Durandal

by Harold Lamb

  “And yet,” put in the lieutenant swiftly, “bears he your mark, O Majesty. For I have heard it said that his face is scarred from eye to chin by a spear-tip. And by this scar will he be known wherever he goes.”

  Theodore’s pallid face showed nothing of his thoughts. “Then,” he said, “bear this command to the Lord Cæsar thy master—have a message written and sent to all garrisons of the frontier, and the seaports, ay, and the captains of our fleets. Describe the tall Frank, with the sword and the scar he bears. Say that he is a deserter from the battle who joined the infidels and dared draw his weapon against our men. Is this clear to thee?”

  “Ay,” the officer assented joyfully, for he had feared the anger of the Emperor.

  “Then, say that we will bestow a thousand pieces of gold upon the man who brings in to us the deserter and recreant Sir Hugh of Taranto. Inform the agents and spies who go among the Moslems beyond the border. Bid them trace this wanderer and send me all news of his movements. Fail not.”

  “Nay—”

  “Fail not, I said, this time. Once thou hast come back with empty hands. If now this wanderer finds his way back to a Christian city thou shalt answer for it—” the dark eyes of the Emperor gleamed—“with thy life. Thou hast leave to go.”

  Two heavy men entered, clad in black leather and wolfskins. They were the deaf Bulgars, the torturers of the Emperor, and between them they led Mavrozomes. The armorer did not bear the glove or hammer of his office, and he trembled in his legs and arms as he cast himself down before Theodore, hiding his eyes.

  The Emperor smiled. At last he had before him something to appease the rage in him.

  “Mavrozomes,” he said softly, “I have chosen two companions who will attend thee and make much of thee—upon the rack. And remember, when they have done with thee, Mavrozomes, if Satan bids thee choose for him a mock Emperor in the nether world, bethink thee and do not pick out such a one as thou didst for me.”

  Still smiling, he listened to the screams of the doomed man, borne away by the two deaf torturers.

  So did Sir Hugh become a marked man, who took refuge among the Arabs from the enmity of a Christian emperor who sought to silence his voice.

  And the eyes and ears of Theodore reached, unseen, far into Asia. Months later one of his spies in Jerusalem sent tidings of the crusader.

  Sir Hugh had appeared, unarmed, in the streets of the Holy City, and the Moslems had suffered him to go and pray at the Sepulchre—because he came as a pilgrim without weapons, and because Khalil, a chieftain of Yaman, had escorted him.

  Before the agents of the Emperor could make any attempt to seize him, the crusader left Jerusalem. By inquiring among the Arabs of the bazaar the spies learned that Sir Hugh dwelt in Khalil’s tents across the gorge of the Jordan. The crusader had joined in the warfare of the desert clans, who told many tales of his great strength. He had learned to speak Arabic well, and Khalil hoped that he would abide in the black tents and take a wife from the Arab girls.

  Thus time passed, until the agents of the Greeks ventured out into the desert country to seek Sir Hugh.

  They came to Khalil’s tribe, which had grown wealthy in horses and camels since the taking of the treasure, and they found their way to Khalil’s tent.

  There they heard that the crusader and the chieftain had set out upon a journey, around the frontier of the Empire, into the east.

  All this they wrote down and sent from Jerusalem to the court of Theodore. It was months later that a wandering Syrian in the pay of Theodore, bound upon another mission, saw Sir Hugh face to face in the streets of Bagdad. He recognized the scar and the long sword that the crusader now carried in a sheath upon his back.

  But the Syrian, a clever scholar, Rabban Simeon by name, dared make no attempt against the life of the man who was Khalil’s guest. He sent his report to the Emperor, adding—for he was a shrewd and careful soul—“The men of Bagdad say that these twain journey now towards the north, to seek the Sea of the Ravens. What they have in mind to do, I know not. But the Christian’s life would not endure an hour if harm befell Khalil. If he lives to attempt to cross the frontier, it will be upon the eastern side.”

  After this word from Rabban Simeon, no further tidings came by letter to the court. But an order was given to the guards of the east—along the mountain wall of the Caucasus, and in the ports of the Black Sea—to look for a tall Frank with a yellow mane of hair who spoke Arabic and bore an old scar from eye to chin.

  For Theodore’s memory was as long as his arm, and he had not forgotten the gauntlet that Sir Hugh had flung at his feet—the steel glove that still lay rusting beneath the broken wall of Antioch.

  CHAPTER VIII - THE STAR GAZER

  Only two men ride into the desert—he who seeks and he who flees.—ARAB PROVERB.

  ON A late afternoon in midsummer a solitary rider made his way into a caravan serai at the edge of some bare brown hills. He was a little man in a wadded black gown tied round the waist with a shawl. He sat perched on the rump of a small bald-faced donkey, and he whacked the donkey steadily with a stick, trying to make it trot.

  When he dismounted, he took the pack off his steed and sat down with a sigh of relief in the shade of the rough stone wall. The serai had no roof—only the wall and a few stunted tamarisks round the well. No grass grew in the hard clay, and the water, when the little man drew it up, tasted like sulphur.

  “The praise to Allah,” he muttered as he drank. “This is the end of the salt desert. How my bones ache.”

  He stared back the way he had come, shivering as he saw the familiar haze of dust over the broken gray plain. In that haze he knew that the ghils, the spirits of the waste places, were dancing over the bones of travelers who had not lived to cross the salt desert.

  When the sun dipped behind the hills the little man began to feel hungry. He gathered up dried dung from the serai floor, and some twigs from the tamarisk, and made a small fire. Over this he hung a copper pot and emptied into the pot the last handfuls of barley from a bag in his pack. To the barley he added water, and he was squatting down to wait for it to boil when he heard a sound behind him and peered anxiously over his shoulder.

  Two Turkomans leaned against the wall. They wore greasy sheepskins and shaggy kalpaks of black wool, and they looked like vultures in search of dinner. One of them, who wore a long yataghan, a sword-knife, kicked the little man’s pack. It flapped open, disgorging nothing but a ragged cloak and a prayer rug with some scrolls of paper and a brass pen.

  “God be with you!” cried the man at the fire, because he was afraid. All Turkomans, he had heard, were robbers, and some would rather slay than rob.

  “Whence art thou?” muttered the one with the sword.

  “Ai, my lords, I have crossed the desert from the Land of the Throne of Gold. But,” he added hastily, “I have not a single piece of money upon me.”

  This was not quite true, because he had bracelets and a purse slung beneath his armpit.

  The Turkoman went up to him and felt through his shawl girdle, finding only a sack of tinder and a flint. These he tossed angrily into the fire. “What road dost thou follow?” he demanded.

  “Perhaps to Rai—” the little man pointed to the north—“perhaps to Bagdad, far to the west. I do not know. I am an astrologer and a man of peace, without a weapon of any kind. Nay, I am fleeing from calamity. There is a great war in Kharesmia, which you call the Land of the Throne of Gold, and the Sultan himself is fleeing. He has gone from Samarkand, although he is the greatest lord of Islam, because this calamity hath come upon his head. But now the desert is between us and that war, and here I am safe.”

  And the astrologer smiled up at the lanky tribesman, although he felt far from safe. The Turkoman was angry, and being angry might strike him with the sword or take his donkey. Instead, the warrior reached down and lifted the copper bowl between two sticks. With the bowl between them, the two Turkomans began to eat the wanderer’s barley.

  “Hi, sta
r gazer,” one of them snarled, “what is thy name?”

  “Nureddin,” the little man answered, edging nearer in the hope that he might have a share of his dinner. He ached with hunger.

  “Then, Nureddin, prophesy something for us. If you have no gold, you can at least read the stars.” And they laughed.

  The astrologer looked up blankly. Suddenly he got to his feet, his fingers twisting in his thin beard.

  “Ahai!” he cried. “Look! A portent! Above the mountains God hath hung the banners of death.”

  The two Turkomans turned their heads quickly. They saw that the sunset had changed to an unwonted hue, since a light cloud stratum lay upon the horizon. It gave the effect of giant crimson streamers hung above the mountains.

  “It is a sure sign,” Nureddin added gloomily. “We call it the maut ahmar, the crimson death. Its meaning is that before sunrise one who is now alive and looking upon it will be put in his shroud.”

  The Turkoman with the sword spat into the empty bowl and flung it at Nureddin. He yawned, yellow teeth gleaming through the mesh of his beard, and stretched his long arms. “By Allah, then is the vulture a better prophet than thou—he knows where not one but many will die between sun and sun.”

  Idly the tribesman glanced at the hills and frowned. The fire had vanished from the sunset, and the clouds had turned ash gray. Round the serai the volcanic ridges had changed in a moment from red to clay color—as if an unseen hand had snatched away the light from the sky.

  In the silence horses’ hoofs were heard, drawing nearer.

  Two riders entered the enclosure with a pair of pack horses following. The Turkomans, peering into the dusk, saw that the saddle mounts were splendid beasts—a gray kohlani, with long tail and mane, and a powerful bay stallion. The newcomers glanced around and dismounted, with a click of steel. One—the tallest man Nureddin had ever seen—pulled the loads from the led horses and gathered brush for a fire, while the other rubbed down the chargers, talking to them under his breath.

  When flame was kindled and caught in the tamarisk, Nureddin saw that the tall stranger wore no helmet; long yellow hair, cut evenly over his brow, fell to his shoulders, and his beard was like red gold. Though his skin was burned many shades darker than his hair, his eyes were a light gray. He was clad in chamois leather, stained and wrinkled by armor. Strapped to his broad belt was a five-foot sword, and Nureddin did not fail to notice that empty sockets in the ball of the pommel might once have held jewels.

  While the newcomer put an iron pot over the fire and tossed into it dried meat and grain, Nureddin’s thin nostrils twitched. When the tall Christian, before eating himself, gave to the horses a measure of barley and dry grass, Nureddin rose to his knees. He was half starved, and these strangers had food.

  Abruptly the Turkomans got up and left the caravan serai. No sooner had they departed out of hearing than the astrologer scurried over and gave greeting to the warriors.

  “Peace to him who directs his steps aright!”

  He had spoken in lilting Persian, but the smaller of the two strangers gave response in sonorous Arabic:

  “And upon thee be the peace.”

  Nureddin looked more closely at the slender stranger—at the flowing garments of loose black wool, at the hood that almost hid the braids of hair upon the warrior’s forehead.

  “Ai-a, thou art an Arab, my lord. Surely the chieftain of a tribe! That I should sit at the fire of a son of Yaman! The honor would be greater if I knew thy name.”

  “Khalil el Kadr.”

  Curiosity began to plague the astrologer. Here was an Arab, a Saracen, journeying in company with a Nazarene crusader. Whither?

  “Verily,” he pleaded, “the favor of Allah hath been turned from me until now. I have not tasted food for a night and a day.”

  “Give the mountebank food,” laughed the tall crusader, who understood Arabic.

  Rising abruptly, Khalil went to the well and washed clean a wooden bowl. This he filled with rice and dates from his own platter and barley cakes from the crusader’s.

  “May God reward thee!” cried Nureddin, reaching forth.

  The good fare put new courage into the astrologer, and his curiosity waxed mighty. For a while he watched the tall crusader, who had drawn the long straight blade from its leather sheath and was polishing it carefully with a clean cloth.

  “Eh,” he addressed the warrior, “I am no mountebank—no charlatan who vows he can bring rain by piling stones in a certain way! I am Nureddin, the Mirror of Wisdom. None can predict so well as I the sa’at—which is, as your Nobility comprehends, the hour of commencement of happenings.” He folded his short arms, and his eyes glimmered under bushy brows. “I have foretold to kings the most auspicious hour for battle, to merchants the day of profit or loss. By the wisdom of the stars I have weighed all things. Ay, at the courts of Cathay, Ind, Kharesmia, and Persia.”

  “Of Cathay I have heard,” smiled the crusader. “It lies on the far side of the world; but what is Kharesmia?”

  “Eh, a place of wonders, a land of gold and honey. Its emperor is called the Shah. He rides upon an elephant, seated beneath a canopy of silk. Wherever he goes it is merry. Houris and bayaderes—waiting women and singing girls attend him by hundreds.”

  Nureddin sighed in remembrance.

  “They walk like gazelles, and smell from afar of musk and acacia bloom. Their bodies sway even as feather fans in the wind. And when they dance—”

  Puffing out his cheeks, he pressed his fingers together and blinked.

  “Verily there is no court like the Throne of Gold. A thousand black slaves could not carry the Shah’s treasure. The softest shining of matched pearls, the fiery rubies of Badakshan, lumps of clear turquoise, diamonds, blue and yellow! His sword belt would ransom a king, and his turban crest would buy a kingdom. It is easy to see that your Grandeur will find work for that sword in Kharesmia, at the court of the Shah, whither, beyond doubt, thou art riding.”

  “We seek a road,” the yellow-haired Christian made response.

  “What road?”

  “To the Sea of the Ravens.”

  Nureddin blinked and leaned forward to peer into the expressionless face of the crusader.

  “And why? Surely that is a jest, my lord!”

  “Is the way known to thee, O Mirror of Wisdom?”

  “Indeed, and indeed! I have stood on the shore of the sea. But thou—O prince of the Nazarenes, that road is not to be traveled by thee!”

  The crusader looked at the astrologer inquiringly. “Verily, I would serve thee, my lord,” Nureddin chattered on. “Not since the day of Iskander4 hath a man of thy race set eyes on the Sea of the Ravens. But beyond this place the life of an infidel is forfeit.”

  “Eh, where lies the road?”

  “There be many—and there is none. Look!” He pointed up at the dark line of summits under the glitter of the stars. “To the west and north are the hills. Beyond are the higher ranges, and the pastures of the Turkomans. They would cut the head from an unbeliever and set it over a tower gate.”

  The crusader nodded understanding, and Nureddin wondered how he had come by his knowledge of Arab speech.

  “Be warned!” he went on quickly. “It were better to cross the salt desert than to go into yonder passes.” Again the Christian nodded assent.

  “To thee, my lord,” Nureddin pointed out, “God hath given a mighty stature, a lion’s mane, and a voice like a trumpet. A razor could shave the hair, and the garments of a believer might cover the limbs—but can a lion be made to pass as a leopard? Nay, and indeed nay! Without disguise, an unbeliever may not win through the mountains of the Turkomans.”

  For the third time the listener made a sign of assent, as if he were weighing this in his mind.

  “A way may be found,” Nureddin observed shrewdly. “The stars will point the way.”

  “Of all fools,” growled Khalil under his hood, “the greatest are they that prophesy.”

  “Tck-tck! To ca
st the light of understanding into the shadows of the future is not folly. For a silver dinar, my lord Nazarene, I will trace thy fate in the stars.”

  Hastily the astrologer drew from his breast a parchment bearing the signs of the zodiac, and smoothed a space of sand before him.

  “Thy birth, hour and day and year? The place?”

  A smile touched the dark face of the crusader.

  “The eve of Candlemas, in the year good King Richard sailed for the Holy Land,” he said in English.

  By Khalil’s aid this was explained to Nureddin, who began to draw lines and symbols and make calculations in the sand.

  “Ai, my lord, that was a time of war, and verily the sign of war is large in thy life.” He frowned over his figures, muttering. “Thus stood the planets in their houses then.” Glancing at the sky, he added gravely, “Misfortune hath come upon thee, O Nazarene, at the hand of a great king in the west and a fullness of misfortune is yet in store for thee. And this is strange—strange.”

  He shook his head, sunk in meditation that was not at all assumed. “Two signs befriend thee. Look for the coming of the Dragon and the Archer—they will aid thee.” All at once his eyes gleamed, and he held out his hand to the warriors.

  “May it please your Nobility—a silver dinar of full weight was promised.”

  “We have heard,” grinned. Khalil, who had no patience with Persian soothsayers, “the bleating of a goat. Begone!”

  He drew a coin from his wallet and tossed it on the sand without looking at it. Nureddin snatched it up and held it to the firelight, astonished that it was gold.

  “May God reward the giver!” he cried joyfully. “May the calamity be averted from the head of the hero. Fail not to watch for the Dragon and the Archer!”

  And he shambled off, to bury himself in his cloak and think of ways of getting more gold from the warriors.

  “If he had learned thy name, O my brother Hugh,” Khalil said grimly, “he would have betrayed thee for a bezant.”

  “And yet he spoke of my foe in the west.”