An
arrow struck the knight's chain-armour, but glanced off harmlessly,
and then a flight of arrows swept by them with the buzzing sound of
great bees. They ran and climbed, and climbed and ran towards the
thieves, who were now all visible standing up among the bushes with
their still quivering bows in their hands: for they had only their
spears and they must at once come hand to hand. The knight was in the
front and smote down first one and then another of the wood-thieves.
The peasants shouted, and, pressing on, drove the wood-thieves before
them until they came out on the flat top of the mountain, and there
they saw the two pigs quietly grubbing in the short grass, so they
ran about them in a circle, and began to move back again towards the
narrow path: the old knight coming now the last of all, and striking
down thief after thief. The peasants had got no very serious hurts
among them, for he had drawn the brunt of the battle upon himself, as
could well be seen from the bloody rents in his armour; and when they
came to the entrance of the narrow path he bade them drive the pigs
down into the valley, while he stood there to guard the way behind
them. So in a moment he was alone, and, being weak with loss of
blood, might have been ended there and then by the wood-thieves he
had beaten off, had fear not made them begone out of sight in a great
hurry.
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