“What have we here?” said the knight in a reedy voice like a boy's. His pale eyes contemplated the figures—the wounded man, now faint again with pain and half-fallen on the litter of branches; his deliverer, tall and grim, but with laughing face; the two murderers cringing in their fear; in a corner the huddled body of the man from the south half hidden by the shield. “Speak, fellow,” and he addressed the soldier. “What work has been toward? Have you not had your bellyfull of battles that you must scrabble like rats in this hovel? What are you called, and whence come you?”
The soldier lifted his brow, looked his questioner full in the face, and, as if liking what he found there, bowed his head in respect. The huge man had the air of one to be obeyed.
“I am of the Duke's army,” he said, “and was sent on to reconnoitre the forest roads I stumbled on this hut and found four men about to slay a wounded English. One lies outside where I flung him, another is there with a cracked skull, and you have before you the remnant.”
The knight seemed to consider. “And why should a soldier of the Duke's be so careful of English lives?” he asked.
“I would help my lord Duke to conquer this land,” was the answer. “We have broken their army and the way is straight before us. We shall have to fight other armies, but we cannot be fighting all our days, and we do not conquer England till England accepts us. I have heard enough of that stubborn people to know that the way to win them is not by murder. A fair fight, and then honest dealing and mercy, say I.”
The knight laughed. “A Solomon in judgment,” he cried. “But who are you that bear a sword and wear gold on your finger?”
The old squire broke in. “My lord Count, I know the man. He is a hunter of the Lord Odo's, and has a name for valour. He wrought mightily this morning on the hill. They call him Jehan the Hunter, and sometimes Jehan the Outborn, for no man knows his comings. There is a rumour that he is of high blood, and truly in battle he bears himself like a prince. The monks loved him not, but the Lord Odo favoured him.”
The knight looked steadily for the space of a moment at the tall soldier, and his light eyes seemed to read deep.
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