The Red Axe

by S. R. Crockett

"It is well," I shouted amid the din. "It is thrice well. But look ye to it. By the morrow's morn there shall not be one of you in your beds—aye, and those whose heads are rolled in the dust shall count yourselves the fortunate ones. For they at least will escape the fate of poor Hans Pulitz."

Now sorely do I wonder, at this distance of time, that they did not slay me in good earnest. But I have learned from that night in the Inn of the Swan that when defiance has to be made, it is ever best to deal in no half-measures. And, besides, coming from the Red Tower of the Wolfsberg, their precious Society of the White Wolf, with its mummery and flummery, filled me with a hot contempt.

"Kneel down!" cried the judge; "lay your head on the block! It has often been wet with the blood of traitors, never with that of a blacker traitor than Hugo Gottfried!"

So with that those about me thrust me forward and forced my head down. I was obliged to clasp the block with both my hands. As I did so I felt it well all over. Then I laughed aloud, with a laugh that must have appeared strange and mad to them.

For this their mock tribunal could not deceive one who had been brought up within the hum of judges of life and death, and with a father who as his daily business propounded the Greater and Lesser Questions. And their precious block, as smooth as sawn and polished timber, with never a notch from side to side, could not take in Hugo Gottfried, who had made a playmate and a printed book of the worn blocks of a hundred executions—to whom each separate chip made by the Red Axe had been a text for Gottfried Gottfried to expatiate upon concerning his own prowess and that of his fathers.

Nevertheless, it certainly gave me a strange turn when ice-cold steel was laid across my neck-bone. It burned like fire, turning my very marrow to water, and for the first time I wished myself well out of it. But only for a moment.

For there came a loud rattling of arms without, a thunderous and insistent knocking at the door, which disturbed the assembly.

"Open, in the name of the Duke!" cried, clamorously, many fierce voices without. I heard the rush and scuffle of a multitude of feet. The hands that had held me abruptly loosened their grip, and I was free. I raised my bound wrists to my brow and tried to push the bandage back. But it was firmly tied, and it was but dimly that I saw the hall of the White Wolf filled with the armed men of the Duke's body-guard, boisterously laughing, with their hands on their sides, or kicking over the mock throne covered with white cloth, the coils of rope, the axes of painted wood, and the other properties of this very faint-hearted Fehmgericht.

"But what have we here?" they cried, when they came upon me, bound and helpless, with the bandage only half pushed off my eyes.

"Heave him up on his pins, and let us look at him," quoth a burly guardsman. "I trust he is no one of any account. I want not to see another such job done on a poor scheming knave like that last, when the Duke Casimir settled accounts with Hans Pulitz!"