There was a silence as the soldiers were probably staring paralyzed at the smoking fuse. Then—a roar! The room shook, the door fell in, blasted off its hinges, and black smoke poured in. Green ran into the cloud, got down on all fours, scuttled through the doorway, cursed desperately when the hilt of his sword caught on the doorframe, tore loose and lunged through into the dense smoke that filled the anteroom. His groping hands felt the ram where it had dropped, and the wet warm face of a soldier who’d fallen. He coughed sharply from the biting fumes but went on until his head butted into the wall. Then he felt to his right, where he imagined the door was, came to it, passed through and on into the next room, also filled with a cloud. After he’d scuttled like a bug across its floor, he dared to open his eyes for a quick look. The smoke was thinner and was pouring out the door to the hallway, just in front of him. He saw no feet in the clearer area between the floor and the bottom of the clouds, so he rose and walked through the door. To his left, he knew, the hall led to a stairway that was probably now jammed with soldiers. To his right would be another stairway that went up to the Duke’s apartments. That was the only way he could go.
Luckily the smoke was still so dense in the corridor that those assembled on the left staircase couldn’t see him. They’d think he was in the Duchess’s rooms yet, and he hoped that when they did rush it and didn’t find him there the rolled-back carpets would give them the idea that he’d taken a running broad jump from the balcony. In which case, they’d at once search the moat for him. And if they didn’t find him swimming there, as they wouldn’t, then they might presume he’d either drowned or else got to the shore and was now somewhere in the darkness of the city.
He felt along the wall toward the staircase, his other hand gripping the stiletto. When his fingers ran across the arm of a man leaning against the wall, he withdrew them at once, bent his knees and in a crouching position ran in the general direction of the stairs. The smoke got even thinner here so that he saw the steps in time to avoid falling over them. Unfortunately the Duke and another man were also there. Both saw his figure emerge into the torchlight from the clouds, but he had the advantage of knowing who he was, so that he had plunged the thin stiletto into the soldier’s throat before he could act. The Duke tried to leap past Green, but the Earthman stuck a leg out and tripped him. Then he grabbed the ruler’s arm, twisted it behind his back, forced him up and on his knees and, using the arm as a cruel lever, raised him. He enjoyed hearing the Duke moan, though he’d never consciously taken pleasure in pain before. He had time to think that perhaps he liked this because of the torture the Duke had inflicted on his many helpless victims. Of course, he, Green, a highly civilized man, shouldn’t be feeling this way. But the rightness or wrongness of an emotion never kept anybody from experiencing it.
“Up you go!” he said in a low, harsh voice, directing the Duke toward his apartments, manipulating the twisted arm as a steering column. By then the smoke had cleared away so that those at the other end of the corridor could see that something was wrong. A shout arose, followed by the slap of running feet on the stone flags. Green stopped, turned the Duke so he faced the approaching crowd and said to him, “Tell them that I will kill you unless they go away.”
To emphasize his point he stuck the end of the stiletto into the Duke’s back and pressed hard enough to draw blood. The Duke quivered, then became rigid. Nevertheless he said, “I will not do so. That would be dishonor.”
Green couldn’t help admiring such courage, even if it did make his predicament worse. He refused to kill the Duke just then because that would throw away the only trump card he held at that moment. So he stuck the stiletto in his teeth and, still holding with one hand to the Duke’s twisted arm, took the Duke’s pistol from his belt and fired over his shoulder.
There was a whoosh of flame that burned the Duke’s ear and made him give a cry that was almost drowned out in the roar of the explosion. The nearest man threw up his hands, dropping his spear, and fell on his face. The others stopped. Doubtless, they were still operating under the Duchess’s orders not to kill Green, for the Duke must have arrived at the foot of the staircase just in time to witness the explosion of the gunpowder. And he was in no condition to issue contrary orders, being deafened and stunned by the report almost going off in his ear.
Green shouted out, “Go back, or I will kill the Duke! It is his wish that you go back to the stairs and do not bother us until he sends word to you!”
By the flickering light of the torches he could see the puzzled expression on the soldiers’ faces. It was only then he realized that in his extreme excitement he had shouted the orders in English. Hastily, he translated his demands, and was relieved to see them turn and retreat, though reluctantly. He then half-dragged the Duke up the steps to his apartments, where he barred the door and primed his pistol again.
“So far, so good!” he said, in English. “The question is what now, little man?”
The ruler’s rooms were even more luxurious than his wife’s, and were larger because they had to contain not only the Duke’s hundreds of hunting trophies, including human heads, but his collection of glass birds. Indeed, one might easily see where his heart really lay, for the heads had collected dust, whereas each and every glittering winged creature was immaculate. It would have gone hard on a servant who’d neglected his cleaning duties in the great rooms dedicated to the collection.
On seeing them Green smiled slightly.
When you’re fighting for your life, hit a man where he’s softest....
9
It was a matter of two minutes to tie the Duke in a chair with several of the hunting whips hanging from the walls.
Meanwhile the Duke came out of his daze. He began screaming every invective he knew—and he knew quite a lot—and promising every refined torture he could think of—and his knowledge was not poverty-stricken in that area either. Green waited until the Duke had given himself a bad case of laryngitis. Then he told him, in a firm but quiet voice, what he intended to do unless the Duke got him out of the castle. To emphasize his determination, he picked up a bludgeon studded with iron spikes and swung it whistling through the air. The Duke’s eyes widened, and he paled. All of a sudden he changed from a defiant ruler challenging his captor to inflict his worst upon him to a shrunken, trembling old man.
“And I will smash every last bird in these rooms,” said Green. “And I will open the chest that lies behind that pile of furs and take out of it your most precious treasure, the bird you have not even shown to the Emperor for fear he would get jealous and demand it as a gift from you, the bird you take out at rare intervals and over which you gloat all night.”
“My wife told you!” gasped the Duke. “Oh, what an izzot she is!”
“Granted,” said Green. “She babbled to me many secrets, being a featherbrained, idle, silly, stupid female, a fit consort for you. So I know where the unique exurotr statuette made by Izan Yushwa of Metzva Moosh is hidden, the glass bird that cost the whole dukedom a great tax and brought many bitter tears and hardships from your subjects. I will have no compunction about destroying it even if it is the only one ever made and if Izan Yushwa is now dead so that it can never be replaced.”
The Duke’s eyes bulged in horror.
“No, no!” he said in a quavering voice. “That would be unthinkable, blasphemous, sacrilegious! Have you no sense of beauty, degenerate slave that you are, that you would smash forever that most beautiful of all things made by the hands of man?”
“I would.”
The Duke’s mouth drew down at the corners; suddenly, he was weeping.
Green was embarrassed, for he knew how great must be the emotion that could make this man, educated in a hard