“There is no going back,” I answered. “It is no safer now to abandon the enterprise than to go on with it. We are not likely to be intercepted until we reach the pass. My advice is that we ride as far as we dare, and then take to the hills on foot, avoiding the passes. We shall have a scramble for it, but life and liberty are worth that.”
“Neither life nor liberty should have been in danger,” said Brunow, sullenly. “It is your fault if they are, and if I lose either through your folly, on your head be it.”
I reminded him that we had laid our plans together, and that they had had his full approval; but he was not in a mood to listen to reason, and I got no answer from him but a grunt of anger and disdain. The council of war had not served any very great purpose so far, and I turned away with a touch of desperation in my mind. I rode on, and the others followed. We skirted a wood which stretched from the river towards the nearest range of hills, and our horses' footfall on the turf, sodden as it was by the recent raiu, made hardly a sound. We kept well in shadow, and had advanced perhaps a couple of miles, when I made out the highway at a little distance looking like a broad ribbon in the moonlight. Suddenly a bugle-call shrilled on the air, and while we shrank closer into the shadow of the trees a tumult of hoof-beats filled the quiet night, and a whole squadron of cavalry came in sight, riding full tilt in the direction of the fortress. We could feel the reverberation caused by the galloping mass beneath us, and in a minute they were out of sight and almost out of hearing.
“That's a curious thing, sir,” said Hinge, speaking almost at my ear.
“What is a curious thing?” I asked.
“That is,” he replied, stretching out a hand in the direction of the vanished body of horsemen. “They've left nobody to guard the roads.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, eagerly.
“I counted 'em as they went by,” he answered. “There's every mounted man they've got in the place. They're all there down to the farriers. I'm a born fool, I am,” he added, in an accent of the greatest delight. “They've never been after us at all, sir. It's a bit of midnight drill. That's what it is. I'll bet the road's as clear in front of us as ever it was.”
After the fright we had had the news seemed too good to be true, but a brief consultation decided us to act on Hinge's hope, and to push boldly forward. We made for the highway, and following it at a road trot found ourselves breasting the first upward slope of the pass within a quarter of an hour. By-and-by the hills began to enfold us round, but the moon rode high and the road was clear and firm. For the first mile or so we kept an anxious outlook, but as the minutes went on our fears of interruption grew fainter, and our hopes rose to fever heat. We were all well mounted, our horses were fresh and full of vigor, and to all but one of us the ride itself was the merest bagatelle. But I noticed, riding side by side with the count, that he was reeling in the saddle like a drunken man, and at one moment he gave such a lurch towards me that if I had not been at hand to support him he would have fallen to the ground.
“I am weak,” he said, as I checked his horse and mine. “It is no wonder. I am surprised that I have come as far.”