Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 23, 2025
"Have mercy on the poor folk!" she cried, when they had done shouting because of her safety. "At worst, they are but misguided, ignorant men!" By this time the doors of the Wolfsberg were thrown open from within, and the men crowded out, casting down their arms in heaps on either side the gate.
But I, Hugo Gottfried, had my eyes and my books open, and knew that I was but biding my time. So it came about that I carried no taint of the dread associations of the Wolfsberg about me as I went down the bustling street to the Weiss Thor to call on that learned and well-reputed lawyer, Master Gerard von Sturm.
The cruelty which had marked the reign of the Black Duke seemed to have afflicted the very face of the country with a visible curse. But the day of deliverance was at hand. As we came nearer to Thorn, there before us was the Red Tower, at first dimly apparent, then prominent, then commanding, finally rising higher than all the buildings of the Wolfsberg.
But I have learned from that night in the Inn of the Swan that when defiance has to be made, it is ever best to deal in no half-measures. And, besides, coming from the Red Tower of the Wolfsberg, their precious Society of the White Wolf, with its mummery and flummery, filled me with a hot contempt. "Kneel down!" cried the judge; "lay your head on the block!
And as for his head, I know not where that went to. But the rush of his followers was utterly checked by the barrier of dead. With a wild cry, "The Duke is dead! Duke Otho is slain!" they rushed down and out of the Red Tower, eager at once to escape unharmed, and to carry to their companions in the Wolfsberg the startling news. Nevertheless, I cleared my arm, wiped my axe, and again stood ready.
I remembered the ride of the wild horsemen returning from the raid such long years agone, the old man who carried the babe, and the Red Axe himself, who now lay dead in the Tower my father, Casimir's Justicer, clad now as then in crimson from head to heel. Ere long I arrived at the Wolfsberg, and as I came near the Red Tower I saw that the gate was open.
Then came my master out of the Hall of Judgment, his head hanging dejectedly down. As soon as he was observed the people crowded about, shaking him by the hand, thanking him for that which he had done for their maid, their holy Saint Helena of the plague. "We will not suffer her to be put to death, not even if they of the Wolfsberg raze our city to the ground!"
And in ten minutes I was riding towards the Wolfsberg. As I went past the great four-square gibbet which had made an end of Ritterdom in Plassenburg, I noted that there was a gathering of the hooded folk the carrion crows.
So I crouched in the dark of the stairs and listened with yet more quivering intentness. Presently I could hear shoulders set to the iron-studded surface, and a voice counted, softly, "One two three and a heave!" But though I discerned the laboring of the men straining themselves with all their might, they might as well have pushed at the rough-harled wall of the Wolfsberg.
Out in the square in front of the Wolfsberg I could hear a knocking dull, continuous, reverberant. At first I thought it must be within my own head. So I asked the soldier, after a little, if he heard it also. I had some faint idea that it might be Prince Karl of Plassenburg with his army thundering at the gates of Thorn.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking