Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/16

 By SEABURY QUINN

A thrilling weird story out of the Dark Ages—a tale of wolves who were men and men who were wolves—a story of a Provencal soldier of fortune and a beautiful girl, who indeed were Fortune's fools

1. A Solitary Horseman Rides

OLD as polar ice, thin-strained as a sophisticated schoolman's logic, the moonlight flooded down the smalt blue sky, a spilth of argent luminance that laid a silver plating upon tree and bough and twig, on rock and scanty, frost-scarred turf, struck a thousand glittering reflections from the stars that glinted diamond-bright against the purple heavens, and picked dazzling highlights from the million tiny facets of the hoarfrost's rime. So bitter cold it was that whip-sharp crackings sounded from the frozen tarns where ice twice frozen ruptured into spider-webs of splayed-out fissures. The dry, dead leaves that clung like corpses hanged in chains upon the oak-trees' branches beat against each other with a clacking rustle like the brittle crackle of a crumpled parchment. The horse's hooves struck on the frozen earth as on the flints of a paved street.

The horseman hunched his shoulders forward in the rising wind and dropped his bridle on the saddle-bow as he beat his hands together to restore stagnated circulation. From crown to knee he was enveloped in an almost shapeless garment made of sheepskin with the wool turned in, a sort of loose surtout topped by a hood which hid his features as a friar's countenance is hidden by his raised capoch. His legs were cased in boots of Spanish leather decorated at the heels with star-shaped brazen rowels. Behind his left knee swung the metal sheath of a long sword. His palms struck on each other sharply; presently their tempo quickened, beating out the rhythm of a song:

His voice rang through the frost-bound uplands and echoed back among the stark tree boles:

Like an echo to his final note there came an answering voice, but not in song. It was knife-sharp, edged wife terror, shrill, uncontrolled, despairing, the cry of one who has the terrible foreknowledge of swift doom upon her, yet offers up a last despairing prayer for help although the possibility of help is hopeless. Silhouetted like a shadow in a lantern show against the cold effulgence of the moonlight, a figure raced across the hill brow, running with such light swift grace the horseman could have sworn its feet scarce spurned the frost- rimed rocks. Yet even as he watched, he saw the runner reel and stumble, then dash on again, but more slowly, with less sure-footed certainty. The fugitive was tiring rapidly.

Now an eery, long-drawn howl came quavering through the quiet night, and across the hilltop swept three furry shapes, wide-jawed, loose-tongued, eyes gleaming with a light as green as jealousy's consuming fire. If the hunted ran

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