As they stood there, hand clasped in hand, exchanging the dateless pledge of brotherhood, they heard the sound of many feet coming cautiously along the road to the bridge. The practised assassins walked catfoot, but there were others that shuffled in their care to go warily.

Nevers said, quietly: "Here come the swords."

Lagardere gave a jolly laugh. "Now for a glorious scrimmage!" he said, and made his sword sing in the air.

As he spoke the words, shade after shade began to descend the steps from the bridge and to advance cautiously into the moat. Lagardere counted them as they came: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Even in the darkness he thought he could recognize certain figures: the twisted form of the hunchback, the burly body of Cocardasse, the gaunt figure of the Norman, the barrel bulk of Staupitz. This barrel bulk came to the front of the shadows huddled together at the base of the hill, and spoke with the thick, Teutonic voice that Lagardere had heard so short a time before. "There they are," Staupitz said, and Lagardere could see a gleam in the night as the German pointed to where the two newly bound comrades stood together.

An instant answer came with the defiant cry of Nevers, "I am here!" which was immediately echoed by Lagardere. "I am here!" he shouted; and then added for himself: "Lagardere! Lagardere!"

Among the bravos a momentary note of comedy intruded upon the intended tragedy, as is often the way when humanity foregathers on sinister business. Cocardasse plucked Passepoil by the sleeve and drew him a little away from their fellow-ruffians. "We cannot fight against the Little Parisian," he whispered into the Norman’s ear. "We will look on, comrade." Passepoil nodded approval, but spoke no word. For the rest of that red adventure into the placid blackness of the night those two stood apart in the shadow, with their arms folded and their swords in their sheaths, sombrely watching the seven men that were their friends assailing the one man they loved. Such honor as they had forbade them to change sides and fight for the Little Parisian. They had been paid to range with the assailants of Nevers. But no payment could possibly prevail on them to attack Lagardere. So, according to their consciences, they split the difference and held aloof. Their abstention was not noticed by their fellows in the excitement of the time.

Numerous as they were, the bravos and their new recruits seemed unwilling to advance against two such famous swordsmen. Lagardere taunted their apathy:

"Come, you crows, the eagles wait for you." He felt that the words had a fine theatrical ring, and he enjoyed them as he flung them forth.

Nevers cried his cry, "I am here!" and Lagardere repeated it, "I am here!" He was longing to come to blows with the bandits, and to show them what two men could do against their multitude. His sword quivered like a snake in its eagerness to feel blades against its blade.

The barrel bulk of Staupitz spoke again addressing his little army. "Do you fear two men?" he asked. "Forward!"

On the word the eighteen men charged, the original seven leading; the eleven recruits, less whole-hearted in the business, came less alertly in the rear. The charge of the assassins was abruptly arrested by Lagardere’s bulwark, and over that bulwark the swords of the two defenders flashed and leaped, and before every thrust a man went down. It seemed an age of battle, it seemed an instant of battle. Then the baffled assassins recoiled, leaving two of the smugglers for dead, while Saldagno and Faenza were both badly wounded, and cursing hideously in Portuguese and Italian.

Behind the intrenchments, Lagardere chuckled as he heard. He turned to Nevers. "Are you wounded?" he asked, anxiously.

And Nevers answered, quietly: "A scratch on the forehead."

As he saw Nevers lift his hand for a moment to the space between his eyes, Lagardere groaned to himself, "My damned fencing-lesson," and mentally promised to make his enemies pay for their readiness to learn. He had not long to wait for an opportunity.

The discomfited bravos were rapidly gathering together for a fresh attack. This time their leading spirit was no longer Staupitz, disagreeably conscious of the difficulties of the enterprise, but the hunchback Æsop, who seemed to burn with a passion for slaughter. Lagardere likened him in his mind to some ungainly, obscene bird of prey, as he loomed out of the mirk waving his gaunt arms and shrieking in his rage and hate. "Kill them! kill them!" he screamed, as he rushed across the intervening space, and the bravos, heartened by his frenzy of fight, streamed after him, flinging themselves desperately against the piled-up hay, only to meet again the irresistible weapons of the friends, and again to recoil before them. Nevers held his own on one side; Lagardere held his own on the other. Nevers delivered his thrust at Æsop, and for the second time that day the hunchback felt the prick of steel between his eyes and saved himself by springing backward, his blood’s fire suddenly turned to ice. Lagardere’s sword was like a living fire. "Look out, Staupitz! Take that, Pepe!" he cried, and wounded both men. Then, while the German and the Spaniard fell back swearing, he turned joyously to Nevers, for his quick ear caught the sound of galloping on the distant highway.

"Good cheer, brother! I hear horses. My men are coming. Lagardere! Lagardere!"

Nevers responded joyously, "I am here! Victory!"

By this time the ground was strewn with the dead and wounded of their assailants, and, save for the slight scratch on Nevers’s forehead, the defenders were unhurt. The galloping of horses was now distinctly heard, and the sound was as displeasing to the bravos as it was delightful to Lagardere.

Delightful, indeed, for the sake of his companion, whom he was so hot to save. Otherwise, Lagardere, so far as he had clearness enough to think coherently at all, thought that he had never lived, had never hoped to live, through moments so delightful. To be in the thick of such a brawl, to be fighting side by side with the best swordsman in all France against what might well be considered overwhelming odds, and to be working havoc and disaster among his antagonists, stirred Lagardere’s blood more blithely than ripe wine. He had fought good fights before now, but never such a fight as this, in the black and dark night, with the dim air thick with hostile swords, and the night wind singing songs of battle in his ears. To live like this was to be very much alive; this had a zest denied to any calmly planned duello; this had a poetry fiercer and finer than the shock of action in the daylit lanes of war.

He called merrily to the bravos to renew their assault, but the bravos hung back discouraged; even the murder-zeal of Æsop had flagged. Then, in an instant, the attacked became the attackers, on the impulse of Nevers. Shouting anew the motto of his house, "I am here!" he leaped lightly over the rampart of hay, soliciting the swords of his foemen. Lagardere followed his example in an instant, and the pair now carried the war into the enemies’ country, charging the staggered assassins, who scattered before them. Lagardere drove some half a dozen of the rogues, including Staupitz and the discomfited Æsop, towards the bridge. Nevers, nearer to the castle, struck down in quick succession two of the ruffians that were rash enough to stand their ground, and stood for the moment alone and unassailed, the master of his part of the field.

Noiselessly behind him the little postern of Caylus opened. Noiselessly two shadows emerged, both masked and both holding drawn swords. Though it was still all blackness under the walls of the castle, there was now a little light in the sky, where a pale moon swam like a golden ship through wave after wave of engulfing cloud. The pair paused for a moment, as if to make sure that indeed their auxiliaries were being routed. Then the foremost shadow glided quietly close to Nevers, where he stood flushed with victory.

"I am here!" Nevers cried, exulting, as he waved his conquering sword and looked in vain for an antagonist.

"I am here!" repeated the shadow behind him, mockingly, and thrust his weapon deep into the victor’s side. Nevers reeled before the suddenness and sureness of the stroke, and fell on his knees to the ground with a great cry that startled Lagardere and stayed him in his triumph. Nevers, striving to rise, turned his face against his treacherous enemy, and seemed to recognize the shadow in spite of its masked visage.

"You!" he gasped—"you, for whom I would have given my life!"

"Well, I take it," the shadow whispered, grimly, and stabbed him again. Nevers fell in a huddle to the earth, but he raised his dying breath in a cry.

"Help, Lagardere! help! Save the child! Avenge me!"

Then he died. Though the assassin stabbed again, he only stabbed a corpse. Lagardere, who was brooming his foes before him as a gardener brooms autumnal leaves from grass, had been arrested in his course by the first cry of the wounded Nevers. While he paused, his antagonists, rallying a little and heartened by their numbers, made ready for a fresh attack. Then, swiftly, came Nevers’s last wild call for help, and Lagardere, with a great fear and a great fury in his heart, turned from the steps leading to the bridge and made to join his comrade. But the clustering swordsmen heard that cry, too, and found new courage in the sound. It meant that one of the demi-gods with whom, as it seemed, they were warring, was now no more than common clay, and that there was good hope of ending the other. They came together; they came upon Lagardere; they strove to stay him in his way. They might as well have tried to stay a hurricane. Lagardere beat them back, cut them down, and swept through their reeling line to the spot where Nevers was lying.

"I am here!" he shouted, and faced the masked shadow. "Murderer, you hide your face, but you shall bear my mark, that I may know you when we meet again."

The slayer of Nevers had stood on guard by the side of his victim when Lagardere came towards him. By his side the masked companion extended a cautious blade. In one wild second Lagardere beat down the slayer’s sword and wounded the unknown man deeply on the wrist. The assassin’s sword fell from his hand, and the assassin, with a cry of rage, retreated into the darkness. Lagardere had only time to brand the traitor; he had not the time to kill him. Looking swiftly about him, he saw that his vengeance must be patient if he were to save his skin from that shambles. The sword of the satellite defended the master; other swords began to gleam anew. From all the quarters of that field of fight the bravos were gathering again, all there were left of them, and Lagardere was now alone. With the activity of the skilled acrobat he leaped backward to the cart, and, while he still faced his enemies and while his terrible sword glittered in ceaseless movement, he snatched the child from the sheltering hay with his left hand, and, turning, began to run at his full speed towards the bridge. There were bravos in his path that thought to stay him, but they gave way before the headlong fury of his rush as if they believed him to be irresistible, and he reached the steps in safety.

Once there he turned again and raised his sword in triumph, while he cried, fiercely: "Nevers is dead! Long live Nevers!"

By now the galloping of horses sounded loud as immediate thunder, and even as Lagardere spoke a number of shadowy horsemen had occupied the bridge behind him, and those in the moat could see above them the glint of levelled muskets. The servant shadow held the postern open with a trembling hand to harbor the survivors of the strife. But the man that had killed Nevers, the man that Lagardere had branded, had still a hate to satisfy.

"A thousand crowns," he cried, "to the man who gets the child!"

Not a man of all the baffled assassins answered to that challenge. Standing upon the steps of the bridge, Lagardere caught it up.

"Seek her behind my sword, assassin! You wear my mark, and I will find you out! You shall all suffer! After the lackeys, the master! Sooner or later Lagardere will come to you!"