Someone knocked the bar up; the two halves of the door fell apart. Those behind pushed on those in front. A tangle of bodies, heads, arms, and weapons jammed themselves in the doorway.
Fulk seized his chance. The first man in went down with a broken skull. The second stumbled as he swung a blow at Fulk with a poleaxe, and had the dagger in his face. Then the whole pack broke through, and Fulk sprang back, knowing that their numbers would smother him if he let them close.
He covered the stairway leading to the solar, and for the moment Merlin’s men held back. A voice cursed them from the porch.
Guy the Stallion was the first man to leap forward, but death took him before he could strike a blow. Isoult had loosed an arrow at him from the head of the stairs. Its white feathers showed under the red tuft of Guy’s beard.
He faltered, and sprawled, his sword flying from his hand. The rest charged over his body. Fulk backed up the stairs like a stag at bay, and paused halfway up to make his stand.
Then began as mad a fight as any fire-eater could have desired.
The stairway was not more than three feet broad; there was no handrail to it, and it went up steeply, yet Merlin’s men tried to rush it in a body, only to cumber each other and help the man with the sword. Isoult had passed Fulk his shield, and he held it slantwise before him, and used the sword-point under it, knowing that such thrusts were more deadly than any slashing.
One fellow fell full length, run through the body, and those who were crowded together behind him tried to thrust at Fulk with their pikes or hack at him with axe or sword. There was no room for so many weapons at once, and Fulk’s shield was a pent-house that was not to be beaten down. He stabbed at the men from under it, giving swift, fierce thrusts that they could not parry. Two more went down, one rolling over the edge of the stairs; those in front, pressed by Fulk’s sword, fell back on those behind, till the crowd upon the stairs lost its foothold and went tumbling down in confusion.
But these footpads, horse-thieves, and deer-stealers were no sheep; their blood was up, and the devil roused in them. The dead men were taken by the heels, and dragged down the stairs out of the way. They hurled stools at Fulk, benches, fire-irons, the halves of the broken door, even crockery, and iron pots that they brought from the kitchen. It was as though all the cooks and scullions in a king’s castle had gone mad. Three of them seized the daïs table and dragged it up beside the stairway, and so made a kind of fighting platform to take Fulk in the flank. The first who climbed it had an arrow through his throat, for Isoult was ready with her bow. Fulk stabbed the second as he reached up and tried to seize his ankle. The third fellow jumped down again, and two more dead men were lying amid the pile of wreckage on the stairs.