Swords From the West (21 page)

But Eric was not thinking of that. His eye had been caught by smoke and dust on the summit of the ridge where the duke's camp stood. Through the haze moved cloaked horsemen and gaunt yellow camels. At times steel dashed in the sunlight. He could hear no uproar but it seemed to him that the large pavilions of the knights were down and burning-and surely Odo's pavilion had vanished from its stone summit.

The fleeing Arabs had turned aside to storm the camp. And Eric, who cared little for that, remembered the sleeping child who had held fast to his hand through the night's watching. He thought of her shot through by arrows, falling under the galloping horses, or bound to an Arab's saddle, and he leaped from his high ground.

He pulled the swordsman who had spoken to him out of the saddle, and he swung upon the Norman's charger, and lashed the horse to a gallop toward the ridge. The others made haste to follow.

But Eric was the first to climb the ridge. The Arabs had fled. Upon the knoll, the duke's pavilion lay in flames.

The Viking urged his horse toward Sir Guy's tent, and reined in.

"Here was fighting," he muttered.

The tent was down, and atop the wreckage lay the figure of a Norman man-at-arms, his chain mesh broken, his body slashed open below the ribs. His head, encased in a basket helm, was turned to the sky, and upon him and about him sprawled the bodies of eight Moslems, all cut and crushed by gigantic blows.

Others of the duke's men came up to stare and to say-what Eric's eyes had told him-that they knew naught of Sir Guy and his daughter, save that no captives had been carried off by the Arabs. But when they said that, the folds of the linen tent stirred upon the wreckage, and a faint voice cried, "God for Bari."

The Normans started back and exclaimed, but Eric bade them cut through the tangle of cloth with their knives and this they did after making the sign of the cross-for it seemed to them that the dead had spoken.

They found the tent pole and table piled against the pallet, and upon the bed the girl Ilga, shielding the head of her sick father with her body. When Eric bent over them she stared back and looked around fearfully. The knight of the Mount raised himself upon his elbow.

"Forgive her, my lord," he whispered. "She hath been sorely tried and all this day she looked for the tall Viking, who came not."

"What befell here?" Eric's voice was hoarse within the steel dome.

"Christ be my aid, a strange thing befell. Anon we watched thy charge and the main battle. Then there came to the tent a tall fellow, wearing a nobleman's helm such as thine, but without device of any kind. He spoke not, but took Ilga up in his arms. She cried aloud for Eric, the Viking, but this man laughed and heeded me not. He bore her to the entrance, then we heard the shouting of the Arabs."

Sir Guy brushed the sweat from his white face "The man of the helm said nothing. He turned back and again he laughed, when he tossed Ilga down beside me. He laid the table-so-and heaved up the center pole, letting it down upon us, with all the canopy about us. Then he pushed his way clear of the cloth and took his stand near us, for we heard his battle shout. Aye, he struck heavy blows, and it seemed to me that a score of swordsmen came against him. Yet he held his ground, and shielded us. He had great strength, being a madman, touched with the sun, or God's anger."

"Not so." The Viking thrust his fingers through the openings in his helm beneath his ears, and wrenched off the steel casque when the links and laces broke.

A hundred eyes stared at him mutely, until the maid Ilga left her father and caught the Viking's arm against her heart. "Thou-thou didst leave me!"

Eric's blue eyes clouded, and he nodded slowly. "True-it must be said that I have that weakness. When steel is bared, I have nothing else in my head." And when she pressed her face against his torn shoulder he bent down, brushing his lips against the tangle of her hair.

A Norman strode up to him. "What then of my lord, the duke? Eric the Landless, it does appear to me thou hast stolen his gear, and helm."

But Sir Guy lifted his hand. "Ill said! This smells to me of Odo's trickery, and I doubt not that he will presently come out of his hole, like the fox he is."

Before anyone could answer, the Viking's deep voice checked them. "Not so!"

He stepped to the body upon the wreckage, and with the edge of his ax cut the thongs of the helm. He drew it off and cast it away, and in the silence that followed his action, leaned on his ax to look down into the pallid features and the open eyes of the dead duke, Odo.

"I am thinking," his voice rumbled on, "that this was a man of hard deeds, but he met his death well. And it must be said, that is a great thing in any man."

Chapter I

Master of the Hawks

The road ran straight as an arrow's flight over the red clay plain. But the plain itself rose and fell, in swell after swell, as if it were a motionless sea on which floated black rocks and a scum of gray tamarisk. A haze of dust shut it in on all sides, veiling the skyline. Through this veil burned the midafternoon sun.

Broad wooden wheel tracks and round camel pads, cut by the sharper hoofs of horses and laden donkeys, marked the line of the road. The dung had been picked up and carried off to be dried for fuel. Only down in a gully, under a grove of wind-stripped poplars, were men to be seen.

They had been watering their animals at the well, in a nest of limestone rock. And, being Afghans, they lingered to dispute among themselves, idly hopeful that plunder might come their way along the caravan road. Like heavy-headed birds of prey they squatted in the shade, wrapped in their striped abtu, with long knives in their girdles.

So far, they had seen nothing promising pass by-herds of sheep and black goats, a well-guarded caravan with rice up from Ghazna, hastening into the orchards of Samarkand a few hours' travel to the west. At about this point the road left the fertile land by the Samarkand River and entered the Kizil Kum, the Red Sands. Beyond the Kizil Kum the road ascended through the foothills to the high plateaus known as the Roof of the World. And beyond this barrier, far to the east, lay Cathay, the dominion of Kublai Khan.

At the sound of hoofs the Afghans turned on their haunches to stare at a single rider coming from Samarkand. After a glance they settled back again, seeing no hope of loot in him.

For one thing, he had light saddlebags. The white felt coat rolled and tied to the saddle behind him was that of a Tatar officer. These Afghans had found it unwise to meddle with the Tatars, who ruled all the world they knew with an iron hand. Yet this rider was not a Tatar. He did not crouch in the saddle with shortened stirrups, but held erect his long straight body clad in a loose tunic of chamois leather. The sun-bleached hair that fell to his shoulders was the color of ripe wheat. His eyes were casual and blue, although his face with its high cheekbones was almost as dark as their own.

Every one of them glanced enviously at the clean-limbed bay mare he rode and looked curiously at the long sword with plain hilt and leather sheath slung to his hip. Unlike the Tatars, he carried no bow or shield.

"Awa fikh!" One of them rose to greet him. "Thy health! Dismount and sit. Let thy horse drink."

The stranger smiled.

"There is no need, 0 brothers of the road. May Allah not turn his face from ye!"

And he trotted on without a backward glance, which in itself was a matter for surprise. They grunted and talked him over.

"He speaks Arabic like a hadji-nay, like one born among the people of the tents. Surely he hath come from afar. The horse is worth more than silver, it is worth gold. But he rides alone. Then, verily, in a little while will we see the others of his band coming after."

The stranger, however, was alone. He was traveling faster than the caravans, and he disliked the delay and confusion of the mixed bands that filled the great road to the East. And, as the Afghans had suspected, he came from a far place.

Nial he was, Nial O'Gordon, with no land to claim for his own. Born in a crusader's frontier castle overlooking the gorge of the Jordan, a Scot by blood, he had been driven out of Palestine by the victorious Moslems. Weaned and trained in the East, he had found no tie to hold him to England, and no kin who would do aught for a wandering son of a crusader. He was no more than twenty years old, and he had a longing to make his way through the barriers to Cathay where the great khan reigned.

From Constantinople Nial had sailed to the sea gate of the Golden Horde, where his swordsmanship had kept life in him and brought him reward from Barka Khan, of the Horde. In that year he had learned to speak with the Tatars, and he carried sewn to the inner side of his belt a bronze tablet certifying that he had served faithfully as gur-khan of the Golden Horde. He had, besides, enough gold to take him far on his road.

After riding half a mile beyond the well, he halted on a rise and let his horse nose the ground while he watched the track behind him. The Afghans looked as if they were on the prowl, and he wanted to see whether any of them had decided to come after him. He did make out one horseman surmounting a ridge with red dust spurting behind him.

But the man was alone, going at a steady gallop. Soon Nial heard a distant jingle of bells, and made out that the oncoming rider was unarmed, with nothing carried on the saddle-a Tatar courier, going at racing speed to the next post station. Those Afghans would never molest the messenger.

The courier swept down into the last hollow and disappeared. With an abrupt jangle the sound of the bells ceased. Nial waited, listening. He heard a confused clatter, as if horses were stamping over loose stones. Then nothing at all.

Nial picked up his rein after a moment and turned back along the trail. Odd that such a rider should have been thrown on an open road. The man would have halted for nothing else. He might have been hurt, and Nial would need to catch the horse and bring him along to the station.

As he had expected, Nial saw the courier lying motionless in the bottom of the hollow near a grove of dense tamarisk. The horse had vanished. He dismounted beside the Tatar and bent over him quickly. The courier's body had been slashed through to the backbone beneath the ribs, and he was dead, although his blood was still draining into the sand.

Turning him over, Nial saw that the long leather case fastened to his belt had been ripped open. Whatever he had carried had been stolen, and the man himself slain out of hand. In the patches of sand around the body Nial traced the tracks of two horses that had come out to the road, barring the way. The slayers had gone off at once, down the gully, to keep clear of the skyline.

Then Nial sprang up, catching at his sword. Something moved behind the screen of tamarisk. Two horses trotted out, and their riders drove at him before he had a chance to mount. As he braced himself, swinging his blade back of his shoulder, he saw that the scimitar of the nearer man was stained with blood. And it flashed through his mind that they had surely seen him coming over the ridge and had turned back to put him out of the way as he knelt over the body.

Even as he thought, he leaped his own length to one side-from the left hand to the right of the horseman who was already bringing down his scimitar in a slash. The sudden move caught the man unaware, and he tried to turn his blade as he shifted in the saddle and jerked at his horse.

But Nial, with both feet planted firmly on the ground, swung his long sword savagely. The horse could not be checked in time, and the steel blade swept down over its head, brushing back the scimitar and biting deep over the hips of the rider.

"Y'allah!" The man screamed, straightening convulsively in his stirrups and falling heavily as Nial pulled the sword clear, turning in time to parry a slash from the second rider.

The man galloped by and pulled in for a moment to stare malevolently at the tall wanderer. Then, clapping his stirrups against the ribs of his horse, he galloped back toward the well, keeping to the road.

Nial listened until he was sure that the surviving slayer had gone off in earnest. Then he went to inspect the man he had cut from the saddle, who had lived only a few moments after striking down the unarmed courier-a tall man in a wolfskin chaban, smelling like a wolf. A black lambskin hat lay beside him, and from under his arm the end of a silver tube projected. Nial drew it out and looked at it curiously.