Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures (47 page)

And the knight’s hold was a haunt of poverty. The dry moat which encircled the castle was filled up in many places; the outer walls were mere heaps of crumbled stone. Weeds grew rank in the courtyard and over the filled-up well.

The chambers of the castle were dusty and bare, and the great desert spiders spun their webs on the cold stones. Lizards scampered across the broken flags and the tramp of mailed feet resounded eerily in the echoing emptiness. No merry villagers bearing grain and wine thronged the barren courts, and no gayly clad pages sang among the dusty corridors. For over half a century the keep had stood deserted, until d’lbelin had ridden across the Jordan to make it a reaver’s hold. For the Sieur Renault, in the stress of poverty, had become no more than a bandit chief, raiding the caravans of the Moslems.

And now in the dim dusty tower of the crumbling hold, the knight in his shabby finery sat at wine with his guest.

“The tale of your betrayal is not entirely unknown to me, good sir,” said Renault – unbidden, for since that night of drunkenness in Damietta, Cahal had not spoken of his past. “Some word of affairs in Ireland has drifted into this isolated land. As one ruined adventurer to another, I bid you welcome. But I would like to hear the tale from your own lips.”

Cahal laughed mirthlessly and drank deeply.

“A tale soon told and best forgotten. I was a wanderer, living by my sword, robbed of my heritage before my birth. The English lords pretended to sympathize with my claim to the Irish throne. If I would aid them against the O’Neills, they would throw off their allegiance to Henry of England – would serve me as my barons. So swore William Fitzgerald and his peers. I am not an utter fool. They had not persuaded me so easily but for the Lady Elinor de Courcey, with her black hair and proud Norman eyes – who feigned love for me. Hell!

“Why draw out the tale? I fought for them – won wars for them. They tricked me and cast me aside. I went into battle for the throne with less than a thousand men. Their bones rot in the hills of Donegal and better had I died there – but my kerns bore me senseless from the field. And then my own clan cast me forth.

“I took the cross – after I cut the throat of William Fitzgerald among his own henchmen. Speak of it no more; my kingdom was clouds and moonmist. I seek forgetfulness – of lost ambition and the ghost of a dead love.”

“Stay here and raid the caravans with me,” suggested Renault.

Cahal shrugged his shoulders.

“It would not last, I fear. With but forty-five men-at-arms, you can not hold this pile of ruins long. I have seen that the old well is long choked and broken in, and the reservoirs shattered. In case of a siege you would have only the tanks you have built, filled with water you carry from the muddy spring outside the walls. They would last only a few days at most.”

“Poverty drives men to desperate deeds,” frankly admitted Renault. “Godfrey, first lord of Jerusalem, built this castle for an outpost in the days when his rule extended beyond Jordan. Saladin stormed and partly dismantled it, and since then it has housed only the bat and the jackal. I made it my lair, from whence I raid the caravans which go down to Mecca, but the plunder has been scanty enough.

“My neighbor the Shaykh Suleyman ibn Omad will inevitably wipe me out if I bide here long, though I have skirmished successfully with his riders and beat off a flying raid. He has sworn to hang my head on his tower, driven to madness by my raids on the Mecca pilgrims whom it is his obligation to protect.

“Well, I have another thing in mind. Look, I scratch a map on the table with my dagger-point. Here is this castle; here to the north is El Omad, the stronghold of the Shaykh Suleyman. Now look – far to the east I trace a wandering line – so. That is the great river Euphrates, which begins in the hills of Asia Minor and traverses the whole plain, joining at last with the Tigris and flowing into Bahr el Fars – the Persian Gulf – below Bassorah. Thus – I trace the Tigris.

“Now where I make this mark beside the river Tigris stands Mosul of the Persians. Beyond Mosul lies an unknown land of deserts and mountains, but among those mountains there is a city called Shahazar, the treasure-trove of the sultans. There the lords of the East send their gold and jewels for safekeeping, and the city is ruled by a cult of warriors sworn to safeguard the treasures. The gates are kept bolted night and day, and no caravans pass out of the city. It is a secret place of wealth and pleasure and the Moslems seek to keep word of it from Christian ears. Now it is my mind to desert this ruin and ride east in quest of that city!”

Cahal smiled in admiration of the splendid madness, but shook his head.

“If it is as well guarded as you say, how could a handful of men hope to take it, even if they win through the hostile country which lies between?”

“Because a handful of Franks
has
taken it,” retorted d’Ibelin. “Nearly half a century ago the adventurer Cormac FitzGeoffrey raided Shahazar among the mountains and bore away untold plunder. What he did, another can do. Of course, it is madness; the chances are all that the Kurds will cut our throats before we ever see the banks of the Euphrates. But we will ride swiftly – and then, the Moslems may be so engaged with the Mongols, a small, hard-riding band might slip through. We will ride ahead of the news of our coming, and smite Shahazar as a whirlwind smites. Lord Cahal, shall we sit supine until Baibars comes up out of Egypt and cuts all our throats, or shall we cast the dice of chance to loot the eagle’s eyrie under the nose of Moslem and Mongol alike?”

Cahal’s cold eyes gleamed and he laughed aloud as the lurking madness in his soul responded to the madness of the proposal. His hard hand smote against the brown palm of Renault d’Ibelin.

“Doom hovers over all Outremer, and Death is no grimmer met on a mad quest than in the locked spears of battle! East we ride to the Devil knows what doom!”

The sun had scarce set when Cahal’s ragged servant, who had followed him faithfully through all his previous wanderings, stole away from the ruined walls and rode toward Jordan, flogging his shaggy pony hard. The madness of his master was no affair of his and life was sweet, even to a Cairo gutter-waif.

The first stars were blinking when Renault d’Ibelin and Red Cahal rode down the slope at the head of the men-at-arms. A hard-bitten lot these were, lean taciturn fighters, born in Outremer for the most part – a few veterans of Normandy and the Rhineland who had followed wandering lords into the Holy Land and had remained. They were well armed – clad in chain-mail shirts and steel caps, bearing kite-shaped shields. They rode fleet Arab horses and tall Turkoman steeds, and led horses followed. It was the capture of a number of fine steeds which had crystallized the idea of the raid in Renault’s mind.

D’Ibelin had long learned the lesson of the East – swift marches that went ahead of the news of the raid, and depended on the quality of the mounts. Yet he knew the whole plan was madness. Cahal and Renault rode into the unknown land and far in the east the vultures circled endlessly.

IV

The bearded watcher on the tower above the gates of El Omad shaded his hawk-eyes. In the east a dust-cloud grew and out of the cloud a black dot came flying. And the lean Arab knew it was a lone horseman, riding hard. He shouted a warning and in an instant other lean, hawk-eyed figures were at his side, brown fingers toying with bow-string and cane-shafted spear. They watched the approaching figure with the intentness of men born to feud and raid.

“A Frank,” grunted one, “and on a dying horse.”

They watched tensely as the lone rider dipped out of sight in a dry wadi, came into view again on the near side, clattered reelingly across the dusty level and drew rein beneath the gate. A lean hand drew shaft to ear, but a word from the first watcher halted the archer. The Frank below had half climbed, half fallen from his reeling horse, and now he staggered to the gate and smote against it resoundingly with his mailed fist.

“By Allah and by Allah!” swore the bearded watcher in wonder. “The Nazarene is mad!” He leaned over the battlement and shouted: “Oh, dead man, what wouldst thou at the gate of El Omad?”

The Frank looked up with eyes glazed from thirst and the burning winds of the desert. His mail was white with the drifting dust, with which likewise his lips were parched and caked. He spoke with difficulty.

“Open the gates, dog, lest ill befall you!”

“It is Kizil Malik – the Red King – whom men call The Mad,” whispered an archer. “He rode with the lord Renault, the shepherds say. Hold him in play while I fetch the Shaykh.”

“Art thou weary of life, Nazarene,” called the first speaker, “that thou comest to the gate of thine enemy?”

“Fetch the lord of the castle, dog,” roared the Gael. “I parley not with menials – and my horse is dying.”

The tall lean form of Shaykh Suleyman ibn Omad loomed among the guardsmen and the old chief swore in his beard.

“By Allah, this is a trap of some sort. Nazarene, what do ye here?”

Cahal licked his blackened lips with a dry tongue.

“When the wild dogs run, panther and buffalo flee together,” he said. “Doom rushes from the east on Moslem and Christian alike. I bring you warning – call in your vassals and make fast your gates, lest another rising sun find you sleeping among the charred embers of your hold. I claim the courtesy due a perishing traveller – and my horse is dying.”

“It is no trap,” growled the Shaykh in his beard. “The Frank has a tale – there has been a harrying in the east and perchance the Mongols are upon us – open the gates, dogs, and let him in.”

Through the opened gates Cahal unsteadily led his drooping steed, and his first words gained him esteem among the Arabs.

“See to my horse,” he mumbled, and willing hands complied.

Cahal stumbled to a horse block and sank down, his head in his hands. A slave gave him a flagon of water and he drank avidly. As he set down the flagon he was aware that the Shaykh had come from the tower and stood before him. Suleyman’s keen eyes ran over the Gael from head to foot, noting the lines of weariness on his face, the dust that caked his mail, the fresh dints on helmet and shield – black dried blood was caked thick about the mouth of his scabbard, showing he had sheathed his sword without pausing to cleanse it.

“You have fought hard and fled swiftly,” concluded Suleyman aloud.

“Aye, by the Saints!” laughed the prince. “I have fled for a night and a day and a night without rest. This horse is the third which has fallen under me – ”

“Whom do you flee?”

“A horde that must have ridden up from the dim limbo of Hell! Wild riders with tall fur caps and the heads of wolves on their standards.”

“Allah il Allah!”
swore Suleyman. “Kharesmians! – flying before the Mongols!”

“They were apparently fleeing some greater horde,” answered Cahal. “Let me tell the tale swiftly – the Sieur Renault and I rode east with all his men, seeking the fabled city of Shahazar – ”

“So that was the quest!” interrupted Suleyman. “Well, I was preparing to sweep down and stamp out that robbers’ nest when divers herdsmen brought me word that the bandits had ridden away swiftly in the night like the thieves they were. I could have ridden after, but knew that Christians riding eastward but rode to their doom – and none can alter the will of Allah.”

“Aye,” grinned Cahal wolfishly, “east to our doom we rode, like men riding blind into the teeth of a storm. We slashed our way through the lands of the Kurds and crossed the Euphrates. Beyond, far to the east, we saw smoke and flame and the wheeling of many vultures, and Renault said the Turkomans fought the Horde. But we met no fugitives and I wondered then – I wonder not now. The slayers rode over them like a wave out of the night and none was left to flee.

“Like men riding to death in a dream, we rode into the onrushing storm and the suddenness of its coming was like a thunderbolt. A sudden drum of hoofs over a ridge and they were upon us – hundreds of them, a swarm of outriders scouting ahead of the horde. There was no chance to flee – our men died where they stood.”

“And the Sieur Renault?” asked the Shaykh.

“Dead!” said Cahal. “I saw a curved blade cleave his helmet and his skull.”

“Allah be merciful and save his soul from the hell-fire of the unbelievers!” piously exclaimed Suleyman, who had sworn to kill the luckless adventurer on sight.

“He took toll before he fell,” grimly answered the Gael. “By God, the heathen lay like ripe grain beneath our horses’ hoofs before the last man fell. I alone hacked my way through.”

The Shaykh, grown old in warfare, visualized the scene that lay behind that simple sentence – the swarming, howling, fur-clad horsemen with their barbaric war cries, and Red Cahal riding like a wind of Death through that maelstrom of flashing blades, his sword singing in his hand as horse and rider went down before him.

“I outstripped the pursuers,” said Cahal, “and as I rode over a hill I looked back and saw the great black mass of the horde swarming like locusts over the land, filling the sky with the clamor of their kettledrums. The Turkomans had risen behind us as we had raced through their lands, and now the desert was alive with horsemen – but the whole east was aflame and the tribesmen had no time to hunt down a single rider. They were faced with a stronger foe. So I won through.