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

by Norton, Andre

  “Michael Karl, you aren't hurt?”

  “I don't think so,” answered Michael Karl, and all at once he felt very young, as if a great load of responsibility had been lifted from his thin shoulders.

  “Well, if you aren't, boy, you ought to be,” there was vast relief in the King's voice. “Your face is a sight.”

  “What have we here?” he demanded a moment later as, with his arm still about Michael Karl's shoulders, they came up to the prisoners. “Oh, Cobentz and Company. You made a very clean sweep, didn't you? We'll get rid of these for the moment.”

  He sent one of the wolfmen running for a prisoner's guard, and then he spoke to the Black Coats.

  “I need not say it in words, Comrades, but you will find that this day's work will bring some fitting reward. You have saved a kingdom, and the king will remember it.”

  Michael Karl saw Urich jump forward and then he took no further interest in kings or kingdoms. Strong arms lifted him and there was a time when he seemed to be carried along halls and up stairs. Some one kept calling him, but for it all he fell asleep.

  Something lay heavy across his breast and he put up his hands sleepily to push it away. The softness of velvet met his fingers. He turned and opened his eyes. There was a fireplace big enough for the whole of a small log, a high-backed chair with a crest in faded gilt on its back. Michael Karl watched them drowsily and then he looked up.

  Above the heavy mantel hung a picture. A slim boy with laughing eyes and rumpled black hair held the reins of a spirited black horse, while, at his mud splattered, booted feet, two hounds lolled, their tongues drooling from the open jaws as if they had but finished the hunt. Their master's white breeches were mud-stained, and his hunting coat was ripped on the shoulder, but, from his fingers dangled the coveted “brush.”

  Michael Karl studied the boy. His face was familiar. Was he one of the officers he had met on the avenue or at the Cathedral? He didn't think so. A lad like that wouldn't be mixed up with Cobentz and his rotten gang. It was probably some one he had seen at Urlich Karl's camp in the mountains.

  By the way, where was he now? He rolled over on his back and studied the green velvet canopy over his head. The last thing he remembered with any certainty was standing in the Cathedral, with the king's arm about him, watching the pillars whirl around in a crazy sort of way.

  He looked down the green velvet cover between the carved bedposts. Another chair faced him, but this time it was completely filled by a sleeping wolfman. He had tossed back the tight, hairy hood-mask and had pillowed his head on his arm. Michael Karl watched him but it was very plain that he wasn't going to sit up and be an interesting companion for some time.

  Michael Karl turned his head stiffly. The whole side of his face ached, and he discovered with investigating fingers that it was tightly bandaged.

  This side of the room was occupied by two more high-backed chairs, a long table carved with a hunting scene all the way around its edge, and a heavy chest. Above the table, balancing the boy of the hunt on the other side of the room, was another deep frame and heavy canvas. Again it was a boy staring down at Michael Karl, but there was no good humor in his arrogant eyes or charming smile curving his thin lips.

  “A very unpleasant person,” commented Michael Karl aloud as he studied the portrait.

  “And that he was, boy. I saw quite a lot of him.” The king was standing at the foot of the bed with the wolfman still sleeping behind him.

  Michael Karl looked up at his cousin without surprise. He was used to these sudden appearances.

  “Who was he?”

  “Our grandfather, the late king. I have yet to find a single person who liked him. And that one,” he nodded towards the boy of the hunt, “is Prince Eric, your father. You're amazingly like him. That might be a picture of you. How do you feel after helping to conquer a city?”

  “Fine and—and dandy. See here, I want to get up.”

  “All in good time. You gave us the fright of our lives, young man, when you decided to pass out of the picture in the Cathedral. Urich got quite angry with me for not sending reinforcements sooner. You've made a large number of loyal supporters for yourself, boy. I shall have to have you take the oath of allegiance as soon as possible because, if you decided to rebel, I would find myself out in the cold world before I knew what happened. How does it feel to be a hero?”

  “Oh, rot! What did you do with Cobentz and the rest?”

  Urlich Karl's eyes lost their dancing lights, and his jaw seemed to sharpen.

  “Cobentz will be tried for treason and the murder of the Archbishop. Either way we've got him. The rest we'll probably exile.”

  “And Innesberg?”

  “Surrendered this morning. The mere threat of cutting off the water supply brought them to terms. They hadn't any good leaders after Kamp was killed when we took the Fortress. Of course, the trouble in the south isn't over yet, but we can safely leave it to Johann. He's suddenly produced an iron hand for ruling which is earning him a lot of respect and wholesome fear.

  “I'm through with a native Household Guard though for the late one turned traitor to a man. The Wolf Pack shall be the bodyguard, and the Foreign Legion will hold the Fortress. I can depend on them.

  “By the way, the part of your own regiment which remained loyal to the Council is suing for forgiveness and peace. I told them that I'd leave them to you.”

  “How about Laupt and Kafner?”

  A shadow of a frown wrinkled the King's smooth forehead.

  “We can't find them. I know that they haven't left the country. It's their being at large that worries me. Laupt was the brains of this whole affair, and I shan't breathe easily until I get him under lock and key in the Lion Tower.”

  “You'll get him,” answered Michael Karl promptly. After the taking of Rein he firmly believed that this tall young man, perched without dignity on the foot of his bed, could do anything he wanted to.

  “Now tell me,” he commanded, “about how you took the Fortress.”

  Chapter XIII

  Who Holds Rein Holds Morvania

  “No,” he corrected himself, “tell me how you became a quick change artist, Werewolf to American to King. I don't like stories which begin in the middle and—”

  “Run both ways?” supplied his cousin. “Well, all this mess is due to the mismanagement of the late but not lamented King, our ungracious grandparent. He was a domestic tyrant of no mean order, modeled himself on the father of Frederick the Great. I won't go so far as to say that he threw plates at the heads of Princes of the Blood or tore their clothes off their backs, but he did his best to make this Fortress a merry little hell for any one who was unfortunate enough to be a relation of his.

  “He bullied his wife to death and then started in on his sons. One morning he tramped into breakfast and jumped on Prince Eric, your father. Eric, of course, was a younger son, and he had no desire for the throne anyway, so he waited until the old man paused for breath and then gave him as good as he got, ending up by declaring that Prince or no Prince he was going to America and he'd like to see his father try to stop him.

  “The King sat there in a sort of stunned silence like a cat who had been badly bitten by a mouse it was playing with. Prince Eric calmly finished his breakfast and stated he was going to pack. His father didn't try to stop him then, maybe he had a sneaking liking for the only member of his family who had ever told him what was what, or maybe he was just temporarily out of commission from shock.

  “Eric bid every one good-by including his brother Stefan, the Crown Prince. The last thing he said to Stefan was to advise him to get out while the going was good. However, Stefan had some ties, not the least of which was yours truly who was raising an awful row in the Royal nursery about then.

  “Prince Eric just got across the border when the officer sent to arrest him arrived at the frontier post. I think Karl had planned a taste of the Lion Tower for Eric when he made that last grab after his fast-moving son.

&n
bsp; “Old Karl sort of simmered after that. He didn't smash things but he looked as if he were going to at any minute, and everybody within hearing got in the habit of tiptoeing around and trying to look like statues when the King favored them with his attention. It was dreadfully wearing on the nerves, like waiting for a delayed bomb to go off.

  “They didn't have to wait long. Eric sailed for America, reached New York and disappeared.

  “The King raged—one of his family had defied him and had gotten away with it. He immediately started a search for him. I hate to think what detective bills the state had to pay.

  “After almost two years he was finally located, going under an assumed name of course. And when the King ordered him home at once, he said firmly that he was sorry but he intended staying right there because he was to be married the next month, and he didn't think his bride would like Morvania. Anyway he was more interested in working in his father-in-law's steel mills than he was in playing the role of Prince, and he wanted to study to be an engineer.

  “That finished the King. There was one grand explosion and people went around picking up pieces of their self-esteem for months afterwards. My father used a little of Eric's medicine and politely but firmly withdrew to his castle in the mountains. He said that he was through having his child scared into fits by his father stamping and yelling up and down the halls.

  “The King never mentioned Eric again and he didn't rage so much. After my father was killed in a landslide, he had me put in school and I never saw him again but for a few minutes at a time every five years or so.

  “About a year and a half after the message from Eric, the King commanded that all the Prince's pictures be draped in black and had a mass sung in the Cathedral. He didn't give out any information but every one knew that the Prince was dead.

  “Things were in an awful mess. All the worthwhile element of the nobility were on their estates, exiled for speaking favorably of the missing Prince.

  “Laupt, Kafner, Oberdamnn, and their ilk were making hay and making it to some purpose. We were neutral during the war and some mighty queer people and things leaked over the border in the last few months before the armistice. Kamp suddenly appeared from the North. He had had a big hand in the Russian mixup.

  “The King was so busy making things unpleasant for the few people who were still loyal to him that he didn't have time to check up on the various tricks of Laupt and Company, Kamp he treated as a joke, and that made Kamp see red. He was used to having aristocrats tremble in their shoes at the mere mention of his name, so the King's indifference stung him into some really brilliant underground work.

  “In every country there's always a few who begin to look excited when some one suggests taking things from the rich and giving them to the poor. But up to 1930 we hadn't had much trouble. Innesberg had revolted once or twice, of course, but it was the usual thing, and nobody became alarmed about it, just as no one becomes excited about a revolution in a South American republic; it was an old story. However, there were the embers, and Kamp set about fanning them into a good roaring fire.

  “There was a strike in the factories, and some of the old time owners used the iron hand a little too heavily. They had to call out the guard, and the King made matters worse by arriving on the scene and taking charge over the protests of his officers. Then Kamp finished his rebellion by having the King shot. The Morvanians will stand for a lot, but they have some old-fashioned notions and one of them is a sturdy loyalty to the throne. They could stand revolution but not king murder.

  “Kamp saw that he had overplayed his hand. He disappeared and Laupt and Company came into the feast licking their chops.

  “I was in the mountains the week before the King left for Innesberg. You know the law: the Heir must claim the throne within a month or the Council steps in for a year. It was made during the Middle Ages when each ruling Duke had six or seven sons and there were a lot of quiet murders. Kafner saw his chance and took it. Unfortunately for him there were still some men loyal to the throne among his intimates. One of them warned me and I proceeded to disappear.

  “Johann came to Rein and started working. He couldn't understand what they were going to do at the end of the year, when they didn't have any heir to produce. You see, none of us knew that Eric had a son. Johann suspected that I was alive and managed to get in touch with me. He was dreadfully afraid that they were going to put up Cobentz.

  “Then Kafner sprang the bomb of your existence upon the Council, and Johann was worried. You weren't hated like Cobentz, you were nearer the throne, and your father had been very popular with the people. Unless something happened I was in a pretty tough place. Every one who would have supported me thought I was dead and the minute I dared appear again I was a target for one of Laupt's assassins.

  “That was when I became the American reporter. I had to be in Rein some of the time, and that was the ideal role. Everybody thought I was writing a book and that gave me license to poke around in all sorts of queer places—”

  “But weren't you ever recognized?” demanded Michael Karl.

  Urlich Karl laughed. “It was really very simple; the people expect a king to wear a bright uniform and ride a horse, never appearing in public without a bodyguard, they can't imagine a king in a business suit poking around in cathedrals and ruined castles for story material. It was the old case of hiding something by putting it in plain sight.

  “Then, too, the way I had been brought up helped a lot. I'd never been around the court much, for I was on our mountain estate until my father died, and then I went straight to military school in Cambsilt, a little town at the head of the Laub. Hardly any one knew what I looked like. And of course I was dead and why look for a dead man.”

  “But why an American? You were never in America were you?”

  The King shook his head. “No, but my tutor was an American, and I always admired him. And I always read American books and papers. I had a soldier of fortune who drifted into my Wolf Pack drill me in up-to-date slang, and there aren't very many other Americans in Morvania to compare me with.

  “The Werewolf idea I got from old mountain legends. It helped me among the peasants and discouraged spies. Even Johann didn't know that I was playing that part as well; he thought that the Werewolf was one of my former aides-de-camp.”

  Urlich Karl paused to explain.

  “The Werewolf legend is well known in the mountains. A werewolf is an evil creature something like a vampire who has the power of becoming a wolf from sunset to sunrise during which time he is supposed to seek men to devour.

  “There are many ways of becoming a werewolf. If you drink from a stream where wolves have lapped, if you eat the brains of a wolf, if you pick and wear a certain sort of flower, if you wear the belt of a werewolf, and if you summon the demon wolf himself to give you the power. I summoned the demon wolf.”

  “What!”

  Urlich Karl nodded seriously. “Our mountain peasants are a shrewd lot. You must be the real thing, they have no time for shams. Yes, I summoned the demon wolf following the instructions of a wise woman. It's a rather complicated ceremony, but I had quite a few hidden witnesses who went home and reported that I was the genuine article.

  “Look.” From beneath his tunic he drew a smooth belt of gray wolf hide fastened with a gold clasp.

  “Don't put it around you,” he warned Michael Karl laughingly, “if you don't want to become a werewolf.”

  “But what do you mean ‘demon wolf?” questioned Michael Karl excitedly twisting the belt in his hands.

  His cousin grew serious. “I don't know. I saw nothing or heard nothing. But then I was just going through the ceremony to impress my hidden listeners. I can not tell you whether the demon wolf really made his appearance or not. I would never do it again. Most of those old mountain legends have a grain of truth behind them. Perhaps there is a demon wolf. But I did not see him. Nor am I a true Werewolf. See.”

  He held out his hands. “Were I a true werewolf, my nai
ls would be long and scarlet, glittering in the light. And my eyebrows would slant up to meet in a point above my nose. But you see I failed to make the proper connections, and I am still human. But the mountaineers listen for my howling each night.

  “The wolf mask gave me the wolf head that a werewolf must have.”

  “But the real wolves?” broke in Michael Karl.

  “Yes, those who followed the horses were the finishing touch, weren't they? There were ten of them in all. An old mountain shepherd, by the way he was supposed to be a real werewolf, caught and tamed them when they were cubs. We never quite trusted them though.”

  “And the Wolf Pack?”

  “They were mountaineers loyal to the throne, deserters from the army who wanted to follow me, and one or two soldiers of fortune who later went to form the beginning of the Foreign Legion. And never has a Prince been served so well as the Wolf Pack served me.”

  “So that is how the Werewolf started,” said Michael Karl looking down at the belt in his hands. “Here goes,” he added suddenly and twisted the belt about him. “Now watch me, Were- wolf!” he challenged his cousin.

  “And what did you think about my coming?” he questioned a moment later.

  “Well, when we found out about you we didn't know what to do. Johann wanted to let them bring you to Rein as they had planned and then take care of you, but I thought it would be better to get you in the mountains. We didn't know much about you or what you would do, but we thought that it would be safer to act on the idea that you were an enemy.

  “The affair of the halfway station was too simple. Kafner of course wasn't prepared, and it was the easiest thing in the world to stop the train. Only, when my men searched it, they couldn't find you, and when they did snatch you up they believed that you were one of the royal aides-decamp. We thought we'd throw a scare into you and let you go in a couple of days to give Laupt something to think about.