the room like smoke above a
battlefield.

"Did you think you'd get away, you fool?" the noble gloated. "Did you
think you'd escape Raoul Morriere's vengeance?"

Mark was breathing hard. His face was pale, his eyes over-bright. Deep
within his brain words were pounding, with the beat of a giant
sledge....

"_I shall defeat fate!_" those words throbbed. "_I shall rewrite
history! Not as I wanted to. No. But they shall not have Elaine--_"

His hand clashed down, then, as a cobra strikes. Down to the broad
bladed knife Jacques Rombeau carried in his belt. All his mind, all his
heart, was concentrated on this one thing: Even though lightning should
strike him this very instant, he would seize that knife. Whip it out.
Bury it to the hilt in Elaine's breast, that death--not Baron Morriere's
retainers--might claim her!

But his hand clutched empty air. He stared down in shocked incredulity.
Stared down, and remembered--

He had given that knife to the old peasant before he went to Paris! And
he had failed to ask it back!

"Look! He reaches for his knife!" whooped the baron. "He would protect
his sweetheart!"

The guardsmen behind him joined in his roar of laughter.

Something came over Mark Carter in that moment. Something at once cold
and deadly, and hotly, fiercely passionate. He felt a kinship to all
earth's fighting madmen--the Malay, run amok; the Viking, gone berserk;
the Arab, charging through hell to paradise.

Like a human projectile he launched himself, straight for the throat of
Baron Morriere!

"Ai!"

It was not a word, that sound that came from the noble's throat. No.
There was something more primitive than that about it.

It was terror, incarnate.

Before the man could move, Mark's fingers were clutching at him, tearing
his clothing and his flesh. Again he screamed.

As one possessed, Mark jerked him from the bosom of his guardsmen.
Hurled him bodily across the room, to slam against the farthest wall
with a crash that echoed through the ancient wing.

But now the guardmen's paralysis was broken. They surged forward as one
man.

"Jacques! Look out!"

* * * * *

Elaine's scream lent strength to her lover's arms. He slammed the door
in the face of the oncoming fighters. Half a dozen swords stabbed deep
into its wood, so closely were they upon him. He hurled himself at the
portal. Forced it shut by sheer desperation. Slammed home its triple
bolts.

He turned,