Without, the mood of the night had changed. The sky, which had hitherto been of favourable aspect, save for the green light in the north as they rowed across the waters of the Haff, was now overflowed by thin wisps of cloud tacking up against the wind. Towards the sea a steely blue smother had settled down along the horizon, while the thunder growled nearer like a roll of drums beaten continuously. The wind, however, was not regular, but came in little puffs and bursts, now warm, now cold, from every point of the compass.
But still Joan slept on, being tired with her journey.
In their chamber in the wing which looks towards the north the three captains lay wrapped in their several mantles, Jorian and Boris answering each other nasally, in alternate trumpet blasts, like Alp calling to Alp. Werner von Orseln alone could not sleep, and after he had sworn and kicked his noisy companions in the ribs till he was weary of the task, he rose and went to the window to cast open the lattice. The air within felt thick and hot. He fumbled long at the catch, and in the unwholesome silence of the strange house the chief captain seemed to hear muffled feet going to and fro on the floor above him. But of this he thought little. For strange places were familiar to him, and any sense of danger made but an added spice in his cup of life.
At last he worried the catch loose, the lattice pane fell sagging inwards on its double hinge of skin. As Werner set his face to the opening quick flashes of summer lightning flamed alternately white and lilac across the horizon, and he felt the keen spit of hailstones in his face, driving level like so many musket balls when the infantry fires by platoons.
Above, in the vaulted chamber, Joan turned over on her bed, murmuring uneasily in her sleep. A white face, which for a quarter of an hour had been bent down to her dark head as it lay on the pillow, was suddenly retracted into the blackness at the girl's slight movement.
Again, apparently reassured, the shadowy visage approached as the young Duchess lay without further motion. Without the storm broke in a burst of appalling fury. The pale blue forks of the lightning flamed just outside the casement in flash on continuous flash. The thunder shook the house like an earthquake.
Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, Joan's eyes opened, and she found herself looking with bewilderment into a face that bent down upon her, a white face which somehow seemed to hang suspended in the dark above her. The features were lit up by the pulsing lightning which shone in the wild eyes and glittered on a knife-blade about the handle of which were clenched the tense white fingers of a hand equally detached.
A quick icy thrill chilled the girl's marrow, darting like a spear through her body. But Joan of Hohenstein was the true seed of Henry the Lion. In a moment her right hand had grasped the sword beside her pillow. Her left, shooting upward, closed on the arm which held the threatening steel. At the same time she flung herself forward, and with the roaring turmoils of the storm dinning in her ears she grappled something that withstood her in the interspace of darkness that had followed the flashes. Joan's spring had been that of the couchant young wild cat. Almost without rising from her bed she had projected herself upon her enemy. Her left hand grasped the wrist so tightly that the blade fell to the ground, whereupon Joan of the Sword Hand shifted her grasp upwards fiercely till she felt her fingers sink deep in the soft curves of a woman's throat.
Then a shriek, long and terrible, inhuman and threatening, rang through the house. A light began to burn yellow and steady through the cracks of the chamber door, not pulsing and blue like the lightning without. Presently, as Joan overbore her assailant upon the floor, the door opened, and glancing upwards she saw the Wordless Man stand on the threshold, a candle in one hand and a naked sword in the other.