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

A squad of men were sweating at the task, but so far they had accomplished nothing.

"You are right," said Constans, letting the glass fall and turning to Piers Minor. "What can they be thinking of—wasting time in that hopeless tinkering? The one important thing is to close the passageway—if possible, by means of the portcullis; failing that, to block it up. If Piers Major but knew—nay, he must know."[Pg 244]

Piers Minor nodded; he understood the appeal.

"I am going to tell him," he said, imperturbably. "I will be careful about keeping out of sight until well away from the vicinity of the 'Flat-iron.' So as not to spoil sport for you," he added, smiling.

Constans accompanied Piers Minor to the street entrance, going over in detail the message that he was to bear to his father. A final admonition of caution, and they parted. It was still broad daylight, and Constans returned to his post of observation.

Of course, the expected happened. A report of the portcullis's unserviceable condition had been finally made to Quinton Edge, and already he was on the scene—a master indeed. The confusion, the contradictory babel of voices, dies away into order and silence, and, as Constans had foreseen, his orders were to suspend operations on the portcullis and proceed with all speed to the blocking-up of the archway. Choked to the ceiling with loose stones and other débris, it would be a formidable barricade to carry by assault.

Constans strode up and down the room, devoured by impatience. Piers Minor had been gone now upward of half an hour, and yet there was no sign of preparation in the camp of the allies. It would take possibly an hour longer to make the vaulted passage impassable; Piers Major must advance within half that time if he would take advantage of this secret weakness in the defence. Failing to do so, he would be thrown back upon the desperate adventure of the scaling-ladders, and the whole issue would then hang upon the effectiveness with which Constans could bring off his attack from the rear.

The restless fit passed, and Constans leaned out upon[Pg 245] the window-sill, watching the darkening sky. A fierce revulsion seized him as he pictured to himself the scene upon which the morning sun would look—the kennels red with blood, the horrors huddled in every corner, all the dreadful jetsam cast up by the ensanguined tide of war. Of necessity, perhaps, must such things be—the endurance of a lesser evil that the greater wrong might be forever blotted out. And yet his heart was heavy.

He looked out again upon the ruined wilderness of stone that hemmed him in. How he hated this monstrous city of Doom, infernal mother of treacheries and spoils! How weary he was of wandering through its stony labyrinths, fit symbol of his own oft-thwarted hopes! A vision of green fields and quiet waters rose before him, he seemed to be walking knee-deep in the lush grass starred with purple asters and the sweet meadow-flag—it was the old home paddock of the Greenwood Keep; there was the copse of white beeches, and through it came the flutter of a woman's gown. Eagerly he watched as she came to meet him—Issa; then she turned her face full towards him, and he saw that it was Esmay. He sprang forward.

A roll of drums beating the charge, and Constans started. "At last!" he said.

Piers Minor, keeping as closely as possible to cover, worked his way slowly to the northward and towards the Stockader camp, on the Palace Road. But, being unfamiliar with the topography of the district, he insensibly kept edging into dangerous proximity to the Citadel Square; suddenly he found himself within a[Pg 246] short block of its eastern front. He turned to retreat, and came face to face with a slender, black-eyed youth who must have been following close upon his heels. Discovered, he tried to dodge, but Piers Minor was too quick, and they closed. The youth struggled gallantly, but the Stockader had all the advantage in strength; in another moment Piers Minor had his antagonist crushed helplessly into a corner. He looked at the boy contemptuously.

"Not a sound, mind, or I'll twist your throat as I would a meadow-lark's. Why were you following me?"

The black eyes snapped back at him unwinkingly.

"Let me speak, then—you hurt me."

Piers Minor loosened his hold upon the slender throat.

"Go on."

"You are a Stockader, and there is a young man with you, fair-haired and with dark eyes—Constans by name? Do you know him?"

"Well, and if I do?"

"Will you tell me where and how I can see him? Just a word, or, if not, then to send him a message."

"It is impossible," said Piers Minor, stolidly. "This is a time of war, and only for life and death——"

"It is a question of that," insisted the youth.

Piers Minor shook himself impatiently.

"Speak out, can't you? What is it that he would care to know?"

"Tell him, then, that last night Esmay disappeared, and yet still remains in Arcadia House. He will understand, for he knows Quinton Edge."

"A woman!" ejaculated Piers Minor, in supreme disdain. "Always that."[Pg 247]

"Yes, always that," retorted the boy, and Piers Minor burst into a laugh.

"You are a bold one," he said, half admiringly. "Well, I will tell him; I promise you that. And now what am I to do with you?"

The boy made a grimace. "We may part as we have met, with no one the wiser."

"I am not so sure of that," said the other, suspiciously. "You are a Doomsman, and you know me to be a Stockader—a spy, if you like. If it were for myself alone I might trust you, but so much may hang——"

He stopped abruptly and his eyes darkened. "The only sure way lies at my knife-point." He scanned intently the face which paled before his gaze, yet changed not in the smallest line.

"Good!" said Piers Minor, heartily. "Although, indeed, I could never have done it. Yet I must bind and gag you," he added.

The boy pouted. "No; I will not have you touch me." He tried by a sudden movement to slip under Piers Minor's detaining hand. The shock displaced his cap, a fastening gave way at the same instant, and a mass of long, black hair tumbled down upon the youth's shoulders. Even then Piers Minor, being of masculine slow wit, might not have guessed the truth but for a bright blush that overspread brow and cheek, a confession that even his dull senses could not misinterpret.

"A woman!" he said, confusedly, and blushed as unrestrainedly in his turn.

Beholding his embarrassment, Nanna was relieved of her own.[Pg 248]

"You will have to trust me, you see," she said, coldly.

The abashed Piers Minor murmured an indistinct assent.

"And you will not forget my message?"

"No, no! He shall have it at the earliest possible moment."

"Very good—it is understood, then. Now you may go."

Piers Minor had not a word to say. He had been meditating upon a thousand possible explanations, excuses, apologies, and his tongue would not utter one of them. He accepted his orders meekly, but as he turned to go he managed to stammer out, "Of course—to meet again."

Nanna, to her own infinite amazement, answered with a look that meant yes, and knew that he had not failed to so understand it. As she walked over to the Citadel Square she could feel that he was standing where she had left him and looking after her. She would have turned to fittingly rebuke behavior so indecorous, but something told her that her insulted dignity would be better saved by removing it to a greater distance.

Nanna entered the Citadel Square after some parley with the sentinels on the walls, who grumbled at the trouble to which they were put to let down a rope-ladder; but, being a daughter of the Doomsmen, she could not be denied.

A little crowd of women and elderly men gathered about an ox-cart in the centre of the square attracted her attention. They were listening to a speaker who, standing upright in the wagon-body, was haranguing[Pg 249] them earnestly. Nanna recognized him—Prosper, the priest.

It was the old story—repentance, the wrath of the Shining One, and the imminence of the judgment. The men of the garrison, absorbed in their preparations for defence, paid no heed; only this handful of old men and fearful women, who crept a little closer together as they listened and sought one another's hands. "To-day, to-day, even to-day, and Doom is fallen, is fallen!"

A disquieting thought flashed into Nanna's mind, the remembrance of those carefully arranged broken wires in the empty house not more than a block away from the Citadel Square. Then of those other wires in the temple of the Shining One, spluttering their wicked-looking sparks. She strained her ears to catch the humming drone of the engines in the House of Power, but there was no sound to be heard—they could not be running.

"Yet there will be mischief worked to-night if the priest has his way," said Nanna to herself, and shook her black-polled head safely. "I almost wish that I had told him of that, too." And then, unaccountably, she blushed again, for all that it was dark and no one was looking at her.[Pg 250]

XXVI

THE SONG OF THE SWORD

It did not take long for Constans to arouse and collect his men; tired of inaction, they were only too glad to respond to the summons. And at the last, Constans, unable to withstand the entreaty in Red Oxenford's eyes, ordered his release.

"But, with the others, you must wait upon my word," he said, sternly, and Oxenford, fearful above all things of being left behind, gave ready assent to the condition.

Under the south rampart of the citadel they halted. There were but two guards on duty here, and they were easily surprised and secured before they could give an alarm. As one by one the rest of the company ascended the scaling-ladder, they were ordered to throw themselves prone on the flat top of the wall, to await the final signal. Over at the north gate the clamor grew momentarily—there were blows of axes on wood, and clash of arms, and the confused crying of many voices.

"The snapping-turtle must be at his work," said Constans to himself. "Wait until his teeth show through that flimsy wooden screen."

Piers Major had advanced promptly upon receiving[Pg 251] the message brought by his son. The chances of a frontal attack had already been discussed between him and Constans, and the latter had devised a formation which, in theory at least, should make such an undertaking feasible. In its basic idea it was the Roman testudo, described by Julius Cæsar in the Gallic Commentaries. The phalanx of marching men were protected from arrows, darts, and ordinary missiles by a continuous covering formed of their ox-hide shields, the latter being held horizontally above the head and interlocked. The overlapping shields bore a fanciful resemblance to the scaly carapace of a tortoise—hence its name; and, so long as the essential principle of unity of action was maintained, it might be reckoned an effective engine of warfare.

As the testudo moved down the Palace Road and towards the wooden barrier of the north gate, it was to be observed that the front-rank men and the file-closers carried their shields in the ordinary fashion, in order to ward off horizontally flying missiles. Once under the shelter of the walls, the leaders would immediately discard their now useless bucklers and begin to ply their axes, protected from overhead assaults by the overlapping shields of their comrades. The formation advanced steadily; there was a suggestion of terrific irresistibility in the very slowness of its progress; to the eager fancy it might have been the veritable recreation of some prehistoric monster, the illusion being heightened by the torchlight that flickered uncertainly over the rounded bellies of the shields of greenish leather and was reflected redly from their copper bosses.

The defence had been quick to recognize the character of the assault, and had done their best to repel[Pg 252] it. The catapults had been brought into action, and their huge projectiles hurtled constantly through the air, but for the most part innocuously, the machines not being in the best of order and the artillerymen unpractised in their use. It was not until the testudo had advanced to within fifty yards that a shot discharged by a machine, worked by Quinton Edge in person, took effect, the missile striking the testudo on the left wing and disabling three men. Before the advantage could be followed up the files had been closed again and the formation had advanced