Page:Weird Tales Volume 12 Issue 05 (1928-11).djvu/91

"hey will kill you, Hugo. Is she worth it?" quavered old Clauda, her lips trembling.

He turned to her tenderly and placed his arm about her waist.

"Clauda, you have been a mother to me and we love eaeh other, do we not? But now my heart lies in Ponkert, and if this girl dies, my life is an empty thing, for she is my worship and we have sworn an oath together. Take the horses to the camp, and if I never return they shall be yours, for I have plenty of money with me. Give Mirko a farewell, and this for thee."

He bent and kissed the soft, withered lips. They were wet with tears. Then gently he disengaged the arms that clung to keep him with her and he was away, running with long strides into the village streets, making a wide circle to avoid the first row of buildings.

Clauda, sobbing, led the horses around the village. With an uncanny prescience, she knew she would never see the boy again, and the days ahead would be bleak and drear without him.

And thus it came about that on the third night of the caravan's stay, from opposite sides of Ponkert came two men, animated with a single purpose, pawns in a game that neither could have understood—a game whose beginning was before their known history and whose end and far-reaching effects may not yet be done.

Ivga cried out and opened her eyes to a blinding glare. A sputtering torch scorched her face and hair as the guard bent over her and shook her shoulder roughly.

"What are you talking about?" he snarled. "None of your tricks, vixen! Art calling up some fiend from hell to serve thee, witch? Silence, or I'll slit your tongue! Why don't you answer me? Answer me; to whom were you talking? Why did you say 'You may!' and again 'Yes!' when no one spoke to you. Why, rat sister?"

With the entering of her body again, Ivga had forgotten the meeting with the Master and now she could only blink into the glare and murmur, "Someone is coming at last," hardly knowing the meaning of the words, for the Master had taken back the memory of the meeting as one last mercy.

Still holding her by the shoulder, the guard turned about, his face white with fear, for he was prone to superstition and expected to see some bat-winged thing close by, called from its evil nest by the witch.

A man was standing below at the foot of the steps.

His face was not visible, for a fold of his long black cloak hid all but his eyes, which glinted like steel in the brilliant moonlight.

The revulsion of feeling was too much for the sentry. "Who are you and what do you want?" he queried boldly. A sepulchral voice issued from the black cloak.

"I am a messenger from Hell for you, dog brother," it said. "Your place is prepared. Come!"

With slow tread the figure mounted the steps, and the sentry backed away as it came higher.

"Stop!" he squeaked in a terrified falsetto. 'What do you want?"

The black cloak fell to the ground as the man sprang up the last two steps, and the girl gasped "Hugo!" as he flashed her a quick, cheery smile and advanced toward her guard.

"I want the girl and your blood!" he spat. "Death to you, gutter offal!" And the guard, seeing that it was only a man before him, sprang forward, roaring.

Hugo grinned as a wolf grins; then, as the guard's sword hissed from its scabbard, the primitive rapier glimmered in the boy's hand like a