“It is a Barachan, all right,” grunted Galbro. “And unless I am mad, ‘tis Strombanni’s Red Hand. What is he doing on this naked coast?”
“He can mean us no good,” growled the count. A glance below showed him that the massive gates had been closed and that the captain of his men-at-arms, gleaming in steel, was directing his men to their stations, some to the ledges, some to the lower loopholes. He was massing his main strength along the western wall, which contained the gate.
A hundred men—soldiers, vassals, and serfs—and their dependents had followed Valenso into exile. Of these, some forty were men-at-arms, wearing helmets and suits of mail, armed with swords, axes, and crossbows. The rest were toilers, without armor save for shirts of toughened leather; but they were brawny stalwarts, skilled in the use of their hunting bows, woodsmen’s axes, and boar spears. They took their places, scowling at their hereditary enemies. For more than a century the pirates of the Barachan Isles, a tiny archipelago off the southwestern coast of Zingara, had preyed on the people of the mainland.
The men on the stockade gripped their bows or boar spears and stared somberly at the carack as it swung inshore, its brasswork flashing in the sun. They could see the figures swarming on the deck and hear the lusty yells of the seamen. Steel twinkled along the rail.
The count had retired from the tower, shooing his niece and her eager protegee before him. Having donned helmet and cuirass, he betook himself to the palisade to direct the defense. His subjects watched him with moody fatalism. They intended to sell their lives as dearly as they could, but they had scant hope of victory, in spite of their strong position. They were oppressed by a conviction of doom. More than a year on that naked coast, with the brooding threat of that devil-haunted forest looming forever at their backs, had shadowed their souls with gloomy forebodings. Their women stood silently in the doorways of their huts, inside the stockade, and quieted the clamor of their children.
Belesa and Tina watched eagerly from an upper window in the manor house, and Belesa felt the child’s tense little body quiver within the crook of her protecting arm.
“They will cast anchor near the boathouse,” murmured Belesa. “Yesl There goes their anchor, a hundred yards offshore. Do not tremble so, child! They cannot take the fort. Perhaps they wish only fresh water and supplies; perhaps a storm blew them into these seas.”
“They are coming ashore in the longboat!” said the child. “Oh, my lady, I am afraid! They are big men in armor! Look how the sun strikes fire from their pikes and helmets! Will they eat us?”
Belesa burst into laughter in spite of her apprehension. “Of course not! Who put that idea into your head?”
“Zingelito told me the Barachans eat women.”
“He was teasing you. The Barachans are cruel, but they are no worse than the Zingaran renegades who call themselves buccaneers. Zingelito was a buccaneer once.”
“He was cruel,” muttered the child. “I’m glad the Picts cut his head off.”
“Hush, Tina!” Belesa shuddered slightly. “You must not speak that way. Look, the pirates have reached the shore. They line the beach, and one of them is coming toward the fort. That must be Strombanni.”
“Ahoy, the fort there!” came a hail in a voice as gusty as the wind. “I come under a flag of truce!”
The count’s helmeted head appeared over the points of the palisade. His stern face, framed in steel, surveyed the pirate somberly. Strombanni had halted just within earshot: a big man, bareheaded, with hair of the tawny hue sometimes found in Argos. Of all the sea-rovers who haunted the Barachans, none was more famed for deviltry than he.
“Speak!” commanded Valenso. “I have scant desire to convene with one of your breed.”
Strombanni laughed with his lips, not with his eyes. “When your galleon escaped me in that squall off the Trallibes last year, I never thought to meet you again on the Pictish coast, Valenso!” said he. “But I wondered at the time what your destination might be. By Mitra, had I known, I should have followed you then! I got the start of my life a little while ago, when I saw your scarlet falcon floating over a fortress where I had thought to see naught but bare beach. You have found it, of course?”
“Found what?” snapped the count impatiently.
“Do not try to dissemble with me!” The pirate’s stormy nature showed itself in a flash of impatience. “I know why you came here, and I have come for the same reason. I will not be balked. Where is your ship?”
“That is none of your affair.”
“You have none,” confidently asserted the pirate. “I see pieces of ship’s mast in that stockade. It must have been wrecked somehow, after you landed here. If you’d had a ship, you would have sailed away with your plunder long ago.”
“What are you talking about, damn you?” yelled the count “My plunder? Am I a Barachan, to bum and loot? Even so, what should I loot on this bare coast?” “That which you came to find,” answered the pirate coolly. “The same thing I’m after and mean to have. But I shall be easy to deal with. Just give me the loot and I’ll go my way and leave you in peace.”
“You must be mad!” snarled Valenso.
“I came here to find solitude and seclusion, which I enjoyed until you crawled out of the sea, you yellow-headed dog. Begonel I did not ask for a parley, and I weary of this empty talk. Take your rogues and go your ways.”
“When I go, I’ll leave that hovel in ashes!” roared the pirate in a transport of rage. “For the last time: will you give me the loot in return for your lives? I have you hemmed in here, and a hundred and fifty men ready to cut your throats at my word.”
For answer, the count made a quick gesture with his hand below the points of the palisade. Almost instantly, a shaft hummed venomously through a loophole and splintered on Strombanni’s breastplate. The pirate yelled ferociously, bounded back, and ran toward the beach, with arrows whistling all about him. His men roared and came on like a wave, blades gleaming in the sun.
“Curse you, dog!” raved the count, felling the offending archer with his iron-clad fist. “Why did you not strike his throat above the gorget? Ready with your bows, men; here they come!”
But Strombanni checked the headlong rush of his men. The pirates spread out in a long line that overlapped the extremities of the western wall; they advanced warily, loosing their shafts as they came. Although their archery was considered superior to that of the Zingarans, they had to rise to loose their longbows. Meanwhile the Zingarans, protected by their stockade, sent crossbow bolts and hunting arrows back with careful aim.
The long arrows of the Barachans arched over the stockade and quivered upright in the earth. One struck the windowsill over which Belesa watched. Tina cried out and flinched, staring at the vibrating shaft.
The Zingarans sent their missiles in return, aiming and loosing without undue haste. The women had herded the children into their huts and now stoically awaited whatever fate the gods had in store for them.
The Barachans were famed for their furious and headlong style of battling, but they were as wary as they were ferocious and did not intend to waste their strength vainly in direct charges against the ramparts. They crept forward in their widespread formation, taking advantage of every natural depression and bit of vegetation— which was not much, for the ground had been cleared on all sides of the fort against the threat of Pictish raids.
As the Barachans got nearer to the fort, the defenders’ archery became more effective. Here and there a body lay prone, its back-piece glinting in the sun and a quarrel shaft standing up from armpit or neck. Wounded men thrashed and moaned.