Crockett Samuel Rutherford
Joan of the Sword Hand

CHAPTER L
THE DIN OF BATTLE

It was a strange uncouth band that Joan had got together in a handful of minutes in order to accompany her to the field upon which, sullenly retiring before a vastly more numerous enemy, Conrad and his little army stood at bay. Raw lathy lads, wide-hammed from sitting cross-legged in tailors' workshops; prentices too wambly and knock-kneed to be taken at the first draft; old men who had long leaned against street corners and rubbed the doorways of the cathedral smooth with their backs; a sprinkling of stout citizens, reluctant and much afraid, but still more afraid of the wrath of Joan of the Sword Hand.

Joan was still scouring the lanes and intricate passages for laggards when Boris and Jorian entered the little square where this company were assembled, most of them embracing their arbalists as if they had been sweeping besoms, and the rest holding their halberds as if they feared they would do themselves an injury.

The nose of fat Jorian went so high into the air that, without intending it, he found himself looking up at Boris; and at that moment Boris chanced to be glancing at Jorian down the side of his high arched beak.

To the herd of the uncouth soldiery it simply appeared as though the two war-captains of Plassenburg looked at each other. An observer on the opposite side would have noted, however, that the right eye of Jorian and the left eye of Boris simultaneously closed.

Yet when they turned their regard upon the last levy of the city of Courtland their faces were grave.

"Whence come these churchyard scourings, these skulls and crossbones set up on end?" cried Jorian in face of them all. And this saying from so stout a man made their legs wamble more than ever.

"Rotboss rascals, rogues in grain," Boris took up the tale, "faith, it makes a man scratch only to look at them! Did you ever see their marrow?"

The two captains turned away in disgust. They walked to and fro a little apart, and Boris, who loved all animals, kicked a dog that came his way. Boris was unhappy. He avoided Jorian's eye. At last he broke out.

"We cannot let our Lady Joan set forth for field with such a compost of mumpers and tun-barrels as these!" he said.

Boris confided this, as it were to the housetops. Jorian apparently did not listen. He was clicking his dagger in its sheath, but from his next word it was evident that his mind had not been inactive.

"What excuse could we make to Hugo, our Prince?" he said at last. "Scarcely did he believe us the last time. And on this occasion we have his direct orders."

"Are we not still Envoys?" queried Boris.

"Extraordinary!" twinkled Jorian, catching his comrade's idea as a bush of heather catches moorburn.

"And as Envoys of a great principality like Plassenburg – representatives of the most noble Prince and Princess in this Empire, should we not ride with retinue due and fitting? That is not taking the Palace Guard into battle. It is only affording due protection to their Excellencies' representatives."

"That sounds well enough," answered Boris doubtfully, "but will it stand probation, think you, when Hugo scowls at us from under his brows, and you see the bar of the fifteen Red Axes of the Wolfmark stand red across his forehead?"

"Tut, man, his anger is naught to that of Karl the Miller's Son. You and I have stood that. Why should we fear our quiet Hugo?"

"Aye, aye; in our day we have tried one thing and then another upon Karl and have borne up under his anger. But then Karl only cursed and used great horned words, suchlike as in his youth he had heard the waggoners use to encourage their horses up the mill brae. But Hugo – when he is angry he says nought, only the red bar comes up slowly, and as it grows dark and fiery you wish he would order you to the scaffold at once, and be done with it!"

"Well," said Jorian, "at all events, there is always our Helene. I opine, whatever we do, she will not forget old days – the night at the earth-houses belike and other things. I think we may risk it!"

"True," meditated Boris, "you say well. There is always Helene. The Little Playmate will not let our necks be stretched! Not at least for succouring a Princess in distress."

"And a woman in love?" added Jorian, who, though he followed the lead of the long man in great things, had a shrewder eye for some more intimate matters.

"Eh, what's that you say?" said Boris, turning quickly upon him. He had been regarding with interest a shackled-kneed varlet holding a halberd in his arms as if it had been a fractious bairn.

But Jorian was already addressing the company before him.

"Here, ye unbaked potsherds – dismiss, if ye know what that means. Get ye to the walls, and if ye cannot stand erect, lean against them, and hold brooms in your hands that the Muscovite may take them for muskets and you for men if he comes nigh enough. Our Lady is not Joan of the Dishclout, that such draught-house ragpickers as you should be pinned to her tail. Set bolsters stuffed with bran on the walls! Man the gates with faggots. Cleave beech billets half in two and set them athwart wooden horses for officers. But insult not the sunshine by letting your shadows fall outside the city. Break off! Dismiss! Go! Get out o' this!"

As Jorian stood before the levies and vomited his insults upon them, a gleam of joy passed across chops hitherto white like fish-bellies with the fear of death. Bleared eyes flashed with relief. And there ran a murmur through the ragged ranks which sounded like "Thank you, great captain!"

In a short quarter of an hour the drums of the Plassenburg Palace Guard had beaten to arms. From gate to gate the light sea-wind had borne the cheerful trumpet call, and when Joan returned, heartless and downcast, with half a dozen more mouldy rascals, smelling of muck-rakes and damp stable straw, she found before her more than half the horsemen of Plassenburg armed cap-a-pie in burnished steel. Whereat she could only look at Boris in astonishment.

"Your Highness," said that captain, saluting gravely, "we are only able to accompany you as Envoys Extraordinary of the Prince and Princess of Plassenburg. But as such we feel it our duty in order properly to support our state, to take with us a suitable attendance. We are sure that neither Prince Hugo nor yet his Princess Helene would wish it otherwise!"

Before Joan could reply a messenger came springing up the long narrow streets along which the disbanded levies, so vigorously contemned of Jorian, were hurrying to their places upon the walls with a detail of the Plassenburg men behind them, driving them like sheep.

Joan took the letter and opened it with a jerk.

"From High Captain von Orseln to the Princess Joan.

"Come with all speed, if you would be in time. We are hard beset. The enemy are all about us. Prince Conrad has ordered a charge!"

The face of the woman whitened as she read, but at the same moment the fingers of Joan of the Sword Hand tightened upon the hilt. She read the letter aloud. There was no comment. Boris cried an order, Jorian dropped to the rear, and the retinue of the Envoys Extraordinary swung out on the road towards the great battle.

Outnumbered and beaten back by the locust flock which spread to either side, far outflanking and sometimes completely enfolding his small army, Prince Conrad still maintained himself by good generalship and the high personal courage which stimulated his followers. The hardy Kernsbergers, both horse and foot, whom Maurice had brought up, proved the backbone of the defence. Besides which Werner von Orseln had striven by rebuke and chastening, as well as by appeals to their honour, to impart some steadiness into the Courtland ranks. But save the free knights from the landward parts, who were driven wild by the sight of the ever-spreading Muscovite desolation, there was little stamina among the burghers. They were, indeed, loud and turbulent upon occasion, but they understood but ill any concerted action. In this they differed conspicuously from their fellows of the Hansa League, or even from the clothweavers of the Netherland cities.

As Joan and the war-captains of Plassenburg came nearer they heard a low growling roar like the distant sound of the breakers on the outer shore at Isle Rugen. It rose and fell as the fitful wind bore it towards them, but it never entirely ceased.

They dashed through the fords of the Alla, the three hundred lances of the Plassenburg Guard clattering eagerly behind them. Joan led, on a black horse which Conrad had given her. The two war-captains with one mind set their steel caps more firmly on their heads, and as his steed breasted the river bank Jorian laughed aloud. Angrily Joan turned in her saddle to see what the little man was laughing at. But with quick instinct she perceived that he laughed only as the war-horse neighs when he scents the battle from afar. He was once more the born fighter of men. Jorian and his mate would never be generals, but they were the best tools any general could have.

They came nearer. A few wreaths of smoke, hanging over the yet distant field, told where Russ and Teuton met in battle array. A solemn slumberous reverberation heard at intervals split the dull general roar apart. It was the new cannon which had come from the Margraf George to help beat back the common foe. Again and again broke in upon their advance that appalling sound, which set the inward parts of men quivering. Presently they began to pass limping men hasting cityward, then fleeing and panic-stricken wretches who looked over their shoulders as if they saw steel flashing at their backs.

A camp-marshal or two was trying to stay these, beating them over the head and shoulders with the flat of their swords; but not a man of the Plassenburgers even looked towards them. Their eyes were on that distant tossing line dimly seen amid clouds of dust, and those strange wreaths of white smoke going upward from the cannons' mouths. The roar grew louder; there were gaps in the fighting line; a banner went down amid great shouting. They could see the glinting of sunshine upon armour.

"Kernsberg!" cried Joan, her sword high in the air as she set spurs in her black stallion and swept onward a good twenty yards before the rush of the horsemen of Plassenburg.

Now they began to see the arching arrow-hail, grey against the skyline like gnat swarms dancing in the dusk of summer trees. The quarrels buzzed. The great catapults, still used by the Muscovites, twanged like the breaking of viol cords.

The horses instinctively quickened their pace to take the wounded in their stride. There – there was the thickest of the fray, where the great cannon of the Margraf George thundered and were instantly wrapped in their own white pall.

Joan's quick glance about her for Conrad told her nothing of his whereabouts. But the two war-captains, more experienced, perceived that the Muscovites were already everywhere victorious. Their horsemen outflanked and overlapped the slender array of Courtland. Only about the cannon and on the far right did any seem to be making a stand.

"There!" cried Jorian, couching his lance, "there by the cannon is where we will get our bellyful of fighting."

He pointed where, amid a confusion of fighting-men, wounded and struggling horses, and the great black tubes of the Margraf's cannon, they saw the sturdy form of Werner von Orseln, grown larger through the smoke and dusty smother, bestriding the body of a fallen knight. He fought as one fights a swarm of angry bees, striking every way with a desperate courage.

The charging squadrons of Plassenburg divided to pass right and left of the cannon. Joan first of all, with her sword lifted and crying not Kernsberg now, but "Conrad! Conrad!" drave straight into the heart of the Cossack swarm. At the trampling of the horses' feet the Muscovites lifted their eyes. They had been too intent to kill to waste a thought on any possible succour.

Joan felt herself strike right and left. Her heart was crazed within her so that she set spurs to her steed and rode him forward, plunging and furious. Then a blowing wisp of white plume was swept aside, and through a helmet (broken as a nut shell is cracked and falls apart) Joan saw the fair head of her Prince. A trickle of blood wetted a clinging curl on his forehead and stole down his pale cheek. Werner von Orseln, begrimed and drunken with battle, bestrode the body of Prince Conrad. His defiance rose above the din of battle.

"Come on, cowards of the North! Taste good German steel! To me, Kernsberg! To me, Hohenstein! Curs of Courtland, would ye desert your Prince? Curses on you all, swart hounds of the Baltic! Let me out of this and never a dog of you shall ever bite bread again!"

And so, foaming in his battle anger, the ancient war-captain would have stricken down his mistress. For he saw all things red and his heart was bitter within him.

With all the power that was in her, right and left Joan smote to clear her way to Conrad, praying that if she could not save him she might at least die with him.

But by this time Captains Boris and Jorian, leaving their horsemen to ride at the second line, had wheeled and now came thrusting their lances freely into Cossack backs. These last, finding themselves thus taken in the rear, turned and fled.

"Hey, Werner, good lad, do not slay your comrades! Down blade, old Thirsty. Hast thou not drunken enough blood this morning?" So cried the war-captains as Werner dashed the blood and tears out of his eyes.

"Back! back!" he cried, as soon as he knew with whom he had to do. "Go back! Conrad is slain or hath a broken head. They were lashing at him as he lay to kill him outright? Ah, viper, would you sting?" (He thrust a wounded Muscovite through as he was crawling nearer to Conrad with a broad knife in his hand.) "These beaten curs of Courtlanders broke at the first attack. Get him to horse! Quick, I say. My Lady Joan, what do you do in this place?"

For even while he spoke Joan had dismounted and was holding Conrad's head on her lap. With the soft white kerchief which she wore on her helm as a favour she wiped the wound on his scalp. It was long, but did not appear to be very deep.

As Werner stood astonished, gazing at his mistress, Boris summoned the trumpeter who had wheeled with him.

"Sound the recall!" he bade him. And in a moment clear notes rang out.

"He is not dead! Lift him up, you two!" Joan cried suddenly. "No, I will take him on my steed. It is the strongest, and I the lightest. I alone will bear him in."

And before any could speak she sprang into the saddle without assistance with all her old lightness of action, most like that of a lithe lad who chases the colts in his father's croft that he may ride them bareback.

So Werner von Orseln lifted the head and Boris the feet, bearing him tenderly that they might set him upon Joan's horse. And so firm was her seat (for she rode as the Maid rode into Orleans with Dunois on one side and Gilles de Rais on the other), that she did not even quiver as she received the weight. The noble black looked round once, and then, as if understanding the thing that was required of him, he gentled himself and began to pace slow and stately towards the city. On either side walked tall Boris and sturdy Werner, who steadied the unconscious Prince with the palms of their hands.

Meanwhile the Palace Guard, with Jorian at its head, defended the slow retreat, while on the flanks Maurice and his staunch Kernsbergers checked the victorious advance of the Muscovites. Yet the disaster was complete. They left the dead, they left the camp, they left the munitions of war. They abandoned the Margraf's cannon and all his great store of powder. And there were many that wept and some that only ground teeth and cursed as they fell back, and heard the wailing of the women and saw the fear whitening on the faces they loved.

Only the Kernsbergers bit their lips and watched the eye of Maurice, by whose side a slim page in chain-mail had ridden all day with visor down. And the men of the Palace Guard prayed for Prince Hugo to come.

As for Joan, she cared nothing for victory or defeat, loss or gain, because that the man she loved leaned on her breast, bleeding and very still.

Yet with great gentleness she gave him down into loving hands, and afterwards stood marble-pale beside the couch while Theresa von Lynar unlaced his armour and washed his wounds. Then, nerving herself to see him suffer, she murmured over to herself, once, twice, and a hundred times, "God help me to do so and more also to those who have wrought this – specially to Louis of Courtland and Ivan of Muscovy."

"Abide ye, little one – be patient. Vengeance will come to both!" said Theresa. "I, who do not promise lightly, promise it you!"

And she laid her hand on the girl's shoulder. Never before had the Duchess Joan been called "little one!" Yet for all her brave deeds she laid her head on Theresa's shoulder, murmuring, "Save him – save him! I cannot bear to lose him. Pray for him and me!"

Theresa kissed her brow.

"Ah," she said, "the prayers of such as Theresa von Lynar would avail little. Yet she may be a weapon in the hand of the God of vengeance. Is it not written that they that take the sword shall perish by the sword?"

But already Joan had forgotten vengeance. For now the surgeons of Courtland stood about, and she murmured, "Must he die? Tell me, will he die?"

And as the wise men silently shook their heads, the crying of the victorious Muscovites could be heard outside the wall.

Then ensued a long silence, through which broke a gust of iron-throated laughter. It was the roar of the Margraf's captured cannon firing the salvo of victory.

CHAPTER LI
THERESA'S TREACHERY

That night the whole city of Courtland cowered in fear before its triumphant enemy. At the nearest posts the Muscovites were in great strength, and the sight of their burnings fretted the souls of the citizens on guard. Some came near enough to cry insults up to the defenders.

"You would not have your own true Prince. Now ye shall have ours. We will see how you like the exchange!"

This was the cry of some renegade Courtlander, or of a Muscovite learned (as ofttimes they are) in the speech of the West.

But within the walls and at the gates the men of Kernsberg and Hohenstein rubbed their hands and nudged each other.

"Brisk lads," one said, "let us make our wills and send them by pigeon post. I am leaving Gretchen my Book of Prayers, my Lives of the Saints, my rosary, and my belt pounced with golden eye-holes – "

"Methinks that last will do thy Gretchen most service," said his companion, "since the others have gone to the vintner's long ago!"

"Thou art the greater knave to say so," retorted his companion; "and if by God's grace we come safe out of this I will break thy head for thy roguery!"

The Muscovites had dragged the captured cannon in front of the Plassenburg Gate, and now they fired occasionally, mostly great balls of quarried stone, but afterward, as the day wore later, any piece of metal or rock they could find. And the crash of wooden galleries and stone machicolations followed, together with the scuttling of the Courtland levies from the post of danger. A few of the younger citizens, indeed, were staunch, but for the most part the Plassenburgers and Kernsbergers were left to bite their lips and confide to each other what their Prince Hugo or their Joan of the Hand Sword would have done to bring such cowards to reason and right discipline.

"An it were not for our own borders and that brave priest-prince, no shaveling he," they said, "faith, such curs were best left to the Muscovite. The plet and the knout were made for such as they!"

"Not so," said he who had maligned Gretchen; "the Courtlanders are yea-for-soothing knaves, truly; but they are Germans, and need only to know they must, to be brave enough. One or two of our Karl's hostelries, with thirteen lodgings on either side, every guest upright and a-swing by the neck – these would make of the Courtlanders as good soldiers as thyself, Hans Finck!"

But at that moment came Captain Boris by and rebuked them sharply for the loudness of their speech. It was approaching ten of the clock. Boris and Jorian had already visited all the posts, and were now ready to make their venture with Theresa von Lynar.

"No fools like old fools!" grumbled Jorian sententiously, as he buckled on his carinated breastplate, that could shed aside bolts, quarrels, and even bullets from powder guns as the prow of a vessel sheds the waves to either side in a good northerly wind.

"'Tis you should know," retorted Boris, "being both old and a fool."

"A man is known by the company he keeps!" answered Jorian, adjusting the lining of his steel cap, which was somewhat in disarray after the battle of the morning.

"Ah!" sighed his companion. "I would that I had the choosing of the company I am to keep this night!"

"And I!" assented Jorian, looking solemn for once as he thought of pretty Martha Pappenheim.

"Well, we do it from a good motive," said Boris; "that is one comfort. And if we lose our lives, Prince Conrad will order many masses (they will need to be very many) for your soul's peace and good quittance from purgatory!"

"Humph!" said Jorian, as if he did not see much comfort in that, "I would rather have a box on the ear from Martha Pappenheim than all the matins of all the priests that ever sung laud!"

"Canst have that and welcome – if her sister will do as well!" cried Anna, as the two men went out into the long passage. And she suited the deed to the word.

"Oh! I have hurt my hand against that hard helmet. It serves me right for listening! Marthe!" – she looked about for her sister before turning to the soldiers – "see, I have hurt my hand," she added.

Then she made the tears well up in her eyes by an art of the tongue in the throat she had.

"Kiss it well, Marthe!" she said, looking up at her sister as she came along the passage swinging a lantern as carelessly as if there were not a Muscovite in the world.

But Boris forestalled the newcomer and caught up the small white hand in the soft leathern grip of his palm where the ring-mail stopped.

"I will do that better than any sister!" he said.

"That, indeed, you cannot; for only the kiss of love can make a hurt better!"

Anna glanced up at him with wet eyes, a little maid full of innocence and simplicity. Most certainly she was all unconscious of the danger in which she was putting herself.

"Well, then, I love you!" said Boris, who did his wooing plainly.

And did not kiss her hand.

Meanwhile the others had wandered to the end of the passage and now stood at the turnpike staircase, the light of Martha Pappenheim's lantern making a dim haze of light about them.

Anna looked at Boris as often as she could.

"You really love me?" she questioned. "No, you cannot; you have known me too brief a time. Besides, this is no time to speak of love, with the enemy at the gates!"

"Tush!" said Boris, with the roughness which Anna had looked for in vain among all the youth of Courtland. "I tell you, girl, it is the time. You and I are no Courtlanders, God be thanked! In a little while I shall ride back to Plassenburg, which is a place where men live. I shall not go alone. You, little Anna, shall come, too!"

"You are not deceiving me?" she murmured, looking up upon occasion. "There is none at Plassenburg whom you love at all?"

"I have never loved any woman but you!" said Boris, settling his conscience by adding mentally, "though I may have thought I did when I told them so."

"Nor I any man!" said Anna, softly meditative, making, however, a similar addition.

Thus Greek met Greek, and both were very happy in the belief that their own was the only mental reservation.

"But you are going out?" pouted Anna, after a while. "Why cannot you stay in the Castle to-night?"

"To-night of all nights it is impossible," said Boris. "We must make the rounds and see that the gates are guarded. The safety of the city is in our hands."

"You are sure that you will not run into any danger!" said Anna anxiously. She remembered a certain precariousness of tenure among some of her previous – mental reservations. There was Fritz Wünch, who had laughed at the red beard of a Prussian baron; Wilhelm of Bautzen, who went once too often on a foray with his uncle, Fighting Max of Castelnau —

For answer the staunch war-captain kissed her, and the girl clung to her lover, this time in real tears. Martha's candle had gone out, and the two had perforce to go down the stair in the dark. They reached the foot at last.

"None of them were quite like him," she owned that night to her sister. "He takes you up as if he would break you in his arms. And he could, too. It is good to feel!"

"Jorian also is just like that – so satisfactory!" answered Martha. Which shows the use Jorian must have made of his time at the stairhead, and why Martha Pappenheim's light went out.

"He swears he has never loved any woman before."

"Jorian does just the same."

"I suppose we must never tell them – "

"Marthe – if you should dare, I will – Besides, you were just as bad!"

"Anna, as if I would dream of such a thing!"

And the two innocents fell into each other's arms and embraced after the manner of women, each in her own heart thinking how much she preferred "the way of a man with a maid" – at least that form of it cultivated by stout war-captains of Plassenburg.

Without, Boris and Jorian trampled along through a furious gusting of Baltic rain, which came in driving sheets from the north and splashed its thumb-board drops equally upon the red roofs of Courtland, the tented Muscovites drinking victory, and upon the dead men lying afield. Worse still, it fell on many wounded, and to such even the thrust of the thievish camp-follower's tolle-knife was merciful. Never could monks more fitly have chanted, "Blessed are the dead!" than concerning those who lay stiff and unconscious on the field where they had fought, to whose ears the Alla sang in vain.

Attired in her cloak of blue, with the hood pulled low over her face, Theresa von Lynar was waiting for Boris and Jorian at the door of the market-hospital.

"I thank you for your fidelity," she said quickly. "I have sore need of you. I put a great secret into your hands. I could not ask one of the followers of Prince Conrad, nor yet a soldier of the Duchess Joan, lest when that is done which shall be done to-night the Prince or the Duchess should be held blameworthy, having most to gain or lose thereto. But you are of Plassenburg and will bear me witness!"

Boris and Jorian silently signified their obedience and readiness to serve her. Then she gave them their instructions.

"You will conduct me past the city guards, out through the gates, and take me towards the camp of the Prince of Muscovy. There you will leave me, and I shall be met by one who in like manner will lead me through the enemy's posts."

"And when will you return, my Lady Theresa? We shall wait for you!"

"Thank you, gentlemen. You need not wait. I shall not return!"

"Not return?" cried Jorian and Boris together, greatly astonished.

"No," said Theresa very slowly and quietly, her eyes set on the darkness. "Hear ye, Captains of Plassenburg – I will give you my mind. You are trusty men, and can, as I have proved, hold your own counsel."

Boris and Jorian nodded. There was no difficulty about that.

"Good!" they said together as of old.

As they grew older it became more and more easy to be silent. Silence had always been easier to them than speech, and the habit clave to them even when they were in love.

"Listen, then," Theresa went on. "You know, and I know, that unless quick succour come, the city is doomed. You are men and soldiers, and whether ye make an end amid the din of battle, or escape for this time, is a matter wherewith ye do not trouble your minds till the time comes. But for me, be it known to you that I am the widow of Henry the Lion of Kernsberg. My son Maurice is the true heir to the Dukedom. Yet, being bound by an oath sworn to the man who made me his wife, I have never claimed the throne for him. But now Joan his sister knows, and out of her great heart she swears that she will give up the Duchy to him. If, therefore, the city is taken, the Muscovite will slay my son, slay him by their hellish tortures, as they have sworn to do for the despite he put upon Prince Ivan. And his wife, the Princess Margaret, will die of grief when they carry her to Moscow to make a bride out of a widow. Joan will be a prisoner, Conrad either dead or a priest, and Kernsberg, the heritage of Henry the Lion, a fief of the Czar. There is no help in any. Your Prince would succour, but it takes time to raise the country, and long ere he can cross the frontier the Russian will have worked his will in Courtland. Now I see a way – a woman's way. And if I fall in the doing of it, well – I but go to meet him for the sake of whose children I freely give my life. In this bear me witness."

"Madam," said Boris, gravely, "we are but plain soldiers. We pretend not to understand the great matters of State of which you speak. But rest assured that we will serve you with our lives, bear true witness, and in all things obey your word implicitly."

Without difficulty they passed through the streets and warded gates. Werner von Orseln, indeed, tramping the inner rounds, cried "Whither away?" Then, seeing the lady cloaked between them, he added after his manner, "By my faith, you Plassenburgers beat the world. Hang me to a gooseberry bush if I do not tell Anna Pappenheim of it ere to-morrow's sunset. As I know, she will forgive inconstancy only in herself!"

They plunged into the darkness of the outer night. As soon as they were beyond the gates the wind drave past them hissing level. The black trees roared overhead. At first in the swirl of the storm the three could see nothing; but gradually the watchfires of the Muscovite came out thicksown like stars along the rising grounds on both sides of the Alla. Boris strode on ahead, peering anxiously into the night, and a little behind Jorian gave Theresa his hand over the rough and uneven ground. A pair of ranging stragglers, vultures that accompany the advance of all great armies, came near and examined the party, but retreated promptly as they caught the glint of the firelight upon the armour of the war-captains. Presently they began to descend into the valley, the iron-shod feet of the men clinking upon the stones. Theresa walked silently, steeped in thought, laying a hand on arm or shoulder as she had occasion. Suddenly tall Boris stopped dead and with a sweep of his arm halted the others.