by Harold Lamb
“May the fiends tear him!”
“Satan will not fail to greet him, if the Frank comes within sword’s reach of him.”
“Choaspes has power from Satan himself.”
“That may be, but the Frank would dare twist the devil’s tail. Much is clear to me that is dark to you. From the hour that his eyes beheld her the Frank loved Rusudan.”
Shotha Kupri looked up in surprise.
“Eh—he gave no sign.”
“Because it was a torture to him that he was bound to serve the Horde.”
“And now?”
“Since Choaspes carried off Rusudan, the Frank hath spoken no word. He walked the battlement between the towers, and of nights he paced his chamber. At first he tried swinging the long sword to test his strength; then he would exercise the stallion down by the river. Wisely he waited until he was fit for the khoda—to take the trail. When that day came, he went. He will rescue Rusudan or—take vengeance.”
This thought filled both the hillmen with grim satisfaction until a shepherd named Arak who had been watching in the heights sought Shotha Kupri and told a strange tale.
He had sallied forth with his dog and had taken the road chosen by Sir Hugh. He had followed the knight’s tracks to the place where Shotha Kupri had turned back. A league or so beyond, the tracks of the stallion left the trail and entered the forest.
This had puzzled the shepherd because the road was too plain to lose, and there were no signs of wolves. The tracks wound through the timber and dropped into a gorge that led north. Avak followed the trail and found himself ascending toward the distant summit of Kasbek.
Here other tracks joined the prints of the stallion’s hoofs—a half dozen ponies, evidently with riders. The shepherd made a circle and picked up the trail of the riders, tracing it up to a camp in a stand of firs overlooking Tiflis.
He was certain that the six horsemen were Mongols because there were broken arrows and kumis sacks around the ashes of the fire. So he went back to the place where the Mongols had intercepted the crusader. He found where they had halted the first night, and it seemed to him that the stallion had been tethered with the other horses.
A few leagues to the north the tracks of the seven riders entered the broad trail of the Horde, where in the multitude of marks of cattle, men, and carts Avak had lost all trace of the seven riders.
“Beyond doubt,” he insisted, “they followed the Horde.”
It seemed to Rupen and Shotha Kupri that the crusader had lied to them, because he had turned from the Trebizond road to go after the Mongols. A patrol left behind to watch the Georgians had picked him up by agreement or by chance. They remembered that strange lights had been seen in that portion of the hills after darkness, and Shotha Kupri thought of the lanterns used as signals by the Mongols in the battle of the Kur.
But more than this they did not learn, because the Gate was closed and the paths of the Caucasus were impassable to men for a time. The spring thaw was setting in. The ice began to go out of the rivers, and a rush of muddy waters filled the valleys. The streams fed by melting snow during the hours of day roared and swirled down from the heights.
Only at night could these streams be crossed, and even then the soft snow afforded treacherous footing. Except for the hunters and the abreks who went out to look for stray cattle, the Georgians remained shut up in their hamlets, and no word reached them from the outer world.
CHAPTER XXVII - THE WILL OF THE EAGLE
AND what,” asked Arslan, “shall I say to Subotai. Bahadur?”
The little Mongol looked more like a Turk than ever, because he had managed to plunder a Bokharian’s horse caravan and had taken for himself shagreen boots, and a turban of sheer blue silk sewn with pearls. Moreover, the lot of a patrol leader suited him well. He had killed a sheep every day and had dined off the fat of the tails until his broad cheeks were puffed out like puddings.
“What order was given?” Hugh inquired.
Arslan counted off on his fingers that were rank of grease and mutton.
“One—to watch for pursuit and bring word of it. Two—not to lose any horses. I have three times the number given me. Three—not to get drunk. There were wineskins in that caravan, and after we had emptied all the skins we rode through the forest with torches and shouted, but took no harm. Four—to look steadfastly for you and bring you direct to the Eagle.”
“Then you have obeyed all of the order but one part. I saw the light of the torches the night you were—” Hugh smiled—“drinking.”
“But without harm, O Swooping Hawk. We all woke up in the yurt a and groomed the ponies the next day.”
“Still, the order was not to get drunk.”
“Aya tak. Thus it was. And yet he who gave the order did not know there would be wineskins.”
“It would be better not to mention the wine.”
“Much better. But Subotai Bahadur will be glad because I am bringing you. He thought you were vanished, like a stone cast into deep water. It may be in his mind to bind your arms and set you on a stake or wind you with straw and light you as a torch at night. How should I know?”
Hugh still smiled, but his eyes were thoughtful.
“Tell to Subotai Bahadur the truth—that I sought your camp and came back to the Horde of my own will.”
“That is truth.”
Although the trail of the Mongols was broad and clear it was by no means easy to follow. Arslan and the crusader had to descend deep gullies that the cavalry had crossed by bridges of timber that were taken up and carried in sleds, to be used over again. For days they skirted the mighty shoulders of Kasbek, working up into higher altitudes where the vultures flapped away from the carcasses of cattle that had died by the way.
Bands of Circassian horsemen were combing over the fields, as hornets buzz around a broken hive. If Arslan and Hugh had been seen they would have been hunted down without mercy. They hid in the timber. Arslan could not resist bringing in some stray horses that wandered too near their covert. It seemed to Hugh as if the Mongol could never get horses enough.
His idea of a good pace was to go at a free gallop, singing and snapping his whip. Occasionally he would call a halt to change saddles to fresher beasts and to cast around for tracks. Whether he guided himself by the stars or had an animal’s instinct for sniffing out the road, Hugh never knew. The crusader’s wounds were troubling him in the damp night air, but he did not ask the Mongols to rein in, and by the time the crescent moon was out of sight he saw they were on the track of the Horde again.
When the sun forced its way into the gorges and the steady drip-drip began from the forest growth, Arslan saw no reason to halt. He said he was tired of hiding out and wanted to be able to sleep all day in the saddle and hear the news of the world that reached Subotai’s division from the dispatch riders of the great Khan.
At the last of the northern passes they came up with the standard of the Horde. Subotai was kneeling on a tiger-skin in the snow, gazing with satisfaction on the scene below him. Behind him, his officers were silent. One held the rein of his black charger; another his sword.
“This is the true Gate,” said Subotai at length, and they assented.
But the voices were barely heard, because on their left hand a swollen river roared over a series of falls, and the spray rising above it formed a deep rainbow that stretched from cliff to cliff of the gorge. Under the arch in the sky could be seen, thousands of feet below, the unbroken green of the northern plain.
But it was the pass itself that filled the Mongols with awe. The red rock walls rose in serried columns, pillars of basalt, shot through with gleaming porphyry.
In all the pass grew no trees or shrubs. From three to four thousand feet above their heads the tips of the gigantic colonnade seemed to brush the clouds. And the howling of wind in the spaces above mingled with the reverberation of the falls.9
Beside the river a line of riders was making its way slowly down, following the precarious path from led
ge to ledge. And the warriors who were waiting their turn to descend looked about uneasily, believing that this colonnade of stone had been fashioned by giants and that the tumult of the falls was an angry voice threatening them.
“There is a writing on the stone behind the Orluk,” said one.
Subotai had chosen to seat himself in the break of a ruined wall, his curiosity aroused by lines of granite blocks and fallen pillars nearly covered with rubble and the debris of the cliff. He had asked the Cathayan and the Syrian rabbans to read the inscription in the rock, but they had not been able to do so.
“This was once a citadel,” said Subotai without hesitation, “and the man who built it knew his business. See, it commands the road.”
“Still, there be spirits of the air in this place,” murmured a noble of Cathay. “Surely there are devils.”
The creaking of the carts, the snapping of whips, and the bellowing of the remnants of the cattle—all these were caught up and echoed back and forth between the cliffs. A horse neighed, and the rocks screamed and whined again until the sound dwindled away to a whisper among the crags. The Mongols glanced upward and shuddered. Thunder and echoes were the two things they feared on God’s earth.
Probably if Subotai had ordered the kettledrums sounded the drummers would have obeyed, but they were praying that the Eagle might not give such an order.
Subotai, impervious to devils, glanced at the throng of prisoners and grunted softly. In front of the ruins the courier Arslan was standing, and by him the crusader.
“Hai!” Subotai’s green eyes gleamed. “What word do you bring?”
Arslan advanced, touched his forehead, lips and breast, and pointed to the small herd guarded by his men.
“The Georgians do not stir. I have many horses.”
“They are yours. What of the Swooping Hawk?”
“He came to us with one horse. He was wounded.”
When Subotai nodded for him to approach, Hugh came forward, conscious of the exclamations of the officers.
“Where is the chieftain of Almalyk? Where is Gutchluk?”
“Slain,” Hugh responded briefly, his eyes intent on the broad face of the Mongol, terrible with anger.
“And you live! Hough! You will join them in the shadowland. You will be cast into the rushing water, and after this hour you will cease to be.”
“If that is your will.” Hugh was aware of warriors moving toward him from behind, and he knew better than to touch his sword. “But we have poured water on our swords, Subotai.”
Instead of answering, the Mongol ground his teeth and rocked on his hips, the red hairs of his thin mustache bristling over his blue lips.
“Hough! I sent four thousand Georgians out of the world. They will remember that they cut off the heads of my envoys. We came among them as wolves among sheep. Now—”
Hugh spoke suddenly, pointing his finger at the Mongol, who was working himself into a murderous rage.
“Have you forgotten the order of the great Khan?”
Sheer surprise at the interruption kept Subotai silent, though the veins in his temples began to throb.
“The order was that you should go to the Western world,” Hugh went on.
“Speak!”
“You have turned your reins to the north.”
“Ay, to avoid the great water, the sea. We cannot go upon the sea. I will find the road again, though dust storms rise and magicians make their veils in the air.”10
“But you cannot find your way to the Golden Chersonese, which is the city of the Emperor, because it lies between land and the great water.”
For a moment Subotai pondered this, remembering that the captive tribesmen had been able to tell him nothing of this rich city—at least, they had all told him different tales, vainly hoping their lives would be spared. Hugh, watching him with every faculty alert, interrupted his meditation.
“Have you seen the Sign?”
Subotai glanced at the rainbow and at the crusader inquiringly. Hugh was pointing at the block of granite upon which the lettering was carved.
“What says the Sign?” the Orluk asked, moved by irresistible curiosity.
The officers, who had been hanging on the words, sat down to listen the better. Hugh could not read the half-effaced inscription, but he knew it must be Latin by the form of the letters.
“The meaning of the Sign is that this was once a post of the Empire, and beyond this point lies peril for an invader.”
Subotai contemplated the debris that nearly covered the ruins and grunted.
“Is there much gold in the Chersonese? How much?”
“A hundred camels could not carry it away, nor a hundred men the precious stones.”
“Kai! I have seen more than that. Some men say the Chersonese is a castle and a garden built at the end of a neck of land running into the sea. Across the neck is a wall. Do they lie?”
“Nay, it is so.”
“And in the sea around the castle are yurtas that float on the water and carry men about.”
“Ay, ships.”
“We would break our teeth on the wall, and the yurtas of the sea would carry the Greeks away before we entered the castle.”
Hugh smiled, because he knew that Subotai had been questioning captives, that he longed to take the city of the Emperor.
“Once,” he said, “Subotai Bahadur told me the strength of a wall is not in the thickness of its stone but in the men that defend it. I know the Emperor and his hired soldiery.”
Once more curiosity quenched the anger of the Mongol.
“Speak!”
“There is a way to carry the wall that bars the Chersonese from the land—ay, though the wall be high as four lances—and to ride in among the Greeks before they can flee in their galleys. Not ten men of the Horde would die.”
Subotai, with another Mongol general, had forced his way through the great wall of Cathay by a stratagem. Now his eyes gleamed.
“What is your plan, O Swooping Hawk?”
It was the first time he had addressed the crusader by his Mongol name, and Hugh answered boldly.
“Give me Arslan and a ten of warriors. I will fare to the Chersonese, and when the hour comes the gate in the wall will be opened. It would be your part to approach unseen at night with a tuman.”
“How will you seize the gate?”
Hugh folded his arms on the hand guard of Durandal, outwardly calm enough, though he was strung to feverish tension within.
“If Subotai Bahadur has given command to put me to death, I can do nothing.”
“I have not given the order.” For a moment the Mongol looked at the crusader without blinking, and men heard again the roar of the falls and the overtones of the echoes. “A devil is in you! Before, in the valley of the Caucasus, you were like a man hesitating between two roads. Now you are like a rider who grips the saddle and looks far ahead.”
“Ay.” Hugh laughed deep in his throat. “The way is clear.”
“Good. Then tell me the plan.”
“Where many listen it is not good to talk.”
Subotai grunted impatiently and motioned his followers away. Hugh squatted down beside him, smoothing a place in the snow and drawing upon it with his dagger point while he talked. The Mongol rested his hands on his knees and bent his head to see the better. He seemed not to notice that his companion had drawn steel within arm’s reach.
When Hugh had done, the dagger still rested in his fingers, and Subotai meditated for the time that water takes to boil.
“You have many foes in the Chersonese,” he muttered, pulling at his mustache.
“So may you be certain that the gate will be opened.”
Again Hugh laughed under his breath. He knew the strength of the Chersonese, where a suspicion-ridden Emperor exiled himself to be safe from attack. Somewhere in the Chersonese he would find Rusudan.
He knew that Subotai wished him no ill. The fate of the Mongol envoys slain by the Georgians would be fresh in Subotai�
��s mind, and there was no knowing how the Eagle might choose to satisfy his anger upon the crusader. If Subotai refused his advice it would be because the Mongol suspected him, and if so, there was no least doubt what would happen.
Suddenly Subotai struck his gnarled hands together.
“Kai! There is surely a devil in you, Swooping Hawk. I wished to learn your plan so that the way would be open to me. Now I see that, alone among the Horde, you can open the portal of the Chersonese.” And he uttered the phrase that pardoned an offender against Mongol law, “You are without blame.”
Hugh sighed from the depths of his body and slipped the dagger back into its sheath.
“Would you have stabbed me if I had said otherwise?” the old Mongol asked suddenly.
“I would have held the knife to your throat and tried to escape.”
This evidently amused Subotai mightily, because he threw back his head and chuckled, all the wrinkles in his bronze face coming to life.
“Oho-ho-o! The cub would spring at the lion.”
Without the slightest stiffening of muscles or sign of what he was about to do, his left hand shot out and closed on Hugh’s right forearm. Before the crusader could tighten his muscles against the pressure the iron fingers of the old warrior were grinding the steel rings into his flesh, twisting the sinews and making the bones move in their sockets.
“Thus,” he said, “it would have been.”
The swift action roused him and put him in a pleasant mood.
“We will ride to the Chersonese, you and I. I will see that long sword at its work. We have been sitting too long like women milking camels.” He stood up and roared an order. “Tugh!”
The standard pole with its nine ox-tails was raised, and his horse led forward. The Mongol drummers, with a desperate glance skyward, sounded the long roll that was the summons for the officers to come to their commands. And, straightway, the echoes roared as if a thousand drums were thundering in the air.