A weary, speechless man dropped from his horse to Edric's feet.
"They come!" he gasped, when he had swallowed a mouthful of beer. "Sighted beyond Stretton.... From Shrewsbury ... in their hundreds--fully armed!"
Richard, deep in the shadow of the tree, took the boy Osbern's hand and drew him down beside him.
"Hasten, all!" shouted Edric, quivering with eagerness. "To every homestead where be weapons--tools--what ye can find! Hasten, hasten! Ride--gather your men together! We will beat them back at the ford."
All were on their feet, all running--every thane, every churl, every thrall. Some dashed into houses and sheds, and bore thence sickles, scythes, axes, picks, shovels, and mattocks, and ancient rust-caked weapons; some seized the horses tethered by the ale-house door and sprang upon them. Richard, still holding Osbern by the hand, entered the town in the midst of the first contingent of those who remained on foot.
"They have taken our horses," he whispered. "Silence now--we must not move nor breathe!"
The maltman's barn opened on to Ludford Street, and they slipped within and hid between the outer wall and a rampart of odorous sacks. Edric drove the whole body of his compatriots out into the open. After a quick consultation with Ingelric, he set off with the old man on the shortest route to Caynham. Some made towards Ashford, some towards the Moor. A few splashed through the ford over which the grey waters of the Teme glided in their winter flood.
An hour passed; another hour; the second hour after noon began. Richard was still in the maltman's storehouse, scarcely stirring from the post he had originally taken up, listening intently to every sound that penetrated from without. Osbern had perched himself upon a sack by his father's side, as motionless except for his fingers, about which he twined a piece of string in cat's cradle pattern. The voices of women reached them, the laughter of children, the swirl of water among the roots of the willows. Falling cobwebs powdered these two with dingy flakes; conflicting currents of air made the malt-dust dance all around them; they heard the patter of rats' feet, the dogged gnawing of a mouse. Suddenly a woman shrieked in terror----