The Prince Commands: Being Sundry Adventures of Michael Karl, Sometime Crown Prince & Pretender to the Thrown of Morvania (12 page)

At twelve minutes Michael Karl raised his hand and Urich put the battered hunting horn to his lips. There was breathless silence behind them. The watch hand touched thirteen, fourteen, Michael Karl brought down his hand and the horn sounded: “Mount and away.”

He discovered that the mare needed no urging. With an effortless stride she kept well ahead. Across the recently plowed fields they went leaving deep scored hoof marks behind them, and Michael Karl found himself wondering, as he loosed his saber in its sheath and knotted its cord around his wrist, what the farmer would think when he came to view the ruin of his land.

They struck a road and turned down it in a flash. The Black Coats rode easily with taut reins holding back their eager horses for the last charge up the streets of Rein.

Before he knew it they were pounding down the pavement of New Rein and somewhere before them a shot or two told them that Grimvich was still busy.

The Inn of the Two Horses was barred and its windows shuttered as were all the houses along the street. And then they were among the Legations. There were heads at the windows of the American Embassy, and from the balcony which hung above the British lion, a rash youngster leaned down to cheer them on with a shrill cry of “Good hunting!” after the flying heels.

Grimvich held the Bridge of the Flower Sellers, and from the windows of the neighboring houses his machine guns cracked and spit towards the darkened houses across the river where the enemy apparently had gone to earth. A soldier at the risk of being ridden down, dashed out to wave them to a stop, and Grimvich, as stolid as ever, came to stand at the stirrup of Michael Karl's plunging horse.

“His Majesty has been successful. The Fortress guns are silenced. Cobentz has withdrawn all but a few sharp-shooters from over there,” he waved toward the houses across the bridge. “We follow you!” he had to shout to be heard.

Michael Karl nodded furiously and drew his saber. The soldier at the edge of the bridge jumped aside and they were on. Then the mare flew across the bridge with Urich's powerful roan at her flanks.

The Black Coats were firing without waiting for orders, swinging low from the saddle and coolly picking their targets. A man with a dirty bandage around his unkempt head fired wildly at Michael Karl as he swept by. Urich raised his rifle and shot. The man threw up his arms in a queer sort of way and slid down to lie very still with his head in the gutter.

A lone machine gun tried to stop them but the long rifles picked off its operators until it was abandoned, and two of the Black Coats, who had lost their mounts, put it to some good advantage against its former owners in a neighboring house. The first headlong speed of those who went on had slackened; they were forced to go more slowly because of the sharpshooters and snipers at the windows and in the dark doorways. But the bulk of Cobentz's force had gone, only a few disputed their passage.

But Michael Karl was wild with impatience. He must get to the Cathedral Square and hold it free for Grimvich's passage. From below came the crackle of rifle fire and the steady chatter of machine guns.

“Grimvich has entered the Bargo!” shouted Urich in his ear. Michael Karl set his jaw. Snipers or no snipers he was going to reach the Cathedral Square. He screamed to Urich, and the hunting horn sounded the “Charge!”

The horses’ shoes struck sparks from the pavement and at the cost of two empty saddles they reached the avenue which ran into the Cathedral Square. Here and there a man could be seen firing desperately until he was picked off, but for the most part the Black Coats’ small force was free from attack.

Some one spurred alongside of him. Michael Karl glanced around. A stranger in the shaggy pelt of a wolfman was shouting something and waving the banner, whose smooth silver Michael Karl had last seen draped above the throne, almost in his face.

“His Majesty holds the Fortress and most of Cobentz's ammunition, but he must have reinforcements. Cobentz has fortified the Cathedral. We must clear the Square!” Michael Karl at last made out the message.

“Does Cobentz have machine guns?” he almost burst his throat asking, but the wolfman shook his head, he didn't know.

The sound of firing was still coming from down the slope. Grimvich wasn't making a very quick advance, and their success or failure depended upon his being able to reach the King before Cobentz and the Reds rallied.

They were within a hundred feet of the Square now, but out of a side street burst a compact body of horse.

“The Household Guard,” Urich pointed to them.

Michael Karl looked behind him. Every second man had drawn his saber white his mate held a rifle easily, spotting his target. They were in for it, but somehow he believed that the Household Guard was going to get the surprise of its life.

If they could meet them at the mouth of that side street before they could form to charge— Urich caught his thought and signaled the “Charge.” There were a few feet of flying movement and then the shock of horse meeting horse and whirling steel clashing dizzily about them. Michael Karl thrust blindly and his saber came away red and sticky. A fat man in a brilliant uniform snarled into his face and then looked surprised, slipping limply downward in his saddle. The mare screamed shrilly and bit at the neck of a black, while the black's rider aimed a vicious blow at Michael Karl's head. He tried to parry, but the blade was in his very eyes and then it slipped away and something stung his cheek.

Then they broke. As swiftly as they had come, the guard turned and fled. He longed to order pursuit but the Square was yet to be taken. A horse lay kicking on the pavement and he nodded with dull approval when one of the Black Coats shot it through the head.

A man lay face downward in a pool as scarlet as his coat and Michael Karl, looking at him, suddenly felt sick. One of the Black Coats was sitting on the curb staring vacantly at a crimson patch above his boot which spread stickily. Leaning against a house wall, dabbing at a wet patch on his shoulder with a scrap of a white handkerchief, was a youngster in a white and gold uniform. He eyed Michael Karl sullenly.

“Your Highness is wounded!” Urich looked at him anxiously. Michael Karl felt his cheek, and his grimy hand came away red.

“It's nothing but a scratch. See to the injured,” he motioned towards the sullen boy and the Black Coat.

One of his men dismounted with a black case in his hand and with help applied rough first-aid to his comrade and their only prisoner. What to do with the latter bothered Michael Karl. He dismounted and went over to him.

“Will you give your parole?” he asked. The boy nodded and winced as the bandage was drawn tighter across his shoulder.

Michael Karl unbuckled his belt and let it fall with a clang. His recent bout had told him that it was no use trying to fight in the tunic which drew so tightly over his shoulders every time he raised his arm. He slipped it off and stood in his shirt sleeves just as the rising sun touched the golden dome of the Cathedral.

Leaving the wounded Black Coat with the prisoner, they mounted and turned towards the Square.

Michael Karl felt like a person caught in a fantastic dream. The whole thing had lost its reality. As the mare moved forward he could hear the spitting of rifles from the lower town, He glanced back, twenty men still kept their saddles and five of them were slightly wounded. And with twenty men he had to take and hold the Square until Grimvich could join him, Grimvich who was moving with a deadly slowness.

Chapter XII

The Battle Of The Cathedral Steps

Cobentz had made good use of the time which had been allowed him, as Michael Karl saw when he clattered at the head of his little company to the end of the Avenue where it gave upon the Square. A barricade of boxes, splintered furniture, the loot of nearby homes, and some bales of scarlet and blue cloth from a wrecked shop, had been thrown up before the steps of the Cathedral itself, while from behind the barrier pointed sinister black rifle barrels.

Did they have machine guns? Michael Karl hesitating there knew that the success or failure of his job depended upon the answer to that question. If they did have them, he and his men would be mown down before they had crossed half the length of the Square. But then it was just as possible that Urlich Karl's quick and successful advance upon the Fortress had caught them sadly off guard and had left them but their rifles.

The Black Coats were beginning to waver and gather in indecisive little groups. Something must be done and done quickly or they would have to fall back and fail those who were depending upon them. And yet, if Cobentz had machine guns—

Michael Karl breathed deeply. He would have to try it. Dropping his revolver he leaned over in the saddle and snatched the Royal Standard out of the wolfman's lax grip. With a backward slash of his heels he scored the sides of the mare cruelly with his spurs.

She leaped like a hunted thing trying to get away from the agony of the steel. Straight into the Square and beyond she darted. Michael Karl shouted,

“The King! Morvania and the King!”

He thought that there was an answer from the barricade, a sullen growl, and from behind him came the faint shouts of his men. There were no machine guns. The mare gathered her feet beneath her and topped the barrier. Michael Karl caught a glimpse of a white twisted face and slashed down at it. Then the mare's shoes were drumming on the steps and he was using the pole of the Standard to ward off saber strokes. They dared not shoot for fear of wounding their own comrades crowding around him to pull him down.

The staff of the Standard snapped off short, five inches from his hand, as he was warding off a vicious blow from a ragged figure's clubbed rifle. He struggled to reach the top of the steps and the little band of bright coated officers where Cobentz must be.

Screaming shrilly the mare went down, a terrific blow of a rifle butt between her wild eyes, Michael Karl struggled free and like dogs they were on him to pull him down. He gained one step and then two; the carven niches of the saints were at his back. Turning to face the barricade he jammed his back and shoulders into one of the deep niches by the door and felt the bump when his head touched the stone feet of Saint Michael above him.

The little band of officers had disappeared and only the snarling wild men of the steps faced him. If they did not pick him off with a shot he was safe for a while.

Across the Square came the Black Coats, coolly firing as they came. The barricade had been cleared already, and its defenders were falling back sullenly while the horses of the dismounted Black Coats milled around the foot of the steps. Urich, his saber biting him a wide path, was coming up to him. It was close work, little shooting now, clubbed rifle against saber and revolver with the Black Coats winning out.

Michael Karl leaned against the cold stone, panting. For the moment they had forgotten him. He noted with a frown that the Royal Standard was a fringe of rags in his hand and that there was more then one dark stain on it. But he didn't have long to notice such small things.

A man in a peasant's blouse yelled hoarsely through his twisted mouth: “Get him before they get us!”

All his fellows within hearing, five or six of them, obeyed and they were at him. But a wicked saber met them with a will.

“Hold them!” screamed Urich from below. “Hold them!”

Michael Karl was trying hard, but it was an ef- fort to raise his arm. The cut on his cheek ached cruelly and the sharp edges of the stone behind him pressed into his back. He was more aware of those discomforts than he was of the men who were trying to reach him.

The man with the twisted mouth shouted again and they drew back with a growl. Their leader raised his hand, Michael Karl guessed, and dropped, as the shot chipped one foot of the protecting saint above his head.

With a cry of victory his opponents turned to hurl themselves into the arms of Urich and the Black Coats. Urich, raving over what he supposed was Michael Karl's death, met them with naked steel, and when the Black Coats reached the next step there was silence and no opposition.

None had offered to surrender; the desperate men of the barricade had fought until a saber ripped them open or a bullet found them out. The Black Coats cleared the Cathedral steps, but ten of them were missing.

Michael Karl arose to his knees. It was very quiet now and the morning sun flashed the Cross on his breast to living fire. Down the hill the firing was dying out and at the edge of the Square the gray uniforms of the Legion began to appear.

He got up slowly, bracing himself with a hand against the stone. The Royal Standard lay crumpled at his feet and with some misgivings as to his balance he stooped over to pick it up. Urich and what was left of the Black Coats were watching him with dull wonder, as one who arose from the dead.

A scarlet trickle, growing larger every second, made a miniature falls down the steps and in passing it splashed the boots of a Black Coat sitting limply and breathing very hard. Even as Michael Karl watched, the man sighed deeply and slid down to lie quietly on the pavement.

The mare, her smooth skin hacked and broken by the boots which had stamped over her, already lay there. Michael Karl looked down at her. She had served him well, and it seemed hard that all that grace and beauty should come to lie at the foot of the Cathedral steps soiled, and broken, and very still.

Urich came up to him walking slowly like an old man.

“They still hold the Cathedral, Your Highness. But they are just a handful, Cobentz and his officers.”

So that was where the group of bright coated officers had disappeared when they saw that the game was against them.

Michael Karl rested his head against the Saint's toes wearily. They had won the steps and the Square but the Cathedral was yet to be taken.

“Call the roll,” he said slowly.

Urich looked down at the Black Coats still on their feet. “There are ten of us, not counting Your Highness.”

“We started with—”

“Forty, Your Highness.”

Michael Karl looked across the Square. Beside the great fountain in the center lay a horse with his head in the water and with him a Black Coat. The defenders of the barrier had found their mark once at least. And now by the horse and his still rider, came in loose formation, the first of the Foreign Legion and with them, neat to his last shining button, Colonel Grimvich stalked very erect, swinging the swagger stick which was his badge of authority.

The Black Coats drew together at the top of the stairs with Michael Karl at their head, while the fruit of their hard won victory lay sprawled at their feet and across the barrier.

Grimvich paused as he caught sight of those horrible steps and then, looking upward, he touched his cane to his peaked cap in salute. Michael Karl answered with the hilt of the broken saber—the blade had snapped off when he had thrown himself down to escape the peasant's bullet—and then picked his way down to meet the Colonel.

“You found things a bit hot, Your Highness,” observed the Colonel.

Michael Karl nodded. “Cobentz still holds the Cathedral, but your way is open. We'll smoke him out. Did you find hard going down below?”

Grimvich smiled for the first time since Michael Karl had met him.

“Rather. But we cleaned them out. We'll be on to the Fortress now. My beauties have enjoyed themselves this morning. Shall I leave you some reinforcements?”

“If you can spare me ten—” began Michael Karl hesitatingly as he looked up at the handful of Black Coats standing at the top of the steps.

“Nothing easier,” said the Colonel heartily. “Cortlandt, ten men for His Highness. Haupthan is coming,” Grimvich continued as the ten men were detached from the gray ranks and went to the barrier, “and the Duke is moving on the water pipes. Innesberg will be making terms within two days. Well, we're off, I'll inform His Majesty of what has been done here.” Raising his cane in salute for the second time, the Colonel moved off, following his men up to the Fortress.

Michael Karl turned back to the Cathedral. It must be taken but, looking at its gray stone walls and massive doors of solid oak, he decided it was going to be a hard job.

He grasped the jagged broken blade of his saber and brought the massive guard down upon the door.

“In the name of the King, I call upon you to surrender!” he shouted.

They waited but the doors hung as blankly and silently closed as ever. Michael Karl knew that his demand for surrender was but a formality and expected no answer.

“For the last time I demand your surrender. The guns of the Fortress are trained upon the Cathedral.” He hoped fervently that the guns could be. The Cathedral couldn't be taken with bare hands.

This time there was response, a dull roaring like the sound of the sea in a twisted shell. Something was evidently going on inside. Cobentz was a coward, but was he coward enough to throw open the Cathedral doors at what might be only an idle threat? But Michael Karl reckoned without the Archbishop.

To that little man the Cathedral was the world, that one stone of it be touched by shot was worse than sacrilege. At the very threat of such a thing he turned upon the defenders savagely.

There was a thud from within and the door swung back. Michael Karl blinked and tried to see through the gloom with his sun dazzled eyes. At the edge of the door was the wizened little figure in a red gown which he had last seen scudding away from the Council table swinging a silver cross which dangled from the chain in his hand.

The little figure looked blindly up, as confused by the light as Michael Karl was by the dark, his sunken mouth working pitifully and his thin arms spread out as if to protect the beauty of the church behind. Then seeming to see Michael Karl he stepped forward a pace, laying a yellow hand on the boy's arm.

“You will not hurt—hurt this?” he pleaded, motioning vaguely towards the dim beauty within. “The wicked ones are there, take them.” He pointed to the high altar.

There was a sharp crack and the scarlet figure swayed limply against Michael Karl, but even as he fell he watched the boy's face hungrily for his answer.

“You will not hurt—” he whispered.

“I will not harm it,” Michael Karl promised.

He sighed once very peacefully and then the Archbishop of Rein left the one thing he loved most of all, and a little figure in a red gown lay still against one of the beautiful columns of the Cathedral nave.

Michael Karl with Urich by his side and his men at his back entered. Once inside, they separated into two columns, one for each aisle, out of danger from a second shot. Now that his eyes were accustomed to the darkness Michael Karl could see the high altar and, on the steps below it, the little group of officers.

One of them shouted suddenly and the sound of his voice, echoed and reechoed, filling the whole Cathedral.

“Sanctuary! We claim sanctuary!”

Michael Karl thought of the red gowned figure by the door and went grimly on. When he noticed that one or two of the Black Coats were startled by the plea, he called in return:

“For those who break sanctuary, there is none. You murdered the Archbishop at his own door.”

The Black Coats went on reassured. Those at the altar could hear their steady advance but could not see them. The pleader called again: “We throw down our arms. Will you make terms?”

Michael Karl answered remorselessly: “The time for making terms is past. If you surrender— perhaps.”

“Would you shed blood here?” demanded the voice, now terror-stricken.

“You, yourself, have willed it so,” answered Michael Karl.

And now from the altar they heard the sound of shuffling and a shout. Then the voice spoke again.

“We surrender and deliver Cobentz to you.”

“March down the center aisle,” commanded Michael Karl, still fearing treachery, “and bring him with you.”

They came slowly, a sorry band in torn and stained uniforms. And among them, limp, his hands twisted behind his back with his own belt, Cobentz. His sly smile was gone, the yellow eyes stared unseeing straight before him, and there was foam on his purple lips.

The Black Coats stepped out and disarmed them, and shortly, bound and broken, they stood before Michael Karl. Cobentz was no longer even a man. He threw himself on the pavement and crawled to Michael Karl's boots making quavering animal sounds.

“Pity, pity!” he shrieked. Michael Karl turned away, sickened.

There was a rasp of spurs in the nave and Michael Karl looked up from the loathsome thing which had reached for the throne. One of the wolfmen was coming. He saluted Michael Karl.

“His Majesty states that the position is safe. He will be here in five minutes.”

Michael Karl thanked him. Suddenly he felt very tired and ill. The mosaic pavement under his feet rocked up and down. When he tried to turn his head the cut on his cheek burned. He decided all at once that he didn't like war.

From the Square came the sound of cheering. Urlich Karl was coming. Michael Karl turned and walked unsteadily towards the door. Those steps should have been cleared.

But before he reached the door and its pitiful guardian, some one entered.

Michael Karl caught his breath. Surely this wasn't the American, this tall kingly figure in the scarlet coat and short, jewel buckled cape. He glanced down at his own ragged shirt where the diamond Cross bobbed up and down and at his blood splattered breeches. Then he looked up at the King's face with its charming smile and felt the brown hands which gripped his shoulders and heard the voice: