Red Axe - Samuel Rutherford Crockett (books to read fiction .TXT) 📗

the common dialect, and that as we were travelling towards regions roughly Wendish and but lately heathen, they might have some uncouth speech of their own. So, as is ever the custom with folk that are not accustomed to the speaking of foreign tongues, I repeated the question in mine own language in a louder tone, supposing that that would do as well.
"You are men of the country of Plassenburg?" cried I, as loud as I could bawl.
"We are not deaf--we have all our faculties, praise the saints!" said the more distant of the two, looking not at me but at his companion. He, on his part, nodded back at his comrade's reply, as if it had been delicately calculated at once to answer my question and at the same time not to commit them to any dangerous opinions.
I tried again.
"Your prince, I hear, is a true man, brave, and well-versed in war?"
The shorter and stouter man, who rode beside me, glanced once at my face, and slowly screwed round his head to his companion in a long, questioning gaze. Then as slowly he turned his head back again.
"Umph!" he said, judicially, with a movement of his head, which seemed a successful compromise between a nod and a shake, just as his remark might very well have resulted from an attempt to say "Yes" and "No" at the same time.
This was not encouraging to one who, like myself, was in high spirits and much inclined for conversation. But I was not to be so easily beaten off.
"The Prince of Plassenburg has a Princess," I said, "who is often upon her travels?"
It was an innocent remark, and, so far as I could see, not one in itself highly humorous. But it broke up the gravity of these red-haired northern bears as if it had been the latest gay sally of the court-fool.
"Ha! ha!" laughed the more distant, lanky man, rocking himself in his saddle till the pennon on his lance shook and the point dipped towards his horse's ear.
"Ho! ho!" chorused his companion, slapping his thigh jovially. "Jorian, did you hear that? 'The Prince of Plassenburg hath a Princess, and she is often upon her travels.' Ha! ha! ha! Ho! ho! ho!"
"He hath said it! Ho! ho! He hath said it! He is a wise fellow, after all, this beardless Jack-pudding of Thorn!" cried the other, tee-heeing with laughter till he nearly wept upon his own saddle-bow.
I began to get very angry. For we men of Thorn were not accustomed to be so flouted by any strangers, keeping mostly our own customs, and reining in the few strangers who ventured to visit Duke Casimir's dominions pretty tightly. Least of all could I brook insolence from these Wendish boors from the outskirts of half-pagan Borrussia.
"The Prince of Plassenburg hath churls among his retinue," said I, hotly, "if they be all like you two Jacks, that cannot answer a simple question without singing out like donkeys upon a common where there are no thistles to keep them quiet."
Sir Thicksides, the fat jolter-head nearest me set his thumb out to stick it into the side armor of Longlegs, his companion, who rode cheek by jowl with him.
"Oo-oo-ahoo!" cried he, crowing with mirth, as if I had said a yet more facetious thing. "'Tis a simple question--'Hath the Prince of Plassenburg a Princess, and is she not oft--ahoo!' Boris, prod me with thy lance-shaft hard, to keep me from doing myself an ill turn with this fellow's innocence."
"Hold up, Jorian !" answered the long man, promptly pounding him on the back with the butt of his spear. "Hold up, fat Jorian! Let not thy love of mirth do thee any injury. For thou art a good comrade, and fools were ever apt to divert thee too much. I have seen thee at this before--that time we went to Wilna, and the fellow in motley gave thee griping spasms with his tomfoolery."
Then was I mainly angry, as indeed I had sufficient occasion.
"You are but churls," I said, "and the next thing to knaves. And I will e'en inform the Prince when we arrive what like are the men whom he sets to escort ladies to his castle."
But though they were silenter after this, it was not from any alarm at my words, but simply because they had laughed themselves out of ply. For as I rode on in high dudgeon, half-way between the women and the men-at-arms, I could see them with the corner of an eye still nudging each other with their thumbs and throwing back their heads, and the breeze blew me scraps of their limited conversation.
"Ho! ho! Good, was it not? 'The Prince hath a Princess, and she--' Ho! ho! Good!"
The ridges of clay of which I have already spoken continued and increased in size as we went on. It was a dried-up, speckled, unwholesome-looking land. And people upon it there were none that we could see. The large fortified farms had ceased altogether. A certain frightful monotony reigned everywhere. Ravines, like cracks which the sun makes in mud, but a thousand times greater, began to split the hills perpendicularly to their very roots. The path wound perilously this way and that among them. And presently Jorian and Boris rode past me to take the lead, for Ysolinde and Helene were inclined to mistake the way as often as they came to the crossing and interweaving of the intricate paths.
And as these two jolly jackasses rode past at my right side I could see the thumb of long Boris curving towards the ribs of his companion, and the shoulders of both shaking as they chuckled.
"A rare simpleton's question, i' faith, yes. Ho! ho! Good!" they chorussed. "'The Prince hath a Princess'--the cock hath a hen, and she-- Ha! ha! Good!"
At that moment I could with pleasure have slain Jorian and Boris for open-mouthed, unshaven, slab-sided Wendish pigs, as indeed they were.
Yet, had I done so, we had fared but ill without them. For had they been a thousand times jackasses and rotten pudding-heads (as they were), at least they knew the way and something of the unchristian people among whom we were going.
And so in a little while, as we wound our way along the face of these perilons rifts in the baked clay, with the mottled, inefficient river feeling its way gingerly at the bottom of the buff--colored ravine, what was my astonishment to see Jorian and Boris turn sharply at right angles and ride single file up one of the dry lateral cracks which opened, as it were, directly into the hill-side!
They did this without ever looking at the landmarks, like men who are anyways uncertain of their road. But, on the contrary, they wheeled confidently and rode jauntily on, and we three meekly followed, having by this time lost the Lubber Fiend, the devil doubtless knew where. For we must have followed Boris and Jorian unquestioningly had they led us into the bowels of the earth, as indeed, at first sight, they seemed to be doing.


CHAPTER XX
THE EARTH-DWELLERS OF NO MAN'S LAND
Then presently we came to a strange place, the like of which I have never seen, save here on the borders of the Mark and the northern Wendish lands. An amalgam of lime, or binding stuff of some sort, had glued the clay of the ravines together, and set it stiff and fast like dried plaster. So, as we went up the narrow, perilous path, our horses had to tread very warily lest, going too near the edge, they should chip off enough of the foothold to send themselves and their riders whirling neck-over-toes to the bottom.
All at once the Little Playmate, who was riding immediately before me, screamed out sharp and shrill, and I hastened up to her, thinking she had fallen upon a misfortune. I found her palfrey with ears pricked and distended nostril, gazing at a head in a red nightcap which was set out of a hole in the red clay.
"The country of gnomes! Of a surety, yes! And hitherto I had thought it had been but the nonsense of folk-tales!" said I to myself.
Which is what we shall say one day of more things than red-nightcapped heads.
But the Little Playmate uttered scream after scream, for the head continued coolly to stare at her, as if fixed alive over the gateway by the craft of some cave-dwelling imp of the Red Axe.
I noticed, however, that the head chewed a straw and spat, which I deemed a gnome would not do--though wherefore straws and spitting are not free to gnomes I do not know and could not have told. Yet, at all events, such was my belief. And a serviceable one enough it was, since it took the fear out of me and gave me back my speech. And when a man can speak he can fight. Contrariwise, it is when a woman will not fight that she can talk best, as one may see in any congress of two angry vixens. So long as they rail there is but threatening and safe recriminations, but when one waxes silent, then 'ware nails and teeth! And I am _not_ in my dotage to use such illustrations--as not unnaturally sayeth the first to read my history.
"Good man," cried I, to Sir Red Cap in the wall, "I know not why you stick your ugly head out of the mud, but retract it, I pray you! For do you not see that it alarms the lady and affrights her beast?"
The man nodded intelligently, but went on coolly chewing his straw.
Then I went up to him, and, as civilly as I could, took him by the chin and thrust his head back into the hole. And as I did so I saw for the first time that the wall of the clay cliff, tough and gritty with its alloy of lime, had been cut and hewn into houses and huts having doors of wood of exactly the same color, and in some cases even windows with bars--very marvellous to see, and such as I have never witnessed elsewhere. Presently, at the trampling of the feet of so many horses, people began to throng to their doors, and children peered out at windows and cried to each other shrilly: "See the Christians!"
For so, being but lately pagans themselves, if not partly so to this day, these outlandish men of the border No Man's Land denominated us of the south.
Presently we came to an open space sloping away from the sheer cliff, where was a wall and a door greater than the others.
Jorian rode directly up to the gate, which was of the same dull brick-red as the rest of the curious town. He took the butt of his lance and thumped and banged lustily upon it. For a time there was no reply, but the number of heads thrust out at neighboring windows and the swarms of townsfolk on the pathways before and behind us enormously increased.
Jorian thundered again, kicking with his foot and swearing explosively in mingled Wendish and German. Then he took the point of his spear, and, setting it to a hole in the wall above his head, he hooked out an entire wooden window-frame, as one is taught to pull out a shrimp with a pin on the shore of the Baltic Sea.
Whereupon a sudden outcry arose within the house, and a head popped angrily out of the aperture so suddenly created. But as instantly it returned within. For Jorian tossed the lattice to the ground by the door and thrust his spear-head into the cravat of red which the man had about his throat, shouting to him all the while