Red Axe | Page 2

night, when all the other
children who would not speak to me were asleep. Then pulling on my
comfortable shoes of woollen list (for my father gave me all things to
make me warm, thinking me delicate of body), and drawing the
many-patched coverlet of the bed about me, I clambered up the stone
stairway to the very top of the tower in which I slept. The moon was
broad, like one of the shields in the great hall, whither I went often
when the great Duke was not at home, and when old Hanne would be
busy cleaning the pavement and scrubbing viciously at the armor of the
iron knights who stood on pedestals round about.
"One day I shall be a man-at-arms, too," I said once to Hanne, "and ride
a-foraying with Duke Ironteeth."
But old Hanne only shook her head and answered:
"Ill foraying shalt thou make, little shrimp. Such work as thine is not
done on horseback--keep wide from me, toadchen, touch me not!"
For even old Hanne flouted me and would not let me approach her too
closely, all because once I had asked her what my father did to witches,
and if she were a witch that she crossed herself and trembled whenever
she passed him in the court-yard.
Now, having little else to do, I loved to look down from the top of the
tower at all times. But never more so than when there was snow on the
ground, for then the City of Thorn lay apparent beneath me, all spread
out like a painted picture, with its white and red roofs and white houses
bright in the moonlight--so near that it seemed as though I could pat
every child lying asleep in its little bed, and scrape away the snow with
my fingers from every red tile off which the house-fires had not already
melted it.
The town of Thorn was the chief place of arms, and high capital city of
all the Wolfmark. It was a thriving place, too, humming with burghers
and trades and guilds, when our great Duke Casimir would let them
alone; perilous, often also, with pikes and discontents when he

swooped from the tall over-frowning Castle of the Wolfsberg upon
their booths and guilderies--"to scotch the pride of rascaldom," as he
told them when they complained. In these days my father was little at
home, his business keeping him abroad all the day about the castle-yard,
at secret examinations in the Hall of Judgment, or in mysterious vaults
in the deepest parts of the castle, where the walls are eighteen feet thick,
and from which not a groan can penetrate to the outside while the Duke
Casimir's judgment was being done upon the poor bodies and souls of
men and women his prisoners.
In the court-yard, too, the dogs, fierce russet-tan blood-hounds, ravined
for their fearsome food. And in these days there was plenty of it, too, so
that they were yelling and clamoring all day, and most of the night, for
that which it made me sweat to think of. And beneath the rebellious
city cowered and muttered, while the burghers and their wives shivered
in their beds as the howling of Duke Casimir's blood-hounds came
fitfully down the wind, and Duke Casimir's guards clashed arms under
their windows.
So this night I looked down contentedly enough from my perched eyrie
on the top of the Red Tower. It had been snowing a little earlier in the
evening, and the brief blast had swept the sky clean, so that even the
brightest stars seemed sunken and waterlogged in the white floods of
moonlight. Under my hand lay the city. Even the feet of the watch
made no clatter on the pavements. The fresh-fallen snow masked the
sound. The kennels of the blood-hounds were silent, for their dreadful
tenants were abroad that night on the Duke's work.
Yet, sitting up there on the Wolfsberg, it seemed to me that I could
distinguish a muttering as of voices full of hate, like men talking low
on their beds the secret things of evil and treason. I discerned
discontent and rebellion rumbling and brooding over the city that clear,
keen night of early winter.
Then, when after a while I turned from the crowded roofs and looked
down upon the gray, far-spreading plain of the Wolfmark, to the east I
saw that which appeared like winking sparks of light moving among
the black clumps of copse and woodland which fringed the river. These

wimpled and scattered, and presently grew brighter. A long howl, like
that of a lonely wolf on the waste when he calls to his kindred to tell
him their where-abouts, came faintly up to my ears.
A hound gave tongue responsively among the heaped mews and
doggeries