Durandal

by Harold Lamb

  “Tzigan” whispered Arslan who understood Arabic, and knew most of the byways of Asia. Had he not carried the post to Kambalu? “Gypsy.”

  So much was apparent from the red velvet vest close-bound over her breast, the white buckram skirt that came no lower than her knees, and the soft ornate morocco boots.

  “Ay, so,” she nodded, admiring the knight’s gray stallion. Then she sprang down from the wagon and pushed through the men, who objected instantly and noisily, until she stood at Hugh’s stirrup and searched his face with keen eyes. “Am I not queen of my people? Dismount, if you would speak to me.”

  Weapons were lowered, and Arslan ceased to look like a cat watching a ferret’s hole. The mountaineers had seen that the three warriors were followed by no more.

  “Bayadere,” said the crusader calmly, “O singing girl, do you always set upon envoys like dogs in an alley?”

  “Envoys?” She caught at the word and glanced at the skin- and lacquer-clad Mongols scornfully. “Whence and whither?”

  “From the chieftain of yonder Horde.”

  “By what token?”

  Smiling at her insistence, the crusader drew the falcon tablet from the breast of his fur surtout.

  “A-ah!” She drew nearer to ponder it. “That is a strange thing. What says the writing?”

  The Khan of Almalyk, who was a veteran of the Horde, an Uighur and something of a scholar, had explained this to the crusader.

  “ ‘By the strength of Heaven, whoso fails to render instant obedience to the bearer shall be slain!’ ”8

  To Hugh’s surprise the singing girl flushed, though her eyes still lingered on his face—eyes that were puzzled and more than angry. And she spoke quietly: “That is a poor jest. Though a pagan, I had thought you a lord of Cathay.”

  A smile touched the wide lips of the crusader.

  “Not one or the other am I.”

  “What message bear you—if you are an envoy?”

  “Bayadere, the message is for the King of the Georgians, and to him will I render it when I have reached his court.” Hugh motioned toward the warrior in Turkish mail. “Ask him if he will lead the way.”

  The singing girl considered a moment and addressed her followers in a swift rush of words that might have been so many sparks, to stir their restlessness. They thronged around her, arms and voices uplifted, until she silenced them by walking to the fire and beckoning Hugh.

  “My lord Ambassador,” she said, “I have told my men that you have yielded captive to us. And still Rupen—” she nodded at the giant—“has sworn that he will cut you to your knees, for that you spoke to me from the saddle. Do not anger him again, and be thankful that he cannot understand your words.”

  Hugh swung down from the stirrup beside the man called Rupen, and there was not an inch of height to choose between them. The crop-headed mountaineer glared at him, fingering his wide leather girdle from which hung a short ax and a curved yataghan.

  “No quarrel seek I,” said the crusader. “In this I serve another. But warn your wolf pack, girl, to keep their distance from my men, or they will have wounds to lick.”

  “Rupen is no guide for you,” responded the Gypsy. “I have sent for Shotha Kupri, a Georgian prince. Abide here until his coming, for the shepherds and the villagers would not suffer three pagans to pass far up the road.”

  Hugh advised the Mongols to dismount and sit by him at the fire. The singing girl vanished into the forest, but Arslan came to gossip.

  “Noyon,” quoth he, “it is true that some of this band are like to horse-lifting Gypsies; it is also true that others wear costly mail. Look! Here are huts and a cart, but where are horses, goats, brats, crones, and dogs? Ekh! It is too clean, this place.”

  Hugh had noticed that the man Rupen assuredly was no Gypsy. He sat on a log near at hand and glowered, tapping the iron-braced shaft of his ax whenever he thought he was noticed. But when the sun left the grove and the air grew chill, he ordered the fire stirred up, and brought to the four envoys bowls of broth and bread with an air of remembering that dogs need not go hungry.

  Darkness closed in on the band, and Hugh sat in thought, pondering the task before him—the lack of a written message, the ignorance of the men of the Caucasus as to the Mongols, and the difficulty of conversing in Arabic. When he looked up, the girl of the red boots was kneeling beside him.

  “I have brought you hot spiced wine from the village,” she said, lifting a jar and pouring steaming liquid into a great copper bowl. “After the saddle, a cup.”

  Hugh raised the bowl in both hands and uttered a deep-throated “Hail!” And he pretended not to notice that two of the Gypsies came and squatted behind him in the shadows. He did not think he would be attacked before the coming of the other Georgians, and in any case Arslan, who seemed to be dozing in the wagon, was watching what went on at his back. In the Caucasus, he meditated, anything was better than to show fear.

  “Your servant,” remarked the Gypsy, “says you are called the Swooping Hawk. Why do you wear your hair long? It is more beautiful than mine!”

  Gravely the eyes of the crusader dwelt on her, the first woman he had seen unveiled in many years, since he had turned his back upon Constantinople to fight his way to Jerusalem.

  “God gave you beauty,” he said.

  “And a voice,” she assented, shaking back the dark mass of loose hair, “that makes the warriors draw silver and gold coins from their wallets. Akh, but it is dull when snow closes the roads.”

  “The way to Tiflis is open.”

  She glanced at him fleetingly.

  “Why go to Tiflis? Many go and few ride back.”

  “Is it not the city of the Caucasus?”

  “Ay—of the mountains. But it is our city, and pagans and infidels find no welcome.”

  “How long is the way?”

  “For a Gypsy, a day and a night and a day. But a stranger will find his grave more easily than our city.” And, as Rupen had done, she touched the ivory hilt of a slender knife in her girdle and nodded emphatically. “You are not like the other Mongols. Why do they call you the Swooping Hawk?”

  She repeated the name, and it seemed to puzzle her. “Nay, once I saw a lion in Sarai. It was big and sleepy. You are like that lion. But it is foolish to go toward Tiflis. It would be much better to tell me your message, and I would send it swiftly. The winds bear my messages.” And, chin on hand, she chuckled at him, like a child with a delightful secret. “Do the Mongols bring war or peace?” she asked idly.

  “Your king shall hear.”

  “You are as stupid as the lion, that only roused when it was hungry or angry. The Armenian merchants say the Mongols are evil spirits who see in the dark.”

  “Neither angels nor demons are they.”

  “Perhaps they are magicians. Do they seek cattle or tribute?”

  Hugh laughed under his breath.

  “Bayadere, come to Tiflis and you shall hear.”

  “Akh, you will grieve that you did not tell me.”

  “What manner of man is your king?”

  The singing girl smiled at him suddenly.

  “Come to Tiflis and you shall know.”

  Nor would she speak to him again, sitting tranquilly on the bearskin beside him, head cradled in her fists, her eyes roving from man to man, not so much a Gypsy queen holding her court as a girl child with a plenitude of playmates. And when Shotha Kupri, a grizzled nobleman, came swinging into the firelight, followed by a line of short and shaggy warriors, her eyes sparkled with anticipation of merriment to come.

  “Make the salaam of obedience, O Thawad,” she called to the grizzled prince, “before this envoy of the mighty Khan. Not to do so is to die. So it is written on the tablet.”

  The grim Georgian planted his legs before Hugh and breathed heavily.

  “By—, that prowler!”

  “Nay,” cried the girl at once, “he bears a message to the king of the Georgians.”

  Before Hugh could be more th
an puzzled by the casual way in which the Gypsy spoke of the reigning monarch, Shotha Kupri growled at him again.

  “War or peace?”

  The crusader stood up, gripping hands in his belt.

  “Prince of these people, will you tell me the armed strength of your bands? The roads by which they cross the mountains?”

  “God forbid!”

  “Nor will I tell to you the words of the Khan.”

  The singing girl wriggled with delight at the Georgian’s chagrin. But the old warrior was a man of expedients.

  “What would you?” he asked.

  “Go to Tiflis.”

  “By the Horned One, no pagan spy shall go to our city!”

  Hugh shook his tawny head quietly.

  “No pagan spy. For ten years I have fought the paynim, under the standard of the Cross.”

  “Hai!” Shotha Kupri raised his shoulders and held out gnarled hands. “You come out of the East, with accursed Mongols at your back; you speak the tongue of the thrice-accursed Arabs. Shall we trust you?”

  “And yet,” mused the singing girl, glancing from the mighty crusader to the old chieftain, “his hair and eyes be unlike the Muslimin. Nay, his sword is a strange weapon.”

  “Proof!” demanded Shotha Kupri.

  “Who are you, my Lord Hugh?” asked the Gypsy girl.

  Hugh looked around at the circle of bearded faces that hemmed in the three, and seated himself, his sword across his knees. He told them the story of his wandering, to Jerusalem, and of his capture by the Horde.

  Then he faced Shotha Kupri squarely.

  “O Khawand, the message I bring is the choice between peace and war. I must go to Tiflis.”

  Hereupon the warriors began to argue among themselves in their harsh voices, and Rupen made no secret of his enmity, while Shotha Kupri seemed dubious, until the singing girl silenced them and answered swiftly and musically, so that Hugh wondered at the quietude that came upon them.

  “We have never seen a Frank before,” she assured him simply, and added eagerly: “Now I will let you tell me of the wars in all the world, and the lords of men, and how they bore themselves in battle, because it is clear to me that you have served long, as you say. And,” she shook her dark head sagely, “you are both foolish and arrogant—and such men do not lie.”

  “The tale is not easy to believe,” put in Shotha Kupri. “These men of Cathay are magicians. Perhaps they have altered one of their number to the semblance of a Christian.”

  Rupen thrust forward and uttered a curt word, and the old prince smote his thigh.

  “True! In Tiflis there are Greeks who will know whether this man lies.”

  Hugh smiled a little.

  “My Lord, have I not said that the Greeks are my sworn enemies?”

  “Hal It will not save you from the test. Come!”

  But when Hugh left his hut the next morning he found Arslan squatting in the snow holding the reins of his charger in readiness for the road. The good-humored little Mongol had spent the remainder of the night with the wine cup among the Georgians.

  “Noyon,” he whispered, pretending to adjust a girth buckle, “the Gypsy girl is ill pleased because you go to the city. She scolded all her men, and now she is gone again, taking a swift-footed pony from the herd. She has a whim.”

  And he shook his dark head soberly, while Hugh suffered the gray stallion to thrust its soft muzzle into his palm.

  “Ay, she sniffs out secrets,” Arslan added. “Her whim is to hear tales of war. Her name is Rusudan, and when she sings these Georgians come and stand guard over her. They are dogs, but they are her dogs.”

  Hugh peered through the mist and smiled.

  “Shotha Kupri is a prince of this realm.”

  “So are the sheep herders and the tenders of cattle. They are all her slaves. You can sleep in the saddle beside Shotha Kupri, but watch for the coming of Rusudan, for that will be the hour of the commencement of happenings.”

  It was a strange country, this of the Caucasus. They rode that day, thirty Georgians and three envoys and Arslan, past Nakha in the forest, and by other villages perched on crags and girdled by rude stone walls. And the men and the dogs of these hamlets streamed down to stare at them and shout encouragement to the captors, defiance to the Mongols.

  But when they reached the summit of the wind-swept pass, Hugh saw that the trail wound down to a broad valley. In the valley the sun gleamed again on the frozen Kur, and when they left the last of the timber behind them Shotha Kupri led them to two waiting sledges.

  Four horses were harnessed to each, and two Georgians sat astride the horses. And here Shotha Kupri bade them leave their own mounts and sit in the sledges. In this way faster time would be made, and the chargers would be spared. So said Shotha Kupri.

  But Hugh noticed that he was to ride with the Georgian in the first sledge, Arslan perching behind on the runners. The horses, likewise, were to be taken from them. So he sought out the Khan of Almalyk and the other gaunt and silent Mongol, who had uttered never a word and had roused only at the prospect of a fight in the deodar grove.

  “My brothers,” he said in their own speech, choosing the words with care, “we go henceforth upon two kibitkas without wheels. I say to you: Draw not your weapons, lift not your hands against the Georgians. This is the yassa, the order.”

  “It is the order,” nodded the Khan, but the other Mongol looked up the valley, so wide that the ranges on either hand seemed like low hills.

  “Kai!” he grunted. “The road is wide; there is no barrier. The Horde will race up the valley like a wolf scenting a sick stag.”

  And, with the indifference of his race, he climbed into the sledge beside Rupen.

  CHAPTER XIX - SNOW

  SPEEDING over the gray valley, Sir Hugh pictured to himself an English countryside, and the longed-for sight of a Christian stronghold, with lord and liegemen, and white-skinned women, unveiled, giving zest to the night with their laughter or praise. Loneliness is like a fever, rising suddenly in the veins of a wanderer.

  Not for two years had he heard the ring of a Frankish voice. His comrades lay, some in graves, some shattered and forgotten.

  Wrapped in his wolfskins, Hugh smiled beside the silent Georgian. He himself, most like, was forgotten now by all save the Greek Emperor, who had hunted him out of the Holy Land. No wife or children or henchmen in Frankland would remember Hugh, who had sewn the Cross on his shoulder when he was a lad in his teens.

  The wooden runners squeaked over hard snow, and a bitter wind whipped the upfling of the horses’ hoofs into his face. The long twilight had ended, and clouds banked low overhead. Shotha Kupri peered about him and grunted when they changed horses at a village. The wind was rising, and the blackness above seemed to press down on the gray ground.

  “Snow,” he muttered. “It will not be good, this night.”

  Nevertheless, he gave command to go forward, and the sledge circled down to the frozen bed of the river. Here they were a little sheltered, but even Arslan, who had the eyes of a wildcat, could not guess where the Road of the Warriors might lie. Dry flakes whirled down from the sky, and the manes of the horses whipped out to the left, while the riders turned up the collars of their burkas to shelter their faces.

  Hugh’s feet and hands grew chilled, and when he wrapped the furs more closely around him the warmth made him drowsy. His chin dropped on his chest and he slept.

  How long, he did not know. When the sledge stopped in front of the lighted windows of a cabin, he roused and saw that the horses were being changed again. Bells jangled, and the Georgian couriers shouted, and before he could ask a question they started off into the wind. White domes that might have been haystacks flitted past, and then the veil of snow hid everything.

  It seemed to the crusader that he had more room in the seat than before, and that the outriders were different men. Abruptly he turned and looked behind him.

  Arslan was no longer perched on the runners. And the horses t
hat galloped after the sledge bore armed warriors. Of the other vehicle and the Mongols there was no sign.

  Hugh clapped a heavy hand on his companion’s shoulder, and then, with an exclamation of surprise, peered into the face hidden under its fur hood. Even in the storm he was conscious of a faint scent of jasmine, and in a moment more he was certain that the eyes looking up into his belonged to Rusudan, the Gypsy.

  The horses’ manes and tails still tossed to the left, so they were still going forward—unless the wind had changed—and he did not think Shotha Kupri would have quitted the sledge unwilling.

  “Where are my men?” he asked bluntly.

  “Ai, your hand is heavy.” Rusudan’s slender shoulder moved under his fingers and released her. “Are they my men?”

  Sudden anger rendered the crusader heedless.

  “Stop and wait for them, or you will know pain.”

  The dark eyes under the hood searched his face in the murk of the storm.

  “Is this the courtesy of a warrior of the Cross? Your men were kept at the last village. Rupen and his abreks have care of them.”

  Hugh stood up at once, casting off the fur lap robes, letting in the drift and the wind, and Rusudan, who seemed able to read his thoughts half-formed, mocked him.

  “Go and seek in the snow! Neither road nor village will you find. Am I to bring spies into Tiflis? Nay, the agreement was that you alone should come.”

  “If harm comes to them—” Hugh thought of Subotai and the Horde that was beginning to weary of eating and sleeping.

  “You will be alone. Are you afraid? Fear is no friend in the Caucasus.”

  Hugh swore roundly under his breath, by good Saint George and the Archangel Michael.

  “Then sit down,” quoth Rusudan, pulling at the robes. “You are letting in the snow, and my men will think you are afraid.”

  Hugh resumed his seat and pulled the robe over the girl, who was shivering under the bite of the wind.

  “Hath all the Caucasus,” he asked grimly, “sworn fealty to Rusudan?”