Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/19

 to her ankles sandal fashion with long strips of gilded leather. But whether she were fair or dark, or young or old, he could but guess, since her sable hood concealed her features. He only knew her eyes shone greenly, like a cat's at night, whenever a stray beam of moonlight pierced the little cavern of her camail, and when they rested on him in calm speculation he felt small ripples of swift chill run up his neck and through his scalp—the eery warning feeling he had known when, walking in the forest, he had almost trod unwittingly into an adder's den.

In obedience to his whistle his frightened horse came to him and he vaulted to the saddle. The woman placed her foot on his and leaped effortlessly to the steed's back, where she sat behind him pillionwise, her arms about his middle, her fur-framed face across his shoulder. The spicy, bracing tang of mint was on her breath; from her fur garments came a subtle, luring scent of mingled myrrh and sandal that made him think of the bazars beyond the Bosporus where merchants from Arabia and Cathay brought stuffs so precious that a single invoice equaled a king's ransom.

"Meseemeth I arrived in good time for your purpose, Domna," he remarked as they clattered past the stiffening bodies of the wolves and mounted the hard, winding trail. "What didst thou in the wilds on such a night?"

"I sought a—flower."

"A flower? Domna Marye! In God's good name, what sort of flower grows i' this cruel air? Nor e'en the blanchflors of the snows could lift its head in such a biting cold."

"I sought a flower," she insisted. "I have need of it. Only in the dead of winter does it bloom, and then by moonlight only. I strayed beyond the castle gates to seek the blossom, and Count Otto's huntsmen were on quest. But for you, beau sire, I had been killed." A purring undertone, sardonically provocative, cynically seductive, seemed to underlie her slowly pronounced words and run from syllable to syllable.

He pondered her reply. At length: "What sort of men be these who course with wolves for dogs, and in the dead of night?"

"They do not course with wolves, messire."

"No? Then by the Devil's teeth——" He broke his query half pronounced, and instead:

"Whither would you we should go?" he asked. A vague uneasiness possessed him, a feeling of malaise that seemed to blow a warning trumpet in his inward ear. The woman's arms were wound about him tightly, and beneath the soft fur of her surtout he could feel the supple play of muscles firm and hard as though they were a youth's.

"There is no shelter but the Wolfberg, and that, belike, is worse than none for thee."

"The Wolfberg—Wolves' Hill?" he replied. This everlasting emphasis on wolves annoyed him. Wolves coursing in the moonlight, running women down like rabbits, attacking travelers in the hills; the very castle of the local noble named for them. "Ah pah!" he blew his bream out gustily. "Say est thou? Then let us go there quickly. Myself am nearly frozen to the bone, and thou must be near perishing. Stray dogs are given bones to gnaw and place beside the Are in Christian homes. Surely this Count Otto cannot offer less to us."

2. Otto von Wolfberg

HE Wolf berg limned its turrets black against the pallid moonlight. It crowned the highest peak that pierced the barren countryside, commanding from

W.T.—2