Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/33

 with darting point and flailing edge his partner in escape hacked at the hawsers which upheld the coulisse. The spike-toothed grating crashed behind them with a mighty bang as they fled down the causeway leading from the castle, and de Grandin turned and shook his fist back at the gloomy pile. "Trapped by Verigod!" he shouted. "The wolves are in the deadfall!" A shower of crossbow quarrels answered him, but all fell short, and he rocked with laughter as they rode away. With the portcullis down, its hawsers cut, the men within the castle were securely prisoned. They must run howling through their burning pen until the flames consumed them, as surely doomed to death by fire as if found guilty in the bishop's court and sentenced to be burnt for heresy and witchcraft.

They clattered down the mountainside through groves of evergreen and oak and out across the pleasant valley where the rising sun began already to shoot rosy darts and drive the clustering shadows back. Far off, in a sequestered franklin's cot, a cock crew with an elfin, silvery note. De Grandin sent a mocking "coquerico" echoing back and burst into a song:

Her rich contralto matched his lyric baritone:

The horses drew together as the trail-way narrowed, and he leant toward her and kissed her on the mouth. "En vous ma mort, en vous ma vie!" he quoted in a whisper.

"Ni vous sans mot, ni moi sans vous!" she answered, and her lips clung against his like iron to the lodestone.

was falling quickly. The sky's bright blue was stained to steel-gray, tawny, finally a dull slate, and presently the hard, cold moonlight crept between the branches of the trees as if to search the riders out, to say to something that pursued them: "Here they be!" No caw of rook or raven's croak came through the thick pine boughs, only the moaning of a wind that seemed to grow more cold each instant, and, occasionally, the crackle of a dry, dead leaf.

But was it just the crackling of dead leaves? About them, right and left, behind, before, marching with them, following, waiting for them, was a stealthy pad-pad-pad of tufted feet. It grew and multiplied till from every quarter it seemed closing in on them. Something streaked across the road before them like a flash of dancing light reflected from a mirror. A rabbit, flying with wings of terror on its heels. The rustling increased till it sounded like the slashing drive of hailstones on the dry-leaf carpet of the forest, and a deer shot by, running with the speed of desperation.

Basta's teeth were chattering. "This likes me not!" she whispered, drawing nearer to de Grandin.

He smoothed his restless horse's neck and wondered which particular saint to approach with a proposition. The Blessed Ones had never failed him yet, but this situation was unprecedented. Intermediate help was not to be despised, but in the circumstances it might be best to make direct petition. He bent his head and signed himself.

"Dom Dio, look on us," he whispered reverently. "We are very weak and full of sin, and oftentimes have transgressed Thy commandments. Nathless, Senhor Lord, we are very sorry for our misdeeds, and if it be Thy will to save us from the