode, in a whisper, "they were buried alive!"

So they must have been; but who shall know when? They had delved in the chalk for the flints they needed for their weapons, and their mine had fallen in at the mouth, and they could not escape. The stones had, doubtless, broken the leg of that one in falling. But by the token of the deer-horn pick I take it that it was ages ago when this happened, maybe before the days of the Welshmen whom we found here. Yet even then, as the red sun lit up the place of their death, we could see that the marks of their chalky hands bided on the handles of their picks, fresh as if made yesterday.

"Come away," said Erling. "I like it not. This is over troll-like for me."

I do not think that either of us was sorry to leave that sight. We went one on either side of Werbode, with our arms across the crupper of his horse, and hastened after the thane and his charge, who were half a mile away by this time, waiting for us. But we never heard any elvish arrow whistling after us, or saw any more of the uncouth folk.

I told him as we went on of the pit we had seen, and how Werbode thought it was a trap. Whereon the housecarl laughed a little, and said that it was but an ancient flint working. The men who had fallen on the party were the descendants of those who had made it.

The flints had been worked here from time untold even till now, and those who worked them today had all the craft of their forebears.

"Why, then, they went into their workings when they fled from us,"

I said.

"No doubt, thane. Where else should they go?" he said. "They came out of them on us."

"I wonder you brought your master and the lady across this heath at all," I said "it is a perilous place."

"It grew late, and it is the nearest way," said the man humbly.

"Nor did I ever hear that the flintknappers, as we call them, harmed any."

"Nor did I," said the old thane. "It is somewhat fresh to me. Maybe parties like ours have pa.s.sed here so often during this last week that at last the sight of gold and jewels has roused them to try to take from a weak band."

So we talked and went on as fast as we might, all the while keeping a lookout around us. The lady had, in some way which is beyond me altogether, set herself in such array again that I, for one, could hardly tell that aught had been awry on her; and I wondered that Werbode's red cloak had never seemed so graceful a garment on his broad shoulders. But she said little or nothing, leaning her head on her father as she rode with her arm round him, save when we asked her if all was well. I think she was very tired.

And so at last, with no more adventure, we came to the well-worn track which we were making for, and by-and-by, in the May moonlight, saw the twinkling lights of Thetford town, seeming to welcome us into the shelter of its protecting ramparts. I was glad to see them; but I had enjoyed that long tramp back, for some reason which was not plain to me, unless it had been the talk of the old thane and my comrades, and the sense of escape from danger.

Now we came to the great hall, and the grooms thronged round us to take the horses; and seeing that there was a lady, one told the steward, and he bustled out to help her. But there I was at hand, and lifted the maiden from the horse and set her on her feet, having to support her for a moment, for she was weary and stiff. So she stumbled a little and laughed at herself, and thanked me, and was glad of my arm to help her toward the great door of the hall.