In a while Beltane brought them to those high wooded banks betwixt which the road ran winding down to Thornaby Ford—­that self-same hilly road where, upon a time, the Red Pertolepe had surprised the lawless company of Gilles of Brandonmere; and, now as then, the dark defile was littered with the wrack of fight, fallen charges that kicked and snorted in their pain or lay mute and still, men in battered harness that stared up from the dust, all unseeing, upon the new day.  They lay thick within the sunken road but thicker beside the ford, and they dotted the white road beyond, grim signs of Sir Benedict’s stubborn retreat.  Hereupon Beltane halted his hard-breathing foresters and bidding them rest awhile and break their fast, hasted down into the roadway with Walkyn and Cnut and Black Roger.

“Aha!” cried Walkyn, pointing to divers of the slain that hampered their going, “these be Pertolepe’s rogues—­”

“Aye,” quoth Roger, throwing back his mail-coif, “and yonder lie four, five—­six of Sir Benedict’s good fellows!  It hath been a dour fight hereabouts—­they have fought every yard of the way!”

“Forsooth,” nodded Cnut, “Sir Benedict is ever most fierce when he retreats, look you.”  A while stood Beltane in that dark defile, the which, untouched as jet by the sun’s level beams, struck dank and chill, a place of gloom and awful silence—­so stood he, glancing from one still form to another, twice he knelt to look more closely on the dead and each time he rose thereafter, his brow was blacker and he shivered, despite his mantle.

“’Tis strange,” said he, “and passing strange that they should all lie dead—­not a living man among them!  How think you Roger?”

“I think, lord, others have been here afore us.  See you this knight now, his gorget loosed off—­”

“O messire!” said a faint voice hard by, “if ye have any pity save me from the crone—­for the love of Christ let not the hag slay me as she hath so many—­save me!”

Starting round, Beltane espied a pale face that glared up at him from a thick furze-bush beside the way, a youthful face albeit haggard and drawn.

“Fear not!” said Beltane, kneeling beside the wounded youth, “thy life is safe from us.  But what mean you by talk of hag and crone?”

“Ah, messire, to-day, ere the dawn, we fell upon Sir Benedict of Bourne—­a seditious lord who hath long withstood Duke Ivo.  But though his men were few they fought hard and gained the ford ahead of us.  And in the fight I, with many others as ye see, was smitten down and the fight rolled on and left us here in the dust.  As I lay, striving to tend my hurt and hearkening to the sighs and groans of the stricken, I heard a scream, and looking about, beheld an ancient woman—­busied with her knife—­slaying—­slaying and robbing the dead—­ah, behold her—­with the black-haired archer—­yonder!”