The Doomsman by Van Tassel Sutphen (best ereader for pdf and epub .txt) 📗

and so at last gained the farther bank and sank down panting on the short, crisp sward.

The cavalier reined in at the beginning of the trestle; he looked doubtfully at the ford above the bridge; but the Swiftwater was in spring flood, and, was the chase worth a wetting?

Evidently not, for, with a shrug of his shoulders, the horseman threw one leg across the saddle-pommel and sat there, very much at his ease, while he proceeded to roll himself a cigarette from coarse, black tobacco and a leaf of dampened corn-husk.

Constans felt his face flush hotly as he noted the contempt implied in his enemy's well-played indifference. Already he had put his bow in order; now he stood up and, with some ostentation, proceeded to fit an arrow to the string. The cavalier looked at these preparations with entire calmness and busied himself again with his flint and steel.

"It would be murder," muttered Constans, irritably, and lowered his hand. Then, moved by sudden impulse, he took aim anew and with more than ordinary care. The arrow sung through the air and transfixed the fleshy part of the cavalier's bridle-arm. The horse, whose withers had been grazed by the shaft, started to rear, but his rider neither moved nor changed color. Quieting the frightened animal with a reassuring word,[Pg 8] he deftly caught the tinder spark at the tip of his cigarette and drew in a deep inhalation of the smoke. Then, with the utmost coolness, he proceeded to snap the arrow-shaft in twain and draw out the barb, Constans yielding him grudging admiration, for it was all very perfectly done.

"Here is a man," thought Constans, and looked him over carefully.

And truly the cavalier made a gallant figure, dressed as he was in the bravest raiment that the eyes of Constans had ever yet beheld. For his close-fitting suit was of claret-colored velvet with gilt buttons, while his throat-gear was a wonderfully fine lace jabot, with a great red jewel fastened in the knot. A soft hat, trimmed with gold lace and an ostrich-feather, covered his dark curls, while yellow gauntlets and high riding-boots of polished leather completed his outward attire. Not an unpleasing picture as he sat there in the sunshine astride the big blood-bay, but Constans, looking upon him, knew that neither now nor hereafter could there be any verity of peace between them. There is such a thing as hate at first sight even as there is love.

The horseman had retained the feathered end of the arrow-shaft, and he proceeded to examine it with an appearance of polite interest.

"Your private token, young sir?" he inquired, indicating the single feather of scarlet. His voice was pitched in an affectedly high key, his manner languidly ceremonious. Constans could only bow stiffly in the affirmative.

"Ah, yes; it is one not to be easily forgotten. I, too, have my sign-manual, and I should have been glad to have exchanged with you."[Pg 9]

Again Constans bowed. He wanted to say something, but the words would not come. The cavalier smiled.

"But there may be another opportunity later on," he continued. "At least, we may hope so." He bowed, lifting his plumed hat. "To our future acquaintance." He turned his horse's head to the southward, and rode away at a slow canter without once looking back.

Constans watched the ostrich-crest as it rose and fell, until it was lost to sight among the tree-trunks. Then, drawing his belt tight, he started on a dog-trot in the contrary direction; the barrier, admitting him to the protection of the stockade, was still some distance away, and he must reach it without delay and give the warning. But, even as he ran, he heard the tolling of a bell; it was the alarm that the Doomsmen were abroad. Now, indeed, he must make haste or he would find the barrier closed against himself.

Ten minutes later he stood before the northern entrance of the Greenwood Keep. Already the warders were fitting into place the gates of iron-studded oak, but they recognized the voice of their lord's son and allowed him to squeeze his way through. Guyder Touchett, the burly captain of the watch, clapped him familiarly on the back.

"Your legs have saved your skin, master. God's life! but you flashed through the cover like a cock-grouse going down the wind. Yet I trembled lest a cross-bow bolt might be following even faster."

"They have come—the Doomsmen?" panted Constans.

"Garth, the swineherd, reported their landing at the[Pg 10] Golden Cove an hour before sunup. Three war-galleys, which means twice that score of men."

"Some mischance of wind or tide," said Constans, thoughtfully. "I noticed that the water in the Gut was rougher than is usual at dawn."

"Like enough," assented Touchett. "These night-birds are not often seen in a blue sky, and luckily so, for the safety of your father's ricks and byres. After all, there is no certainty in the matter; Garth is stupid enough betimes for one of his own boars, and there was a christening-party at the barracks last night. You know what that means—the can clinking until the tap runs dry."

"Yet you say he saw——"

Guyder Touchett shrugged his shoulders. "Anything you like. When the ale is in the eye there are stranger things than gray cats to be discovered at the half-dawn. In my opinion, Garth is a fool and a liar."

"And, as usual, your opinion is wrong," retorted Constans, "for the Gray Men are really here. But I cannot wait; I must speak with Sir Gavan himself."

"You will find him at the water gate," bawled Touchett, as the boy ran past him.

Constans sped rapidly up the green slope leading to the house a quarter of a mile away. As he ran, he mentally rehearsed the story of his late adventure. Surely, now, Sir Gavan would permit him to bear a man's part in the impending crisis. Had he not already drawn hostile blood—the first?

Sir Gavan awaited his son at the water gate, his ruddy countenance streaked with an unwonted pallor and his gray eyes dark with trouble.[Pg 11]

"Where is your sister?" he asked, abruptly, as Constans ran up.

The boy stared. "She did not go out with me, sir. Do you mean that Issa——"

"Hush! or your mother will overhear. Come this way." And Sir Gavan preceded his son into the guard-room on the left of the vaulted entrance, walking heavily, as one who bears an unaccustomed burden upon his shoulders. Yet when he spoke again his voice had its accustomed steadiness.

"No one has seen her since ten of the sundial. It is now noon, and the alarm-bell has been ringing this half-hour."

Constans felt something tighten at his own throat. "You have searched the enclosure?" he faltered.

"Every nook and corner," returned Sir Gavan. "Tennant, with a dozen men, is now beating the upper plantations."

Constans thought guiltily of that cleverly concealed gap in the palisades just beyond the intake of the Ochre brook. He and Issa had shared it between them as a precious secret, and he had used it this very morning as a short cut to the water-side. Tennant, their elder brother, was not aware of its existence, but then Tennant was a prig, and not to be trusted in truly momentous affairs.

There was his father's wrath. Constans turned sick at the thought of arousing it. No; he could not tell him.

"I don't know," he said, vaguely.

Sir Gavan looked at him searchingly, then turned and strode out of the room.

Constans felt his cheeks grow hot. Why had he not[Pg 12] told all the truth? He was a coward, a liar, in all but the actual word. He sat down on a bench and buried his face in his hands; then the recurring thought of Issa and of her peril stung him to his feet. Where had Sir Gavan gone?

Constans made his way, hesitatingly, into the court-yard of the keep. He found it thronged with men, his father's retainers and servants. The archers were busy putting new strings to their bows; the spearmen were testing, with grave eagerness, the stout ash of their weapons, or perchance whetting an edge on the broad blades. Half a dozen of the younger men were engaged in covering the roof of the main and out buildings with horse-hides soaked in water, as a protection against burning arrows; others were driving the protesting cattle into the byres and sacking up a quantity of newly threshed grain that lay upon the flailing floor; everywhere the noise of shouting men and of hurrying feet.

Sir Gavan was not to be seen, and Constans, after inquiring for him through a fruitless quarter of an hour, entered the main house and sought the fighting platform on its roof. Why had no lookout been stationed here? Surely an oversight. He gazed eagerly about him.

Directly to the right of the house lay the home paddock, stretching away some two hundred yards to the edge of a white-birch plantation. The Ochre brook bounded it on one side, and the current had scoured out for itself an ever-deepening channel in the soft, alluvial soil. A clump of alders, just bursting into leaf, masked the bed of the stream at one particular point, where the bank rose into a miniature bluff.[Pg 13] Constans, from his elevated position, was enabled to overlook this point, and so to make out the figure of a mounted man behind the alder screen, his horse standing belly deep in the water. It was the cavalier of the ostrich-feathers; and then, through the white trunks of the birches, he caught the flutter of a woman's gown. Constans tried to shout, to call out, but the vocal chords refused to relax, the sounds rattled in his throat.[Pg 14]

II

THE NIGHT OF THE TERROR

The reader, desiring to inform himself in extenso regarding the physical and social changes that followed the catastrophe by which the ancient civilization was so suddenly subverted, would do well to consult the final authority upon the subject, the learned Vigilas, author of The Later Cosmos (elephant folio edition). But for our present purpose a brief epitome should suffice. To borrow then, with all due acknowledgments, from our admirable historian:

"It was in the later years of the twentieth century that the Great Change came; at least, so the traditions agree, and how is a man to know certainly of such things except as he learns them from his father's lips? True, the accounts differ, and widely so at times, but that much is to be expected—where were there ever two men who heard or saw the same things in the same way? It is human nature that we should color even transparent fact with the reflected glow of our passions and fancies, and so the distortion becomes inevitable; we should be satisfied if, to-day, we succeed in making out even the broad outlines of the picture.

"It appears tolerably certain that the wreck of the ancient civilization took place about three generations[Pg 15] ago, the catastrophe being both sudden and overwhelming; moreover, all the authorities agree that only an infinitesimal portion of the race escaped, with whole skins, from what were, in very sooth, cities of destruction. These fortunate ones were naturally the politically powerful and the immensely rich, and they owed their safety to the fact that they were able to seize upon the shipping in the harbors for their exclusive use. The fugitives sailed away, presumably to the southward, and so disappeared from the pages of authentic history. We know nothing for certain; only that they departed, and that we saw their faces no more.

"Let us reconstruct, as best we may, the panorama of those few but awful days. The first rush was naturally to the country, but the crowds, choking the ferry and railway stations, were quickly confronted with the terror-stricken thousands of the suburbs, who were flocking to the city for refuge. And all through the dragging hours the same despairing reports flowed in from the remoter rural districts; everywhere the Terror walked, and men were dying like flies. From ocean to ocean, from the lakes to the gulf, the shadow rushed, and now the whole land lay in darkness.

"Such was the situation in what was then the United States of America, and similar conditions prevailed throughout the habitable world. London and Hong-Kong, Vienna and Pekin, Buenos Ayres and Archangel—from every direction came the same inquiry, to every questioner was returned the same answer. It was the end of all things.

"Coincidently with this great recession of the hu[Pg 16]man tide, occurred the eclipse of industry, science, and, indeed, every form of thought and progress. The plough rusted in the furrow, the half-formed web dropped to pieces in the loom, the very crops stood unharvested in the fields, to