“I see.”
“I gave it to half a dozen wretches with one foot and four toes in the grave. Old folk wasting away still crave their victuals—some of ’em more than blacksmiths—but they wouldn’t have touched the stuff if I hadn’t sanded their mush for two days running. Would you call that slipshod work, young sir, or would you call it foresight?”
“I don’t know what to call it till I know your purpose.”
“You haven’t guessed it yet? When a body’s tottering on the brink, a breath o’ wind sends him over.”
“They died?”
“Whist!”
Messer Vico had cocked his head to listen to a grating sound from the iron gate. As it swung open, he stood forth as though to oversee the proceeding. Two by two came the burly guards, each pair carrying a bier on which lay a naked corpse. Somehow I had thought they would all be old men, but what I took for a beardless gaffer with frail limbs showed in the rushlight as a wasted crone. Then I saw a male child among the number and then a fair-haired damsel—newly wedded, perhaps, or a virgin bride of Death.
“Ain’t that the wench who came to nurse her father, and wouldn’t pay your rent for a soft, warm bed?” Captain Vico called jovially to one of her pallbearers.
“The very one,” the bravo answered. “Instead she warmed herself catching fever, which was hot enough, and now she’s gone to join him in a hard, cold bed.”
I thought the pale parade would never end. It did, though, at last—when I had counted nine. Behind them marched six idle guardsmen of a full squad of twenty-four. The shapes faded into the darkness; and the noise of jests and laughter and complaints over shirking fair shares of the load grew faint and indistinguishable. There was still a flickering half-circle of shadows before the rushlight, but done was the awful dance of jumping jacks on the wet stone.
Captain Vico returned to us with a proud smile.
“Wait a minute more in case one of ’em glances back,” he advised. “You’ve time to take your time, as you plainly see.”
“There are more than usual?” I asked. My voice sounded strained.
“Several more. But I reckoned there might be.” The side of his face drew—I saw it in the deep, cold gloom, and I could guess that it indicated a long, knowing wink.
“Six more?”
The question caused Felix to look at me in a startled way.
Captain Vico shook his head. “Sometimes they’ve got more life in them than you reckon, but there were three that got here sooner than they would have, including one that I had least counted on.”
“The old woman?”
“We’d better get on the move——” Felix broke in.
“Why, you’ve time to sit and play a game of chess. Young gentleman, how did you know it was her?”
“I saw you look surprised as they brought her out.”
“You’ve sharp eyes, and no mistake! Them old women are the greatest lingerers in the house. Well, it turned out you didn’t need the extra ones, but many a night there’s only two or three, and I’ve seen the night when we drew a blank. My only aim was to help you win, and I had no notion of asking a share in the prize. But if you’ve thirty lire handy——”
I did have, and I had considered handing them to him. Instead my hand found other work to do, it seemed on its own volition. I had been hating the creature with a swiftly expanding hate, and suddenly he fell down. I had hardly heard the thud of my fist against his cheekbone—perhaps I had aimed at the eye that had winked—before I hated myself for the reckless act. Quite possibly it would wreck our scheme.
“Devils in hell!” Felix broke out in a low-voiced violence. “Do you want to hang us all?”
“I’m sorry——”
Felix jerked a cloth from around his neck and a cord from his pocket. “See, he’s coming to already,” he grumbled as he crouched with busy hands beside the fallen man. “For the love of God, Marco, the next time you hit a man, hit him in the jaw.”
With unbelievable swiftness he fixed a gag in the warden’s mouth and tied his wrists and ankles. Thrusting him into the darkest part of the recess, we dashed for the iron gate. It opened readily and Felix led the way into the dim hall. Soon we both stopped, sickened by the foul air and appalled by the gloom. Here and there a low-burning lamp was bracketed to the wall, but these only caused deeps and shallows of darkness that bewildered the mind. There were black openings that might be corridors, gratings, and barred doors.
“Which way?” Felix whispered.
I could not tell him, but by standing still and shutting fear out of my heart, I looked at the map that Mustapha Sheik had furnished me. I did not do so with my hands and outward eyes, but inside my head where I had stored it, line by line, and with the eyes of the mind. This was the thing I could do, the part I was good for. I was not a good captain but I would make an excellent councilor. . . .
In a moment I knew which one of the black holes to make for. Beyond was a door, as sure as the devil, and a steep stairway. . . . At its head opened a long hall; with the flickering light it seemed a mile long. Through this gloom we sped, I counting eleven cells. At the twelfth we stopped.
“Haran-din?” I called into its fetid dark.
“Shair Allah (The justice of God)!”
Under my surcoat was an iron bar. I took it out and thrust it through the ring of the big padlock and began to pry. There was no result but a grating noise and then a clang as the iron slipped and struck the cell door. With a grunt of disgust, Felix took it out of my hands. He placed it carefully, his elbow came down against the powerful upward twist of his forearm, and the lock broke off.
My eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom and I feared to turn them on the inmate of the cell. Many a leper becomes a living carcass, half dismembered. Haran-din had the white form of the disease, so that most of his skin was silvery-looking, picking up the vestiges of light so that it appeared to have a phosphorescent glow. He was naked except for a breachclout and a round cap.
“Come quickly,” I murmured in the silence.
It seemed that he too should be able to see in the pale dark, so long had it been his medium. Instead he groped his way toward the door. I was reaching to help him when he gave forth a wail like some strange swamp fowl. Out of the gloom rose a fast football of stone. I had hardly time to turn when three keepers, carrying pointed sticks, burst out of a black passage.
A few seconds ago, Felix and I had been taut as harpstrings with force we could not free. There had been nothing to spend it on after the lock broke; the action of the adventure had been reduced to a snail’s pace. Suddenly we were in a swirl of violence. The guards flung themselves on us, their weapons raised to strike us.
They would have done better to employ them as spears. The most likely reason they did not was a humanly interesting one to be considered only in peaceful leisure. These fellows were not knights, to level lances at the foe, but base keepers of half-dead folk. They used their sticks to prod with through the bars, whereby they were greatly feared and hated, terrible weapons indeed to the poor wretches who could only grunt and shriek and beg for mercy. In truth they were like the forks employed by demons in Hell, for there too the damned are bound in iron and cannot fight back. But well the villains knew that Felix and I differed greatly from their usual prey. Losing faith in their sticking and stabbing, they hoisted them like clubs.
Before their wielders could strike us, we were at grips with them. They were three to our two, but whatever terror was in me was transmuted first to excitement, then to fierce joy. Perhaps I realized it was not a fight to the death. If they carried daggers they did not draw them, partly perhaps because they took me for a nobleman whose kniving would be avenged inside or outside the law, mainly for care of their own skins.