The Red Axe Part 34

"Your man is dead, or the next thing to it, two other rascals grievously wounded, and the scoundrel Von Reuss fled, as well he might. But my archers are already on his track."

Up the hill came Jorian and Boris leading the rout.

"Is the Prince safe?" cried Jorian.

"The Prince is safe," said Karl, answering for himself.

"Good!" chorussed Jorian, Boris, and all the archers together.

"Catch me that man on horseback there!" cried the Prince. "Take him or kill him, but if you can help it do not let him escape. He is the Count von Reuss, and a double traitor."

"Good!" cried the pair, and set off after him, all dripping as they were from their abrupt pa.s.sage of the river.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

THE FLIGHT OF THE LITTLE PLAYMATE

We carried Dessauer back to the boat with the utmost tenderness, the Prince walking by his side, and oft-times taking his hand. I followed behind them, more than a little sad to think that my troubles should have caused so good and true a man so dangerous a wound. For though in a young man the scalp-wound would have healed in a week, in a man of the High Councillor's age and delicacy of const.i.tution it might have the most serious effects.

But Dessauer himself made light of it.

"I needed a leech to bleed me," he said. "I was coward enough to put off the kindly surgery, and here our young friend has provided me one without cost. His last operation, too, and so no fee to pay. I am a fortunate man."

We came to the gate of the Palace of Pla.s.senburg.

My Lady Princess met us, pale and obviously anxious, with lips compressed and a strange cold glitter in her emerald eyes.

"So strange a thing has happened!" she began.

"No stranger than hath happened to us," cried the Prince.

"Why, what hath happened to you?" she demanded, quickly.

"Your fine Von Reuss has proved himself a traitor. He fought a duel with Hugo here all tricked in chain-armor, and when found out he whistled his rascals from the covert to slay us. But we bested him, and he is over the hill, with Jorian and Boris hot after his heel."

"And he hath not gone alone!" said the Princess, and her eyes were brilliant with excitement.

"Not gone alone?" said the Prince. "What do you know about this black work?"

"Because Helene, my maid of honor, hath fled to join him," she said, looking anxiously at us, like one who perils much upon a throw of the dice.

I laughed aloud. So certain was I of the utter impossibility of the thing, that I laughed a laugh of scorn. And I saw the sound of my voice jar the Lady Ysolinde like a blow on the face.

"You do not believe!" she said, standing straight before me.

"I do not believe--I know!" answered I, curtly enough.

"Nevertheless the thing is true," she said, with a curious, pleading expression, as if she had been charged with wrong-doing and were clearing herself, though none had accused her by word or look.

"It is most true," the Princess went on. "She fled from the palace an hour before sundown. She was seen mounting a horse belonging to Von Reuss at the Wolfmark gate, with two of his men in attendance upon her.

She is known to have received a note by the hand of an unknown messenger an hour before."

I did not wait for the permission of the Princess, but tore up the women's staircase to Helene's room, where I found nothing out of place--not so much as a fold of lace. After a hurried look round I was about to leave the room when a crumpled sc.r.a.p of paper, half hidden by a curtain, caught my eye.

I stooped and picked it up. It was written in an unknown and probably disguised hand--a hand c.u.mbersome and unclerkly:

"Come to me. Meet me at the Red Tower. I need you."

There was no more; the signature was torn away, and if the letter were genuine it was more than enough. But no thought of its truth nor of the falseness of Helene so much as crossed my mind.

To tell the truth, it struck me from the first that the Lady Ysolinde might have placed the letter there herself. So I said nothing about it when I descended.

The Prince met me half-way up the stairs.

"Well?" he questioned, bending his thick brows upon me.

"She is gone, certainly," said I; "where or how I do not yet know. But with your permission I will pursue and find out."

"Or, I presume, without my permission?" said the Prince.

I nodded, for it was vain to pretend otherwise--foolish, too, with such a master.

"Go, then, and G.o.d be with you!" he said. "It is a fine thing to believe in love."

And in ten minutes I was riding towards the Wolfsberg.

As I went past the great four-square gibbet which had made an end of Ritterdom in Pla.s.senburg, I noted that there was a gathering of the hooded folk--the carrion crows. And lo! there before me, already comfortably a-swing, were our late foes, the two bravoes, and in the middle the dead Cannstadt tucked up beside them, for all his five hundred years of ancestry--stamped traitor and coward by the Miller's Son, who minded none of these things, but understood a true man when he met him.

I pounded along my way, and for the first ten miles did well, but there my horse stumbled and broke a leg in a wretched mole-run widened by the winter rains. In mercy I had to kill the poor beast, and there I was left without other means of conveyance than my own feet.

It was a long night as I pushed onward through the mire. For presently it had come on to rain--a thick, dank rain, which wetted through all covering, yet fell soft as caressing on the skin.

I took shelter at last in a farm-house with honest folk, who right willingly sat up all night about the fire, snoring on chairs and hard settles that I might have their single sleeping-chamber, where, under strings of onions and odorous dried herbs, I rested well enough. For I was dead tired with the excitement and anxiety of the day--and at such times one often sleeps best.

On the morrow I got another horse, but the brute, heavy-footed from the plough, was so slow that, save for the look of the thing, I might just as well have been afoot.

Nevertheless I pushed towards the town of Thorn, hearing and seeing naught of my dear Playmate, though, as you may well imagine, I asked at every wayside place.

It was at the entering in of the strange country of the brick-dust that I met Jorian and Boris. They were riding excellent horses, unblown, and in good condition--the which, when I asked how they came by such n.o.ble steeds, they said that a man gave them to them.

"Jorian," said I, sharply, "where have you been?"

"To the city of Thorn," said he, more briskly than was his wont, so that I knew he had tidings to communicate.