“Wind your thongs yet tighter friends of mine!” the sneer broke gaspingly from the lips of the doomed. “I defy your malice and laugh at your doom!”
The interest now was most absorbing and intense.
Along the whole extent of blackened rocks, frowning above the level space, gathered the multitude gazing on the scene with gasping breath and woven brows; while the men-at-arms, circling along the base of the hill, stood silent and motionless, their upraised swords still glittering in the first beams of the morning sun.
And there, in the centre of the space of highway earth, placed haunch to haunch, stood the barbs of Arimanes, their eyes flashing as though a demon-soul lived and moved within each sinewy form; there were gathered the deformed Moors, each sable groom holding an ebon steed by the nostrils, for the bridles were now cast aside; there, standing at the side of each wild horse, the avengers of the dead, with the right leg advanced and dagger drawn, awaited the word of vengeance; and there, with his face turned upward to heaven, helpless and motionless, intense pain shooting through every vein, and quivering along every sinew, filling his brain with fire, his heart with ice, Aldarin the fratricide smiled in scorn, as the moment of his doom came hurrying on.
“Avengers of your Lord,” shouted Robin the Rough, “raise your daggers, and as the word falls from my lips, bury them to the hilt in the flank of each steed!”
“A word—a single word,” whispered Aldarin, in a subdued voice. “Draw near—I would say my last farewell—”
“What would’st thou have?” exclaimed one of the men-at-arms, advancing.
“When I am dying, ere the heart is cold, or the brow chill, approach and gaze upon my countenance, and as you gaze, take to your very soul.”
“Speak—man of blood—thy moments are well nigh spent.”
“Take to your very soul,” whispered the fratricide, as he slowly, and with difficulty, brought his head round to his right shoulder—“The Curse of Aldarin!”