Red Axe by Samuel Rutherford Crockett (books to read for self improvement TXT) 📕

home to find yourself brought to death's door by murderous treachery is quite another.
At this moment there came news of a diversion. From below was heard the crying of a stormy voice.
"Halt! I command you! Halt!"
And wheeling sufficiently to see, I observed through the twilight the figure of a stout man, who came leaping heavily up the hill towards us, waving a sword as he came. Well, thought I, the more there are of them the quicker it will be over, and the more credit for us in keeping up our end so long. Better die in a good fight than live with a bad conscience.
With which admirable reflection I sent my sword through Von Reuss's sword-arm, in the fleshy part, severing the muscle and causing him to drop his blade. I had him then at my mercy, and experienced a great desire to push my blade down his throat, for a treacherous cowardly hound as he had proved himself to me. But instead of this I had to turn towards the other two who came at the charge down the hill and were now close upon us.
I had just time to leap aside from the first and let him overrun himself when he shot almost upon the sword of the thick-set man, who came up the hill shouting to us to stop. The second man I engaged, and a stanch blade I found him, though fighting for as dirty a cause as ever man crossed swords in.
"Halt!" came the voice of command again--the voice I knew so well--"in the name of the State I bid you cease!"
It was the voice of Karl, Prince of Plassenburg.
"We must take the rough with the smooth now. We must kill them, every one, like stanch men of the Mark!" cried Von Reuss. "There is no safety for any of us else." And in a moment we were at it, the Prince furiously assaulting the second of the bravoes who came down the hill. More coolly than I had given him credit for, Von Reuss stuffed a silken kerchief into the hole in his shoulder, and repossessed himself of his weapon in his other hand.
It was the briskest kind of a bicker that ensued for a little while there on the bosky, broomy hill-side in the evening light. Ah, Dessauer was down at last and Cannstadt at his throat! I went about with a whirl, leaving my own man for the moment, and rushed upon the Count's false second. He turned to receive me, but not quite quick enough, for I got him two inches below where I had pinked his principal's ring-mail, and that made all the difference. Cannstadt did not immediately drop his sword. But his limbs weakened, and he fell forward without a sound.
Then as I looked about, there was the Prince manfully crossing swords with two, and the cowardly Von Reuss creeping up with his sword shortened in his left hand with intent to slay him from behind.
Whereat I gave a furious cry of anguish, that I should have been the means of bringing my noble master into such peril. The Prince Karl had at the same moment some intuition of the treacherous foe behind him, for he leaped aside with more agility than I had ever seen him display before on foot, and Von Reuss was too sorely wounded to follow.
Presently I was at my first bravo again, and the Prince being left with but one, Von Reuss took the opportunity to slip away over the hill.
The rest of the conflict was not long a-settling. There were loud voices from the stream beneath. The combat had been observed, and half a score of the Prince's guard were already swimming, wading, and leaping into small boats in their haste to be first to our assistance.
But we did not need their aid. I passed my blade through and through my assailant, almost at the same moment that the Prince spiked his man so directly in the throat, so that the red point stood out in the hollow of his neck behind.
Both went down simultaneously, and there was Von Reuss on horseback, just disappearing over the ridge. Prince Karl wiped his brow.
"What devil's traitors!" he cried. "Poor Dessauer, I wonder what he has gotten? Let us go to him."
We went across the plateau together, and knelt by the side of the old man. At first I could not find the wound, though there was blood enough upon his face and fencing-habit. But presently I discovered that his scalp had been cut from above the eye backwards to the crown of his head--a shallow, ploughing scratch, no more, though it had effectually stunned the old man.
Even as I held him in my arms, he came to and looked about him.
"Are they all dead?" he said, feeling about for his sword.
"You were nearly dead, dearest of friends," said my master. "But be content. You have done very well for so young a fighter. An you behave yourself, and keep from such brawling in the future, I declare I will give you a company!"
Dessauer smiled.
"All dead?" he asked, trying still to look about him.
"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 passage of the river.


CHAPTER XXXIII
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 constitution 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 Plassenburg.
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 scrap 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 cumbersome 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 God 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 Plassenburg, 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