Suddenly the bars of the door jangled on the stones under the swinging blows of the battering-ram. I heard feet clatter on the stair. They came with a rush, but long ere they had arrived at the top the pace slackened. Only one man at a time could come up the stairway, and it is always a drag upon the enthusiasm of an assault when at least two cannot advance together. The light flickered and filtered in from the torches in the streets, and the reflected glow of the bonfire on the roof made the stair-head clear as a lucid twilight.
I waited, with the axe swinging loosely in one hand. A head bobbed up, clad in a steel cap. Bat as the unseen feet propelled it upward the Red Axe took little reck of the head. Betwixt the steel cap and the rim of steel of the body armor appeared a gray line of leather jerkin and a thinner white line of neck. The Red Axe swung. I bethought me that it was a bad light to cut off calves' heads in. But the Red Axe made no mistake. I had learned my trade. There was not even a groan—only a dull thud some way underneath, such as you may hear when the children of the quarter play football on the streets.
Then the foremost of the assailants were blocked by the fallen body, and the feet of the men behind were stayed as the strange round plaything rebounded among them.
"Back!" they cried, who were in front.
"Forward!" replied those who were hindmost and knew nothing.
"Come, men—on and finish it!" cried the voice which had commanded the powder-flask and the tree—the voice I now knew to be that of Duke Otho himself.
But the kick-ball argument of the Red Axe was mightily discouraging to those immediately concerned, and as I felt the muscles of my right arm and waited, I could hear Otho reasoning, threatening, coaxing, all in vain. Then his tones mounted steadily into hot anger. He reviled his followers for dogs, cowards, curs who had eaten his bread and now would not rid him of his enemies.
"A thousand rix-dollars to the man who kills Hugo Gottfried!" he shouted.
"But, hear ye, save the girl alive!"
Yet not a man would attempt the first hazard of the stair.
"Knaves, traitors, curs!" he cried; "would that there were so much as a single true man among you—but there is not one worth spitting upon!"