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. Others were straightway knocked down, stunned,
and bound. Some died suddenly. And a few were saved to stretch the
judicial ropes of the Bailiwick. For it was always thought a good thing
by such as were in authority to have a good show on the "Thieves'
Architrave," or general gallows of the vicinity, as a thing at once
creditable to the zeal of the worthy dispensers of local justice, and
pleasing to the Kaiser's officer if he chanced to come spying that way.