Swords From the West (53 page)

The Maritime Council of Venice planned new inroads into the field of Oriental trade, and wrote off the moneys advanced to Signor Clavijo and his party as a total loss. In fact it was recorded in the annals of the council that Clavijo and all those with him were lost.

This, however, was not the case. Clavijo lived-outside the knowledge of the council that he dreaded-in Spain and wrote a book of his travels that was filled with most marvelous tales.

And Tamerlane rewarded Michael Bearn. The Tatar monarch bestowed on him a khanate in northern Persia-Fars, with its palace and riches.

But Michael did not accept it for himself, giving it, instead, to a friend. He turned his back on the East to seek a galley bound for the Brittany he had not seen for ten years and the castle where his mother waited.

So it happened that the bailios of Contarini and the Maritime Council of the Signory of Venice reported a curious thing.

In the heart of Tatary, they said, sometimes called the land of Gog and Magog, not far from the Salt Sea, there was a fine palace in fair groves of date and cypress trees.

The ruler of this palace of Fars was a weird man, with emerald rings on his toes and cloth-of-gold on his broken body. He called himself sometimes the Grand Cham or Khan and sometimes Bembo the First.

When he saw the first stars over mountains, Mark pulled in his racing horse and laughed. It was dark and he was safe. "Faith," he said to the roan mare, "we are still alive in our skins." But he spoke between his teeth; he made little sound.

Even though he now felt himself to be safe from the danger that followed his heels, he kept moving along the path. Mark, late Sieur de Kerak, believed in taking no chances. He reined his horse to the side of the roadway where he could not be seen under the pines. His long body was covered with mesh, darkened so that it did not gleam and oiled so that it did not grate when he moved. Over this he pulled the black mantle that he had picked up when he began his long ride, months before. No ponderous helm of steel showed the outline of his head; he wore only a round steel cap. No long unwieldy sword clanked at his hip. Mark had left the family swords behind him.

Instead he carried, loosely thrust into his belt, the most deadly and efficient of weapons, a morning star. This morning star had a two-foot shaft of wood, strengthened by iron, with three slender chains hanging from it and, at the ends of the chains, three spiked metal balls. A swinging blow from this morning star-as Mark's arm swung it-could crush in the armor or the head of a man.

Mark knew weapons as well as he knew war. His hard body had scars in it that ached when he felt the night's cold. Only a sure instinct had kept him alive, and Mark trusted his instinct more than any talisman or prayer.

Now that instinct told him to keep on going. Behind him, witless people were dying each day by the thousand under the hoofs of that strange horde emerging from the steppes of Asia. It was like a whirlwind, that tide of horsemen.

Mark listened, as he rode, to the heaving breaths of his horse and the stir of the wind in the forest mesh. He put his hand into the small sack of barley tied carefully to the saddle horn. Beneath the barley, his fingers touched objects like sharp stones; only these were precious stones, carefully selected-pigeonblood rubies, emeralds of Ind, and glorious amethysts, a treasure of them, enough to ransom a king.

His father, the first lord of Kerak, had voyaged out of England with the heedless Richard the Lionheart, and his father had left his bones in Kerak overlooking the barren ridges beyond the Dead Sea. Mark, born in that waste borderland, had wrested wealth from it and he meant to return to England with that wealth; to make the acquaintance of the homeland he had never seen. He had grown very tired of his castle above the greenishblue of the Dead Sea, and its sour wine and olive trees.

"The crusades," he told himself, "are running out, like the sands of an hourglass. Aye, they are done!"

Suddenly he checked his horse. A gleam of light showed above the trees. So high up, it must come from a tower. A tower, by the same token, meant a good large seigniory, and that meant food. He ached with hunger, and the mare would be the better for an hour's rest.

Seeking along the edge of the trees he found the break that marked a road going up, and up this he made his way, alert for a challenge. It came when he saw the loom of a wall and the light overhead.

"SloY! "

"Slava bohu!" he shouted. "Glory to God!"

A torch flickered in a doorway, and three bearded men looked him over, jabbering a speech he did not know. The one with the torch took him by the hand and led him into the hall, where logs blazed in a huge fire hearth. Mark took in the place with a glance-the heads of stag and buffalo fastened to the walls, the flax hanging from the rafters, the crude swords and huge embroidered coats of the score of armed men who filled the benches by a long table, the yellow-haired maids carrying wine jugs, the spinning wheels stowed away in the corners. "The hall of a small nobleman," he thought, "who likes hunting. But where is he and what is he?"

There was a high seat, empty, at the table near the fire. There were gold dishes and a white cloth at that place; behind it, a shield of arms bearing something like a dragon, obscured by smoke.

It surprised him that these people seemed to be getting ready to dine, rather than flee the place. One of the men bowed to Mark and pointed behind him. Mark did not turn around. He preferred to face these strangers and he chose to keep the sack of barley slung over his arm.

"Panna Marya!" growled the bearded man.

"I hear you, brother," said Mark to himself, "but the devil himself couldn't make me turn my back to twenty swords."

Then he heard a woman laugh softly behind him and he swung around quickly enough.

She had not meant to pose there. Only she looked like a painting, like the stiff dragon on the shield. For pearl strings lay heavy on her young shoulders, and silver tissue made a crown on her dark hair. Such things did not fit her because her lips were quivering with laughter, and her eyes merry and knowing. She was holding a silver tray and on that tray, a dish of salt and a piece of broken bread.

"Chlieb sol," she said, curtsying. She chattered at him, the words meaning nothing to Mark. He had not seen a maid like this in his life's time, because he was newly come out of the East. "Eheu, hospes," she cried at him. "Oh, guest, speak, can't you?"

She was speaking Latin then, and Mark had once been taught that language by a wandering friar. Only this youthful Marya rattled it out like a bird singing: "I greet you, sir. And the bread and salt of my house I offer you."

A side of mutton was what Mark craved. Swearing silently, he took a morsel of bread, dipped it in the salt and chewed it. Then the girl Marya in her queenly garb fetched him a gold cup of spiced wine.

It felt heavy in his hand, and he guessed the gold to be solid and old. As he drank, he thought that this cup, slipped into his bag, would pay his way to Venice. "A kiss with the cup is good," he grinned, remembering a verse that the friar had not taught him.

For a second, Parma Marya's eyes searched his. Then they widened, fastening upon something on his shoulder. "A kiss, truly," she whispered, slipping up to him, taking his hand. She still looked into his eyes when his lips touched hers and his arm pressed hard against her slim back.

"Nay, you will spill the wine." She smiled. "I did not know that you were crucifer. An honor it is, so to greet a cross-bearer."

No more had Mark known that he was a crusader. The black mantle he wore had a cross sewn on the shoulder because it had belonged to his father.

But Parma Marya acted as if Michael the Archangel had dismounted in her hall. She clapped her hands, she cried out, the towheaded maids scurried around like hens when grain is scattered, old men climbed into the gallery among the stag heads and began to make music. The men-at-arms clanked around Mark, jabbering, and Marya skipped back to interpret.

The giant Kmita, captain of the men-at-arms, pulled off his iron cap and swept his beard below his belt in a bow.

"My people say it is a good omen that you should come at this hour," cried the girl. "And I say so, too."

She led him to the high seat by the fire and made him sit where the gold service gleamed on the boards, while a flustered maid offered him a silver basin of water to rinse his hands before eating.

Kmita drove the maids back to the hearth and brought the platters of smoking pigeon and pork and venison to Mark himself, bowing each time. It was the custom of her people, Marya explained-the Polish people. Didn't he know? He shook his head, eating fast.

When he got up, taking his bag on his arm, Marya looked at him, dismayed.

"But it is night. You must sleep and rest and break your fast with us, Mark!"

He did not think he had heard aright. "You mean to stay?"

"I? Yes."

"Here, in this castle?"

The girl Marya seemed to be troubled because he did not understand. She had been visiting Krakow, she said, for the Easter festival when she had heard the country was invaded. So she had hurried back to the Dragon-as she called the castle.

"You think you can defend this place?" Mark asked. "With what?"

Hesitating, she pointed at Kmita and the henchmen, chewing tranquilly at their meat.

Mark shook his head impatiently. "Lady, the horsemen who follow after me have laid Cathay in waste. Men say that they cracked open Kiev like a melon, and now they may be venturing into these mountains of yours-"

"True-we know. But I had hope" -her gray eyes appealed to him-"that you, a war wager, might abide with us."

How her eyes held him! He could feel the touch of her lips and he did not want to leave her behind.

"Listen"-he was glad the henchmen could not understand him-"it is too late now to evacuate the folks here. But we can drive our horses tonight and with luck get others at Krakow. Change your dress." He glanced at the old-fashioned strings of pearls. "Take your jewels in a bag. Have a fast horse saddled, but hurry!"

The girl Marya gripped tight the carved arms of her chair. "To go away, with you? Only we two?"

"It's a chance, a good chance. What did you say about an omen?" Mark was thinking of the road ahead, full of refugees. "In a month we can be in Venice. And if Venice is not safe, then, there is the sea and England."

"Eng-land?" She did not seem to understand. She said something-about her father the castellan, and her grandfather, and the way they had built the castle, and something else about a dragon that watched over it, protecting it.

"Dragons are not what they were," Mark laughed. It was so like the girl to think of a legend at a time like this. "Not in these days."

"But this one is!" She brushed the mass of dark hair from her cheeks and smiled at him. "Come! I want you to see!"

Slinging the bag on his arm, he followed her out of the hall through the massive doorway of the donjon. "Now, look," she said, holding to the door.

Bedlam resounded outside. Torches flared in the courtyard where wild figures pushed through the outer gate-huntsmen with game on their shoulders, peasants pushing long wagons creaking under loads of kegs and sacks of food. Women with babies lashed in shawls behind their backs, and older children herding in steers and sheep.

Mark recognized these people as refugees he had passed on the road.

"My father said the castle was of ours in time of peace, and it is for them in time of war. They have no other place to go."

"By the eyes of God," Mark muttered, "are you coming?"

"I-they would not know what to do without me."

Her fingers caught at his and then let go. Why had he sat here gossiping like a midwife for two hours?

He jumped down the steps, pushing toward his horse. "Close the gate and knock out those torches!" he shouted, his skin cold with the feel of danger here. Swinging into the saddle of the roan mare, he rode through the gate without looking back.

At the main road he stopped, listening. Evidently the Poles were all inside the castle, because he could hear nothing. But down the road the way he had come, a gray patch blacked out and then reappeared. Something was moving there without making any noise.