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Updated: June 23, 2025
I went on towards the prison of the Wolfsberg; so it was nominated by a sort of grim superiority in that place which was all a prison the castle which had lorded it so long over the red clustered roofs and stepped gables of Thorn, solely because it meant prisonment and death to the rebel or the refuser of the Duke's exactions.
But as we travelled farther into the Wolfmark the city seemed to sink deeper into the plain and the dark castle of Duke Casimir to shoot ever higher into the skies. So that presently, as we looked back, we could only see the Wolfsberg itself, the abode of cruelty and wrong, standing black against the white sky of noon.
"Lady Ysolinde," said I, as they met with the mutually level eyeshot of women who measure one another, "this is Helene whom, for love and kindliness, we of the Wolfsberg call the 'Little Playmate." The daughter of Master Gerard impetuously threw back the gray monk's hood which shrouded the masses of her tawny hair.
Like a wave the people rushed in a black irregular mass at the front rank of the guard. The soldiers of the Duke were swept away like chaff; I could see one here and another there struggling in the vortices of the angry multitude. "On to the Wolfsberg!" cried the crowd.
He was shut up tight in the Wolfsberg, not daring to show his face to his own citizens. He would appear some fine day before the Palace of Plassenburg and slay every man of us. He was in a madman's cell, and Otho von Reuss was Duke of the Mark in his place. These were only a few of the stories which were brought to regale us daily.
But I hope no one will go back to the Wolfmark and tell the maids that Hugo Gottfried said this of them, or of a surety my left ear will tingle with the running of their tongues if there be any truth in the old saw. It was three of the clock and the sun was very fierce on the dusty, unslaked yard of the Wolfsberg, glaring down upon us like the mouth of a wide smelter's oven.
So indeed I thought also, as I looked out and saw the swarms of Duke Otho's men in the court-yard and about the square, and reflected on our helplessness here in the Red Tower within the defenced precincts of the Wolfsberg. But at long and last the most tardy-footed day comes to an end.
"We were long in riding over to Thorn two days and nights upon the way. It was a terrible time, and all the while those condemned beasts of the Wolfmark, Casimir's Black Riders, driving us with their spears like prick-goads, till our backs were all bleeding, gentle and simple alike. So at midnight of the third day we came to the city of Thorn, and up through the streets to the Wolfsberg.
These ponderous pieces of ordnance were presently being dragged through the swamps and over the brick-dust barrens of the borderlands, and it might be three or four days before they could arrive to aid us. There was nothing, therefore, to do but to sit down and wait, drawing a cincture that not a mouse could creep through about the cliffs of the Wolfsberg.
The shadow of the Red Tower, the stain of the Red Axe, was over us both so long as we abode on the Wolfsberg. Yet what it cost us to depart at least till we were out of the gates of the city I cannot write down, for to both of us the first waygoing seemed bitter as death. I remember it well. My father had been busy all the morning with his grim work on the day when we were to ride away.
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