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

thought of my father's office itself, and from my childhood never for a moment intended to exercise it, nevertheless I had always the most notable facility in cutting things. Never to this day have I a stick in hand, when I walk abroad among the ragweed waving yellow on the grassy pastures below the Wolfsberg, but I must need make wagers with myself to cut to an inch at the heads of the tallest and never miss. And this I can do the day by the length, and never grow weary. Then again, for pleasaunce, my father used to put me to the cutting of light wood with an axe, not always laying it upon a block or hag-clog, but sometimes setting the billet upright and making me cut the top off with a horizontal swing of the axe. And in this I became exceedingly expert. And how difficult it is no one knows till he has tried.
So it is small wonder that as soon as I gripped the noble broadaxe which Helene passed me I felt my own man again.
Then we were silent and listened--and ever again listened and held our breaths. Now I tell you when an enemy is whispering unseen without, rustling like rats in straw, and you wonder at what point they will break in next, thinking all the while of the woman you love (or do not yet love, but may) in the chamber behind--I tell you a castle is something less difficult to hold at such a time than just one's own breath.
Suddenly I heard a sound in the outer chamber which I knew the meaning of. It was the shifting of horses' feet as they turn in narrow space to leave their stalls. Our good friends were making free with our steeds. And, if we were not quick about it, we should soon see the last of them, and be compelled to traverse the rest of the road to Plassenburg upon our own proper feet.
"Jorian," cried I, "do you hear? They are slipping our horses out of the stalls! Shall you and I make a sortie against them, while Boris with that pistol of his keeps the passage from the wicks of the middle door?"
"Good!" answered Jorian. "Give the word when you are ready."
With axe in my right hand, the handle of the door in my left, I gave the signal.
"When I say 'Three!' Jorian!"
"Good!" said Jorian.
Clatter went the horses' hoofs as they were being led towards the door.
"One! Two! Three!" I counted, softly but clearly.


CHAPTER XXIV
THE SORTIE
The door was open, and the next I mind was my axe whirling about my head and Jorian rushing out of the other door a step ahead of me, with his broadsword in his hand. I cannot tell much about the fight. I never could all my days. And I wot well that those who can relate such long particulars of tales of fighting are the folk who stood at a distance and labored manfully at the looking on--not of them that were close in and felt the hot breaths and saw the death-gleam in fierce, desperate eyes, near to their own as the eyes of lovers when they embrace. Ah, Brothers of the Sword, these things cannot be told! Yet, of a surety, there is a heady delight in the fray itself. And so I found. For I struck and warded not, that being scarce necessary. Because an axe is an uncanny weapon to wield, but still harder to stand against when well used. And I drove the rabble before me--the men of them, I mean. I felt my terrible weapon stopped now and then--now softly, now suddenly, according to that which I struck against. And all the while the kitchen of the inn resounded with yells and threatenings, with oaths and cursings.
But Jorian and I drove them steadily back, though they came at us again and again, with spits, iron hooks, and all manner of curious weapons. Also from out of the corners we saw the gleaming, watchful eyes of a dark huddle of women and children. Presently the clamorous rabble turned tail suddenly and poured through the door out upon the pathway, quicker than water through a tide-race in the fulness of the ebb.
And lo! in a moment the room was sucked empty, save only for the huddled women in the corners, who cried and suckled their children to keep them still. And some of the wounded with the axe and the sword crawled to them to have their ghastly wounds bound. For an axe makes ugly work at the best of times, and still worse on the edges of such a pagan fight as we three had just fought.
So we went back victorious to our inner doors.
Then Jorian looked at me and nodded across at Boris.
"Good!" was all that he said. But the single word made me happier than many encomiums.
In spite of all, however, we were no nearer than before to getting away that I could see. For there was still all that long, desperate traverse of the defile before we could guide our horses to firm ground again. But while I was thinking bitterly of my first night's sleep (save the mark!) away from the Red Tower, I heard something I knew not the meaning of--the beginning of a new attack, as I judged.
It sounded like a scraping and a crumbling somewhere above.
"God help us now, Jorian!" I cried, in a sudden, quick panic; "they are coming upon us everyway. I can hear them stripping off the roof-tile overhead--if such rabbit-warrens as this have Christian roofs!"
Boris sat down calmly with his back against the earthen wall and trained his pistol upward, ready to shoot whatever should appear. Presently fragments of earth and hardened clay began to drop on the pounded floor of the corridor. I heard the soft hiss of the man-at-arms blowing up his match, and I waited for the crash and the little heap of flame from the touch.
Suddenly a foot, larger than that of mortal, plumped through our ceiling of brick-dust and a huge scatterment of earth tumbled down. A great bare leg, with attachment of tattered hose hanging here and there, followed.
Before the pistol could go off, Boris meanwhile waiting shrewdly for the appearance of a more vital part, a voice cried, "Stop!"
I looked about me, and there was the Lady Ysolinde come out of her chamber, with a dagger in her hand. She was looking upward at the hole in the ceiling.
"For God's sake, do not fire!" she cried; "tis only my poor Lubber Fiend. Shame on me, that I had quite forgotten him all this time!"
At which, without turning away the muzzle, Boris put it a little aside, and waited for the disturber of brick-dust ceilings to reveal himself. Which, when presently he did, a huge, grinning face appeared, pushing forward at first slowly and with difficulty, then, as soon as the ears had crossed the narrows of the pass, the whole head to the neck was glaring down and grinning to us.
"Lubber Jan," said Ysolinde, "what do you up there?"
The head only grinned and waggled pleasantly, as it had been through a horse-collar at Dantzig fair.
"Speak!" said she, and stamped her little foot; "I will shake thee with terrors else, monster!"
"Poor Jan came down from above. It is quite easy!" he said. "But not for horses. Oh no! but now I will go and bring the Burgomeister. Do you keep the castle while I go. He bides below the town in a great house of stone, and entertains our Prince Miller's Son's archers. I will bring all that are sober of them."
"God help us then!" quoth Jorian; "it is past eleven o' the clock, and as I know them man by man, there will not be so much as one left able to prop up another by this time!"
"Aha!" cried the head above; "you say that because you know the archers. But I say I shall bring full twenty of them--because I know the strength of the Burgomeister's ale. Hold the place for half an hour and twenty right sober men shall ye have."
And with that the Lubber Fiend disappeared in a final avalanche of brick-dust and clay clods.
He was gone, and half an hour was a long time to wait. Yet in such a case there was nothing for it but to stand it out. So I besought the maids to retire again to their inner chamber, into which, at least, neither bullets nor arrows could penetrate. This, after some little persuasion, they did.
We waited. I have since that night fought many easier battles, and bloody battles, too. Now and then a face would look in momentarily from the great outer door and vanish before any one could put a shot into it. Next, ere one was aware, an arrow would whistle with a "_Hisst_!" past one's breast-bone and stand quivering, head-covered in the clay. Vicious things they were, too, steel-pointed and shafted with iron for half their length.
But all waitings come to an end, even that of him who waits on a fair woman's arraying of herself. Erdberg evidently did not know of the little party down at the Burgomeister's below the pass of the ravine, or, knowing, did not care. For, just as our half-hour was crawling to an end, with a unanimous yell a crowd of wild men with weapons in their hands poured in through the great door and ran shouting at our position. At the same time the window at the end of the passage opened and a man leaped through. Him I sharply attended to with the axe, and stood waiting for the next. He also came, but not through the window. He ran at me, head first, through the door, and, being stricken down, completely blocked it up. Good service! And a usefully bulky man he was. But how he bled!--Saint Christopher! that is the worst of bulky men, they can do nothing featly--not even die!
One man won past me, indeed, darting under the stroke of my axe, but he was little advantaged thereby. For I fetched a blow at the back of his head with the handle which brought him to his knees. He stumbled and fell at the threshold of the maids' chamber. And, by my sooth, the Lady Ysolinde stooped and poignarded him as featly as though it had been a work of broidering with a bodkin. Too late, Helene wept and besought her to hold her hand. He was, she said, some one's son or lover. It was deucedly unpractical. But, 'twas my Little Playmate. And after all, I suppose, the crack he got from me in the way of business would have done the job neatly enough without my lady's dagger.
I tell you, the work was hot enough about those three doors during the next few moments. I never again want to see warmer on this side of Peter's gates--especially not since I got this wound in my thigh, with its trick of reopening at the most inconvenient seasons. But the broadaxe was a blessed thought of the little Helene's, and helped to keep the castle right valiantly.
Yet I can testify that I was glad with more than mere joy when I heard the "Trot, trot!" of the Prince's archers coming at the wolf's lope, all in each other's footsteps, along the narrow ledge of the village street.
"Hurrah, lads!" I shouted; "quick and help us!"
And then at the sound of them the turmoil emptied itself as quickly as it had come. The rabble of ill-doers melted through the wide outer door, where the archers received and attended to them there. Some precipitated themselves over the cliff.