When
his eyes opened again he knew me not, but thought he was in some
tavern, and struck with his hand upon the ground as upon a table,
and called for the drawer.
Around him were only the stillness and the shadows of the night,
but to his vision men sat and drank with him, diced and swore and
told wild tales of this or that. For a time he talked loudly and at
random of the vile quality of the drink, and his viler luck at the
dice; then he began to tell a story. As he told it, his senses seemed
to steady, and he spoke with coherence and like a shadow of
himself.
"And you call that a great thing, William Host?" he demanded. "I
can tell a true tale worth two such lies, my masters. (Robin tapster,
more ale! And move less like a slug, or my tankard and your ear
will cry, 'Well met!') It was between Ypres and Courtrai, friends,
and it's nigh fifteen years ago. There were fields in which nothing
was sowed because they were ploughed with the hoofs of war
horses, and ditches in which dead men were thrown, and dismal
marshes, and roads that were no roads at all, but only sloughs. And
there was a great stone house, old and ruinous, with tall poplars
shivering in the rain and mist. Into this house there threw
themselves a band of Dutch and English, and hard on their heels
came two hundred Spaniards. All day they besieged that house, -
smoke and flame and thunder and shouting and the crash of
masonry, - and when eventide was come we, the Dutch and the
English, thought that Death was not an hour behind.
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