by Harold Lamb
This prospect was rather pleasing to the warrior of al-Yaman, particularly as he firmly believed the speaker had the gift of sight into hidden things, and he asked Donn Dera to prophesy whether the issue would be favorable or not.
“God knows,” responded the wanderer.
The Arab nodded, in complete agreement.
“With Him are the keys of the unseen.”
CHAPTER V - THE SWORD OF ROLAND
If a chain is on the lions neck, the jackal will range the ruins all night long.—ARABIC PROVERB.
THE third day dawned clear and cloudless in its heat, and Khalil waxed impatient. Hugh’s fever had left him, and his hurts had mended, and it was decided to move toward Antioch.
The horses were driven in from pasture by the boys of the tribe, and the men selected their mounts—Hugh picking out a bay charger that looked as if he were accustomed to a heavy rider in armor. Then Khalil led them to where plundered weapons were kept.
Swords—of the weight that would suit the crusader—were lacking, and the knight of Taranto selected an ax with a curved edge and a pick at the other end. The handle of the ax was three feet in length, of gray ash, smooth and oiled. Donn Dera raked over the pile, grumbling, until he grinned and held up an iron flail—two-foot lengths of wood and metal hinged together, the tip set with spikes.
“That will not cut a shield,” Khalil remarked.
“It will break bones,” responded the wanderer.
No shields had been taken by the Arabs, or helmets, and Hugh gave to Donn Dera the mail shirt, sleeveless, that he had worn under his hauberk. At first the man from Erin would not accept this, but when Hugh reminded him that he was defenseless against arrows without it, he put it on.
Hugh had been watching the Arabs. They carried light leather targets slung to slender spears at their shoulders. Each man had his scimitar girded high, and his hands rested among the hilts of numerous and varied daggers—some even wore two swords. Long kaftans covered their mail and light steel helmets. They wore no spurs, and managed the horses by knee and voice.
“They move like foxes,” said the youth, “swift and alert—but ready to flee as well as strike. How will we storm a gate with such as they?”
“That remains to be seen,” admitted Donn Dera, “but if the gate be open they will slip through like elves.”
It was the first time that the crusader had been able to talk with Donn Dera. Hitherto, when he had sought the man of weapons in the camp, Donn Dera had been out with the watchers, or off somewhere with Khalil. The red warrior had the gift of tongues and could make himself understood more easily than Hugh.
“I know now,” said Hugh frankly, “that you broke my sword to keep me from death—though at the time it angered me. But what reason is there for lies? You have made Khalil believe that I am the lord of the Greeks, and you have boasted overmuch.”
“That is my nature,” explained Donn Dera gravely. “As for the lie—if Khalil understood that you were no more than a young lord of the Franks, he would ransom you for fifty pieces of gold to Theodore, who would pay readily enough. Would it please you to stand as a prisoner before the nobles of the Emperor?”
“Ay, so that I could face him with his treachery!”
Donn Dera only puckered his lined face and inspected the hinge of his flail.
“It may be,” he said after a while, “that the Greeks cannot or will not find a ransom of two men’s weight in gold. That is your safety.”
“You have the gift of foreknowing,” assented Hugh calmly.
“Not so. I have cunning, and eyes and ears. Youssouf ben Moktar, who is lieutenant to Khalil, speaks the lingua franca. Yea, he is almost as great a boaster as I. From him I learned that Khalil covets the spoil of Antioch. And this is a strange city.”
“How strange?” asked Hugh, not quite convinced that his companion could not look into the future.
Donn Dera twisted in the saddle. He rode not with the steady seat of the crusader or the pliant ease of the desert man, but with a jerking and shaking of his mighty limbs.
“Well, Youssouf and I fared forth together two days agone to a height whence we looked down upon the city. He did this because I dared him to go with me while I cast a spear over the wall of Antioch.
“Thus, from a shoulder of these mighty hills, we beheld the city, and it lies in a valley. A small river runs down the valley, and on either hand of the river are two stone mountains, like giants. Now the town of Antioch runs down the slope of a hill—the one on this side of the river.
“The castle itself sits at the crown of the hill, and its walls are white stone. Now, look. Behind the castle, guarded by its walls, is the quarry from which this stone is taken. The quarry eats into the stone summit as a wolf gnaws into the flank of a dead cow. All this we saw, for we left the horses and climbed and peered. We climbed to the end of the castle wall and cast two spears over it.”
“And what of the path that is to lead us into the castle?”
“Youssouf said there was a way through the stone of the quarry. The lord Khalil had heard tell of it. But what the way is and where it lies, I wit not.”
He blinked reflectively, and added:
“Yet horses can pass through it. On the shoulder of the mountain behind the castle we saw their tracks, coming and going.”
“They might have been Greeks.”
“Not so. The Greek standards are planted in the town, where the Emperor builds mangonel and ram to batter the gate and wall. Not even a dog or goat could climb from the town to this side of the summit.”
“Why did you throw the spears?”
Donn Dera rubbed a gnarled hand through his boarlike bristles of hair.
“They were javelins of your Franks. When they fell among the Seljuks, the paynim must have feared they were cast down from the heavens by warrior angels. It will be a miracle and an omen, and that will not be a bad thing for us.”
Everything Donn Dera did was a matter of impulse, and yet he always had a plausible reason for it afterward. He had gone off on a mad venture, in which he might well have broken his neck. And he came back with a clear description of the lay of the castle and its strength.
Three days ago the two Franks Had been captives, disarmed and kept only to be sold to the Greeks by the Arabs. Now they were mounted on good horses and had weapons in hand. Hugh knew that Donn Dera had arranged this by his cunning. Yet, as he thumped about on the hard wooden saddle and fingered his clumsy flail and grimaced, he did not seem to have an idea in his head.
“You do not make plans, Donn Dera,” he observed, “but luck always aids you. Why did you join the standard of the Emperor to come hither?”
“Easy to say, Hugh. In all the years of my life I have found no weapon that fits my hand save that great staff I lost in the river. When I heard the pilgrim tell of Durandal, the sword of Roland, hidden in a Moslem hall, I came to seek this sword. When I heard the Emperor was marching hither I joined his followers.”
Now when the young knight considered these words, it became clear to him that the man from Erin had schemed to persuade Khalil to take them into Antioch through the mountain.
“And you,” asked Donn Dera, his small eyes twinkling under shaggy brows, “what brought you and your fellows to the battle?”
“Faith,” the knight meditated, “it was the Emperor who came to us with an offer to share in his venture. He swore that he would march from Antioch through the Saracens to Jerusalem. We have taken the vow not to turn back until we have seen the tomb of the Lord Christ in the Holy City.”
“Well, then, you were fools—all eight hundred of you—for Theodore seeks only the gold of Kai-Kosru in Antioch. He will not go to Jerusalem. He will go back to Constantinople with the treasure—if Khalil does not lay hand on it first.”
“Do you think, Donn Dera,” Hugh asked, “that Durandal lies of a truth in the hall of the Seljuk palace?”
“I think this. The paynim folk have a great fear and a dread of the Frankish cham
pions, such as Richard of England and Roland, who was the peer of Charlemagne. Such swords they could not swing in their hands, but they would cherish them from father to son as an honor and a glory to their name. If they say that they have Roland’s sword, it is the truth.”
A mighty longing came upon Hugh to have Durandal for his own. He felt sure that he would have the strength to wield the sword.
Observing him shrewdly, Donn Dera spoke again:
“I shall find and take Durandal. To that have I set my mind.”
“My life I owe to you,” assented Hugh readily, “and though I desire the great sword above all things, I will yield it to you if I take it.”
“Youngling—” the wanderer laughed harshly—“you have no hand for such a weapon. I will be the one.”
His mood changed in an instant from kindliness to brooding, and he sighed many times.
“Oh, it is said by the priests, ‘They who take up the sword shall perish by the sword.’ I have a boding and a sensing of ill to come.”
Whatever Donn Dera might feel within him, he gave no sign of it when they halted that night where a little grass grew among a labyrinth of loose rock. They had climbed steadily, and a cold wind buffeted their lair, to the disgust of the Arabs. Khalil would permit no fire to be lighted, and they slept in their cloaks, rousing at times to listen to the horses cropping the tough grass.
The Arabs were in no hurry to take to the saddle again, and when broad daylight came Hugh wondered where they were. All around him grew scattered firs, dwarfed and bent by the wind.
At places he could see down into distant valleys, where brown grain rippled and tossed, and through the mesh of the evergreens he glimpsed the reflection of the sun on water—evidently the river of which Donn Dera had spoken.
Late in the morning Khalil sought them out.
“Come,” said he, “it is time.”
They mounted and wound upward, through the firs, and Khalil, who rode in advance, scrutinized closely the marks on the trail. There was only the one trail, because it clung to the shoulder of the mountain, and at times they were forced to edge their horses between the wall of brown stone and a cliff that fell away sheer.
Khalil’s lips moved as if he were counting, and he and Youssouf exchanged a brief word.
“Many tens of Seljuks came along this trail two nights ago. There were some women, but no pack animals heavily laden. The Seljuks are dropping away from Antioch, but these are the first deserters, who had not much loot.”
Hugh could see that the hoof marks went away from the mountain, but he wondered how the Arabs guessed at women, until Khalil showed him the faint outline of a slipper, where a woman had dismounted to lead her pony around one of the outcroppings of stone—and pointed to a fragment of coral anklet trampled into the ground. He showed the crusader, too, where the Seljuk horses had galloped across a wide slope, explaining that heavily laden animals would have kept to a foot pace.
“If these warriors have their families,” he added shrewdly, “they will not wait to plunder those who come after. They will not wait at all.”
When the sun was almost overhead, and its heat warmed the cavalcade in spite of the chilling wind, Khalil dismounted to search the ground. Here a narrow gorge ran back into the cliffs that now rose several hundred feet overhead. And here the chieftain left all his men but Youssouf and Hugh.
On foot the three leaders followed the ledge around the shoulder of the mountain, and Hugh saw that here were no hoof marks. Soon they were ascending over masses of purple and whitish stone and leaping fissures. Youssouf led the way around a turning and climbed a pinnacle of rock with the agility of a goat.
“Antharikyah, dar assiyadah!” he called back softly. “Antioch, the abode of power.”
When the others joined him, all three lay down and drew themselves to the edge of the rock.
“V’allah!” muttered Khalil. “We have not come too soon.”
In the brilliant sunlight the scene below them, to the left, was etched in minutest detail. Almost abreast them, a bare two arrow flights away, was the castle of Kai-Kosru—a castle built upon a ledge of solid marble, white, with reddish veins running through it. A wall of marble blocks, some twenty feet in height, had been built around it. Above the wall appeared the dome of a mosque, the terraced roofs of buildings and a single slender tower with a watch gallery at the summit.
This ledge was the shape of a half moon, curving out from the summit of the mountain, and so steep was the slope at either side that no men in armor could climb it without aid from above. Groups of warriors were visible on the wall, plying their bows through the crenels of the battlement. Others stood in the watchtower, and Hugh could hear them shout, one to another.
“How many?” Khalil asked his lieutenant.
“More than two hundred, less than four. I watched, for the interval between two prayers. I saw no women.”
“They have been sent away. A few Seljuks went to guard them, and these others remain to carry off the Sultan’s wealth, if the castle cannot be held.”
“Would even a few go hence without the wealth?”
“Ay, for they had the women of these as surety.” He nudged Hugh and asked, low-voiced, “What think ye of the wall, my lord—will it fall?”
Hugh could see the flank of the castle and one end of the Greek lines. The ledge on which the castle stood was some hundred feet above the highest roofs of the town. And the town itself, amid gardens and terraces, descended from the base of the ledge to the river, far below. The streets were little more than stairs.
And these streets swarmed with Greek soldiery. Archers and crossbowmen occupied the nearest buildings and kept up a steady fire at the battlement above them. Other detachments escorted captive Turks who were hauling up massive timbers. The snapping of whips mingled with the whirring of crossbows.
“They have built a counter tower,” explained Hugh. “See, they batter down the gate.”
Within the vision of the watchers stood a strange edifice. It was wide at the base, narrowing to a summit, on which, reared back like the head of a striking snake, the long shaft of a mangonel was being bent. The wooden tower was fashioned of tree trunks, laid horizontal, and covered with raw hides as a protection against blazing arrows. Men could ascend within it to the platform, which was shielded by mantelets. And these men were levering back the seasoned beam that held a boulder in the pocket at its end. Great ropes creaked, and the beam was suddenly loosed, the stone shooting forward and up.
Khalil, watching with interest, could not see where it struck, but heard the thud of it, and the pounding of marble fragments sliding away. A white dust rose over the wall, and the Seljuks shouted in anger.
“How is the castle gate?” asked Hugh. “Do ladders or steps lead up, or is there a road?”
“A road,” responded Khalil, “runs slantwise up the ledge to the gate. By it, horses come to the castle. Halfway down the ramp small towers stand, and a lower gate, but this the Greeks may have destroyed.”
“Then, when the stone caster has battered in the gate, they will assault the ramp and enter through the breach. But they will not attack until a way has been opened.” Khalil nodded assent, thinking that the crusader was eager to join the Greeks once more. And when they had climbed down from the rock and rejoined the waiting warriors, Khalil spoke to Youssouf, ordering his lieutenant to follow at Hugh’s back with two men, to shield the crusader.
It seemed to the Arab that his captive was eager to go against the Seljuks. And, having witnessed the crusader’s recklessness in battle, Khalil proposed to take no chances of losing four thousand miskals of gold.
CHAPTER VI - THE WAY THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN
AT THE end of the first watch of the night, Arab sentries came back from the lookout rock and reported that all was quiet in Antioch. The Greeks had ceased their hammering at the wall.
Khalil glanced at his men, nodded to Hugh, and flung off his white koufiyeh. Tightening his girdle, he looked up at the sta
rs and spoke three words:
“Come, my children.”
Striding into the maw of the ravine, he was lost to sight instantly, and the three warriors who followed him. Youssouf nudged Hugh, and the two Franks stepped out of starlight into the utter blackness of trees between two cliffs. In their dark armor, with black hoods and skirted tunics, the Arabs were invisible.
At sunset the horses had been sent back along the trail, guarded by five warriors who made no secret of their disgust at this mission.
Hugh, ax on shoulder, his eyes on the vague shape of the man in front of him, advanced up the ravine, feeling his way around the twisted and thorny boles of trees, and sliding down clay banks. At times he walked over the round stones of a dry stream bed.
There was a halt and a muttered challenge when Khalil picked up the two sentries that had gone up the ravine.
Then Youssouf peered into his face and touched his shoulder. Following the lieutenant, Hugh climbed a bank, clinging to the roots that met his hand, and emerged from the brush into a narrow gorge. Through the cleft between rock walls far overhead, he could see the gleam of stars, and a cold wind brushed past him.
“Ah, what is this?” Donn Dera whispered in his ear. “I am thinking that this is neither quarry nor cairn, but a path into a pit, and no good at the end of it all.”
Hugh could hear his companion’s teeth clicking together, and his breath sighing, and the ends of his flail striking against the cliff, and he wondered at the man’s anxiety. Donn Dera did not lack courage, but the gusts of wind that whined in the gorge, the silence of the place, made him fearful.
Skilled marauders, the Arabs moved without a sound of footfall or metal striking against armor. Hugh could make out the faint gleam of their helmets. Then he could see nothing before him, and his ax struck stone overhead. He felt up with his hand and discovered that he was entering a tunnel, where he could touch the wall on either side. Bending his head, he strode on.