The Red Axe Part 24

And very coolly betook himself to the edge of the cliff, where he primed his piece anew, and blew up his match.

"Loose the man and stand back!" cried the Princess.

A moment the innkeeper stood nerving himself. A moment he hung on the thin edge of his resolve. The slack gray face worked convulsively, the white lips moved, the hands were gripped close to his sides as though to run a race. His whole body seemed suddenly to shrink and fall in upon itself.

"The torture! The terrible torture!" he shrieked aloud, and ran swiftly from the clutches of the men who had held him. Between the path and the verge of the cliff from which he was suffered to cast himself there stretched some thirty or forty yards of fine green turf. The old man ran as though at a village fair for some wager of slippery pig's tail, but all the time the face of him was like Death and h.e.l.l following after.

At the cliff's edge he leaped high into the air, and went headlong down, to our watching eyes as slowly as if he had sunk through water. None of us who were on the path saw more of him. But Jorian craned over, regarding the man's end calmly and even critically. And when he had satisfied himself that that which was done was properly done, as coolly as before he stowed away his match in his cover-fire, mounted his horse, and rode towards us.

He nodded to the Princess. "Good, my Lady!" quoth he, for all comment.

"I saved a charge that time!" said he to his companion.

"Good!" quoth Boris, in his turn.

We had now a safe and n.o.ble escort, and the way to Pla.s.senburg was easy.

The face of the country gradually changed. No more was it the gray, wistful plain of the Wolfmark, upon which our Red Tower looked down. No more did we ride through the marly, dusty, parched lands, in which were the ravines with their uncanny cavern villages, of which this Erdberg was the chief. But green, well-watered valleys and mountains wooded to the top lay all about us--a pleasant land, a fertile province, and, as the Princess had said, a land in which the strong hand of Karl the Prince had long made "the broom-bush keep the cow."

I had all along been possessed with great desire to meet the Prince of so n.o.ble and well-cared-for a land, and perhaps also to see what manner of man could be the husband of so extraordinary a Princess.

CHAPTER XXVI

PRINCE JEHU MILLER'S SON

Yet now, when she was in her own country, and as good as any queen thereof, I found the Lady Ysolinde in no wise different from, what she had been in the city of Thorn and in her father's house. She called me often to ride beside her, Helene being on my other side, while the Lubber Fiend, who had saved all our lives, gambolled about and came to her to be petted like a lapdog of some monstrous sort. He licked his lips and twisted his eyes upward at her in ludicrous ecstasy till only the whites were visible whenever the Princess laid her hand on his head. So that it was as much as the archers of the guard could do to hide their laughter in their beards. But hide it they did, having a wholesome awe of the emerald eyes of their mistress, or perhaps of the steely light which sometimes came into them.

It was growing twilight upon the third day (for there were no adventures worth dwelling upon after that among the cavern dwellings of Erdberg) when for the first time we saw the towers of Pla.s.senburg crowning a hill, with its clear brown river winding slow beneath. We were yet a good many miles from it when down the dusty road towards us came a horseman, and fifty yards or so behind him another.

"The Prince--none rides like our Karl!" said Jorian, familiarly, under his breath, but proudly withal.

"He comes alone!" said I, wonderingly. For indeed Duke Casimir of the Wolfsberg never went ten lances' length from his castle without a small army at his tail.

"Even so!" replied Jorian; "it is ever his custom. The officer who follows behind him has his work cut out--and basted. Not for nothing is our Karl called Prince Jehu Miller's Son, for indeed he rides most furiously."

Before there was time for more words between us a tall, grim-faced, pleasant-eyed man of fifty rode up at a furious gallop. The first thing I noticed about him was that his hair was exactly the same color as his horse--an iron-gray, rusty a little, as if it had been rubbed with iron that has been years in the wet.

He took off his hat courteously to the Princess.

"I bid you welcome, my n.o.ble lady," said he, smiling; "the cages are ready for the new importations."

The Lady Ysolinde reached a hand for her husband to kiss, which he did with singular gentleness. But, so far as I could see, she neither looked at him even once nor yet so much as spoke a word to him. Presently he questioned her directly: "And who may this fair young damsel be, who has done me the honor to journey to my country?"

"She is Helene, called Helene Gottfried of Thorn, and has come with me to be one of my maids of honor," answered the Lady Ysolinde, looking straight before her into the gathering mist, which began to collect in white ponds and streaks here and there athwart the valley.

The Prince gave the Little Playmate a kindly ironic look out of his gray eyes, which, as I interpreted it, had for meaning, "Then, if that be so, G.o.d help thee, little one--'tis well thou knowest not what is before thee!"

"And this young man?" said the Prince, nodding across to me.

But I answered for myself.

"I am the son of the Hereditary Justicer of the Wolfmark," said I. "I had no stomach for such work. Therefore, as I was shortly to be made my father's a.s.sistant, I have brought letters of introduction to your Highness, in the hopes that you will permit me the exercise of arms in your army in another and more honorable fas.h.i.+on."

"I have promised him a regiment," said the Princess, speaking quickly.

"What--of leaden soldiers?" answered the Prince, looking at her mighty soberly.

"Your Highness is pleased to be brutal," answered the Lady Ysolinde, coldly. "It is your ordinary idea of humor!"

A kind of quaint humility sat on the face of the Prince.

"I but thought that your Highness could have nothing else in her mind--seeing that our rough Pla.s.senburg regiments will only accept men of some years and experience to lead them. But the little soldiers of metal are not so queasy of stomach."

"May it please your Highness," said I, earnestly, "I will be content to begin with carrying a pike, so that I be permitted in any fas.h.i.+on to fight against your enemies."

Jorian and Boris came up and saluted at this point, like twin mechanisms.

Then they stood silent and waiting.

The Prince nodded in token that they had permission to speak.

"With the sword the lad fights well," said Boris. "Is it not so, Jorian?"

"Good!" said Jorian.

"But with the broadaxe he slashes about him like an angel from heaven--not so, Boris?" said Jorian.

"Good!" said Boris.

"Can you ride?" said the Prince, turning abruptly from them.

"Aye, sire!" said I. For indeed I could, and had no shame to say it.

"That horse of his is blown; give him your fresh one!" said he to the officer who had accompanied him. "And do you show these good folk to their quarters."

Hardly was I mounted before the Prince set spurs to his beast, and, with no more than a casual wave of his hand to the Princess and her train, he was off.

"Ride!" he cried to me. And was presently almost out of sight, stretching his horse's gray belly to the earth, like a coursing dog after a hare.

Well was it for me that I had learned to ride in a hard school--that is, upon the unbroken colts which were brought in for the mounting of the Duke Casimir's soldiery. For the horse that I had been given took the bit between his teeth and pursued so fiercely after his stable companion that I could scarce restrain him from pa.s.sing the Prince. But our way lay homeward, so that, though I was in no way able to guide nor yet control my charger, nevertheless presently the Prince and I were clattering through the town of Pla.s.senburg like two fiends riding headlong to the pit.

Within the town the lamps were being lit in the booths, the folks busy marketing, and the watchmen already perambulating the city and crying the hours at the street corners.

But as the Prince and I drove furiously through, like pursuer and pursued, the busy streets cleared themselves in a twinkling; and we rode through lanes of faces yellow in the lamplight, or in the darker places like blurs of scrabbled whiteness. So I leaned forward and let the beast take his chance of uneven causeway and open sewer. I expected nothing less than a broken neck, and for at least half a mile, as we flew upward to the castle, I think that the certainty of naught worse than a broken arm would positively have pleasured me. At least, I would very willingly have compounded my chances for that.

Presently, without ever drawing rein, we flew beneath the dark outer port of the castle, clattered through a court paved with slippery blocks of stone, thundered over a n.o.ble drawbridge, plunged into a long and gloomy archway, and finally came out in a bright inner palace court with lamps lit all about it.