Before he could get up his own weapon the other cried: “Drop it! Throw your gun over, or I fire. Over with it, I say, or you are a dead man!”
Zarka’s face had gone grey, his eyes blazed with impotent hate. By a great effort he assumed a look of surprised protest, but his ever-ready smile was hardly a success, if, that is, it was meant for anything more than a diabolical grin.
“Herr D’Alquen!” he cried. “What do you mean, my good friend? Are you mad?”
But his good friend showed no sign of relaxing his attitude. “Drop your gun over, or I swear I’ll shoot,” he insisted.
The Count hesitated, and for a moment looked as though he were calculating his chances in an impromptu duel. But D’Alquen’s rifle covered him pitilessly; he could see that the aim was straight on his heart. Probably his wonder was that his intended victim had not fired without parley. After all, his opportunity was lost, and to lose his gun was to gain time. So with a protesting shrug he turned and threw the weapon ringing down the rocks below.
“Are you satisfied, mein Herr?” he demanded, with almost insolent blandness.
“Hardly, Herr Graf,” D’Alquen returned. “But that is something. It was lucky I did not wait for the stags, or my patience would have been exhausted. You did not mention that another matter claimed your attention first.”
The man’s mocking tone was not pleasant to the lord of Rozsnyo, possibly because it was precisely what he would himself have been pleased to indulge in had the tables been turned. However, he was forced to content himself with a remark, rather weak, considering the intensity of the situation.
“I was not aware that I had come out for sport with a madman.”
“As I was that my companion was an assassin,” D’Alquen retorted. “Now, Herr Graf, shall I send you after your gun?”