Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures (11 page)

“We have run the buck to cover, brother!”

But there was no laughter on the lips of Diego de Guzman, as he stood over the half-risen occupant of the chamber, and Al Afdhal saw the lifted saber quiver in his muscular hand.

Zahir el Ghazi was a tall, lusty man, his sandy hair close cropped, his short tawny beard carefully trimmed. Late as the hour was, he was fully clad in bag-trousers of silk, girdle and velvet vest.

“Lift not your voice, dog,” advised the Spaniard. “My sword is at your throat.”

“So I see,” answered Zahir el Ghazi imperturbably. His blue eyes roved to the Turk, and he laughed with harsh mockery. “So you avoided the spillers of blood? I had thought you dead by this time. But the result will be the same. Fool! You have cut your throat! How you came into my chamber I know not; but one shout will bring my slaves.”

“Ancient houses have ancient secrets,” laughed the Turk. “One you have learned – that the walls of this chamber are so constructed as to muffle screams. Another you have not learned – the secret by which we came here tonight.” He turned to Diego de Guzman. “Well, why do you hesitate?”

De Guzman drew back and lowered his saber. “There lies your sword,” he said to the Berber, while Al Afdhal swore, half in disgust, half in amusement. “Take it up. If you are man enough to slay me, be it so. But I think you will never see the sun rise again.”

Zahir peered curiously at him.

“You are no Moor,” said the Berber. “I was born in the Atlas mountains, but I was raised in Malaga. You are a Spaniard. Who are you?”

Diego threw aside his tattered
kafiyeh
.

“Diego de Guzman,” said Zahir calmly. “I might have guessed. Well,
hidalgo
, you have come a long way to die – ”

He swooped up the heavy scimitar, then hesitated.

“You wear armor while I am naked but for silk and velvet.”

Diego kicked a helmet toward him, one of several pieces of armor cast carelessly about the chamber.

“I see the glint of mail beneath your vest,” he said. “You always wore a steel shirt. We are on equal terms. Stand to it, you dog; my soul thirsts for your blood.”

The Berber bent, donned the head-piece – leaped suddenly, hoping to catch his antagonist off-guard. But the Moorish saber clanged in mid-air against the Berber scimitar, and sparks showered as the two long curved blades wheeled, flashed, rose and fell, flickering in the lamp-light.

Both attacked, smiting furiously, each too intent on the life of the other to give much thought for showy sword-play. Each stroke had full weight and murderous willing behind it. Such a battle could not long continue; the desperate recklessness of the combat must quickly bring it to a bloody conclusion, one way or another.

De Guzman fought in silence, but Zahir el Ghazi laughed and taunted his foe between lightning strokes.

“Dog!” The play of the Berber’s arm did not interfere with the play of his tongue. “It irks me to slay you here. Would that you might live to see the destruction of your accursed people. Why did I come to Egypt? Merely for refuge? Ha! I came to forge a sword for mine enemies, Christian and Moslem alike! I have urged the caliph to build a fleet – to lift the standards of
jihad
– to conquer the caliphate of Cordova!

“The Berber tribes are ripe for such a war. We will roar westward from Egypt like an avalanche that gains volume and momentum as it advances. With half a million warriors we will sweep into Spain – stamp Cordova into dust and incorporate its warriors into our ranks! Castile can not stand before us, and over the bodies of the Spanish knights we will sweep out into the plains of Europe!”

De Guzman spat a curse.

“Al Hakim has hesitated,” laughed Zahir, breathing evenly and easily, as he parried the whirring saber. “But tonight he sent me word – I have just come from the palace, where he told me it shall be as I have desired. He has a new whim; he believes himself to be God! No matter. Spain is doomed! If I survive, I shall be its caliph some day! And even if you slay me, you can not stop Al Hakim now. The
jihad
will be launched. The
harims
of Islam shall be filled with Castilian girls – ”

From de Guzman’s lips burst a harsh savage cry, as if he realized for the first time that the Berber was not merely taunting him with idle words, but was voicing an actual plot of conquest.

Face grey and eyes glaring, he plunged in with a fresh ferocity that made Al Afdhal stare. Zahir’s bearded lips offered no more taunts. The Berber’s whole attention was devoted to parrying the Spanish saber which beat on his blade like a hammer on an anvil.

The clash of steel rose until Al Afdhal chewed his lip in nervousness, knowing that some echo of the noise would surely reverberate beyond the muffling walls.

The sheer strength and berserk fury of the Spaniard were beginning to tell. The Berber was pallid under his bronzed skin. His breath came in gasps, and he continually gave ground. Blood streamed from gashes on arms, thigh, and neck. De Guzman was bleeding too, but there was no slackening in the headlong frenzy of his attack.

Zahir was close to the tapestried wall, when suddenly he sprang aside as de Guzman lunged. Carried off balance by the wasted thrust, the Spaniard plunged forward, and his saber-point clashed against the stone beneath the tapestry. At the same instant Zahir slashed at his enemy’s head with all his waning power. But the saber of Toledo steel, instead of snapping like a lesser blade, bent double, and sprang straight again. The descending scimitar bit through the Moorish helmet into the scalp beneath, but before Zahir could recover his balance, de Guzman’s saber sheared upward through steel links and hip bone to grate into his spinal column.

The Berber reeled and fell with a choking cry, his entrails spilling on the floor. His fingers clawed briefly at the nap of the heavy carpet, then went limp.

De Guzman, blind with blood and sweat, was driving his sword in silent frenzy again and again into the form at his feet, too drunk with fury to know that his foe was dead, until Al Afdhal, cursing in something nearly like horror, dragged him away. The Spaniard dazedly raked the blood and sweat from his eyes and peered down groggily at his foe. He was still dizzy from the stroke that had cloven his steel head-piece. He tore off the riven helmet and threw it aside. It was full of blood, and a crimson torrent descended into his face, blinding him.

Cursing earnestly, he began groping for something to wipe it away, when he felt Al Afdhal’s fingers at work. The Turk swiftly mopped the blood from his companion’s features, and made shift to bind up the wound with strips torn from his own clothing.

Then, taking from his girdle something which de Guzman recognized as the ring Al Afdhal had taken from the finger of the black killer, Zaman, the Turk dropped it on the rug near Zahir’s body.

“Why did you do that?” demanded the Spaniard.

“To blind the avengers of blood. Let us go quickly, in the name of Allah. The Berber’s slaves must be all deaf or drunk, not to have awakened before now.”

Even as they emerged into the corridor, where the dead mute stared sightlessly at the painted ceiling, they heard sounds indicative of wakefulness – a vague murmur of voices, a distant tramp of feet. Hurrying down the hallway to the secret panel, they entered and groped in darkness until they emerged once more in the silent grove.

The paling stars were mirrored in the dark waters of the canal, and the first hint of dawn etched the minarets.

“Do you know a way into the palace of the caliph?” asked de Guzman. The bandage on his head was soaked with blood, and a thin trickle stole down his neck.

Al Afdhal turned, and they faced one another under the shadow of the trees.

“I aided you to slay a common enemy,” said the Turk. “I did not bargain to betray my sovereign to you! Al Hakim is mad, but his time has not yet come. I aided you in a matter of private vengeance – not in the war of nations. Be content with your vengeance, and remember that to fly too high is to scorch one’s wings in the sun.”

De Guzman mopped blood and made no reply.

“You had better leave Cairo as soon as possible,” said Al Afdhal, watching him narrowly. “I think it would be safer for all concerned. Sooner or later you will be detected as a
Feringhi
by someone not in your debt. I will furnish you with monies and horses – ”

“I have both,” grunted de Guzman, wiping the blood from his neck.

“And you will depart in peace?” demanded Al Afdhal.

“What choice have I?” returned the Spaniard.

“Swear,” insisted the Turk.

“By God, you are insistent,” grumbled de Guzman. “Very well: I swear by Saint James of Campostello, that I will leave the city before the sun reaches its zenith.”

“Good!” The Turk breathed a sigh of relief. “It is for your own good as much as anything else that I – ”

“I understand your altruistic motives,” grunted de Guzman. “If there was any debt between us, consider it paid, and let each man act accordingly.”

And turning, he strode away with a horseman’s swinging stride. Al Afdhal watched his broad shoulder receding through the trees, with a slight frown that betokened doubt.

IV

From mosque and minaret went forth the sonorous
adhan
. Before the mosque of Talai, outside the Bab Zuweyla, stood Darazai, the
muezzin
, and when he lifted his voice, and when he tolled it out across the tense throngs, men shuddered and finger nails bit into dusky palms.

“ – And for that your divinely appointed caliph, Al Hakim, is of the seed of Ali, who was of the blood of the Prophet, who was God Incarnate, so is God this day among ye! Yea, the one God moves among ye in mortal shape! And now I command ye, all Believers in Al Islam, recognize and bow down and worship the one true God, Lord of the Three Worlds, the Creator of the Universe, Who set up the firmament without pillars in its stead, the Incarnation of Divine Wisdom, who is God, who is Al Hakim, the seed of Ali!”

A great shudder rippled across the throng; then a frenzied yell broke the breathless stillness. A wild-haired figure ran forward, a half naked Arab. With a shriek of “Blasphemer!” he caught up a stone and hurled it. The missile struck the
mullah
full in the mouth, breaking his teeth. He staggered, blood streaming down his beard. And with an awesome roar, the mob heaved and billowed and surged forward. Taxation, starvation, rapine, massacre – all these the Egyptians could endure; but this stroke at the roots of their religion was the last straw. Staid merchants became madmen; cringing beggars turned into rabid-eyed devils.

Stones flew like hail, and louder and louder rose the roar, the bedlam of wild beasts, or men gone mad. Hands were clutching at the stunned Darazai’s garments, when men of the Turkish guard in chain mail and spired helmets beat the mob back with their scimitars, and carried the terrified
mullah
into the mosque, which they barricaded against the surging multitude.

With a clanking of weapons and a jingling of bridle-chains, a troop of Sudani horse, resplendent in gold-chased corselets and silk breeches, galloped out of the Zuweyla gate. The white teeth of the black riders shone in wide grins of glee; their eyes rolled, they licked their thick lips in anticipation. The stones of the mob rattled harmlessly on their cuirasses and hippo-hide bucklers. They urged their horses into the press, slashing with their curved blades. Men rolled howling under the stamping hoofs. The rioters gave way, fleeing wildly into shops and down alleys, leaving the square littered with writhing bodies.

The black riders leaped from their saddles and began crashing in doors of shops and dwellings, heaping their arms with plunder. Screams of women resounded from within the houses. A shriek, a crash of glass and lattice-work, and a white-clad body struck the street with a bone-crushing impact. A black face looked down through the ruined casement, split in an empty belly-shaking laugh. A black horseman spurred forward, bent from his saddle and thrust his lance through the still quivering form of the woman on the stones.

The giant Othman, in flaming silk and polished steel, rode among his black dogs, beating them off. They mounted, swung into line behind him. In a swinging canter they swept down the streets, gory human heads bobbing on their lances – an object lesson for the maddened Cairenes who crouched in their coverts, panting with hot-eyed hate.

The breathless eunuch who brought news of the uprising and its suppression to Al Hakim, was followed swiftly by another, who prostrated himself before the caliph and cried: “Oh Lord of the Three Worlds, the emir Zahir el Ghazi is dead! His servants found him murdered in his palace, and beside him the ring of Zaman the black Sworder. Wherefore the Berbers cry out that he was murdered by order of the emir Othman, and they search for Zaman in el Mansuriya, and fight with the Sudani!”

Zaida, listening behind a curtain, stifled a cry, and clutched at her bosom in brief, passing pain. But Al Hakim’s inscrutable, far-away gaze did not alter; he was wrapped in aloofness, isolated in the contemplation of mystery.