Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures (79 page)

The horseman grunted, sitting his horse like a statue, etched in the moonlight. He was tall, clad in grey chain-mail which did not hide the hard lines of his rangy limbs, an iron cap pushed back carelessly on his steel-hooded head. Even in the uncertain light, the fugitive was impressed by the man’s hawk-like, predatory features.

“I think you lie,” he said, speaking Norman-French with a peculiar accent. “You a galley slave, with your hair new cropped and your face freshly shaven? And what Moslem galleys would dare hide on the European shore, so close to the city?”

“Why, by God,” answered the other in evident surprize, “you can not deny that I am a Christian. As to my hair and beard, I think it a poor thing that a cavalier should allow himself to become sloven, even in captivity. One of the captives on board the galley was a Greek barber, and only this morning I prevailed upon him to shear and shave me. As for the other, all men know that the Moslems steal up and down the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora almost at will. But we risk our lives standing here babbling. Give me a stirrup and let us be gone.”

“I think not,” muttered the horseman. “You have seen too much.”

And with a powerful heave of his whole frame, he drove the spear straight toward the other’s broad breast. So unexpected was the action, that it was only the instinctive movement of the victim which saved him. Caught flat-footed, his steel-trap coordination yet electrified him a flashing fraction of an instant quicker than the driving steel, which cut the skin on his shoulder as it hissed past him. But it was not blind instinct which caused him to grasp the spear-shaft and jerk back savagely. Rage at the unprovoked woke the killing lust in his brain. The avoiding of the blow and the jerk at the spear-shaft were the work of an instant. Over-reached and off balance from the missed stroke, the horseman tumbled headlong from the saddle, full on his antagonist’s breast, and they crashed to the ground together, the horseman’s carelessly worn helmet falling from his head. The horse snorted and bolted to the edge of the trees.

The stranger had released the spear as he fell, and now, close locked, the fighters rolled across the open space and crashed among the bushes. The mailed hand clutched at the sheathed dagger, but de Cogan was quicker. With a volcanic heave, he reared himself above his antagonist, clutching a heavy stone on which his fingers had blindly closed. The dagger was out, gleaming in the moonlight, but before it could drive home, the stone crashed with stunning force on the mail-clad head. The flexible coif was not enough protection against such a blow. The pliant links did not part, but they gave, and beneath them the striker felt the skull crunch under the blow. And with fully roused ferocity, the ex-slave struck again and again, until his foeman lay motionless beneath him, blood seeping sluggishly from beneath the iron hood.

Then, panting, he rose, flinging aside the crude weapon, and glared down at the vanquished. Still shaken with fury and surprize, he shook his head bewilderedly. Then a sudden thought came to him, and he wondered that it had not occurred to him before. The horseman had come from the direction of the Moslem camp. Surely it had been impossible for him to have ridden past it unchallenged. He must have been in the camp itself. Then that meant that the fellow was somehow in league with the paynim, and again Roger shook his head. He had learned much of the ways of the East since he had ridden down the Danube in the vanguard of Peter the Hermit. Byzantine and Moslem were not always at each other’s throats. Sometimes they dealt together secretly, to the confounding of the westerners. But Roger had never heard of a Crusader turning renegade – and this man, in the armor of a Cross Wearer, was no Greek.

Yielding to urgent necessity, Roger began to strip the dead. The dead man was clean shaven, with square-cut yellow hair. As far as appearances went, he might have been a Norman, but de Cogan remembered his alien accent. The ex-galley slave hurriedly donned the harness, settled the sword belt more firmly about his lean loins, and looked about for the iron cap which he placed on his tawny locks. All fitted him as if made for him. Inch for inch, the unknown attacker and he had been a perfect match. He stroked the hilt of the long broad sword, and felt like a man again, for the first time in months. The clink of the scabbard against his mail-sheathed thigh reminded him that he was again Sir Roger de Cogan, knight of the Cross, and one of England’s surest swords.

No sound save the distant twittering of night birds disturbed the magic silence as he caught the charger which was calmly gazing at the edge of the woods. As he swung into the saddle, the long months of degradation and grinding toil fell away from him like a cast-off mantle, leaving only a grim determination to pay the debt he owed the worshippers of Muhammad. He smiled bleakly as he remembered the dying gurgles of Yusef ibn Zalim, but his face darkened as another visage rose before him, mocking in the moonlight – a lean hawk-face, crowned by a peaked helmet with a heron’s feather. Prince Othman, son of Kilidg Arslan, the Red Lion of the Seljuks. The phantom mocked, but there would be another day, and scant in all other things, Norman patience, when laid toward vengeance, was deep and abiding as the North Sea which bred it.

Roger left the spear where it lay, but he unslung the kite-shaped shield which hung at the saddle-bow, and wary as a wolf, plunged into the shadows of the trees, in the direction in which he had been going before the adventure. There was no insignia on the shield, but on the breast of the hauberk a strange emblem was worked in gold – something that looked like a falcon, and was unmistakably Grecian in its artistry.

The woods through which he rode were now as deserted as if he were the last man on earth. He followed the shore line as near as he dared, guiding his course by the distant lap of the waves, and the terrain was rolling and uneven. After some three hours, the lights of Constantinople blazed through the trees, as he mounted rises, then vanished as he dipped into hollows. It was, he calculated, somewhat past midnight when he rode into the outskirts of the city, which, separate from the greater metropolis and yet a part of it, sprawled along the northern bank of the Golden Horn. This was the quarters of the Venetian traders and other foreign merchants – straggling streets of carved wooden buildings and more substantial houses of stone. But before he reached the heart of the city, a wall halted him, and the watch at the gate hailed him. A torch in a mailed hand was reached down, to be brandished almost in his face, but before he could name himself, he saw a figure in black velvet lean from the wall and scrutinize him closely. There followed a few low words in Greek, and the gates swung open, to clang behind him as he reined his steed through. He prepared to ride away down the street, when the velveted figure darted out and caught his rein.

“Light! light!” exclaimed this person impatiently. “What is in your mind? Have you forgotten our master’s instructions? Here, Manuel, take this steed to the pier. Come with me, my lord Thorvald. Wait! Some one may recognize you! I had not known you, in those western trappings, and without your beard, but for the golden falcon on your hauberk. But some one might – take this silken scarf and mask your features with it.”

Sir Roger took it and wrapped in loosely about his coif, so that only his steely eyes were visible. It was apparent that he had been mistaken for the man he had slain. It was almost certain that he was going into danger, but it was as certain that if he declared his identity, he would just as quickly find himself in danger. The name of Thorvald stirred some faint recollection at the back of the Norman’s mind, and he instinctively touched the hilt of the sword at his girdle.

The guide led the way through narrow, deserted streets, until Roger knew that they were not far from piers that gave on to the strait, and halted at the door of a squat stone tower, evidently a relic of an earlier, ruder age. Some one looked out through a slit in the door.

“Open, fool!” hissed the man in velvet. “It is Angelus and the lord Thorvald the Smiter.”

Hinges creaked as the door swung inward. Sir Roger followed, in a maze of fantastic speculations. Thorvald the Smiter – so that was the man he had battered to death with a stone in the glade. He had heard of the Norseman who was the grimmest swordsman in the Varangian Guards, that band of mercenaries, Northern slayers maintained by the Greeks. He had seen them about the palace of the Emperor – tall bearded men, in crested helmets and scarlet-edged cloaks and gilded mail. But what was a Varangian captain doing riding from a Turkish rendezvous in the night, clad in the mail of a Crusader?

Roger began to feel that he had stepped into a pit full of hidden snakes in the dark, but he drew the scarf closer about his features, and followed his guide through a short dark corridor into a small, dim-lit chamber. Some one was sitting in a great ornate chair, and to this figure the guide bowed almost to the floor, and withdrew, closing the door behind him. The Norman stood straining his eyes, and as they became accustomed to the dim candle-light, the form in the chair slowly took form. It was a short, stocky man who sat there, wrapped in a plain dark satin cloak which hid all other details of his costume. A featherless slouch hat and a mask lay on a table close at hand, arguing that the man had come in secrecy, fearing recognition. The knight’s eyes were drawn to the other’s face; the blue-black beard was carefully curled, the dark locks bound back from the broad forehead with a cloth-of-gold band; beneath it wide brown eyes gleamed with an innate vitality. Sir Roger started violently. In God’s name, into what dark undercurrent of plot and intrigue had he fallen? The man in the chair was Alexis Comnene, emperor of the Byzantine empire.

“You have come quickly enough, Thorvald,” said the emperor – and Sir Roger did not reply, being too busy wondering what mysterious matter had brought the emperor of the East from his marble-pillared palace in the dead of night to an obscure tower in the outer city.

“You ride with a loose rein. The messenger I sent did not tell you why I wished your presence?”

Sir Roger shook his head, at a venture. Alexis nodded.

“I told him to only bid you hasten here. But tell me – in your cruisings among the Black Sea corsairs, have they ever suspected your true identity?”

Again Sir Roger shook his head.

Alexis smiled.

“Sparing of speech as ever, old wolf! It is well. But just now I have work for you even more important than keeping an eye on the Moslem pirates. So I sent for you –

“Thorvald, since you went spying among the Turks, the hosts of the Franks have come and gone. They did not come as came Peter the Hermit and Gautier-sans-Avoir – rabbles of paupers and knaves. They came with war-horses, and wagon trains, cavaliers, and women, archers, pikemen and men-at-arms – all afire with zeal for recovering the Holy Sepulcher.

“First came Hugh of Vermandois, brother of the French king, in a ship with a few attendants. I feasted him royally, made him rich gifts, and persuaded him to take oath of allegiance to me. Then came others – St. Gilles of Provence, Godfrey of Bouillon and his brothers, and that devil Bohemund. All took oath of fealty except the stubborn Count of Provence – but I fear him not. He is zealous, and all for Jerusalem. Bohemund is another matter; he would cut the throat of Saint Paul, to gratify his ambition.

“They took Nicea for me, but I tricked them out of it, sending Manuel Butumites to make a secret treaty with the Turks, and now the city is garrisoned with my soldiers. Now the host marches southward, toward Palestine, and in the hills of Asia Minor, Kilidg Arslan will doubtless cut all their throats. Yet it may be that they will prevail against him. At least, they will deal him such great blows that he will be no more a menace for Byzantium for years to come. Nay, I fear him less than I fear that devil Bohemund, whom naught but luck helped me to defeat some twelve years ago when he came up out of Italy with Robert Guiscard.

“Thorvald, I sent for you because there is no man east of the Danube able to stand against you in sword-play. I have laid my plans well, yet Bohemund has slipped through my fingers before. With the corsairs you have been my eyes and my brain; now you must be my sword. Your task is to see that Bohemund does not leave the field alive, when Kilidg Arslan comes up against the Franks. Hew not to the right nor to the left, but aim your strokes at him! This is my command – come what will, be the fortune of war what it may, who ever conquers or loses, lives or dies – KILL BOHEMUND!”

The emperor’s voice rang vibrantly in the chamber, his dark eyes flashed magnetically. Roger felt the force of the man’s dynamic personality like a physical impact.

“The Crusaders have already been a few days on the road,” said Alexis, “but they travel slowly, for their cavalry must keep pace with their wagons. It will be easy for you to pass beyond them and reach the Sultan before he joins battle, with the arrangements I have made. Your steed is already on a boat – a fresh steed, that is. The boat lies at the foot of the Green Pier – but Angelus will guide you thither. On the Asiatic side Ortuk Khan, he whom men call the Rider of the Wind, will meet you and lead you to the Sultan. Theodore Butumites is with Godfrey – ” he broke off suddenly, staring at Roger’s coif. “By Saint Paul,” said he, “there is fresh blood on your mail, Thorvald. Are you wounded?”

His mind full of whirling conjectures, Roger absently answered, “No.”

Instantly he was realized his mistake. Alexis started, and his keen eyes flared with suspicion. Every faculty of the man was as sharp as a whetted sword.

“That’s not Thorvald’s voice!” he snarled, and with a motion quick as a striking hawk, he ripped the scarf from the knight’s head. Both men leaped to their feet, the emperor recoiling with a scream.

“Spy! This is not Thorvald! Ho, the guard!”

Sir Roger’s sword flashed in the candle-light. Alexis leaped back, cat-like, and the blade sheared a lock of hair from his head as it hummed past. Instantly it seemed, the room swarmed with armed men, pouring in from each door. But the sight of the emperor fleeing desperately from the murderous attack of one they supposed to be a loyal servitor, momentarily froze their wits. Roger alone knew exactly what he had to do. No time for another stroke at the emperor who had sprung behind the great chair, and was shouting for his soldiers to cut down the impostor. The Norman wheeled toward the nearest door, where three men barred his way. The first went down, casque and skull cloven by the knight’s shearing stroke, and as the other two sprang in hacking, Sir Roger ducked and drove in headlong behind his shield. They reeled apart before the impact, and the Norman’s bull-like drive carried him through the door and into the corridor. Recovering his balance in full flight, he raced down the short hallway. The outer door had been left unguarded. A quick fumbling at the chains and bolts and he was through, slammed the door in the faces of his yelling pursuers, and fled down the narrow street, cursing the clang of his mail-shod feet on the flags. He could not hope to evade his attackers, but ahead of him were the broad rows of green marble steps leading down to the waters edge, known as the Green Pier. He knew it of old. At the foot of the steps lay a broad boat, the steersman holding the craft to the lower step by a boat-hook thrust into a ring set in the marble. A rangy Arab horse was held quiet by grooms, and the brawny oarsmen gaped at his haste, as the knight ran down the steps and sprang into the boat.