by Harold Lamb
“To Rusudan. Is not every Georgian a Gypsy at heart?”
“Even Shotha Kupri?”
“The thawad loves me. And Prince Rupen—both of them.”
“And they also, who ride behind us?”
Rusudan gasped and then chuckled.
“O stupid lion of the Nazarenes—they also, all twenty.” And she lifted her clear voice in a call, as a huntress might urge on the dog pack. At once a gruff shout came back to them against the wind. “O lion that sleeps and growls! Not Hugh but Gurgaslan the Tawny One should be thy name. Why did the Mongol chieftain choose you for envoy?”
“Because I can speak with the people of these mountains and the Greeks beyond, if there be need,” said the crusader simply.
“Why do you always speak the truth?”
A gust that swooped down from ice gorges fifty miles away buffeted them and drove the dry snow into throats and sleeves, and touched their bodies with utter cold. Hugh knew that it was true that he could not find a village or even keep to the road if he left the sledge.
When he could draw a free breath again he laughed.
“Such is the law of Genghis Khan.”
“Who is he?”
“The most terrible of emperors, who hath conquered half the world. Ay, the master of the Horde.”
Rusudan found food for thought in this and asked an unexpected question:
“Is Genghis Khan with the Horde down in the lower valley?”
“Nay. Perhaps in Samarkand, or Ind, or Cathay—who knows?”
“But you are a knight of the Cross!”
“Ay.”
“And what is the law of Christendom among the Franks? Do they also speak the truth always?”
“Not always, little Rusudan.”
Hugh laughed again and explained as if to an inquisitive child the vows that must be taken by a youth of western Europe before he could wear the belt and the gold spurs. And Rusudan, throwing her wide sleeve before her eyes, bent closer to the crusader, trying to read his face in the whirling white drift.
“Akh,” she made response, her mood changing as swiftly as the gusts of the storm, “to serve God in all things—that is good. And to render fealty to thy lord. But for the rest, to draw weapon for the weak in a quarrel or to utter only what is truth—one who did that would not live long here—” she swept her arm across the outer darkness.
And she added thoughtfully:
“A camel must choose his own gait, and a lion his own path.”
Though the sledge lurched and creaked, and the horsemen went forward to search for the road they had lost, and all the devils of the storm screamed at them, Rusudan seemed pleased with events.
She sang under her breath in time with the jingling of the harness bells, until the ceaseless pelter of snow made her drowsy, and she cuddled back in the fur robes, leaving the crusader to his own thoughts.
And Hugh wondered how little else she had told him that was true, and why she had taken Shotha Kupri’s place. Bending over her to adjust the robe about her, he was aware again of the flower-scent of jasmine, more delicate than musk. Under long lashes deep in the shadow of the hood, eyes both eager and curious searched his face.
Rusudan was as good as her word. Late the next afternoon, when the storm had drifted away over other ranges, they left the Road of the Warriors with its strings of long-haired camels, its bands of Circassians and wild Alans—all heading west and all truculent and quarrelsome, until they heard Rusudan’s voice—and turned away from the river into a grove of evergreens.
When the outriders dismounted, the singing girl left the sledge and motioned for Hugh to come with her.
Sword in hand, he walked beside her to a stone church hidden in the grove—a strange little church, for all it bore a cross carved above the arched entrance—with a round tower and only narrow embrasures for windows.
“Nay,” said Rusudan, “we of the Caucasus follow Christ, as our fathers have done. See, the chapel is like to a guarded tower. Have we not defended our faith and our churches with the sword?”
Hugh looked up at the emblem chiseled in stone, worn with age and strange in form, and his eyes lighted.
“Surely this is the door of Christendom!”
“Ay, the gate. Come!”
Rusudan pushed open the iron-barred door and closed it after them. The gray light of the winter afternoon hardly penetrated the narrow openings, but under the vault of the tower a huge candle gleamed, and toward it the girl made her way, taking the crusader’s hand to guide him.
The wall at the base of the tower was a pattern of tile and mosaic, brightened with holy pictures in their gilded frames. Rusudan paused beside a granite slab, and the knight, bending forward, saw that a helmet and shield and sword lay upon the stone. There was gold inlay on the steel casque, and the blade of the curved sword was clean and bright.
“I take care of them,” Rusudan whispered. “I come here more often than to the great Malaki by the palace. This is the tomb of George Lasha, my brother.”
Hugh bent his head.
“May God give rest to him. In life he bore good weapons.”
The girl tossed back the dark mane of her hair and smiled proudly.
“His foes knew his anger. Dear Christ, he was young, that he should be laid under the earth!”
Hugh understood vaguely that this girl of the mountains, who sang before the warriors and pried into secrets, could not be old. At times he thought her a child of sixteen, escaped from the embroidery frame and the teachings of a priest; and again he told himself she must be a woman of mature years.
“Upon the road, Hugh,” she said gravely, “you did not trust my words. Akh, now you must talk with others. But tonight you will see my scarlet kontash and silver fillet. My brother was king of all the clans, scion of Karthlos, first among all the Georgians.”
“He was king!” The crusader stepped, back a pace, and his brow knit in thought. “And who now holds the throne?”
“Ivan—John the Constable is Protector. He is the leader of the army. I have no other brother, and I am too young to sit on the throne of Tiflis.”
Many things came into Hugh’s mind: the girl’s escort that had made such a fierce stand when the Mongols appeared; the anxiety of Shotha Kupri; the respect that greeted her upon the road.
“They call me,” went on Rusudan, who had an uncanny knack of guessing his thoughts, “a Gypsy, forsooth. Because I go to the hunts and like the saddle better than a carriage and—because of many things.”
She sighed, as if there were many pleasant things that a sister of the king might not do.
“I was visiting Prince Shotha’s family,” she went on, “at his castle on the Kur, when a shepherd brought tidings of the Mongols and their great camp, and I begged old Shotha to let me go to the outer camp where some of his men watched the doings of your Horde. He would not consent, but I begged. At last he agreed, if I would not make it known in Tiflis. John the Constable is a harsh man, and he would not forgive old Shotha that I had been near peril. O good Saint Demetrius, Rupen and Shotha were wild when you came out of the forest!”
And she laughed so gleefully at the memory that Hugh laughed with her. In truth, he had come with scant ceremony before this child of a ruling family.
“Akh!” she cried, her mood changing. “Rupen has sworn he will challenge you to edged weapons and stretch you on the ground. It would be a sin to slay an envoy, and I told him that you were under my protection.”
“If he seeks me,” put in Hugh bluntly, “it is not my wish to claim protection. Tell him so.”
Rusudan’s small lips puckered.
“Ei, I do not want either of you killed. Men are like stupid old boars that tear one another and do not care what happens to all the rest.”
“Princess,” the crusader asked gravely, “why did you take Shotha Kupri’s place in the sledge?”
“Why? The road was not safe for you. Shotha Kupri has feuds with other clans; even a robber would not lift h
and against me.”
“For thy favor I thank thee.”
“And now tell me the message of the khan. I wish to know.”
Hugh considered, frowning.
“I crave thy pardon, Princess Rusudan. I may not tell it save to the ruler of the Georgians, and he, by thy tale, is one John the Constable.”
Rusudan’s blue eyes flashed.
“O fool—thrice fool that thou art! Tall, bearded simpleton! At first thy bold bearing and great sword made me think thee a paladin, a wise and courteous lord—thy coming an omen—” She stopped abruptly, with a grimace. “Do you still think I am lying to you?”
“Saint George!” cried the knight with utter sincerity. “Not so!”
“Then,” went on the girl quietly, “come to the audience this night and deliver thy message to Ivan.”
Hugh sought for words, feeling as if he had plunged in full career against an array of mailed riders. Before he could speak, Rusudan had turned away from him and was kneeling before the candle, her hands clasped against her breast, her lips moving in prayer. From the wall strange saints looked down at her with expressionless eyes.
When she had finished the prayer, Rusudan drew the fur hood over her head and went to the door; nor did she again offer her hand to guide the crusader.
“I believed thy tale, when others did not,” she said, when he strode to her side. “Now I go to Tiflis. Wait, and one will come to guide you.”
When he had opened the door and would have followed her out to the sledge, she motioned for him to remain in the chapel. The waiting Georgians closed around her and were lost to sight in the gray twilight among the firs.
Standing in the door, leaning on the broad hand guard of his sword Durandal, the crusader waited, until a spluttering torch came into view down another path and disclosed a single warrior leading toward him a white charger, ready saddled.
CHAPTER XX - THE MESSAGE
HUGH followed the man toward Tiflis. The torch made deeper the night mist, and his guide was silent as the chapel of the ikons wherein lay the body of the late king. They halted at a wall of gray stone until a postern door opened and bearded spearmen peered at them curiously; then they plunged into alleys where lights bobbed forth and disappeared, and the smells were of mastic and charcoal and steaming rice. Below them somewhere a river swirled and roared, and ice crackled.
The night was full of sound and half-seen shapes—a queer little priest with a full beard and rosy cheeks and a veil that fell from his sugar-loaf hat to his plump shoulders; a bold-eyed Jew clutching his shuba about him with one hand and dragging a laden donkey with the other.
All the men who thronged the narrow streets bore weapons, and all ceased talking to stare after the crusader with his heavy sword. Then they crowded past the stalls of merchants—Armenians selling embroidery beside hawk-nosed Moslems who sat among gleaming yataghans, and leather, tasseled shields.
And the snatches of talk that reached his ears seemed the very gossip of Babel, harsh Arabic mingling with plaintive Persian, and an oath compounded of all the saints in the Greek calendar. His guide turned aside from the alleys and plunged up into deeper mist. The tumult of the river and restless men subsided, and Hugh could hear distant church bells chiming slowly.
He saw that the road they ascended was hewn out of sheer rock and was full of turnings. He guessed it was the ramp of a castle, before they reached a stone gate and passed under the jaws of the lifted portcullis. In the half darkness of an outer courtyard the guide laid hand on the charger’s rein.
Hugh listened to the steady tramp of men-at-arms along the parapet over his head, and he drew a long breath of satisfaction. After years of wandering he stood at last within the walls of Christian folk.
A young Georgian emerged from a door with a serving knave bearing a lanthorn, and the crusader was led through the halls of the donjon to a chamber where a fire glowed on the hearth and the Georgian esquire-at-arms brought him food and wine and a silver basin of water.
“The mighty lord,” he said in barbaric Greek, “awaits you. Eat, therefore, and robe yourself.”
Hugh satisfied a huge hunger, but change his apparel he could not, lacking other garments than the ones he stood in, and the eyes of the Georgian widened when he rose in his worn steel hauberk and stained leather gambeson and wet leg-wrappings. Even the steel of the light helm he carried on his arm was dark with oil and weathering, and had more than one dent in it.
“Lead, youth,” quoth Hugh, picking up the sword Durandal in its stained leather scabbard with his free hand, “to this mighty lord.”
In the hall of the donjon a hundred pairs of eyes paid tribute to the fairness of Rusudan, child of the race of Karthlos, Keeper of the Gate.
Armenian elders, Georgian thawads, and Circassian and Avar chieftains from the higher ranges, and the many vassals of Ivan, whose family ruled the domain about Tiflis—all these were standing in the rushes of the lower hall. The upper end of the hall was raised, and covered with rich carpets. Oil lamps flared and smoked in their niches in the wall that was adorned to the rafters with weapons and heads of boar and stag.
The long table had been cleared of food, and the three men who sat in converse, glancing from time to time at the entrance, were sipping wine from silver goblets. The central figure was John the Constable, Protector of Georgia, who alone of the three wore mail.
Small of stature, he sat erect, seldom moving hand or head, and the weapon bearer behind him held a short black ax. Like the ax, the face of the constable was broad and unchanging. A daring man and obstinate.
“The envoy of the Khan!”
So cried the young squire, stepping into the hall. The uproar of talk died away to a murmur. At one end of the table an aged Katholicos in black robe and glittering cope set down his goblet of wine and stroked his beard.
Opposite the priest, Rusudan turned her head to look down the hall. Troubled and anxious she might be, but gave no outward sign of it as she sat, her high-backed chair raised a little above the others, her clasped hands hidden in long embroidered sleeves of whitest linen, a scarlet over-robe hanging from her thin shoulders, the mass of her brown hair penned by a silver fillet studded with square turquoise. Against her breast was the weight of a great emerald cut in the form of a shield. Silent she must be, for John’s was the power, but in the admiring eyes of the assembled chieftains she was the child of their king and the seal of their loyalty.
At Hugh they stared angrily as he advanced to the steps of the upper hall and bent his head to John the Constable, who acknowledged the salute curtly.
An Italian at the left of the protector rose and greeted the crusader courteously.
“John of Georgia bids me welcome you to Tiflis, Sir Envoy.”
Hugh saw that this was a Genoese, punctilious in finest linen and velvets, his dark curls oiled, his eyes shrewd—a man who would take much and give little.
“To John the Constable,” said Hugh at once, “I bear greeting from Subotai Bahadur, marshal of Genghis Khan.”
When the Italian, who was called Della Trevisani, had translated this, Hugh was bidden to come to the table, where he stood facing the constable.
“It is passing strange,” observed the Genoese, “that a Frankish knight should find service in the pagan Horde.”
To this Hugh made no answer.
“And where,” went on Trevisani, “is the warranty of your mission?”
Hugh touched the falcon tablet at his throat, and the constable looked at him curiously.
“The protector,” Trevisani hastened to explain, “is pleased to say you have the bearing of a warrior—a noble who hath seen service in war.”
The crusader inclined his head, and John the Constable spoke again.
“Where is the message of the Mongol?” the Genoese interpreted. “Is it written in Arabic?”
“It is not written. It was said to me.”
“Hal And what?”
Trevisani bent over the table eagerly, and th
e throng of chieftains, sensing happenings, crowded closer.
Hugh faced the Lord of Tiflis.
“Thus says Subotai Bahadur: ‘Our horses are swift, our arrows sharp, and our hearts hard as yonder mountains. It is ours to command; the Georgians’, to obey. Let them not molest us when we pass over the roads of their kingdom.’ ”
When he had done, Trevisani started, and hesitated before translating. When he had rendered the message in harsh Georgian, the swarthy face of John the Constable grew dark, and he snatched at the ax in the hand of his weapon bearer.
“Was that all?” the Genoese asked.
Hugh glanced at Rusudan who was sitting bolt upright, her cheeks the hue of the scarlet robe.
“Subotai pledges this,” he answered quietly. “If the Georgians will swear a peace and keep it, the Mongols will do likewise.”
“Has he written that?”
“He cannot write,” Hugh explained, “nor can any of the Horde, except the captive, Rabban Simeon. But he will not violate his pledged word.”
The Georgians had been muttering their rage, while John the Constable crashed the flat of his ax upon the table and set all the goblets to dancing. The patriarch raised a quivering hand and seemed to bless the tumult, while Rusudan twisted her fingers in her white sleeves, her eyes shining.
It was John the Constable who thrust back the unruly nobles and stepped to Hugh’s side.
“Bold are you,” the modulated voice of the Genoese translated the grim words, “to bear such defiance. Hearken, now, to the answer.”
The tumult quieted while warriors and serving knaves alike held their breaths to listen. The constable signed to the third man at the table, and together they went to stand at Rusudan’s chair and talk, low-voiced. Hugh uttered an exclamation when he looked more closely at John’s companion.
The Georgians around him nudged one another, and a bearded noble whispered to his neighbor:
“The ambassador of the Emperor.”
The officer of the Emperor! Hugh had heard there were Greeks at Tiflis, and surely this was one of high rank. So much he knew by the man’s white cloak edged with scarlet, by his leggings bound with gold cord, and the jeweled medals that gleamed on his chest. Rusudan spoke to the twain, but her glance went over the throng and rested on Hugh defiantly.