The interminable trees seemed to vex the woman's spirit as their trunks crowded the winding track and shut the pair in as with a never-ending barrier. But for an occasional patch of heathland or scrub, no lengthy vista opened up before them. Tree-boles stood everywhere to baulk their vision, silent and stiff like sullen sentinels. The horses plodded on. Igraine's impatience could be read upon her face, and discovered in her slighter gestures. It was the impatience of a mind at war within itself, a mind prone through the chafe of trouble to be vexed with trifles; sore, sensitive, and hasty. Brastias watched her, pretending to be intent the while on the path that wandered away into the mazes of the wood. He was a considerate creature, and he suffered her petulance with a placid good-humour, and a certain benevolence that was the outcome of pity. Igraine jerked her bridle, and eyed the trees as though they were the members of a mob thrusting themselves between her and her purpose. She was inclined to be unreasonable, as only a woman can be on occasions. Brastias, calm-faced and debonair, contented himself with sympathy, and refrained from reason as from the handling of a whip. "That peasant fellow was a liar," he said, by way of being companionable. "Yes, the whelp." "I'll swear we've ridden two leagues, not one." "The fellow should have a stripe for every furlong." "Rough justice, madame." Igraine laughed. "If justice were done to liars," she said, "the world would be hideless, scourged raw." Brastias edged his horse past an intruding tree and chuckled amiably. "It would be a pity to spoil so much beauty." "Eh!" "The women would come off worst." Igraine flashed a look at him. "Balaam's ass spoke the truth," she said. They had not gone another furlong when Brastias reined in suddenly and stood listening. He held up a hand to Igraine, looking at her with prophetic face, his black armour lustreless under the trees. "Hark!" Igraine stared into his eyes. Neither moved a muscle for fully a minute. "A trumpet-cry!" Brastias lowered his hand. "From the host. And the 'advance,' by the sound on't." "Then we shall be out of the woods soon." "Go warily, madame; it would be poor wisdom to stumble on an Irish legion." "Brastias, I would not miss the day for a year in heaven." As they pushed uphill through the solemn shadows of the forest, a sound like the raging of a wind through a wood came down to them faintly from afar. It was a sullen sound, deep and mysterious as the hoarse babel of the sea, smitten through with the shrill scream of trumpets like the cry of gulls above a storm. In the alleys of the pine forest it was still as death, and calm beneath the beniscus of the tall trees. Igraine and Brastias looked meaningly at each other as they rode. The sound needed no words to christen it. The two under the trees knew that they heard the roar of host breaking upon host, the cataractine thunder of a distant battle.