Durandal

by Harold Lamb

  Presently the walls fell away, and the forms of men ahead of him became visible. He was standing in what seemed to be a narrow room, carpeted, without any ceiling. Reaching down, he picked up gritty dust in his fingers. Then he knew that he was in the quarry and that the white walls of the niche were marble.

  The Arabs cast about a moment and entered a corridor that was so narrow only one man could go at a time. This passage turned many times, until the men in advance halted and Hugh was dazzled by the gleam of firelight on the streaked stone.

  Pushing up to Khalil, he looked around the corner. There was barely room for one man to squeeze out of the corridor, and the Arabs had halted.

  By looking over their heads Hugh could see the fire in the heart of the quarry. It crackled and swirled under the wind gusts and sent shadows leaping over the gleaming wall of stone. Marble blocks, half chiseled into smoothness, stood at the sides, with piles of ropes and pulleys and hammers, and the short wooden ladders used to climb from ledge to ledge.

  Clustered around the fire were some score of Seljuks. Several of them were talking at once, pointing and arguing, and—though they had spears ready to hand—they had eyes only for one another. A single sentry leaned on his spear and listened, almost within reach of Khalil.

  This man was a bearded warrior with two swords and an array of daggers girded under his ribs, and a Greek shield slung over his shoulders. From time to time he yawned and spat. And without warning, aroused by a slight sound, he turned and looked squarely at the Arab who was moving toward him from the corridor.

  “Yah hai—” he roared, and reeled back, falling with a clash of steel, Khalil’s javelin fast in his throat.

  The Seljuks sprang up, groping for weapons. Seeing the warriors running from the passage they closed in on them without waiting to dress shields or string bows.

  Khalil, with a half dozen Arabs, met their rush with two-edged scimitars, and before Hugh came up the chieftain had shifted his ground. The Arabs seemed to flow, rather than run, from the passage, bending low until they leaped at their foes.

  Spreading out to the sides, they pulled down the Seljuks who tried to fly from the quarry. The remaining guards crowded together, then scattered and rushed desperately. But the swift-footed desert men sliced them with the curved scimitars, and the cry of “Aman—have mercy!” was raised in vain.

  “Yah Khawand—yah rafik!” roared Khalil’s men as the last Seljuk went down. Some picked up an extra sword, and they all swept after Khalil across the floor of the quarry.

  At the edge of the firelight they came full upon a chasm or a foss cut where the castle plateau met the stone of the mountain. It was too wide to leap, and there was no way of telling its depth.

  As a precaution—though no attack had been expected from the quarry passages—no bridge had been built across this chasm. Instead, a light beam lay athwart it, and two sentries stood at the far end.

  They had heard the fighting and seen the Arabs run from the fire, but, fearing to leave their comrades in a trap, had not pulled back the beam until the first assailants came up.

  And these, without a second’s hesitation, flung themselves bodily upon the beam, catching it in their arms and holding it in place with their weight. Some of the Arabs rushed across the shaking bridge, and the two sentries fled. The men who now hung to the beam were drawn up, and Khalil’s band ran into the heart of Kai-Kosru’s stronghold.

  Hugh saw that the last man over halted long enough to push the beam loose, and it disappeared into the depths of the mountain.

  Somewhere in the darkness kettledrums sounded, and a man ran from the door of a palace building waving a smoldering torch over his head. He was cut down before he had a chance to cry out. Darkness favored the Arabs, and Khalil, who knew the plan of the castle, made the most of surprise.

  Leaving the dome of the mosque on his left, he ran toward the Sultan’s dwelling on his right. At the portico a dozen of the garrison had mustered and were shouting at the sentries on the wall.

  These were surrounded by the Arabs, and their outcry ceased suddenly, in a clatter of steel. Guards were at the gate of the outer wall, and some hundred Seljuks were standing at the rampart, kindling cressets, stringing bows and shouting to know what the matter was.

  Between the wall and the palace, Hugh made out the foliage of a garden and the shimmer of water. Beyond the garden stood a low structure that looked like a barrack, and here also there was a bustle and clamor. Calling half of his men to him, Khalil plunged into the garden, and Youssouf cried out to the Franks:

  “Come, lords, we will take the Sultan’s serai!”

  Paying no attention to the warriors on the outer wall, who fingered their weapons and peered into obscurity, unable to make out friend or foe, Youssouf sprang through the columns of the portico into the tiled entrance hall.

  Hither the leaders of the Seljuks were hastening, down the stairway from a balcony, out of corridors. And here there was light, reflected on the gilded ceiling from hanging oil lamps.

  Hugh confronted the foemen who had vanquished his followers a week ago—stocky men, with broad, bony faces, clad in Damascus and Persian mail. By the plumes in their helmets he recognized several chieftains and made toward them with Youssouf at his elbow.

  One of the Seljuks stepped out to meet him, with shield advanced and scimitar lifted. Hugh had learned that the light, curved blades of these fighters could strike inside the sweep of an ax. Lacking a shield, he gripped the shaft of his weapon in both hands and sprang aside as the warrior cut at him.

  The scimitar glanced from the mail coif, laced about his head, but his ax, swung with all the strength of his shoulders, caught the man fairly between throat and arm. Tearing through steel links and shoulder bones, the ax grated against the Seljuk’s spine, and he fell prone, bearing with him the embedded ax.

  Others leaped at Hugh with a shout of anger, but Youssouf slipped in front of the crusader, and Donn Dera’s whistling flail backed the Arab up. Putting his foot on the Seljuk’s body, Hugh wrenched out his ax and snatched up the round steel shield that the dying man had dropped.

  Outnumbered, the leaders of the Seljuks fought desperately, crying to their followers to come to them. Several of them pressed together and cut their way out of the hall and ran from the palace. The others were pursued through corridors and balconies until they scattered in headlong flight.

  “Hoi” cried Youssouf. “These are vultures, and we have stripped their feathers from them.”

  He kicked a plumed helmet and sent it spinning across the tiled floor.

  “Come, Lord King, let us see where Kai-Kosru kept his wealth.”

  “What of Khalil?” demanded the knight.

  “Khalil is a hawk, and these are vultures. Come!”

  And, regardless of what was happening outside the palace, the Arabs snatched up lamps and torches and spread through the inner chambers. Here the floors were richly carpeted, and the marble walls bore paintings of Seljuk sultans and their battles. Youssouf halted in his stride, and threw back his head, baying like a hound at scent of quarry.

  “By the Ninety and Nine holy names—by the beard and the breath of Ali, the Companion—lo, the vultures have trussed up their meat and left it for the hawks to find!”

  It was, perhaps, well for the marauders that the garrison had been preparing to evacuate Antioch. Had the Arabs, scenting loot, scattered through the sleeping chambers and the deserted women’s quarters, stripping and plundering, Youssouf could never have held them together.

  As it was, in dozens of stout leather saddlebags and goatskin packs, the treasure of Kai-Kosru and his ancestors lay gathered before their exulting eyes, in the center of an anteroom. More, it was neatly sorted and packed, and the warriors who had been guarding it had fled.

  With a slash of his scimitar, Youssouf cut the thongs from the neck of one sack and thrust his hand within. Under the beards of his companions he held out gold bezants, and heavier coins stamped with Greek letters and the
likeness of pagan gods—Persian dinars, bearing the figure of a horseman.

  “Ai-yah!” cried Youssouf, delving deeper, “here is a dirhem, of the caliph Aaron the Blessed3 and another of Saladin, the foe of the Franks. Verily, Kai-Kosru had his finger in every purse of al-Islam.”

  “The praise to the Giver!” echoed a warrior, who was prodding a goatskin.

  Others unearthed jewels in the smaller saddle bags, and held them up to the torchlight gleefully, but Youssouf, well satisfied with the extent of the Seljuk treasure, remembered that the fighting was not over by any means. Hastily he told off ten men who were slightly wounded, to guard the sacks.

  Then he looked around for the two Franks, at first casually and then more anxiously, until he struck clenched hands against his temples and stormed at his followers.

  “Thieves—sons of misfortune—O ye spawn of the gullies! Was the door of plunder open, that ye should shut eyes and ears against the two Nazarenes, the captives entrusted to ye by Khalil! Out upon ye—search, seek—”

  A shouting at the outer gate silenced him, and he clutched his beard when he heard the cry of the Seljuks.

  “Yah hai—Allah, il allahi.”

  Muttering, he gathered together the twenty remaining able-bodied men and sallied forth to learn what was taking place outside the palace.

  While the Arabs were crowding around the bags of gold, Hugh looked for Donn Dera. Not finding him in the anteroom, he went back to discover whether his companion had been struck down in the entrance hall. Here was no sign of the man from Erin, and Hugh continued his search, wandering through a corridor that led into the garden court in the center of the palace. This was in darkness, but at the far end a glimmer of light came from between slender pillars.

  Ax in hand, the crusader crossed the garden, circled a marble pool, and advanced through the colonnade. He found himself in the throne-room of Kai-Kosru.

  A single oil lamp brought to life the blue of lapis lazuli set in the wall, the soft sheen of silk carpet underfoot, and the glint of shields and rare swords—scimitars, yataghans and daggers hung behind the dais upon which stood the narrow silver chair of the dead Sultan.

  And beside the lamp on this dais sat Donn Dera with a five-foot sword across his knees.

  Hugh came closer and looked at it, knowing that this was the sword Durandal. Its pommel was a gold ball from which the empty jewel facets stared like blind eyes. From pommel to crosspiece extended a bronze bar, long enough for two hands to grip, and the wide crosspiece curved toward the blade like a new moon.

  “That is Roland’s glaive,” he said.

  The blade was broad at the base, and the bright steel had the glow of silver. Down it ran an inscription that Hugh could not read. The point was blunter than in the swords Hugh had used.

  All at once he felt that here was a sword of enduring strength. His hand longed to take it up. He thought that the bronze would fit his hand.

  “Yea,” quoth Donn Dera, “I found it hanging above the throne. I lifted it down.”

  The wanderer was gazing at the great blade as if puzzled or grieved.

  “I can bend any bow, or cast any spear—I can lift this blade above my shoulders, but there is no strength in me to swing the sword Durandal.”

  “With both hands, then,” suggested Hugh, who was afire with eagerness to do that very thing.

  “Nay, I have the ache of long years in my joints. The sword is too heavy. Ah—”

  Donn Dera stared at his companion in surprise. The young knight had dropped to one knee and clasped his hands upon it, and had shaken back the mail coif his head, so that his mane of tawny hair fell around his shoulders.

  After a moment Hugh spoke to Donn Dera.

  “I thank the Lord Christ that we have found the sword of the hero and will take it from paynim hands.”

  “Yea, we shall take it,” muttered the wanderer. “My cunning found it, though I have not the strength to wield the great sword.”

  “Come and find Khalil.”

  Together, the elder walking with effort under the weight of the five-foot blade, they went from the throne room and garden to the entrance of the palace. Hugh could not keep from looking again and again at Durandal. Donn Dera had found the sword, and it was his. But the young knight was glad that it would not fall to the Greeks. The blade gleamed in such a friendly manner, as if asking him to take it up.

  CHAPTER VII - THE GAUNTLET

  UTTER confusion reigned outside the palace. Riderless horses plunged away from spluttering torches. Groups of Arabs flitted between lights, and beyond the outer wall of the castle there rose the steady, threatening roar of a multitude. On the wall Seljuks were loosing arrows from their bows.

  But they were sending their shafts into the outer darkness, and half-heartedly, because they were aware of the Arabs in the palace and the stables.

  “By Michael,” grinned Donn Dera, “the Greeks are attacking the gate.”

  They saw Khalil, then. The chieftain of Yaman was taking full advantage of confusion. Having cleared the barrack of Seljuks, he had scattered his few men so that the garrison on the wall could not judge his strength, and must have fancied, in their desperation, that all Arabia had descended from the mountain.

  Carefully Khalil had counted the defenders of the wall—a hundred and fifty, warriors and officers. He had loosed the horses to add to their perplexity, having appropriated the best stallion for his own mount, and now, escorted by torches, with sheathed sword and hand on hip, he revealed himself to the harassed Seljuks.

  “O ye men of Kai-Kosru!” he shouted in a voice that carried over the tumult. “Are there not souls enough in paradise that ye should stand against the Roumis and join the company of the slain?”

  “What man art thou?” one of the Seljuk leaders demanded.

  “I am Khalil el Kadhr, chief of the Ibna, lord of Yaman. My men hold the palace and what is in it. Lay down your weapons, or we shall throw you to the Roumi dogs that bay without!”

  Khalil looked both triumphant and satisfied. In reality he was on fire with anxiety. If he tried to withdraw, taking the sacks of gold—and Youssouf had told him their worth—the Seljuks would be aware of his scanty numbers and would turn to fight for the treasure. So far he had not molested the garrison on the castle wall, and the last thing he wished to do was to attack them from below.

  Meanwhile the Greeks, aroused by the tumult within, had ventured up the ramp and were beating at the outer gate with a ram. Their crossbow bolts whistled past the Seljuk helmets.

  “Nay, withdraw, O ye Arabs!” cried one of the Turkish officers. “Leave the horses—the infidels will be in upon us before the first light.”

  Khalil laughed loudly.

  “When did the men of Yaman leave horse to the Sultan’s dogs? We shall deal with the Greeks. Throw down your weapons—now—or we will come against you with the sword.”

  Perhaps memory of the dreaded Arab scimitar stirred the Seljuks, or sheer uncertainty made them desperate. They had seen their comrades slain or scattered—most of their leaders were lost, and they were quarreling among themselves.

  “Then, Khalil,” cried he who had bid the assailants withdraw, “let there be peace between us. We will help thee bear the gold to safety, away from the cursed Greeks. Then will we talk of horses and a division of the treasure—”

  “Does the lion sit down with the jackal? I would have left ye, to live—”

  “Nay, Arab!” The Seljuk cried out hastily when he saw Khalil turn as if to give an order. In imagination the men on the wall saw a thousand arrows loosed at them, and they all began to shout at once.

  “Aman!”

  “Forebear—we are believers. Have mercy, Khalil!”

  “We hear and obey! Only stand back and let us pass into the quarry.”

  Khalil looked at them without apparent pleasure.

  “Then cast down weapons—all weapons! The javelins likewise. What, have ye no knives?”

  A few at first, scores of scimi
tars, spears, and bows clattered on the stones beneath the wall, and the Seljuks ran down the inclines, some prostrating themselves before Khalil’s horse. But the Arab wished neither talk nor delay.

  Youssouf and bands of the desert men hounded the prisoners off toward the stables, thrusting at them with their own javelins and mocking them. The Seljuks were thoroughly disheartened, and—though many of them had long knives hidden under cloak and girdle—more than willing to flee.

  A few of them picked up a stout plank bridge set on rollers that must have been used by the Sultan to pass horses across the chasm. Pushing this into place, they fought to be first to cross to the sanctuary of the mountain. When the last had disappeared, Youssouf stationed a guard at the movable bridge and hastened back to where his chieftain was loading horses with the sacks of gold and precious stones that were being carried from the palace.

  And then a warrior shouted, and they stopped their work, rigid with astonishment.

  Hugh had walked past them to the gate that was already splintered and shaken. One of the iron bars had been knocked down. Setting his shoulder under the remaining bar, the tall crusader lifted it, cast it aside, and wrenched open one of the teak doors.

  Reaching out he gripped the sword on Donn Dera’s shoulder, and with Durandal in his hand he stepped through the opening, and confronted the mass of the besiegers.

  No Arabs were near enough to prevent him, and they who snatched up bows and javelins to slay him remembered that he was Khalil’s captive, the Emperor.

  Below Hugh of Taranto a hundred torches smoked and crackled. Under his feet was the debris knocked from the wall by the stones, and the length of the inclined ramp was littered with fragments of marble and the ruins of the lower towers.

  Upon the ramp several hundred Greeks had ventured, and now stood poised, with shields raised over their heads, sword in hand. The nearest, who had been driving a tree trunk against the gate, had let fall their ram, and snatched up spears, fully expecting a sally from the opened gate.