Swords From the West (6 page)

But the man who stood before the bakshi-the officer-was a strange figure. Half a head he rose above the crowd, with a brown camel's-hair cloak hanging from his wide shoulders. He wore neither hat nor turban, and his sun-lightened hair fell to his shoulders. He leaned quietly on the top of a kite-shaped shield, upon which was the battered semblance of a lion.

"He has no voice," cried the bakshi of the rolls. "He knows not Armenian or the speech of the U-luss."*

And Mardi Dobro, who knew all the types of the caravan road, had never beheld one like this man without a voice. His darkened skin showed that he came from a hot country, yet his eyes were a clear blue. He bore himself like a man grown; but he was young, almost a boy.

"Yah raJik," asked the shaman at a venture-for the cloak was of Arab work-"O man of the roads, art thou of the Arabs?"

"Nay," the youth answered at once.

"Was there ever," demanded the bakshi, irritated because the voiceless one had responded to another, "an Arab with hair like ripe wheat and a lion upon his shield? What is his name?"

"What name bearest thou?" the shaman asked in Arabic.

"Nial."

"Ni-al." The secretary wrote it down. "From what place is he? What lord follows he? Whither goeth he? And why?"

"Patience," muttered Mardi Dobro as he put the questions to the stranger. "Eh, bakshi, he says that he is from beyond the sea. He has no master and he goes to no place."

"Cha!" The Chinese flourished his reed pen angrily. "How can I write that in the book?" He turned to the Tatar soldier, who was eyeing the lion on the shield with curiosity. "Take thou the weapons from this wanderer from nowhere who serves no one."

Stretching out his arm, the burly Tatar caught the hilt of the stranger's sword and half drew it. Instantly the man named Nial swung up his clenched fist, striking the warrior where the throat meets the jawbone. The guard whirled and fell, his long -skirted coat flapping about his boots.

The crowd stared in amazement. Few had seen the blow, and fewer still dreamed that a man's hand without a weapon could knock another down. The Tatar lay without moving, although he breathed heavily.

Clang! The bakshi struck hard upon a bronze basin hanging beside him, and other soldiers appeared, hastening toward him. Death was the punishment for attacking a Tatar with a weapon.

The crowd fell away from the man named Nial, who, feeling the menace in the air, raised the lion shield on his arm and drew his sword, a long straight blade of gray steel. But Mardi Dobro sprang in front of him.

"Move thou not," he commanded, "and say naught."

And as the guards ran up, the shaman thrust them back with his hands, shouting-

"0 fools, would you cut down one who brings a gift to Barka Khan?"

The Chinese who had demanded the stranger's life cried angrily-

"Where is the gift?"

"Look at it," retorted Mardi Dobro, his green eyes glowing. "It is the sword in his hand. But touch it not."

Pressing nearer, they gazed at the long blade, observing that an inscription in gold was set in the gray steel. This was no common sword, and the man who held it faced them without fear or excitement.

"This," explained the shaman, who knew well how to work upon the feelings of a throng, "is indeed no ordinary sword. You all saw how when this man laid his hand upon it he fell senseless. It is a sword of power."

"Kai!" exclaimed the listeners. They all feared the power of magic, and who should know more of it than this sorcerer? Only the shrewd Chinese suspected that Mardi Dobro was trying to protect the wanderer.

"Why, then," objected the official, "does he wear it at his side, if it be truly a gift for the illustrious khan, our master?"

"Fool! If he did not keep it sheathed at his side, others might come to harm by it, as thou hast seen. Wilt thou stand in the way of one bearing a gift to Barka Khan?"

Slowly the official shook his head. He wrote down on his record that on the fourth day of the third moon of the Leopard one named Nial had come out of the Western Sea bringing with him a sword of power to be given to Barka Khan-all this upon the testimony of the Mongol sorcerer named Mardi Dobro.

"And see," he added grimly, "that the sword is given."

And he motioned to the guards to let the stranger pass into Tana. Promptly Mardi Dobro led his companion away from the crowd into the shadow of an alley. Here he thrust out his bowl, grimacing.

"Pay me, lordling Ni-al. I saved thy head for thee. Pay now the worth of thy head."

Nial took from his leather girdle a small wallet and tossed it to the shaman, who untied it and examined the single gold byzant and the few silver coins within it.

"Is this all?"

"All." The stranger smiled. "I have no more."

"But thou hast friends who will lend to thee?"

"Not in this place."

Tying up the wallet and stowing it within his girdle, Mardi Dobro stared at the youth with insolent green eyes.

"Then why art thou here?"

"I heard that in the lands of the great khan a man may find service for his sword."

"Ohai!" Mardi Dobro grinned like a cat. "Thou-a Christian without even a horse, without gold or servants-seeketh service with the Lord of the World! Thou art a prince of fools. Go back to thy people. Find a ship sailing into the west and go!"

Again Nial smiled.

"My people are dead. I have set my foot upon this road. I will go on."

"The child rides a calf and cries for a horse." Mardi Dobro snapped lean fingers contemptuously. This boy had stood up to the Tatars foolishly, yet his sword was a good one. Perhaps it might please Barka Khan. And then there was the lion on the shield, the same rearing lion of the seal of Barka Khan. This might be an omen. "Thou canst not abide in Tana and live," he muttered. "There is a way for thee to go to Sarai, the city of Barka Khan. I will set thy foot on the way, if thou wilt."

"Aye," said Nial.

Shaking his head, and motioning Nial to follow, the shaman made off through the crowded alleys, dodging horses and mules, until he came to the face of a stone building into which a string of laden camels was passing. He led Nial through the gate into a courtyard open to the sky. Here he pointed to the open gallery of the floor above them.

"At the head of the stair, in the fourth sleeping chamber, thou wilt find a Christian merchant who is as wise as thou art foolish. He goes to Sarai. Look to thyself!"

When Nial turned to thank the shaman, he had disappeared among the kneeling camels. Climbing the stairs, the young swordsman counted the open compartments along the gallery and stopped. In these stalls slept the travelers who owned the beasts in the yard below. But at the fourth place loitered two bearded and shaggy men who glanced at him furtively and waited for him to pass. He had seen their like before, even to the long, curved knives they fingered restlessly.

"Go," he said to them quietly. "Go and rob in the alleys below."

They looked at his sword and the spread of his shoulders, then slipped away. Nial glanced into the compartment.

"Ha! What art thou?" a sharp voice challenged him.

Messer Paolo Tron sat at a small table before a steaming dish of rice and mutton, apparently heedless of the knifemen who had slunk off. A good carpet was spread on the floor, and the merchant's bed of quilts had been laid over several chests and bags at the rear.

"Nial O'Gordon am I," responded the wanderer, "without gear or gold in this land of paynims. Faith, it was a magician who got me through the port and told me I would find a Christian merchant here."

"What seek ye, Messer Nial?"

Tron spoke in the Norman French that was common to most of Europe. Secretly-although he carried a short falchion under his mantle and wore a shirt of linked mail under his jerkin-he was glad to have the loiterers driven away, but he did not show it. Instead his lips tightened at mention of gold.

"A bite to eat, a place to sleep, and a way to Sarai, which is the city of the great khan."

Tron clapped his hands. A frightened Greek servant came to fetch another plate and glass for Nial. The two men helped themselves with their fingers and washed the food down with wine, in silence. The merchant was not given to idle talk, and Nial was hungry after weeks of being pent up in the galley.

"Now," Tron asked suddenly, "how is it that you speak like an Arab?"

"Easy to say." The boy smiled. "I was born among them. Aye, in a castle over the Jordan. My father and his father lived there, in the wars, but now they are dead."

A crusader's son, Tron thought. A luckless lad, raised in Palestine and driven out into the sea by victorious Moslems. He had met crusaders returning through all the ports of the Mediterranean in the ships of the Templars. They were all poor, seeking hire for their swords in a Christendom that cared not at all for them. Strange that this one should come to the road to the Far East.

"Better for you to abide in England. Have you no kin there?"

"Aye, so," Nial nodded. "One would have fed me, if I had tended his cattle. Another wanted me to carry cloth to the dyeing vat. I sold my horse and took ship."

Tron frowned. So it was with these younglings who had grown up in the wars. They would have naught of honest service at a trade, nor would they abide content within the four walls of a room. Probably this Nial would never forget that he had once ridden with his hawks along the heights of the Promised Land, or had watched for foemen to darken the sheen of a river at night.

"Here," he pointed out, "a man can do naught with a sword. The Tatars rule with a heavy hand, and they watch every shadow. Aye! The very horses are spies, carrying tales to them."

Nial bethought him of the quarrel at the customs.

"Still," he said, "a good blade serves well at times."

Slowly Tron shook his head. He was thinking that he had need of a man he could trust, a man whose courage would be like unbending steel. He would need such a man in Sarai. And here was this homeless Nial without other friends. Bold enough to meet the test, and young enough, Tron suspected, to be loyal to the man who gave him aid. At least, the merchant could make trial of him.

"I can give you service," he observed, "as far as Sarai, which is a caravan journey of three weeks. It will be your part to yield me armed protection at need and to go with me upon my ventures."

"That is fair," Nial assented, "and I will do it."

Tron pointed to the chests beside them.

"They have double locks of good Milanese work. But they hold only wine and gear and claptrap for gifts. If thieves get them, 'twill be small loss. Make a show of guarding them, but watch this other thing."

Rising, he looked up and down the gallery, then went back to thrust his hand among the quilts. He drew out a small sack of plain leather and untied the thong that bound it. After listening a moment he poured out into his hand a small stream of barley. Nial saw that in the barley lay loose jewels-tawny opals, blue turquoises inlaid with gold, and some small rubies.

"I am a jewel merchant," Tron explained, watching him, "and I mean to sell these at Sarai. They are worth a year's tithe of a great city."

Nial said nothing. He did not know what else the sack held, but the stones he had seen were not valuable in the Eastern market. Of course, Tron might have better stones hidden elsewhere.

"This sack," the merchant explained, tying it up again, "is your charge. Carry or keep it where you will."

"Aye, so," Nial assented.

In Christendom a merchant could keep his trove in locked chests. Here, upon the caravan road, a good pair of eyes and a ready sword were the only safeguard. If they were to travel together, Tron must needs trust him.

"Now," the merchant added, "abide here. I must look for horses to hire and a road follower to tend them. The Greek is too frightened to steal from me, but he is of no more value than a hare among wolves."

When he had gone, Nial replaced the sack in the quilts and lay down, wrapping himself in his cloak. As the light grew dim he dozed, half hearing the pad of passing feet and the voices in the courtyard below. The Greek came with a brazier to heat the chamber, and the smell of charcoal mingled with the stench of mud and wet sheepskins.

But Nial did not hear-because he came crouching, silent as a creeping cat-the man whose head was hidden under a white bearskin. Mardi Dobro squatted at the entrance of the stall, only his green eyes moving as he scanned every object, lingering upon the chests with their locks in full view.

Deep in thought, Mardi Dobro left the house of the caravans. Although he peered into open doors and scanned the faces of passersby from habit, he paused at times to stare into the trodden snow and shake his shaggy head.

"Kun bolkhu bagasan," he muttered once. "Does the foal show what the horse will be?"

Then-for the sorcerer had as great an appetite for meat as for silver, and the air had grown bitter cold-he felt the ache of hunger, and went swinging through the dusk toward the shop of Ku Yuan, who, being a man of Cathay, would have meat in the pot about that hour, and perhaps part of a tea brick boiled.

Ku Yuan's shop would have given pause to one who did not know it. A narrow door opened into dimness and smells unmentionable. A snarl and then a bird's scream greeted Mardi Dobro, and a long chain clashed as a black panther leaped from one end of it to the other. Livid eyes fastened upon him and blinked as he made his way familiarly through the caged beasts and the roped hawks sitting their wall perches. Ku Yuan kept a fine selection of hunting stock, leopards, cheetahs, and falcons. The shaman smelled broiling mutton among the other odors, and pushed past a screen to find an old Chinese squatting beside the hearth, dipping into a steaming pot.

In silence the shaman knelt beside his host and pulled part of a fat tail from the grease, seasoned with tea. He stuffed himself expertly, pausing only to belch, until he sat back and wiped his hands on a sleeping dog.

"It is true." Mardi Dobro nodded, while he filled his cheeks with lumps of mastic. "More and more Moslems come from the boats with arms."