The Harp and the Blade

  When all had quieted to listen I strummed a brief prelude and commenced singing. Thereafter my voice carried the burden of the tune, the harp supporting it with only occasional chords and runs of music between the stanzas.

  “Oh, Jacques met Ann And found her crying.

  ‘Pretty little Ann, say why do you weep?”

  ‘I’m wedding a man,

  And I’d rather be dying!’

  ‘What would you marry—a mute or a sheep?”

  Meanwhile my hands had been at work. “Where?” I had spelled. There was no response from Conan, and for a panicky moment I thought my scheme had failed. As I began the next strophe, however, my friend casually crossed his legs to sit, ankle over knee. He could thus use his shin bone for the transverse, his signaling fingers looking as if they were tapping time to the melody.

  “ ‘But Robert’s gray And mostly belly

  And stinks like a fish in the noonday sun.’

  ‘Then why not, I pray,

  Pick a fellow less smelly?

  For one so pretty it is simply done.’ ”

  “Northeast wing,” Conan had spelled. I looked at Gregory, but he wasn’t an attentive member of my auditors. His mind was on Chilbert’s visit. Father Clovis was smiling lazily, but I saw his eyes roll to take in Conan. He knew that something was being accomplished between us.

  ” ‘But Robert’s rich And Dad likes money

  Better than a heathen is loved by Hell;

  Ah, an old bear’s itch

  For to guzzle new honey

  Makes Robert pay high, so Father will sell.’ ”

  “Door?” I had asked. “No,” Conan had sent. That meant no egress except through the hall, which was bad.

  ” ‘Would you wed me?

  I haven’t a penny,

  But I will love you well, I swear, my sweet.’

  ‘But, Jacques, how could we Get along without any?

  All we pretty maids rather like to eat.’ “

  “Window?” I had spelled. “Too small,” had been the answer.

  ” ‘You’d rather bed,

  Come, dare confessing,

  With a lad like me than a fat, old cluck.’

  ‘But I’ll never wed

  Unless I have a blessing

  Given by my father, for that’s bad luck.’

  ” ‘Don’t, pretty Ann,

  Be broken-hearted;

  I’ll get a blessing for us out of hand,

  And as I’m a man,

  Stinking Robert, outsmarted,

  Will buy us a house and acres of land.’ ”

  “Guards,” Conan had been telling me. “Two. Lights. All night.” That was very bad. In fact, the more I learned the worse I felt.

  ” ‘Sir, do you know That in the hollow

  Kings buried treasure in the swamp of old?

  Now if you will go

  Down there tonight and follow

  Where the folly fire leads you’ll find much gold.’

  ‘I’m in a bog

  And stuck fast, sinking!’

  ‘Sir, will you let me wed your daughter dear?’

  ‘Why never, you dog!’

  ‘Then go on with your shrinking:

  I’ll stay around and watch you disappear.’

  ‘Oh, help me, Jacques!

  My neck’s in the water! ‘

  ‘Hard on the turtles, but it doesn’t hurt me’

  ‘I take it all back,

  You can marry my daughter;

  But first make sure that I’m alive to see.’ ”

  “Best wall?” I had asked. Having been there for some while and having, perhaps, visited the fort before he became an important enough figure to be worth a kinsman’s betrayment, he might know not only which steps up to the wall could be reached and climbed with the greatest chance of privacy but also, and even more important, where we could jump down with the least chance of breaking a leg. “North,” he had answered, which wasn’t good, either. That meant we’d have to circle half around the place before we could reach Fulke and the horses.

  ” ‘If there’s a maid For whom, sir, you’re pining,

  And you put your head through the bridal stone,

  She will be displayed

  In the moon’s shining

  With no clothes on her—just herself alone.’

  ‘My head’s stuck now!

  The devil’s in it!

  I can’t pull away so I’ll starve and die! ‘

  ‘Don’t fret, sir, I vow I’ll free you in a minute

  If you ‘II buy this oil—though the price is high.’

  ‘I’ll grease the hole And free you gently

  With no wounds left you by the rough, hard stone,

  Or shove a live coal At you incontinently,

  And you’ll jerk back then, ripped to the bare bone.’

  ‘The oil, Jacques, pray!’

  ‘Where is the money?’

  ‘Here in the belt I wear around my waist. ‘

  ‘You’re kind, sir, to pay For the luscious, new honey,

  All for me and which you will never taste.’ ”

  There had been one other thing to find out. What about the three men who had accompanied him into the fort? Once outside, Conan might be able to do something for them, and I knew, the odds being what they were against even Conan himself escaping, that that was their only chance. Still he might refuse to leave without them. I had asked about them during the stanzas, and, to my great relief, his answer had been: “Later.”

  ” ‘Sweet Ann, let’s run To church for wedding;

  Your father’s overjoyed that we are matched.

  And when that’s done,

  Then it’s ho! for our bedding

  In our own fine house that Robert has thatched.’ ”

  For one of the few times in my experience I took no note of the applause. I remember giving two or three other songs, then I excused myself and pretended to be very busy with the wine. Though as a matter of fact I drank almost nothing. I had many things to think over in a very short time, and I wanted only solitary silence; but Gregory might start thinking about me if I abruptly took leave of the company. It was he himself who came to my rescue. He had an eye on the harvesting and sent his men to sleep early.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  A DOZEN men, it turned out, were sharing the loft with me, but I got there first and gained the corner where my weapons were hidden. Those who straggled in after me had had enough wine on top of weariness to bring sleep suddenly. It would be a sound sleep, too, so that when I got ready to move none of them was likely to challenge me.

  I lay on my back, open-eyed in the black dark, and methodically worked the problem over. I had pictured Conan as being in some convenient guardhouse out in the court, watched over by no more than one man at a time. Such a sentinel could conceivably be slugged in peace and quiet, but as it was there would be no such easy means of getting at my friend. Aside from the two who stayed in a lighted room with him—they were taking no chances, sure enough!—there would be men bedded down in the main room of the hall, my point of entry, who’d rise at a word from the guards to overwhelm me.

  The only solution was to have the garrison’s attention otherwise and thoroughly occupied. Well, there was a means of doing that, though it would beget noteworthy dangers on its own account. After a while I was sure that the risk was worth it because there was no other way possessing even a smell of feasibility. Then I considered where to begin and concluded that I could do no better than to operate in the barn where I then was.

  Well, now it was coming. I used one of my old tricks for handling myself, running over some lines of amusing poetry to clear my mind of doubts and hesitations, then I sat up. Snores muted the rustling of the hay as I felt along the wall carrying the two blades still wrapped in my cape in such a way that they wouldn’t rattle against each other. My harp I had left behind. If I survived Conan could buy me another; if not, its loss would be a matter of no more concern to me t
han anything else. I was too intent on the business in hand even to regret the destruction of a fine and prized instrument.

  I felt as stealthily feral as my movements. One great thing about action, once it is thoroughly entered into, is its selfcontainment. It believes thoroughly in its power to complete itself. Nothing else seems possible, let alone logical.

  By listening carefully to the snoring and heavy breathing, I avoided stepping on anybody, though I came near falling out of the loft when I reached the edge. A minute later I located the ladder, however, and descended to stand in the litter of hay on the floor below. I could see a little there, but neither my eyes nor my ears could detect a possible watcher. Soft-footing it to the door, I saw that the court looked deserted. There was no sign of anyone being awake, but I knew there were guards on the walls. I stole back.

  It didn’t take long to make a pile of hay several feet high against the inside wall of the barn. The men above, I thought with hard humor, had better not sleep too soundly or they’d know all about Hell before they got there. Striking sparks to my tinder, I blew the glow to a flame.

  The hay smoked heavily, then burst afire. I threw more on, and the blaze stretched, reaching up to the hay drooping down from the loft. One pendent wisp caught but dropped harmlessly. Another took fire and did not drop. The little flame crept upward, got a grip on the main bulk of the hay, and spread like something spilled. A moment later there was the crackling of burning wood, and I waited for no more.

  As I ran from it I could hear a man coughing between drowsy curses. I spun when I had gone a few paces and made sure the glow was apparent from the outside. “Fire,” I yelled, running again.

  “Where?”

  “Look! It’s the great barn!”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Fire!”

  The watchmen shouted the dread word repeatedly as they came down from the walls. Possible danger from without was dwarfed by the archfoeman within. I hid in the shadow of the woodshed and watched them finish the rousing. There were frantic shouts from the barn itself now, and a frightened horse screamed horribly. The fire had eaten through the boards at its original starting point and was climbing up the outside.

  As I glanced toward the hall again, men began scrambling out, each pausing for an instant for a look then dashing either for the barn or for the well. Gregory was one of the first, for I heard his angry voice yelling commands. I had little fear that any of the men who sped by would look my way. They had serious business on hand.

  That barn housed horses as well as winter food for stock. The loss of either, let alone both, would be a crippling one. Then there was the chance that the fire would spread to the rest of the buildings, maybe all of them. There were none so far away as to be out of imminent danger. Prompt work should save the horses and, conceivably, part of the hay and other fodder, but I didn’t wait to watch. When no more men came out of the hall I skirted all around it and approached the door from the side away from the barn. Already the radiance reached half across the court.

  “Everybody out! Fire!” I shouted as I stepped inside.

  “Is it very bad?” a man called nervously.

  The voice came from a corner of the east side of the great room. I started to fumble my way toward it in the dark. “Everybody out!” I repeated. “Gregory says every man’s needed!” I bumped into a long table and guided myself by it. A streak of light, I could now see, showed under the door. Carefully I drew both swords, leaving the scabbards and the cloak for whomsoever would find them.

  “Get moving!” I commanded angrily. “You can’t skulk there and let us do all the work!”

  “Gregory’s orders were to stay here,” one of the men inside told me sharply.

  I was by then in front of the door, and I pounded it imperiously. “That was before the fire, you fools! Two other buildings have caught now! The whole shebang is likely to go, the hall included!”

  I could sense their hesitation and I was about to spring on it with more unnerving arguments when I heard scuffling sounds. “In, brother!” Conan grunted, and I hit the door with my shoulder. It shook but didn’t yield, so I stood back and leaped, smashing it with all my weight. There was a slight opening now, I shoved the spare sword through it half to the hilt, and pulled savagely. The sword broke; but its work was done, and I whirled into the room.

  Conan had one man under him and a grip on the other’s neck. The close quarters had forced the guards to drop their swords, but the man on top was working his knife loose. I killed him with a cut across his back. Taking the dirk, Conan finished the other and rose, panting.

  “They forgot and turned their backs,” he explained as he bent to help himself to a sword.

  Gregory’s men had done some shouting before they died, but there was far more noise out in the court. I handed Conan a torch when he straightened up. “Fulke’s in the woods’ edge off the corner nearest home,” I said. “You know how you want to go.”

  He nodded, and I could see his eyes gleam with the energy of fighting hope. “It’ll take several to stop us.”

  Up to that point my plan had worked, with some luck to help, as well as could be wished, but just ahead were the dangers I had foreseen. By the time we had reached the court the flames were so high and bright that a book could have been read almost anywhere within the fort. Moreover, the heat—for the barn was past the point where there was any chance of saving it—was such that it had driven people back toward the hall.

  Having saved the still excitedly snorting horses, all of the garrison except for a group engaged in wetting down the thatch of other buildings was waiting idly, if alertly, for the moment when a threat of more damage should call them into action. Indeed, some, seeking a cool vantage point from which to enjoy the terrible fascination of a destructive fire at night, had joined the women and children on the walls. A few were weaponless, but most had instinctively caught up their arms when roused from sleep.

  Whether or not Conan had had any more reasons, strategic or otherwise, for advocating the north wall, I had observed that the steps leading up to it were the nearest to the doors from which we now burst. Tossing away his torch, he led me full tilt around a knot of gabbling men, and we were half way to the wall before anyone was struck by our haste. Then someone shrieked: “Jesus! It’s Conan!”

  After that plenty of things happened. A bunch tried to cut us off, still tugging to get their swords out as they rushed us. We in turn, with our advantage of momentum, blasted through them without bothering to strike. Just before we reached the stairs one man with more hardihood than brains got in our way. Conan parried his outstretched sword and mowed him down by the force of his charge. I ran over him, feeling one foot sink in his belly, and then we were at the wall.

  The steps were short logs imbedded in the packed dirt, and we took them by threes. But men were concentrating to wait for us at the top, so that was where our real difficulties began. They were coming up behind us, too, naturally, and I turned to hold them back while my friend cleared the way as best he could. Men in the fort had stopped their fire-prevention activities to watch; others were mounting the walls at different points and running toward us; and Gregory was bawling orders to both groups. All this I noticed in one flash, and then I had no time to notice anything except who was trying to kill me. .

  There were some few so minded; but only two could be effective at a time, and I was in a strong position steeply above them. Conan had much the harder task. After a moment I nicked one of my opponents, drove his mate back, and stole a peek over my shoulder. Two men, incapacitated or dead, lay at Conan’s feet. He had seized footing on top, and I backed up to stand just below him.

  “Shall we shove and jump?” I barked.

  “Whip ‘em down, then come fast, and we’ll try,” he gasped.

  By tremendous exertion I backed them down four steps. The sounds told me that Conan still kept his place on the wall, so I yelled to let him know and came leaping. The weight of my drive carried me past him into
the melee, and a man in the rear rank toppled over the waist-high palisade with a cry. I gutted one but wasn’t fast enough in drawing back my blade to ward a stroke from another. I shifted but not far enough, and his sword sliced across my ribs. It wasn’t a bad wound, but avoiding a worse one had made me break my rush. Still I held my ground, and Conan surged along the little swath I had left.

  “Don’t stop!” he cried.

  They gave a little before the sweep of his weapon, and I piled after, stabbing one and kneeing another in the groin. The trick was to make it across the wall before they could take us full in the back. But I don’t think we ever would have succeeded if Gregory hadn’t spoiled his own game.

  Not that it was stupidity on his part. His dilemma was that Conan dead in advance was an asset that Chilbert would appreciate but one for which he wouldn’t pay. “Take Conan alive!” Gregory was howling. “Kill the other, but capture Conan! I’ll hang you all if he’s killed!”

  Their chief’s threat left them undecided, and Conan grasped the moment. Knocking two more men off the wall as he charged, he beat through the wavering swords, spun, and braced. I was after him on the instant, but I hesitated beside him, and he snarled at me. “Over!” he ordered, so over I went. Ducking beneath his swinging blade, I flung my own sword where I wouldn’t land on it—there was plenty of light in which to see where it fell—vaulted over the palisade, and dropped where God put me.

  Unlike the stone walls Conan was building, earthworks though steep, cannot be perpendicular. I hit with a jolt and tumbled swiftly to the bottom, but my descent didn’t have the absolute force of a fall. I was well bruised, but neither my wind nor my sense of direction was knocked out of me. I rolled completely over before I could jerk myself erect, then I lunged for my sword.