CHAPTER II.

A BURST FOR FREEDOM.

The crossbow was audibly rattling on Dickon's shoulder and his knees smote together after hearing what the old archer had told him about the so-called sorcerer. He looked hurriedly behind, with perhaps some vague thoughts of flight, but the sight of the fierce horsemen at his heels scattered these.

The boy plodded miserably forward, catching only here and there a stray word of what the archer further said. This was to the effect that the place they were pushing toward--dread Camber Dane--had been the home of the mad baron, Lord Tasktorn, for many years. Now for other many years his equally mad younger son, Sir John Camber, had been in possession of the estate.

A gruesome and awful man, by all accounts, was this Sir John, who lived alone with uncanny, dwarfish servant-people. It was said that he conjured gold and jewels out of the unholy flames he kindled, and was accurst of God and the church.

Little enough of this did Dickon comprehend, for the idea of an alchemist was new to him; but the terrors which the archer painted were none the less real to the lad.

He fancied that the air in the tangled copse through which they were now pushing their upward path already bore the fatal taint of magic. He strove to breathe as little of it as he could, and thus to avoid its spell.

The horses had been left behind, and their riders were now on foot like the rest.

Dickon looked anxiously about for some offer of escape. Then affrighted visions of what death really was rose before his eyes--all with startling suddenness taking on the likeness of his father, lying gasping on the straw of the squalid forge. It horrified his senses.

He stumbled blindly on with the rest, not seeing where or with whom he was going, and ever and again receiving blows from the armed men behind him, which he scarce noted.

All at once they all stood forth on the edge of a promontory. Beneath them spread out a picture of almost enchanted loveliness, with park and lawn, with garden, orchard, and lake. In the centre of all was a peaceful mansion, turreted and gabled for beauty rather than defence. Engirdling all was a broad oaken zone of forest. Midwinter though it was, the sylvan prospect seemed to speak of spring, and grass and trees alike were green.

As he looked down upon this scene, Dickon felt the fog of fright lifting from his mind. Somehow the notion dawned upon him that if death by a sorcerer's wiles awaited him here in this vale, it must be a gracious and almost pleasant death to fit the place.

His terrors left him,--as strangely swift as they had come,--and in their place there rose a curious sensation of regret that so sweet and goodly a home as this should be ravaged.

This was, however, too novel a thought to take easy root, and he forgot it again as they began creeping downward along the narrow, shelving path to the park. The marauding party were sheltered from view the whole length of this path by a hedge the height of a man's waist; and once the bottom was reached, their way led through a wood where bushes and saplings grew thickly in the shadow of giant oaks.

When at last the end of this had been won, they were close to the rear of a small stone building which they had not seen until now. An arrow's flight away was the great house, also in plain view--and there grave things were going forward.

As Dickon gazed out, a great cloud of black smoke burst forth from the upper window in one of the towers of this mansion, and through the smoke he saw a dark object hurled outward, and whirl swiftly to the ground.

As it fell and lay sprawled shapelessly there, the lad realized that it was a human being. Then, in a dazed way, he understood that he was witnessing the sacking of a manor-house.

Sir Watty and his troop were already inside, and from the narrow doors and windows faint noises proceeded--screams of terror, curses of rage, and the clashing of weapons. Through a little postern door two of the Egswith marauders were thus early dragging out spoil in hangings, armor, and russet and murray gowns.

At the back of the mansion, to judge by the sounds, there was fighting in the open air not less fierce than that within.

At sight of the booty issuing from the postern, Rawly uttered a roar of greedy exultation, and Dickon, in the twinkling of an eye, found himself bereft of all his late companions, who followed Rawly in a headlong race for the scene of plunder.

The old archer did hold aloof for a brief space, calling out to Dickon that in a minute, or two at the utmost, all these would assuredly be stricken dead; but when no such thing happened, and more costly stuffs appeared to view in the hands of the ravishers, he threw off his fears of magic, and ran forward at the top of his speed to join in the work of plunder.

Such combat as had been needed was now at an end. Sir Watty--unless, indeed, he had other visits on his mind--might have safely wrought all this mischief with the fifth part of his force. Dickon marvelled vaguely that so many men had been brought for such paltry fighting--in ignorance that his lord's true danger lay on the highroad, returning with his spoils.

Why the lad had not gone forward with his fellows he could not have told. There was no reason why the thought of plunder should be repugnant to him.

His whole life had been spent among men who lived by plunder, and only in the dimmest fashion did he comprehend that there were people able to command horses and armor who lived by other means.

Yet he made no motion to join the others, and in the curious interest with which he stared upon the scene before him, had wholly forgotten the crossbow under his arm.

As he looked a swaying, shouting knot of men-at-arms appeared at the chief door of the mansion, dragging forward, with great buffetings and scuffling, a person whom Dickon saw to be, despite his struggles and disorder, one of dignity and presence.

As they haled him out upon the sward, and he stood erect among them, the lad noted that he was tall and past middle age, with the white face which goes with gentle pursuits, and that he wore a blue side-gown with fur upon it, and had a chain of gold about his neck.

His brow was bleeding from a blow with an iron gauntlet, but he held himself straight and proudly. Now that they had ceased to buffet him, he seemed to be putting questions to them which they answered by ribald shouts. Instinctively Dickon left the wood and began to cross the open space, that he might the better hear the gentle questions and the rude answers.

Sir Watty Curdle came suddenly out from the door, and made his way with swift, striding steps to the centre of this strange group. The shouts of the soldiers rose the higher for a moment, and then ceased altogether, to make silence for what their dumb show gave to be a talk between the robber-knight and the gentleman.

Dickon had not won near enough to catch even the sound of their voices, when the parley came to an abrupt ending.

Sir Watty all at once lifted his mailed hand, and with it struck the other man a violent blow in the face. As the gowned and unarmed man reeled, a soldier with his pole-axe completed his master's work. The stricken gentleman fell heavily, sidelong, and two others on the instant pitched upon the body to tear off the chain and furred robe.

While he stood watching this, Dickon felt his heart leap upward, and then sink with a great sickening. He stood as if turned to stone for a moment; and when sense returned to him, he had unconsciously brought his crossbow forward and fitted a bolt in it, and begun to draw the string home. To do what? He never knew.

Some soldiers were running in his direction across the sward, sounding the halloo of the chase, and pointing their weapons toward him. His first thought--that their approach meant an attack upon him--bred promptly the resolve to die as hard as might be.

He set his heels firmly, and again began to draw his bow; but then it became apparent that these running men strove to call his attention to some other matter, for they themselves were headed now obliquely away from him.

Turning, he saw that two persons, an old man and a boy, were fleeing for their lives toward the wood. They had come from the small house near by, and might have won safety by this time if his presence there had not forced them to bend in their course.

Without an instant's thought he began running after them at his utmost speed. It seemed to him that he had never moved with half the swiftness before which now lightened his heels.

At the very edge of the forest, the old man staggered and tripped upon his long gown, and fell face to earth, so that the foremost of his pursuers tumbled over him. Dickon had a momentary glimpse of a reverend white head and long, snowy beard kicked on the ground among iron boots, and of a half-dozen furious men fighting over what seemed already to be a lifeless body.

Then he heard a hoarse voice cry out, "The lad has the jewels! After him! After him!" and two of these robbers plunged on in headlong pursuit of the fugitive boy.

What Dickon had seen thus swiftly had served to slacken his pace for but a moment, and now that he gave chase again he was nearer to the child victim than were the others.

As he rushed through the thick tangle of woodland, he could see that the boy ahead bore under his arm a casket, the weight of which so wore upon his frail strength that his flight could last but a little longer. Then it came that Dickon was between the strange lad and his pursuers, being very close to both, and was turned in hot resolve to face these murderers, with his crossbow strung and levelled.

It seemed to cover only a blinded and whirling instant of time--this struggle which enveloped him. Dickon sent his square-headed bolt with a twang! straight into the throat of him who, panting and red-eyed, led the chase. As this one threw up his knees and pitched forward, the young archer sprang fiercely over the body, and fell with the fury of despair upon the other.

There was a terrible brief wrestle upon the frosted leaves and moss. Then the second ruffian lay suddenly still.

Dickon stood in trembling amaze for a little, staring down upon these twain, whom he had in a frenzied second put beyond further combat. He shook like any winter leaf as he looked, and his legs bent beneath him--for this foremost dead man was Morgan, the very bone and sinew of Egswith's dread band.

To be burned alive were the lightest vengeance for such a trick as this.

Dickon now thought of flight. Turning in haste, he saw before him the boy with the casket, standing at the entrance to a rocky glade just beyond, and looking out upon him with a white face. He moved swiftly to him, and laid hold upon the box.

"Speed for your life!" he hissed; and then the pair, with no further word, set forth in a breathless stumbling race through the forest.

Before long the echoes of savage shouts at the rear rang over the thicket, but the hunted lads only shivered in silence and pressed on. Then the cries died away, and there was no sound in all the woodland save the rustle of their hurried footsteps.

At last, when they had crossed a second valley, and had arrived at a hill upon which tall fir trees grew sparsely, and the ground was spread with a dense carpet of dry spines, the strange boy threw himself to the earth.

"Further I may not stir," he groaned, and put his head down upon the soft pine-needles in utter weakness.

Dickon lifted the lad in his arms, and bore him a little way to a nook where some stunted firs, bunched close in a ring around an ancestral stump, offered shelter. There, when he had disposed his companion in comfort, and stripped off his own fretting haubergeon, Dickon had time to think and to look about him.

The lad whose life he had saved in so terrible a fashion was slender and small of stature, yet had a face which to Dickon seemed full of the wisdom of years. It was a pale and girlish face, with thin, fine lineaments and blue eyes from which shone knowledge and swift sense.

The brow was strangely high and white. Dickon had seen such once or twice among the younger of the preaching road-friars. The long hair which fell in two partings from it was of the color and softness of flax. His thin legs were cased in some light hose which Dickon held to be of silk--puny enough stuff for such a rude journey as they were making, and now much torn and stained.

His body was covered with a tight slashed tunic of a brown velvet. His cap--if he set out with one--had been lost in the flight.

The boy seemed to desire no talk, for he lay with his ear to the earth, breathing heavily, and so Dickon squatted himself on his haunches, and pried open the cover of the heavy casket he had borne so far.

Instead of jewels, as he had looked to find, there was naught but a block of leather, ornamented with raised strips of velvet and gilded lines, which wholly filled the box. When Dickon lifted it out from its encasing, this leather top turned as on a hinge; and fastened below it at the back were seen many folds of parchment, one upon the other, all covered with black markings strange to the eye.

Dickon gazed in wonder at the queer figures upon the parchment. Then his slow mind recalled the archers talk of magic, and he let the thing drop, open and with crushed pages, flat to the ground.

The lad sprang up at this with a murmur of alarm, and lifted the fallen object, solicitously smoothing out the parchments and shutting the leather over them. Then he reached for the casket, and put it inside again, eying his companion with vexed regard meanwhile.

"It is ill to mar what thou canst not mend," he said sharply.

"There are more bolts to my bow, an you mean me harm," Dickon answered, with a stout voice enough, but much uncertainty within. He took up his weapon to point the words.

The lad in velvet laughed. "What harm could be in me?" he said, and laughed again. "Bolts and bows, forsooth! Why, thou couldst spoil me with thy thumb." And still he laughed on.

"Yon leathern gear--is it goodly?" Dickon pointed to the casket.

"What--my Troilus?" Looking into Dickon's honest face, he understood his fears, and answered gently: "Nay, ease thy mind. It is a book--a book not written, but made with types. It tells to the skilled eye a brave story--but not braver, good fellow, than to-day's tale of thee. Art a stout carle, by the rood! Who is thy master?"

Dickon bent his chin upon his throat to overlook the device stitched upon his breast, but did not reply. A formless idea crossed his brain that perchance one might live in forests without a lord. It was worth thinking upon.

"And by what mercy camest thou at my heels?" the lad pursued.

Then, as these words brought up before him the awful scene at the woodland's edge, he fell to shuddering and choked with sobs.

"My good old master,--to die thus foully,--oh, woe! woe!" he moaned, and put down his head again.

Dickon pricked up his ears at the word. "Had you then a master, too?" he asked, and on the instant there sprouted in his heart a kindlier feeling for the lad. They were more of a common clay, it seemed, than he had thought.

"But you have no badge!" he commented.

"Badge? Badge?" the boy said hesitatingly, and Dickon noted now a strangeness of sound in his speech which, the while he had held him to be of rank, had passed unheard.

"What means it--badge?" asked the lad; and when Dickon pointed to the two hares on his own breast, the stranger burst again into laughter. A droll boy this, surely, who could be so merry and so tearful all in the same breath.

"Nay, I wear no mans collar," he said at last; and then, in pity for Dickon's perplexity, explained. "The good old man, Geraldus Hansenius, was my master only in love and courtesy, and in that he taught me in all the deep mysteries of his craft.

"He brought me from my own land, and here, where Sir John gave us honor and fair lodgment, we printed the book. And now, lo! in this short hour Sir John and Geraldus are foully done to death, and Camber Dane is despoiled--and the Troilus and I are hiding for our lives, like hares in a thicket. Ach Gott! Ach Gott!"

At this there were more moans.

"No hare am I," said Dickon, stoutly, "but if they try me, more like a wolf. Pick me out these threads."

He knelt beside the lad, who with a bodkin from his doublet ripped one by one the hated lines that had shown Dickon to be evil Sir Watty's man.

Then Dickon stood upright, and filled himself with a great, deep breath. The new sense of liberty seemed to raise his stature and swell his girth. He took off his iron sallet, and shook his free head proudly, nearer to the sky than it had ever before been lifted.

"We will live in the greenwood," he said in bold, boyish confidence.