Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/21

 cabbages, no sweets, no food that grew upon the fields or in the forest; only meat, and that so lightly cooked that it was almost raw.

At the lower tables were the men at arms, coarse of body and unkempt as those who sat above them, and the air was heavy with the shouting of obscenities and the bellowing of drunken laughter. The rushes on the floor had not been changed for days, and sucked-out marrow-bones and bits of rotting food lay in them, festering like offal on a swill heap.

Frowzy slatterns, some thin as witches, some obscenely fat, some almost toothless, some with more hair on lips and chin that any stripling in his sixteenth year could boast, shared the half-cooked meat and sour beer and matched gross jest with ribald answer. But no brats ran squalling round the tables or fought for marrow-bones or chunks of meat among the rushes.

Through the stench of putrefying food and unwashed bodies ran another odor, a rancid, acrid smell to make the nostrils quiver and bring tear drops smarting to the eyes. It was not the odor of the kennel, for there were no dogs to be seen; yet it was something similar, only stronger, heavier, and, vaguely, terrifying.

The hubbub was so great that it was not until the provost guardsmen dragged their prisoner half-way to the table dais that Otto noticed them and brought his fist down on the board with a dish-rattling thump to enjoin silence. Otto of the Wolves' Hill did not rule by love. His frown was a sword and his sword was death. Even the most drunken of the company faltered into silence as the count's fist smote the oaken board, and the guardsmen hauled their captive to the well before the dais in silence still as midnight in a churchyard.

"What have we here?" Count Otto roared, glowering ogrishly at the captive stranger. "Speak, fellow, and declare thyself. Who art thou, and how darest thou trespass upon our demesne?"

They had stripped him of his sheepskin surtout while he lay unconscious in the courtyard, and now he stood in small-clothes, a soft suede jerkin of light brown laced high about his neck and topped with a brass gorget at the throat; snugly fitting breeches of the same soft leather cased his legs, tall boots of cordovan were pulled well up his thighs. He was a slightly built, small man with fair soft hair that hung in rippling waves about his neck and ears and gave him from the side and back a youthful, almost feminine appearance. But looked at from the front he showed no trace of femininity, for his upper lip was adorned with a pair of fierce mustachios reaching almost past his cheeks and twisted in the Spanish fashion into horn-like points. Upon his pointed chin a tuft of wheat-blond pointed beard thrust truculently out. His brows, in contrast to his hair, were vivid black, and arched so sharply that they gave his face a rather mocking, questioning expression. Deep set, his little round blue eyes might have seemed humorous had it not been for the curiously cold directness of their gaze. Bound though he was and still half fainting from the pike blow which had rendered him unconscious in the courtyard, he stood with martially squared shoulders and gave Count Otto glare for baleful glare.

"Come, sirrah, speak, or must I twist an answer from ye wi' the rack?" roared Otto, rising half-way from his seat. "Who art thou?"

Cold hatred blazed like frigid lightning in the captive's eyes. "I hight Ramon Nazara y de Grandin, gentleman of Provence and knight of Aragon, and here before thy varlets, trulls and lick-spittles I brand thee traitor to thy chivalry, if such thou ever had, Otto von Wolfberg, and