Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures

by Robert E. Howard

  And he leaped and struck as a tiger leaps. Not Baibars’ stallion that screamed and reared, not his trained swordsmen, not his own quickness could have saved the memluk then. Death alone saved him – death that took the Gael in the midst of his leap. Red Cahal died in midair and it was a corpse that crashed against Baibars’ saddle – a falling sword in a dead hand that, the momentum of the blow completing its arc, scarred Baibar’s forehead and split his eyeball.

  His warriors shouted and reined forward. Baibars slumped in the saddle, sick with agony, blood gushing from between the fingers that gripped his wound. As his chiefs cried out and sought to aid him, he lifted his head and saw, with his single, pain-dimmed eye, Red Cahal lying dead at his horse’s feet. A smile was on the Gael’s lips, and the gray sword lay in shards beside him, shattered, by some freak of chance, on the stones as it fell beside the wielder.

  “A hakim, in the name of Allah,” groaned Baibars. “I am a dead man.”

  “Nay, you are not dead, my lord,” said one of his memluk chiefs. “It is the wound from the dead man’s sword and it is grievous enough, but bethink you: here has the host of the Franks ceased to be. The barons are all taken or slain and the Cross of the patriarch has fallen. Such of the Kharesmians as live are ready to serve you as their new lord – since Kizil Malik slew their khan. The Arabs have fled and Damascus lies helpless before you – and Jerusalem is ours! You will yet be sultan of Egypt.”

  “I have conquered,” answered Baibars, shaken for the first time in his wild life, “but I am half-blind – and of what avail to slay men of that breed? They will come again and again and again, riding to death like a feast because of the restlessness of their souls, through all the centuries. What though we prevail this little Now? They are a race unconquerable, and at last, in a year or a thousand years, they will trample Islam under their feet and ride again through the streets of Jerusalem.”

  And over the red field of battle night fell shuddering.

  The Skull in the Clouds

  The Black Prince scowled above his lance, and wrath in his hot eyes lay,

  “I would that you rode with the spears of France and not at my side today.

  A man may parry an open blow, but I know not where to fend;

  I would that you were an open foe, instead of a sworn friend.

  “You came to me in an hour of need, and your heart I thought I saw;

  But you are one of a rebel breed that knows not king or law.

  You – with your ever smiling face and a black heart under your mail –

  With the haughty strain of the Norman race and the wild, black blood of the Gael.

  “Thrice in a night fight’s close-locked gloom my shield by merest chance

  Has turned a sword that thrust like doom – I wot ’twas not of France!

  And in a dust-cloud, blind and red, as we charged the Provence line

  An unseen axe struck Fitzjames dead, who gave his life for mine.

  “Had I proofs, your head should fall this day or ever I rode to strife.

  Are you but a wolf to rend and slay, with naught to guide your life?

  No gleam of love in a lady’s eyes, no honor or faith or fame?”

  I raised my face to the brooding skies and laughed like a roaring flame.

  “I followed the sign of the Geraldine from Meath to the western sea

  Till a careless word that I scarcely heard bred hate in the heart of me.

  Then I lent my sword to the Irish chiefs, for half of my blood is Gael,

  And we cut like a sickle through the sheafs as we harried the lines of the Pale.

  “But Dermod O’Connor wild with wine, called me a dog at heel,

  And I cleft his bosom to the spine and fled to the black O’Neill.

  We harried the chieftains of the south; we shattered the Norman bows.

  We wasted the land from Cork to Louth; we trampled our fallen foes.

  “But Conn O’Neill put on me a slight before the Gaelic lords,

  And I betrayed him in the night to the red O’Donnell swords.

  I am no thrall to any man, no vassal to any king.

  I owe no vow to any clan, nor faith to any thing.

  “Traitor – but not for fear or gold, but the fire in my own dark brain;

  For the coins I loot from the broken hold I throw to the winds again.

  And I am true to myself alone, through pride and the traitor’s part.

  I would give my life to shield your throne, or rip from your breast the heart

  “For a look or a word, scarce thought or heard. I follow a fading fire,

  Past bead and bell and the hangman’s cell, like a harp-call of desire.

  I may not see the road I ride for the witch-fire lamps that gleam;

  But phantoms glide at my bridle-side, and I follow a nameless Dream.”

  The Black Prince shuddered and shook his head, then crossed himself amain:

  “Go, in God’s name, and never,” he said, “ride in my sight again.”

  The starlight silvered my bridle-rein; the moonlight burned my lance

  As I rode back from the wars again through the pleasant hills of France,

  As I rode to tell Lord Amory of the dark Fitzgerald line

  If the Black Prince died, it needs must be by another hand than mine.

  A Thousand Years Ago

  I was chief of the Chatagai

  A thousand years ago;

  Turan’s souls and her swords were high;

  Arrows flew as snow might fly,

  We shook the desert and broke the sky

  When I was a chief of the Chatagai

  A thousand years ago.

  When I was a chief of the Chatagai,

  A thousand years ago,

  I bared my sword, I loosed the rein,

  I shattered the shahs on Iran’s plain,

  I smote on the walls of Rhoum in vain,

  When I was chief of the Chatagai

  A thousand years ago.

  I was a chief of the Chatagai,

  A thousand years ago,

  And still I dream of the flying strife,

  Of the desert dawns and the unreined life

  When I took the wars of the world to wife –

  When I was a chief of the Chatagai

  A thousand years ago.

  Lord of Samarcand

  The roar of battle had died away; the sun hung like a ball of crimson gold on the western hills. Across the trampled field of battle no squadrons thundered, no war-cry reverberated. Only the shrieks of the wounded and the moans of the dying rose to the circling vultures whose black wings swept closer and closer until they brushed the pallid faces in their flight.

  On his rangy stallion, in a hillside thicket, Ak Boga the Tatar watched, as he had watched since dawn, when the mailed hosts of the Franks, with their forest of lances and flaming pennons, had moved out on the plains of Nicopolis to meet the grim hordes of Bayazid.

  Ak Boga, watching their battle array, had chk-chk’d his teeth in surprize and disapproval as he saw the glittering squadrons of mounted knights draw out in front of the compact masses of stalwart infantry, and lead the advance. They were the flower of Europe – cavaliers of Austria, Germany, France and Italy; but Ak Boga shook his head.

  He had seen the knights charge with a thunderous roar that shook the heavens, had seen them smite the outriders of Bayazid like a withering blast and sweep up the long slope in the teeth of a raking fire from the Turkish archers at the crest. He had seen them cut down the archers like ripe corn, and launch their whole power against the oncoming spahis, the Turkish light cavalry. And he had seen the spahis buckle and break and scatter like spray before a storm, the light-armed riders flinging aside their lances and spurring like mad out of the melee. But Ak Boga had looked back, where, far behind, the sturdy Hungarian pikemen toiled, seeking to keep within supporting distance of the headlong cavaliers.

  He had seen the Frankish horsemen sweep on, reckless of their horses’ strength
as of their own lives, and cross the ridge. From his vantage-point Ak Boga could see both sides of that ridge and he knew that there lay the main power of the Turkish army – sixty-five thousand strong – the janizaries, the terrible Ottoman infantry, supported by the heavy cavalry, tall men in strong armor, bearing spears and powerful bows.

  And now the Franks realized, what Ak Boga had known, that the real battle lay before them; and their horses were weary, their lances broken, their throats choked with dust and thirst.

  Ak Boga had seen them waver and look back for the Hungarian infantry; but it was out of sight over the ridge, and in desperation the knights hurled themselves on the massed enemy, striving to break the ranks by sheer ferocity. That charge never reached the grim lines. Instead a storm of arrows broke the Christian front, and this time, on exhausted horses, there was no riding against it. The whole first rank went down, horses and men pin-cushioned, and in that red shambles their comrades behind them stumbled and fell headlong. And then the janizaries charged with a deep-toned roar of “Allah!” that was like the thunder of deep surf.

  All this Ak Boga had seen; had seen, too, the inglorious flight of some of the knights, the ferocious resistance of others. On foot, leaguered and outnumbered, they fought with sword and ax, falling one by one, while the tide of battle flowed around them on either side and the blood-drunken Turks fell upon the infantry which had just toiled into sight over the ridge.

  There, too, was disaster. Flying knights thundered through the ranks of the Wallachians, and these broke and retired in ragged disorder. The Hungarians and Bavarians received the brunt of the Turkish onslaught, staggered and fell back stubbornly, contesting every foot, but unable to check the victorious flood of Moslem fury.

  And now, as Ak Boga scanned the field, he no longer saw the serried lines of the pikemen and ax-fighters. They had fought their way back over the ridge and were in full, though ordered, retreat, and the Turks had come back to loot the dead and mutilate the dying. Such knights as had not fallen or broken away in flight, had flung down the hopeless sword and surrendered. Among the trees on the farther side of the vale, the main Turkish host was clustered, and even Ak Boga shivered a trifle at the screams which rose where Bayazid’s swordsmen were butchering the captives. Nearer at hand ran ghoulish figures, swift and furtive, pausing briefly over each heap of corpses; here and there gaunt dervishes with foam on their beards and madness in their eyes plied their knives on writhing victims who screamed for death.

  “Erlik!” muttered Ak Boga. “They boasted that they could hold up the sky on their lances, were it to fall, and lo, the sky has fallen and their host is meat for the ravens!”

  He reined his horse away through the thicket; there might be good plunder among the plumed and corseleted dead, but Ak Boga had come hither on a mission which was yet to be completed. But even as he emerged from the thicket, he saw a prize no Tatar could forego – a tall Turkish steed with an ornate high-peaked Turkish saddle came racing by. Ak Boga spurred quickly forward and caught the flying, silver-worked rein. Then, leading the restive charger, he trotted swiftly down the slope away from the battlefield.

  Suddenly he reined in among a clump of stunted trees. The hurricane of strife, slaughter and pursuit had cast its spray on this side of the ridge. Before him Ak Boga saw a tall, richly clad knight grunting and cursing as he sought to hobble along using his broken lance as a crutch. His helmet was gone, revealing a blond head and a florid choleric face. Not far away lay a dead horse, an arrow protruding from its ribs.

  As Ak Boga watched, the big knight stumbled and fell with a scorching oath. Then from the bushes came a man such as Ak Boga had never seen before, even among the Franks. This man was taller than Ak Boga, who was a big man, and his stride was like that of a gaunt gray wolf. He was bareheaded, a tousled shock of tawny hair topping a sinister scarred face, burnt dark by the sun, and his eyes were cold as gray icy steel. The great sword he trailed was crimson to the hilt, his rusty scale-mail shirt hacked and rent, the kilt beneath it torn and slashed. His right arm was stained to the elbow, and blood dripped sluggishly from a deep gash in his left forearm.

  “Devil take all!” growled the crippled knight in Norman French, which Ak Boga understood; “this is the end of the world!”

  “Only the end of a horde of fools,” the tall Frank’s voice was hard and cold, like the rasp of a sword in its scabbard.

  The lame man swore again. “Stand not there like a blockhead, fool! Catch me a horse! My damnable steed caught a shaft in its cursed hide, and though I spurred it until the blood spurted over my heels, it fell at last, and I think, broke my ankle.”

  The tall one dropped his sword-point to the earth and stared at the other somberly.

  “You give commands as though you sat in your own fief of Saxony, Lord Baron Frederik! But for you and divers other fools, we had cracked Bayazid like a nut this day.”

  “Dog!” roared the baron, his intolerant face purpling; “this insolence to me? I’ll have you flayed alive!”

  “Who but you cried down the Elector in council?” snarled the other, his eyes glittering dangerously. “Who called Sigismund of Hungary a fool because he urged that the lord allow him to lead the assault with his infantry? And who but you had the ear of that young fool High Constable of France, Philip of Artois, so that in the end he led the charge that ruined us all, nor would wait on the ridge for support from the Hungarians? And now you, who turned tail quicker than any when you saw what your folly had done, you bid me fetch you a horse!”

  “Aye, and quickly, you Scottish dog!” screamed the baron, convulsed with fury. “You shall answer for this – ”

  “I’ll answer here,” growled the Scotsman, his manner changing murderously. “You have heaped insults on me since we first sighted the Danube. If I’m to die, I’ll settle one score first!”

  “Traitor!” bellowed the baron, whitening, scrambling up on his knee and reaching for his sword. But even as he did so, the Scotsman struck, with an oath, and the baron’s roar was cut short in a ghastly gurgle as the great blade sheared through shoulder-bone, ribs and spine, casting the mangled corpse limply upon the blood-soaked earth.

  “Well struck, warrior!” At the sound of the guttural voice the slayer wheeled like a great wolf, wrenching free the sword. For a tense moment the two eyed each other, the swordsman standing above his victim, a brooding somber figure terrible with potentialities of blood and slaughter, the Tatar sitting his high-peaked saddle like a carven image.

  “I am no Turk,” said Ak Boga. “You have no quarrel with me. See, my scimitar is in its sheath. I have need of a man like you – strong as a bear, swift as a wolf, cruel as a falcon. I can bring you to much you desire.”

  “I desire only vengeance on the head of Bayazid,” rumbled the Scotsman.

  The dark eyes of the Tatar glittered.

  “Then come with me. For my lord is the sworn enemy of the Turk.”

  “Who is your lord?” asked the Scotsman suspiciously.

  “Men call him the Lame,” answered Ak Boga, “Timour, the Servant of God, by the favor of Allah, Amir of Tatary.”

  The Scotsman turned his head in the direction of the distant shrieks which told that the massacre was still continuing, and stood for an instant like a great bronze statue. Then he sheathed his sword with a savage rasp of steel.

  “I will go,” he said briefly.

  The Tatar grinned with pleasure, and leaning forward, gave into his hands the reins of the Turkish horse. The Frank swung into the saddle and glanced inquiringly at Ak Boga. The Tatar motioned with his helmeted head and reined away down the slope. They touched in the spurs and cantered swiftly away into the gathering twilight, while behind them the shrieks of dire agony still rose to the shivering stars which peered palely out, as if frightened by man’s slaughter of man.

  II

  “Had we twa been upon the green,

  And never an eye to see,

  I wad hae had you, flesh and fell;

  But
your sword shall gae wi’ me.”

  – The Battle of Otterbourne

  Again the sun was sinking, this time over a desert, etching the spires and minarets of a blue city. Ak Boga drew rein on the crest of a rise and sat motionless for a moment, sighing deeply as he drank in the familiar sight, whose wonder never faded.

  “Samarcand,” said Ak Boga.

  “We have ridden far,” answered his companion. Ak Boga smiled. The Tatar’s garments were dusty, his mail tarnished, his face somewhat drawn, though his eyes still twinkled. The Scotsman’s strongly chiselled features had not altered.

  “You are of steel, bogatyr,” said Ak Boga. “The road we have traveled would have wearied a courier of Genghis Khan. And by Erlik, I, who was bred in the saddle, am the wearier of the twain!”

  The Scotsman gazed unspeaking at the distant spires, remembering the days and nights of apparently endless riding, when he had slept swaying in the saddle, and all the sounds of the universe had died down to the thunder of hoofs. He had followed Ak Boga unquestioning: through hostile hills where they avoided trails and cut through the blind wilderness, over mountains where the chill winds cut like a sword-edge, into stretches of steppes and desert. He had not questioned when Ak Boga’s relaxing vigilance told him that they were out of hostile country, and when the Tatar began to stop at wayside posts where tall dark men in iron helmets brought fresh steeds. Even then there was no slacking of the headlong pace: a swift guzzling of wine and snatching of food; occasionally a brief interlude of sleep, on a heap of hides and cloaks; then again the drum of racing hoofs. The Frank knew that Ak Boga was bearing the news of the battle to his mysterious lord, and he wondered at the distance they had covered between the first post where saddled steeds awaited them and the blue spires that marked their journey’s end. Wide-flung indeed were the boundaries of the lord called Timour the Lame.

  They had covered that vast expanse of country in a time the Frank would have sworn impossible. He felt now the grinding wear of that terrible ride, but he gave no outward sign. The city shimmered to his gaze, mingling with the blue of the distance, so that it seemed part of the horizon, a city of illusion and enchantment. Blue: the Tatars lived in a wide magnificent land, lavish with color schemes, and the prevailing motif was blue. In the spires and domes of Samarcand were mirrored the hues of the skies, the far mountains and the dreaming lakes.