The Norman finished his goblet at a draft and rose deliberately, taking up his shield and helmet.
“And what of me, Yahouda?” It was the guttural voice of the Mongol. “Has the great prince no word for Toghrul Khan, who has ridden far and hard to join his horde? Has he said naught of an audience with me?”
The Jew scowled. “Lord Skol said naught of any Tartar,” he answered shortly. “Wait until he sends for you, as he will do – if it so pleases him.”
The answer was as much an insult to the haughty pagan as would have been a slap in the face. He half made to rise then sank back, his face, schooled to iron control, showing little of his rage. But his serpent-like eyes glittering devilishly, took in not only the Jew but Cormac as well, and the Norman knew that he himself was included in Toghrul Khan’s black anger. Mongol pride and Mongol wrath are beyond the ken of the Western mind, but Cormac knew that in his humiliation, the nomad hated him as much as he hated Jacob.
But Cormac could count his friends on his fingers and his personal enemies by the scores. A few more foes made little difference and he paid no heed to Toghrul Khan as he followed the Jew up the broad stairs, and along a winding corridor to a heavy, metal-braced door before which stood, like an image carven of black basalt, a huge naked Nubian who held a two-handed scimitar whose five-foot blade was a foot wide at the tip.
Jacob made a sign to the Nubian, but Cormac saw that the Jew was trembling and apprehensive.
“In God’s name,” Jacob whispered to the Norman, “speak him softly; Skol is in a devilish temper tonight. Only a little while ago he tore out the eyeball of a slave with his hands.”
“That was that scream I heard then,” grunted Cormac. “Well, don’t stand there chattering; tell that black beast to open the door before I knock it down.”
Jacob blenched; but it was no idle threat. It was not the Norman-Gael’s nature to wait meekly at the door of any man – he who had been cup-companion to King Richard. The majordomo spoke swiftly to the mute, who swung the door open. Cormac pushed past his guide and strode across the threshold.
And for the first time he looked on Skol Abdhur the Butcher, whose deeds of blood had already made him a semi-mythical figure. The Norman saw a bizarre giant reclining on a silken divan, in the midst of a room hung and furnished like a king’s. Erect, Skol would have towered half a head taller than Cormac, and though a huge belly marred the symmetry of his figure, he was still an image of physical prowess. His short, naturally black beard had been stained to a bluish tint; his wide black eyes blazed with a curious wayward look not altogether sane at times.
He was clad in cloth-of-gold slippers whose toes turned up extravagantly, in voluminous Persian trousers of rare silk, and a wide green silken sash, heavy with golden scales, was wrapt about his waist. Above this he wore a sleeveless jacket, richly brocaded, open in front, but beneath this his huge torso was naked. His blue-black hair, held by a gemmed circlet of gold, fell to his shoulders, and his fingers were gleaming with jewels, while his bare arms were weighted with heavy gem-crusted armlets. Women’s earrings adorned his ears.
Altogether his appearance was of such fantastic barbarism as to inspire in Cormac an amazement which in an ordinary man would have been a feeling of utmost horror. The apparent savagery of the giant, together with his fantastic finery which heightened rather than lessened the terror of his appearance, lent Skol Abdhur an aspect which set him outside the pale of ordinary humanity. The effect of an ordinary man, so garbed, would have been merely ludicrous; in the robber chieftain it was one of horror.
Yet as Jacob salaamed to the floor in a very frenzy of obeisance, he was not sure that Skol looked any more formidable than the mail-clad Frank with his aspect of dynamic and terrible strength directed by a tigerish nature.
“The lord Cormac FitzGeoffrey, oh mighty prince,” proclaimed Jacob, while Cormac stood like an iron image not deigning even to incline his lion-like head.
“Yes, fool, I can see that,” Skol’s voice was deep and resonant. “Take yourself hence before I crop your ears. And see that those fools downstairs have plenty of wine.”
From the stumbling haste with which Jacob obeyed, Cormac knew the threat of cropping ears was no empty one. Now his eyes wandered to a shocking and pitiful figure – the slave standing behind Skol’s divan ready to pour wine for his grim master. The wretch was trembling in every limb as a wounded horse quivers, and the reason was apparent – a ghastly gaping socket from which the eye had been ruthlessly ripped. Blood still oozed from the rim to join the stains which blotched the twisted face and spotted the silken garments. Pitiful finery! Skol dressed his miserable slaves in apparel rich merchants might envy. And the wretch stood shivering in agony, yet not daring to move from his tracks, though with the pain-misted half-sight remaining him, he could scarcely see to fill the gem-crusted goblet Skol lifted.
“Come and sit on the divan with me, Cormac,” hailed Skol, “I would speak to you. Dog! Fill the lord Frank’s goblet, and haste, lest I take your other eye.”
“I drink no more this night,” growled Cormac, thrusting aside the goblet Skol held out to him. “And send that slave away. He’ll spill wine on you in his blindness.”
Skol stared at Cormac a moment and then with a sudden laugh waved the pain-sick slave toward the door. The man went hastily, whimpering in agony.
“See,” said Skol, “I humor your whim. But it was not necessary. I would have wrung his neck after we had talked, so he could not repeat our words.”
Cormac shrugged his shoulders. Little use to try to explain to Skol that it was pity for the slave and not desire for secrecy that prompted him to have the man dismissed.
“What think you of my kingdom, Bab-el-Shaitan?” asked Skol suddenly.
“It would be hard to take,” answered the Norman.
Skol laughed wildly and emptied his goblet.
“So the Seljuks have found,” he hiccupped. “I took it years ago by a trick from the Turk who held it. Before the Turks came the Arabs held it and before them – the devil knows. It is old – the foundations were built in the long ago by Iskander Akbar – Alexander the Great. Then centuries later came the Roumi – the Romans – who added to it. Parthians, Persians, Kurds, Arabs, Turks – all have shed blood on its walls. Now it is mine, and while I live, mine it shall remain! I know its secrets – and its secrets,” he cast the Frank a sly and wicked glance full of sinister meaning, “are more than most men reckon – even those fools Nadir Tous and di Strozza, who would cut my throat if they dared.”
“How do you hold supremacy over these wolves?” asked Cormac bluntly.
Skol laughed and drank once more.
“I have something each wishes. They hate each other; I play them against one another. I hold the key to the plot. They do not trust each other enough to move against me. I am Skol Abdhur! Men are puppets to dance on my strings. And women” – a vagrant and curious glint stole into his eyes – “women are food for the gods,” he said strangely.
“Many men serve me,” said Skol Abdhur, “emirs and generals and chiefs, as you saw. How came they here to Bab-el-Shaitan where the world ends? Ambition – intrigues – women – jealousy – hatred – now they serve the Butcher. And what brought you here, my brother? That you are an outlaw I know – that your life is forfeit to your people because you slew a certain emir of the Franks, one Count Conrad von Gonler. But only when hope is dead do men ride to Bab-el-Shaitan. There are cycles within cycles, outlaws beyond the pale of outlawry, and Bab-el-Shaitan is the end of the world.”
“Well,” growled Cormac, “one man can not raid the caravans. My friend Sir Rupert de Vaile, Seneschal of Antioch, is captive to the Turkish chief Ali Bahadur, and the Turk refuses to ransom him for the gold that has been offered. You ride far, and fall on the caravans that bring the treasures of Hind and Cathay. With you I may find some treasure so rare that the Turk will accept it as a ransom. If not, with my share of the loot I will hire enough bold rogues to rescue Sir Rupert.”
Skol shrugged his shoulders. “Franks are mad,” said he, “but whatever the reason, I am glad you rode hither. I have heard you are faithful to the lord you follow, and I need such a man. Just now I trust no one but Abdullah, the black mute that guards my chamber.”
It was evident to Cormac that Skol was fast becoming drunk. Suddenly he laughed wildly.
“You asked me how I hold my wolves in leash? Not one but would slit my throat. But look – so far I trust you I will show you why they do not!”
He reached into his girdle and drew forth a huge jewel which sparkled like a tiny lake of blood in his great palm. Even Cormac’s eyes narrowed at the sight.
“Satan!” he muttered. “That can be naught but the ruby called – ”
“The Blood of Belshazzar!” exclaimed Skol Abdhur. “Aye, the gem Cyrus the Persian ripped from the sword-gashed bosom of the great king on that red night when Babylon fell! It is the most ancient and costly gem in the world. Ten thousand pieces of heavy gold could not buy it.
“Hark, Frank,” again Skol drained a goblet, “I will tell you the tale of the Blood of Belshazzar. See you how strangely it is carved?”
He held it up and the light flashed redly from its many facets. Cormac shook his head, puzzled. The carving was strange indeed, corresponding to nothing he had ever seen, east or west. It seemed that the ancient carver had followed some plan entirely unknown and apart from that of modern lapidary art. It was basically different with a difference Cormac could not define.
“No mortal cut that stone!” said Skol, “but the djinn of the sea! For once in the long, long ago, in the very dawn of happenings, the great king, even Belshazzar, went from his palace on pleasure bent and coming to the Green Sea – the Persian Gulf – went thereon in a royal galley, golden-prowed and rowed by a hundred slaves. Now there was one Naka, a diver of pearls, who desiring greatly to honor his king, begged the royal permission to seek the ocean bottom for rare pearls for the king, and Belshazzar granting his wish, Naka dived. Inspired by the glory of the king, he went far beyond the depth of divers, and after a time floated to the surface, grasping in his hand a ruby of rare beauty – aye, this very gem.
“Then the king and his lords, gazing on its strange carvings, were amazed, and Naka, nigh to death because of the great depth to which he had gone, gasped out a strange tale of a silent, seaweed-festooned city of marble and lapis lazuli far below the surface of the sea, and of a monstrous mummied king on a jade throne from whose dead taloned hand Naka had wrested the ruby. And then the blood burst from the diver’s mouth and ears and he died.
“Then Belshazzar’s lords entreated him to throw the gem back into the sea, for it was evident that it was the treasure of the djinn of the sea, but the king was as one mad, gazing into the crimson deeps of the ruby, and he shook his head.
“And lo, soon evil came upon him, for the Persians broke his kingdom, and Cyrus, looting the dying monarch, wrested from his bosom the great ruby which seemed so gory in the light of the burning palace that the soldiers shouted: ‘Lo, it is the heart’s blood of Belshazzar!’ And so men came to call the gem the Blood of Belshazzar.
“Blood followed its course. When Cyrus fell on the Jaxartes, Queen Tomyris seized the jewel and for a time it gleamed on the naked bosom of the Scythian queen. But she was despoiled of it by a rebel general; in a battle against the Persians he fell and it went into the hands of Cambyses, who carried it with him into Egypt, where a priest of Bast stole it. A Numidian mercenary murdered him for it, and by devious ways it came back to Persia once more. It gleamed on Xerxes’ crown when he watched his army destroyed at Salamis.
“Alexander took it from the corpse of Darius and on the Macedonian’s corselet its gleams lighted the road to India. A chance sword blow struck it from his breastplate in a battle on the Indus and for centuries the Blood of Belshazzar was lost to sight. Somewhere far to the east, we know, its gleams shone on a road of blood and rapine, and men slew men and dishonored women for it. For it, as of old, women gave up their virtue, men their lives and kings their crowns.
“But at last its road turned to the west once more, and I took it from the body of a Turkoman chief I slew in a raid far to the east. How he came by it, I do not know. But now it is mine!”
Skol was drunk; his eyes blazed with inhuman passion; more and more he seemed like some foul bird of prey.
“It is my balance of power! Men come to me from palace and hovel, each hoping to have the Blood of Belshazzar for his own. I play them against each other. If one should slay me for it, the others would instantly cut him to pieces to gain it. They distrust each other too much to combine against me. And who would share the gem with another?”
He poured himself wine with an unsteady hand.
“I am Skol the Butcher!” he boasted, “a prince in my own right! I am powerful and crafty beyond the knowledge of common men. For I am the most feared chieftain in all the Taurus, I who was dirt beneath men’s feet, the disowned and despised son of a renegade Persian noble and a Circassian slave-girl.
“Bah – these fools who plot against me – the Venetian, Kai Shah, Musa bin Daoud and Kadra Muhammad – over against them I play Nadir Tous, that polished cutthroat, and Kojar Mirza. The Persian and the Kurd hate me and they hate di Strozza, but they hate each other even more. And Shalmar Khor hates them all.”
“And what of Seosamh el Mekru?” Cormac could not twist his Norman-Celtic tongue to the Arabic of Joseph.
“Who knows what is in an Arab’s mind?” growled Skol. “But you may be certain he is a jackal for loot, like all his kind, and will watch which way the feather falls, to join the stronger side – and then betray the winners.
“But I care not!” the robber roared suddenly. “I am Skol the Butcher! Deep in the deeps of the Blood have I seen misty, monstrous shapes and read dark secrets! Aye – in my sleep I hear the whispers of that dead, half-human king from whom Naka the diver tore the jewel so long ago. Blood! That is a drink the ruby craves! Blood follows it; blood is drawn to it! Not the head of Cyrus did Queen Tomyris plunge into a vessel of warm blood as the legends say, but the gem she took from the dead king! He who wears it must quench its thirst or it will drink his own blood! Aye, the heart’s flow of kings and queens have gone into its crimson shadow!
“And I have quenched its thirst! There are secrets of Bab-el-Shaitan none knows but I – and Abdullah whose withered tongue can never speak of the sights he has looked upon, the shrieks his ears have heard in the blackness below the castle when midnight holds the mountains breathless. For I have broken into secret corridors, sealed up by the Arabs who rebuilt the hold, and unknown to the Turks who followed them.”
He checked himself as if he had said too much. But the crimson dreams began to weave again their pattern of insanity.
“You have wondered why you see no women here? Yet hundreds of fair girls have passed through the portals of Bab-el-Shaitan. Where are they now? Ha ha ha!” The giant’s sudden roar of ghastly laughter thundered in the room.
“Many went to quench the ruby’s thirst,” said Skol, reaching for the wine jug, “or to become the brides of the Dead, the concubines of ancient demons of the mountains and deserts, who take fair girls only in death throes. Some I or my warriors merely wearied of and flung to the vultures.”
Cormac sat, chin on mailed fist, his dark brows lowering in disgust.
“Ha!” laughed the robber. “You do not laugh – are you thin-skinned, lord Frank? I have heard you spoken of as a desperate man. Wait until you have ridden with me for a few moons! Not for nothing am I named the Butcher! I have built a pyramid of skulls in my day! I have severed the necks of old men and old women, I have dashed out the brains of babes, I have ripped up women, I have burned children alive and sat them by scores on pointed stakes! Pour me wine, Frank.”
“Pour your own damned wine,” growled Cormac, his lip writhing back dangerously.
“That had cost another man his head,” said Skol, reaching for his goblet. “Y
ou are rude of speech to your host and the man you have ridden so far to serve. Take care – rouse me not.” Again he laughed his horrible laughter.
“These walls have re-echoed to screams of direst agony!” His eyes began to burn with a reckless and maddened light. “With these hands have I disembowelled men, torn out the tongues of children and ripped out the eyeballs of girls – thus!”
With a shriek of crazed laughter his huge hand shot at Cormac’s face. With an oath the Norman caught the giant’s wrist and bones creaked in that iron grip. Twisting the arm viciously down and aside with a force that nearly tore it from its socket, Cormac flung Skol back on the divan.
“Save your whims for your slaves, you drunken fool,” the Norman rasped.
Skol sprawled on the divan, grinning like an idiotic ogre and trying to work his fingers which Cormac’s savage grasp had numbed. The Norman rose and strode from the chamber in fierce disgust; his last backward glance showed Skol fumbling with the wine jug, with one hand still grasping the Blood of Belshazzar, which cast a sinister light all over the room.
The door shut behind Cormac and the Nubian cast him a sidelong, suspicious glance. The Norman shouted impatiently for Jacob, and the Jew bobbed up suddenly and apprehensively. His face cleared when Cormac bruskly demanded to be shown his chamber. As he tramped along the bare, torch-lighted corridors, Cormac heard sounds of revelry still going on below. Knives would be going before morning, reflected Cormac, and some would not see the rising of the sun. Yet the noises were neither as loud nor as varied as they had been when he left the banquet hall; no doubt many were already senseless from strong drink.
Jacob turned aside and opened a heavy door, his torch revealing a small cell-like room, bare of hangings, with a sort of bunk on one side; there was a single window, heavily barred, and but one door. The Jew thrust the torch into a niche of the wall.
“Was the lord Skol pleased with you, my lord?” he asked nervously.
Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures Page 27