V
The Rout of the Witches
I knew an instant of terror more complete and sickening than any that had been mine in the war, a worse chill than at Murfreesboro, Selma or Shiloh itself. Then the terror departed from me, and left me almost serenely strong and confident. For those who came in were only men.
They were murderous men, perhaps. They possessed ugly powers—witness that light in which they seemed to be dipped, and the chivvying commands from that being called the Flying Horned One. They were men joined for a steadfast purpose of evil. They did not simply lack ideals, morals or character, but adhered to ideals, morals and character antithetic to all I honored. They had a belief, even a form of travestied worship, that claimed them as ever pure religion claimed saints or martyrs. They had come to execute horrors upon me.
But their master had stayed outside. These, his followers, were no more than men, and as such had but muscles with which to attack, vital organs in which to receive wounds. I asked no lesser opponents than such.
Jaeger had spoken of twelve members to the coven, under rule of the Flying Horned One. The death of Peter Dole, the pitiful renegade, would leave only eleven. I think that that many came in now, and the light seemed to burst from the uplifted hand of the tallest. But my second glance showed me that the hand was not his. It was a five-fingered candle or taper, fixed by the wristlike base upon a tin plate, and each of the fingers sprouted a kindled wick.
I had lost sight, though not thought, of Susan. She stood near Jaeger, and came forward. One of the throng whooped in laughter—his voice was muffled by his mask and thickened by alcohol—and confronted her.
“She did it, good girl! She bound them!” He turned upon the motionless form of Jaeger. “Why aren’t you preaching, Parson? Walloping the pulpit and quoting chapter and verse? Pretty quiet and stiff, ain’t you?”
He drew a straight dagger like the one drawn against me at the scene of the flogging.
“Take the red knife,” he quoted unsteadily, “and cut red bread!”
“Wait,” interposed the tall man who held the five-fingered light. “There’s something to do first. There lies some dead clay under the blanket yonder. I’d guess it for what’s left of Dirt Fire, known to men as Peter Dole.”
Dirt Fire. Dirt Fire—I had heard somewhere of how witches, upon joining the circle, were baptized mockingly to new names. That had befallen Peter Dole, and he had asked for a second baptism to clear his soul of the horror he felt. The tall one passed his tin plate, with the light, to a pudgy figure who must have been a woman, masked and in men’s rough riding clothes. Then he took a step toward Susan and towered over her.
“You’ve served us well,” he spokes “Our coven is one short. You will fill the emptiness.”
There was no asking of her whether she wanted to. Perhaps some quick instruction by Jaeger had prepared her for this. In any case, she voiced neither acceptance nor refusal. She only faced the tall mask man, silently and gravely.
“Thirteen we shall be, counting our master,” intoned the tall one. “Susan Dole, say after me the words I now repeat.”
He lifted a hand, and made the stroking gesture in air that Jaeger had called “hypnotic.” Susan drew herself up. The spell seemed to be catching hold of her on instant.
Just then, Jaeger made a little twitching motion with the right hand that had hung quietly at its side. That hand held his revolver, unnoticed by the invaders, Fire spurted, powder exploded. The tall hypnotist seemed to somersault sidewise, a banged down on the floor to lie without a quiver.
I had been like a hound on leash all this while, forcing myself to wait for the cue of Jaeger’s first move. Now, before the sharp echo of the revolver-shot died that room, I had flung out my left hand and snatched the saber from its fastenings by the sill. My right hand brought it from the sheath with a loud rasp of metal. I gathered my legs under me and leaped at the man with the drawn dagger.
He knew I was coming, somehow or other. For he turned, trying to fend off with that straight blade he had meant for Jaeger. My first axelike chop broke his steel close to the hilt. My second assault a drawing slice, severed muscles, arteries and tendons at junction of neck and shoulder. Down he went at my knee, the gushing blood all black and shiny in that pallid light. I stepped across him, and into the melee that had sprung into being around Jaeger.
No less than myself, those invaders must have been keyed up to expectation of violence. When Jaeger’s first shot felled their comrade, they threw themselves upon the sender of that shot. A big mask-wearer came in under the revolver muzzle, stood up under a terrific blow with the barrel, and grappled Jaeger. Others seized him by the arms, beard, throat, legs. They were pulling him down, as dogs pull down a bear. The pudgy one who held the five-fingered light stood apart, drawing another of those straight daggers. The look of the hand that held the dagger convinced me more than ever that here was a woman in men’s garments.
Coming upon the press, I slid my saber-point into the back of the big fellow whose arms were around Jaeger. He subsided, coughing and struggling, and I cleared my weapon in time to face another who quitted his assault on Jaeger to leap at me. He tried to avoid my slash, and I smote his jaw with the curved guard that enclosed my knuckles. He sprawled upon a comrade, and both fell.
Then Jaeger, fighting partially free, fired two more shots. One of his attackers fell limply, and another flopped away, screaming and cursing by the names of gods I did not recognize.
The light-holder now gave tongue in a shrill warning:
“Betrayed, we’re betrayed! Run! Get away!”
Those who could respond did so. Jaeger fired yet again, his fourth bullet. The last of those who fled was down, floundering awkwardly to crawl across the hewn log outside the door. Two of the others caught the squirming body and dragged it clear. We were suddenly alone.
“Don’t close that door,” said Jaeger from the dimness that fell again—for the five-fingered light had been knocked down and extinguished. “I doubt if we need to be fenced in from them.” He was kindling his own kerosene lamp, that gave a healthier radiance. “Count the dead, Wickett.”
I did so, noting that all wore coats or jackets turned inside out. Two had perished by my saber, two more by Jaeger’s bullets, while a third whom he had shot, died even as I bent over him. The man I uppercutted with the saber-hilt was still alive and breathing heavily, but quite unconscious. I reckoned the one dragged away must be badly hurt, if not also dying.
“We killed or wounded seven,” was my report. Jaeger had led Susan to one side, where she might not look. Then he went from one body to the other, pulling away their horned masks of dingy black cloth. At the sight of each face he grunted his recognition.
“All of them are my neighbors,” he announced, “and all of them in my congregation, or pretending to be. Look Wickett! This one is a woman—she and that first man you sabered were husband and wife. I would have spared her had I known her sex. But here is one who seems to be awakening.”
The single survivor sat up. He fingered his bruised chin, waggling it tenderly. His face, unmasked, looked long and sharp and vicious. His small, dark eyes burned as they fixed upon Susan.
“She tricked us,” he accused, spitting blood.
“It was I who tricked you,” corrected Jaeger. “Stand up, Splain. But make any sudden move, and I will fire one of the two bullets still in this revolver.” He held it up significantly.
The captive stood up. Like the others, he wore his coat inside out. “My name isn’t Splain any more,” he stated, with a show of defiance. “Now I’m called—”
“Spare us what foolish name your devil master gave you,” interrupted Jaeger sharply. “I know most of that stupid ritual, that you think so frightening—another baptism, another book of prayer, another submission to mastery. I will call you Splain, and to that name you will answer, if you hope for mercy. Take off that coat, and put it on properly.”
“You can’t make me,” flared Splain.
Jaeger pocketed the revolver, caught Splain by a shoulder, and shook him like a rug in a high wind. Splain squealed, cursed, and fumbled inside his coat. But Jaeger pinned his wrists, gave it a wrench, and a knife fell to the floor.
“I’ve seen this kind of knife before,” I said, picking it up.
“Yes, several like it,” agreed Jaeger. He had shaken the resistance out of Splain, had roughly dragged the reversed coat from him, and was now turning it back as it should go. “Get into this, Splain. … Yes, so. Clothing turned inside out was an invulnerability charm as long ago as the Egyptian Pharoahs, but it did not protect you. Wickett, I judge that it is a magic dagger, so-called, that you hold. Potent against all enemies that are not prepared.”
“It looks homemade,” I ventured, examining the weapon.
“Of course. Each wizard must make his own knife, hand-forging it of metal never before used. The blade is inscribed? In strange characters? I thought so.”
We picked up four other knives, including the one I had broken, from the floor. Jaeger gathered them on a table, also the plate with the extinguished five-fingered taper.
“A poor imitation,” he said of this last object. “The hand of glory, cut from a hanged murderer’s arm, is supposed to shed light and strike victims numb. Having no hanged murderer convenient, these made a dummy of wax. It failed against us as other charms have failed.”
He smiled grimly at Splain. “Had the blades been simple and honest, your friends might have killed us. But they were enchanted—and useless. Get out, Splain.”
“Out?” repeated the other stupidly.
“Yes. Seek that monster you call your lord, who thought a poor minister of God could not plan and fight a battle. Tell him that I prophesy his defeat. Six of the eleven he sent against us have died. The souls and bodies of the remainder are his responsibility. I shall require them at his hands. You obey?”
“Yes, Parson,” grumbled Splain. He shambled toward the door.
Green fire suddenly played about him, like many little lightnings, or some display of fireworks. Splain shuddered, sagged, crumpled. He, too, was dead, the seventh to perish on the floor of Jaeger’s front room.
Jaeger looked at him, at me. Then he whistled in his beard.
“So much for a defeated wizard,” he commented pithily. “In some way the Flying Horned One knew of Splain’s failure, and he has no use for failures.”
He had produced his revolver once more. Flipping the cylinder clear, he drew the two charges remaining. Then he carefully loaded the gun afresh. From a box in the table drawer he took the bullets, pale and gleaming.
“Those look like silver,” I said.
“They are silver. The sovereign weapon against wicked creatures which are more and less than human.”
“You are going to shoot at the Flying Horned One?”
“No, Wickett,” said the Reverend Mr. Jaeger, and put the weapon into my hand. “You are.”