Colgran ordered up fresh troops. It was his policy to wear out the garrison by sheer importunity and the stress of numbers. He could afford to lose some hundred men; every score were precious now to Flavian. It was a system of counter barter in blood, till the weaker vessel ran dry. The Lord of Gambrevault understood this rough philosophy well enough, and husbanded his resources. He could not gamble with death, and so changed his men when the opportunity offered, to give breathing space to all. Conscious of the strong stimulus of personal heroism, he kept to the breach himself, and fought on through every assault with Modred’s great axe swinging at his side. He owed his life more than once to those gorilla-like arms and that crescent of steel. In the outer court, certain of the women folk with Yeoland dealt out wine and food, and tended the wounded. In the chapel, tapers glimmered, lighting the frescoes and the saints, the priest chanting at the altar, the women and children who knelt in the shadowy aisles praying for those who fought upon the walls. Panic hovered over the pale faces, the fear, the shivering, weeping, pleading figures. There was little heroism in Gambrevault chapel, save the heroism of supplication. While swords tossed and men groped for each other in the wind and rain, old Peter the cellarer lay drunk in a wine bin, and lame Joan, who tended the linen, was snivelling in the chapel and fingering the gold angels sewn up in her tunic. Five times did Colgran’s men assault the breach that night, each repulse leaving its husks on the bloody wreckage, its red libations to the swords of Gambrevault. The last and toughest tussle came during the grey prologue before dawn. The place was so packed with the dead and stricken, that it was well-nigh impassable. For some minutes the struggle hung precariously on the summit of the pass, but with the dawn the peril dwindled and elapsed. The stormers revolted from the shambles; they had fought their fill; had done enough for honour; were sick and weary. No taunt, command, or imprecation could keep them longer in that gate of death. Colgran’s rebels retreated on their trenches. And with the dawn Flavian looked round upon the breach, and saw all the horror of the place in one brief moment. Cloven faces, hacked bodies, distortions, tortures, blood everywhere. He looked round over his own men; saw their meagre ranks, their weariness, their wounds, their exultation that lapsed silently into a kind of desperate awe. Some tried to cheer him, and at the sound he felt an unutterable melancholy descend upon his soul. The men were like so many sickly ghosts, a wan and battered flock, a ragged remnant. He saw the whole truth in a moment, as a man sees life, death, and eternity pass before him in the flashing wisdom of a single thought.