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"Forward!" cried Baron Henry, and out from the gateway they swept and across the drawbridge, leaving Drachenhausen behind them a flaming furnace blazing against the gray of the early dawning. VIII. In the House of the Dragon Scorner.
What then was to become of our name and the glory of our race if it was to end with him in a monastery? No, Drachenhausen is the home of the Vuelphs, and there the last of the race shall live as his sires have lived before him, holding to his rights by the power and the might of his right hand."
Up from the gray rocks, rising sheer and bold and bare, stood the walls and towers of Castle Drachenhausen. A great gate-way, with a heavy iron-pointed portcullis hanging suspended in the dim arch above, yawned blackly upon the bascule or falling drawbridge that spanned a chasm between the blank stone walls and the roadway that winding down the steep rocky slope to the little valley just beneath.
"I will stay here," said the Baron, quietly, "and keep back those who follow as long as God will give me grace so to do." A murmur of remonstrance rose among the faithful few who were with him, two of whom were near of kin. But Conrad of Drachenhausen turned fiercely upon them. "How now," said he, "have I fallen so low in my troubles that even ye dare to raise your voices against me?
A white young face framed in yellow hair looked out into the courtyard from a window above; but if Baron Conrad of Drachenhausen saw it from beneath the bars of his shining helmet, he made no sign. "Forward," he cried again. Down thundered the drawbridge, and away they rode with clashing hoofs and ringing armor through the gray shroud of drilling rain.
"Sire," said Abbot Otto, "we have humbly besought you by petition, in the name of your late vassal, Baron Conrad of Vuelph of Drachenhausen, for justice to this his son, the Baron Otto, whom, sire, as you may see, hath been cruelly mutilated at the hands of Baron Henry of Roderburg of Trutz-Drachen. He hath moreover been despoiled of his lands, his castle burnt, and his household made prisoner."
There, day after day, Schwartz Carl kept watch upon the gray road that ran like a ribbon through the valley, from the rich town of Gruenstaldt to the rich town of Staffenburgen, where passed merchant caravans from the one to the other for the lord of Drachenhausen was a robber baron. Dong! Dong! The great alarm bell would suddenly ring out from the belfry high up upon the Melchior Tower. Dong!
There, having first stripped his prisoner of all his weapons, Hans sat the man up in the angle of the wall. "So, brother;" said he, "now we can talk with more ease than we could up yonder. I will tell thee frankly why I am here; it is to find where the young Baron Otto of Drachenhausen is kept.
Mayhap if he goes to dwell at Drachenhausen he may make you the better instead of you making him the worse." Then light came to the darkness of little Otto's wonderment; he saw what all this talk meant and why his father had come hither.
"I will tell thee," said he, at last; "I swore an oath that the red cock should crow on Drachenhausen, and I have given it to the dames. I swore an oath that no Vuelph that ever left my hands should be able to strike such a blow as thy father gave to Baron Frederick, and now I will fulfil that too. Catch the boy, Casper, and hold him."
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