Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Number 4 (1927-10).djvu/70

 more were trying to work up interest in a desultory cockfight near the portcullis. Ho hum! Life was good. His head nodded forward on his breast.

He was awakened by a ragged thunder of hoofs upon the lowered drawbridge. He leaped to his feet, all his sleepy content shattered, as a wild-eyed horse charged into the courtyard and plunged to a stop before him, in a great lather of sweat. From its back slid a bleeding bundle of a man whom he recognized as the serf Gomar. “Oh, sir,” gabbled this one, in a mixture of Saxon and English which Gil still found hard to understand, “oh, sir; Lady Constance! I must to Lord Robert. Gray Henry, the Wolf, has stolen”

Without pausing to finish, the serf started into the castle at a slouching, staggering run, and Couteau followed him, sword in hand.

They found Sir Robert Fitzgerald, lord of the castle, in an alcove off the main hall. He was dressed in a dust-colored robe, like the priest of some occult order, and, surrounded by an array of test-tubes and retorts, was poring over a huge volume as they rushed in.

He leaped to his feet, however, and strode forward with a step which belied his sixty-five years.

“Oh, sir,” cried the serf, throwing himself at the old man’s feet, “your daughter, Lady Constance, has been stolen”

“By whom?” thundered Sir Robert, jerking him to his feet as though the burly Saxon had been a feather.

“By your foster-brother, Gray Henry,” sobbed the man.

“Henry the Wolf,” whispered the old man, his face growing pale beneath his long beard. “But that’s impossible,” he cried, shaking the serf savagely. “She had three men-at-arms with her. Where are they?”

“Dead! We were put upon in the forest,” came the answer.

Sir Robert returned slowly to his seat behind the test-tubes. He seemed older—grayer. “Call my son Brian,” he commanded at length. “This matter will require fighting, methinks. Couteau, stay with me.”

He busied himself arranging his apparatus as the others departed. “You have heard of my foster-brother since you returned with us from Palestine?” he finally inquired.

“Merely his name, sir,” replied the other, “and that he holds Castle Barnecan, up the river.”

“There is more to it than that,” said Sir Robert. “Henry has an evil reputation. He dabbles in sorcery as I do in alchemy. Perhaps he has had more success than I. So ’tis said by the country-folk.”

He paused, paced back and forth for some moments, then resumed: “You have heard of the gray wolf of Barnecan?”

“Aye, sir, I have even thought a little of a hunt to kill it, since there is nothing else to do here, and the wolf’s deviltries are so numerous.”

“’Tis lucky you haven’t tried, Gil,” retorted the old man fiercely. “He killed my uncle, you know, and people say—well I must out with it—the people say that my cursed foster-brother is”

They were interrupted by a clatter of spurs on the flagstones. Young Brian, heir and only son of Sir Robert, rushed in.

“I have heard, Father,” he cried. “Constance has been stolen by that fiend. Why do you stand there so quietly? Come! We must find her; we must storm Castle Barnecan at once.”

He looked very handsome as he stood in his hunting clothes, for he was tall and blond and very, very young, or at least so it seemed to Couteau, who had fought seven weary years in Palestine.

“Sir Henry is too strong for us, boy,” reasoned his father. “We