Chapter 8

The terrible growling suddenly changed to a high-pitched howl of despair as Alzo flew over the railing and out into the air above the walk. Green, leaning over to watch him, did not feel sorry for him. He was exultant. He’d hated that dog and had dreamed of just such a moment.

Alzo’s yelping was cut off as he struck the parapet beside the walk, bounced off, and then dropped from view into the depths beyond. Green’s strength had been greater than he’d suspected, for he had thought only to toss the one hundred and fifty pound beast over the railing.

There was no time for savoring triumph. If the dog could get through that little door, so could soldiers. He ran out into the room, expecting that at least a dozen men had crawled in. But there was no one. Why? The only thing he could think of was that they were afraid, knowing that if he at once dispatched the dog, he could leisurely knock them over the head in their helpless on-all-fours position.

The door shook beneath a mighty impact. They’d taken the wiser, if the less courageous, course of battering rams. Green loaded his pistol, spilling the powder at his first attempt to prime the pan because his hands shook so. He fired, and a large hole appeared in the wood. However, part of the ball also stuck out, for the door was planked thickly against just such weapons.

The battering ceased and he heard a thud as the ram was dropped on the floor in hasty retreat. He smiled. As they were still operating under the Duchess’s instructions to take him alive--not yet countermanded by the Duke’s--they would not want to face pistol fire with only swords in hand. And in the first reflex to the shot they’d undoubtedly forgotten that a ball couldn’t penetrate the wood.

“This is living!” said Green out loud. And he wondered that his voice shook as much as his legs did, and yet he felt a wild exultance shooting through his fear and knew that he was tasting both with a fine liking. Perhaps, he thought, he really liked this moment--even if his death was around the corner--because he’d been repressed so long and violence was a wonderful therapy for releasing his resentment and clamped-down-on fury. Whatever the reason, he knew that this was one of the high moments of his life and that if he survived he’d look back on it with pleasure and pride. And that was the strangest thing of all, since in his culture the young were taught to abhor violence. Luckily, they weren’t so conditioned against it that the very thought of it paralyzed them. No hard neural paths had been set up against the action of violence; it was just that, philosophically speaking, they loathed the concept. Fortunately, there was a philosophy of the body, too, a much older and deeper one. And while it was true that man could no more live without philosophy of the mind than he could without bread, it had no place in Green at present. The fiery breath that flooded his body now and made him so sensitive to what a fine thing it was to be alive while death was knocking at the door did not rise from any mental abstraction or profound meditation.

Green rolled back the carpets that led from the room to the balcony, for he wanted a firm footing if it became necessary to make a running broad jump from the balcony in an effort to clear the walk below and drop into the moat. He’d have to have very good timing and do everything just right the first time, like a parachute jump, otherwise he’d end up with broken bones on the hard stones below.

Not that he was going to make that leap unless he just had to. But he was leaving an avenue open if his other measures didn’t work.

Again he ran to the bureau and drew out a large bag of gunpowder, weighing at least five pounds. In the open end of this he inserted a fuse, and tied the neck around it. While he was doing this, he heard shouts and cheers as the soldiers returned to the door, picked up their ram and hurled themselves at the thick planking. He did not bother shooting again but instead lit the fuse with a candle. Then he walked to the large door, pushed out the small dog’s door and tossed the bag through it. He jumped back and ran, though there was little chance that the resultant explosion would harm the door.

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.