Gilbert turned his head quickly in the direction of the sound. A
swarthy face appeared, framed in a close leathern cap on which small
rings of rusty iron were sewn strongly, but not very regularly. Then a
long left arm, clad in the same sort of mail, pushed the lower boughs
aside and made a gesture in the direction whence Gilbert had come,
which was meant to warn him back--a gesture of the flat hand, held
across the breast with thumb hidden, just moving a little up and down.
"Why should I go back?" asked Gilbert, in his natural voice.
"Because yes," answered the dark man, in the common Italian idiom, and
in a low tone. "Because we are waiting for the Florentines, certain of
us of Pistoja, and we want no travellers in the way. And then--because,
if you will not--"
The right arm suddenly appeared, and in the hand was a spear, and the
act was a threat to run Gilbert through, unmailed as he was, and just
below his adversary. But as Gilbert laid his hand upon his sword,
looking straight at the man's eye, he very suddenly saw a strange
sight; for there was a long arrow sticking through the head, the point
out on one side and the feather on the other; and for a moment the man
still looked at him with eyes wide open. Then, standing as he was, his
body slowly bent forward upon itself as if curling up, and with a crash
of steel it rolled down the bank into the pool of water, where the
lance snapped under it.
For little Alric, the Saxon groom, had quietly slipped to the ground
and had strung his bow, suspecting trouble, and had laid an arrow to
the string, waiting; and little Alric's aim was very sure; it was also
the first time that he had shot a man, and he came of men who had been
bowmen since Alfred's day, and before that, and had killed many, for
generations, so that it was an instinct with them to slay with the bow.
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