"Death to the Princess Maritza!"
"You hear, Captain. Some one has fooled us all."
"Princess Maritza!" Ellerey exclaimed. "What has she to do with us?"
"Sufficient to give us a violent ending," Stefan answered.
"The golden cross is the sign of her house, her token; and you, Captain, have been her messenger."
CHAPTER XVI
THE TRAITOR
A smile wrinkled Stefan's face, not of amusement at the deception which had been practised upon them, but in expectation of disappointed rage from Ellerey. With diplomacy and the fine points of strategy Stefan the soldier had little to do. His business was fighting. It was his livelihood, and some day, near or far in the future as fate decreed, it would be his death. His respect for his fellows was measured by their power of withstanding him, and the man he had the greatest affection for, perhaps, was a soldier, now incapacitated, who had once in a melee succeeded in knocking him from his saddle. At the same time he believed in his own astuteness, not without some reason be it said, and in the back of his mind there was always a certain admiration for the man who could get the better of him. It is more than possible that if he ever married he would thoroughly respect his wife on account of her cleverness in having hoodwinked him into marrying her.
But the burst of anger did not come. Ellerey's eyes were fixed on the point in the pass round which the soldiers had disappeared, and for some minutes he did not speak.
"What is done must remain as it is," he said at last. "We have only ourselves to consider now. We must watch two and two, one on the plateau, one at the path. Anton and you, Stefan; Grigosie and I. It's short rations for us and careful use of cartridges. We must understand how our enemy is going to conduct this siege before we calculate our chances. What ammunition have we?"