Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures M

by Robert E. Howard

  “When I was free again, I learned that Zahir had fled from Spain, for fear of his own people. But my sword was needed in Castile. It was another year before I could take the road of vengeance. And for a year I have sought through the Moslem countries, in the guise of a Moor, whose speech and customs I have learned through a lifetime of battle against them, and by reason of my captivity among them. Only recently I learned that the man I sought was in Egypt.”

  Al Afdhal did not at once reply, but sat scanning the rugged features of the man before him, seeing reflected in them the untamable nature of the wild uplands where a handful of Christian warriors had defied the swords of Islam for three hundred years.

  “How long have you been in al medina?” he demanded abruptly.

  “Only a few days,” grunted de Guzman. “Long enough to learn that the caliph is mad.”

  “There is more to learn,” returned Al Afdhal. “Al Hakim is, indeed, mad. I say to a Feringhi what I dare not say to a Moslem – yet all men know it. The people, who are Sunnites, murmur under his heel. Three bodies of troops uphold his power. First, the Berbers from Kairouan, where this Shia dynasty of the Fatimids first took root; secondly, the black Sudani, who, under their general Othman yearly gain more power; and thirdly, the Memluks, or Baharites, the White Slaves of the River – Turks and Sunnites, like myself. Their emir is Es Salih Muhammad, and between him, and el Ghazi, and the black Othman, there is enough hate and jealousy to start a dozen wars.

  “Zahir el Ghazi came to Egypt three years ago as a penniless adventurer. He has risen to emir, partly by virtue of a Venetian slave woman named Zaida. There is a woman behind the curtain of the caliph, too: the Arab Zulaikha. But no woman can play with Al Hakim.”

  Diego set down his empty goblet and looked straight at Al Afdhal. Spaniards had not yet acquired the polished formality men later came to consider their dominant characteristic. The Castilian was still more Nordic than Latin. Diego de Guzman possessed the open bluntness of the Goths who were his ancestors.

  “Well, what now?” he demanded. “Are you going to betray me to the Moslems, or did you speak truth when you said you would keep my secret?”

  “I have no love for Zahir el Ghazi,” mused Al Afdhal, as if to himself, turning in his fingers the ring he had taken from the black giant. “Zaman was Othman’s dog; but Berber gold can buy a Sudani sword.” Lifting his head he returned de Guzman’s direct and challenging stare.

  “I too owe Zahir a debt,” he said. “I will do more than keep your secret. I will aid you in your vengeance!”

  De Guzman started forward and his iron fingers gripped the Turk’s silk-clad shoulder like a vise.

  “Do you speak truth?”

  “Let Allah smite me if I lie!” swore the Turk. “Listen, while I unfold my plan – ”

  II

  And while in the hidden wine-shop of Ahmed the Crippled a Turk and a Spaniard bent their heads together over a darksome plot, within the massive walls of El Kahira a stupendous event was coming to pass. Under the shadows of the meshrebiyas stole a veiled and hooded figure. For the first time in seven years, a woman was walking the streets of Cairo.

  Realizing her enormity, she trembled with fear that was not inspired wholly by the lurking shadows which might mask skulking thieves. The stones hurt her feet in her tattered velvet slippers; for seven years the cobblers of Cairo had been forbidden to make street shoes for women. Al Hakim had decreed that the women of Egypt be shut up, not indeed like jewels in vaults, but like reptiles in cages.

  Though clad in cast-off rags, it was no common woman who stole shuddering through the night. On the morrow the word would run through the mysterious channels of communication from harim to harim, and spiteful women lolling on satin cushions would laugh gleefully at the shame of an envied and hated sister.

  Zaida, the red-haired Venetian, favorite of Zahir el Ghazi, had wielded more power than any other woman in Egypt. And now, as she stole through the night, an outcast, the thought that burned her like a white hot brand was the realization that she had aided her faithless lover and master in his climb to the high places of the world, only for another woman to enjoy the fruits of that toil.

  Zaida came of a race of women accustomed to swaying thrones with their beauty and wit. She scarcely remembered the Venice from which she had been stolen as a child by Barbary pirates. The corsair who had taken her and raised her for his harim had fallen in battle with the Byzantines, and as a supple girl of fourteen, Zaida had passed into the hands of a prince of Crete, a languorous, effeminate youth, whom she came to twist about her pink fingers. Then, after some years, had come the raid of the Egyptian fleet on the islands of the Greeks, plunder, slaughter, fire, crashing walls and shrieks of death, a red-haired girl screaming in the iron arms of a laughing Berber giant.

  Because she came of a race whose women were rulers of men, Zaida neither perished nor became a whimpering toy. Her nature was supple as the sapling which bends to the wind and is not uprooted. The time was not long when, if she never mastered Zahir el Ghazi in turn, she at least stood on equal footing with him, and because she came of a race of king-makers, she set forth to make a king of Zahir el Ghazi. The man had intelligence, super vitality, and strength of mind and body; he needed but one stimulant to his ambition. Zaida was that incentive.

  And now Zahir, considering himself fully able to climb the shining rungs of the ladder without her, had cast her aside. Because Allah gave him a lust no one woman, however desirable, could wholly satisfy, and because Zaida would endure no rival – a supple Arab had smiled at the Berber, and the red-haired Venetian’s world had crashed. Zahir had stripped her and driven her into the street like a common slut, only the compassion of a slave covering her nakedness.

  Engrossed in her searing thoughts, she looked up with a start as a tall hooded figure stepped from the shadows of an overhanging balcony and confronted her. A wide cloak was drawn close around him, his coif concealed the lower parts of his features. Only his eyes burned at her, almost luminous in the starlight. She cowered back with a low cry.

  “A woman on the streets of al medina!” The voice was strange, hollow, almost ghostly. “Is this not in defiance of the command of the caliph, on whom be peace?”

  “I walk not the streets by choice, ya khawand,” she answered. “My master has cast me forth, and I have not where to lay my head.”

  The stranger bent his hooded head and stood statue-like for a space, like a brooding image of night and silence. Zaida watched him nervously. There was something gloomy and portentous about him; he seemed less like a man pondering over the tale of a chance-met slave-girl, than a sombre prophet weighing the doom of a sinful people.

  At last he lifted his head.

  “Come!” said he, in a voice of command rather than invitation. “I will find a place for you.” And without pausing to see if she obeyed, he stalked away up the street. She hurried after him, clutching her draggled robe about her. She could not walk the streets all night; any officer of the caliph would strike off her head for violating the edict of Al Hakim. This stranger might be leading her into slavery, but she had no choice.

  The silence of her companion made her nervous. Several times she essayed speech, but his grim unresponsiveness struck her silent in turn. Her curiosity was piqued, her vanity touched. Never before had she failed so signally to interest a man. Faintly she sensed an imponderable something she could not overcome – an unnatural and frightening aloofness she could not touch. Fear began to grow on her, but she followed because she knew not what else to do. Only once he spoke, when, looking back, she was startled to see several furtive and shadowy forms stealing after them.

  “Men follow us!” she exclaimed.

  “Heed them not,” he answered in his weird voice. “They are but servants of Allah that serve Him in their way.”

  This cryptic answer set her shuddering, and nothing further was said until they reached a small arched gate set in a lofty wall. There the stranger halted and called aloud.
He was answered from within, and the gate opened, revealing a black mute holding a torch on high. In its lurid gleam the height of the robed stranger was inhumanly exaggerated.

  “But this – this is a gate of the Great Palace!” stammered Zaida.

  For answer the man threw back his hood, revealing a long pale oval of a face, in which burned those strange luminous eyes.

  Zaida screamed and fell to her knees. “Al Hakim!”

  “Aye, Al Hakim, oh faithless and sinful one!” The hollow voice was like a knell. Sonorous and inexorable as the brazen trumpets of doom it rolled out in the night. “Oh, vain and foolish woman, who dare ignore the command of Al Hakim, which is the word of God! Who treads the street in sin, and sets aside the mandates of The Beneficent King! There is no majesty, and there is no might save in Allah, the glorious, the great! Oh, Lord of the Three Worlds, why withhold Thy levin-fire to burn her into a charred and blackened brand for all men to behold and shudder thereat!”

  Then changing his tone suddenly, he cried sharply: “Seize her!” and the dogging shadows closed in, revealing themselves as black men with the wizened features of mutes. As their fingers closed on her flesh, Zaida fainted for the first and last time in her life.

  She did not feel herself being lifted and carried through the gate, across gardens waving with blossoms and reeking with spice, through corridors lined with spiral columns of alabaster and gold, and into a chamber without windows, the arched doors of which were bolted with bars of gold, gemmed with amethysts.

  It was upon the carpeted, cushion strewn floor of this chamber that the Venetian regained consciousness. She looked dazedly about her, then the memory of her adventure came back with a rush, and with a low cry, she stared wildly about for her captor. She shrank down again to see him standing above her, arms folded, head bent gloomily, while his terrible eyes burned into her soul.

  “Oh Lion of the Faithful!” she gasped, struggling to her knees. “Mercy! Mercy!”

  Even as she spoke she was sickeningly aware of the futility of pleading for mercy where mercy was unknown. She was crouching before the most feared monarch in the world: the man whose name was a curse in the mouths of Christian, Jew and orthodox Moslem alike; the man who, claiming descent from Ali, the nephew of the Prophet, was the head of the Shia world, the Incarnation of Divine Reason to all Shiites; the man who had ordered all dogs killed, all vines cut down, all grapes and honey dumped into the Nile; who had banned all games of chance, confiscated the property of the Coptic Christians and given the people themselves over to abominable tortures; who believed that to disobey one of his commands, however trivial, was the blackest sin conceivable. He roamed the streets at night in disguise, as Haroun ar Raschid had done before him, and as Baibars did after him, to see that his commands were obeyed.

  So Al Hakim stared at her with wide unblinking eyes, and Zaida felt her flesh shrivel and crawl in horror.

  “Blasphemer!” he whispered. “Tool of Shaitan! Daughter of all evil! Oh Allah!” he cried suddenly, flinging aloft his wide-sleeved arms. “What punishment shall be devised for this demon? What agony terrible enough, what degradation vile enough to render justice? Allah grant me wisdom!”

  Zaida rose upon her knees, snatching off her torn veil. She stretched out her arm, pointing at his face.

  “Why do you call on Allah?” she shrieked hysterically. “Call on Al Hakim! You are Allah! Al Hakim is God!”

  He stopped short at her cry; he reeled, catching at his head, crying out incoherently. Then he straightened himself and looked down at her dazedly. Her face was chalk white, her wide eyes staring. To her natural acting ability was added the real and desperate horror of her position. To Al Hakim it seemed that she was dazed and dazzled by a vision of celestial splendor.

  “What do you see, woman?” he gasped.

  “Allah has revealed Himself to me!” she whispered. “In your face, shining like the morning sun! Nay, I burn, I die in the blaze of thy glory!”

  She sank her face in her hands and crouched trembling. Al Hakim passed a trembling hand over his brow and temples.

  “God!” he whispered. “Aye, I am God! I have guessed it – I have dreamed it – I, and I alone possess the wisdom of the Infinite. Now a mortal has seen it, has recognized the god in the form of man. Aye, it is the truth taught by the teachers of the Shia – the Incarnation of the Godhead – I see the Truth behind the truth at last. Not a mere incarnation of divinity – divinity itself! Allah! Al Hakim is Allah!”

  Bending his gaze upon the woman at his feet, he ordered: “Rise, woman, and look upon thy god!”

  Timidly she did so, and stood shrinking before his unwinking gaze. Zaida the Venetian was not extremely beautiful according to certain arbitrary standards which demand the perfectly chiselled features, the delicate frame – but she was good to look at. She was somewhat broadly built, with big breasts and haunches, and shoulders wider than most. Her face was not the classic of the Greeks, and was faintly freckled. But there was about her a vital something transcending mere superficial beauty. Her brown eyes sparkled, reflecting a keen intelligence, and the physical vigor promised by her thick limbs and big hips.

  As he looked at her a change clouded the wide eyes of Al Hakim; he seemed to see her clearly for the first time.

  “Thy sin is pardoned,” he intoned. “Thou wert first to hail thy God. Henceforth thou shalt serve me in honor and splendor.”

  She prostrated herself, kissing the carpet before his feet, and he clapped his hands. A eunuch entered, bowing low.

  “Go quickly to the house of Zahir el Ghazi,” said Al Hakim, seeming to look over the head of the servitor, and see him not at all. “Say to him: ‘This is the word of Al Hakim, who is God; that on the morrow shall be the beginning of happenings, of the building of ships, and the marshalling of hosts, even as thou hast desired; for God is God, and the unbelievers too long have blasphemed against Him!’ ”

  “Hearkening and obeying, master,” mumbled the eunuch, bowing to the floor.

  “I doubted and feared,” said Al Hakim dreamily, gazing far and beyond the confines of reality into some far realm only he could see. “I knew not – as now I know – that Zahir el Ghazi was the tool of Destiny. When he urged me to world-conquest, I hesitated. But I am God, and to gods all things are possible, yea, all kingdoms and glory!”

  III

  Glance briefly at the world on that night of portent, 1021 A.D. It was a night in an age of change, an age writhing in the throes of labor in which all that goes to make up the modern world was struggling for birth. It was a world crimson and torn, chaotic and awful, pregnant with imponderable power, yet apparently sinking into stagnation and ruin.

  In Egypt a Sunnite population groaned under the heel of a Shiite dynasty – a dynasty shrunken and shrivelled from world empire, but still mighty, reaching from the Euphrates to the Sudan. Between the borders of Egypt and the western sea stretched a vast expanse inhabited by wild tribes nominally under the caliph’s sceptre, the same tribes which had in an earlier day crushed the Gothic kingdom of Spain, and which now stirred restlessly in their mountains, needing only a powerful leader to sweep them again in an overwhelming wave against Christendom.

  In Spain the divided Moorish provinces gave ground before the hosts of Castile, Leon and Navarre. But these Christian kingdoms, forged of blood and iron though they were, were not numerically powerful enough to have withstood the combined onslaught of Islam. They formed Christendom’s western frontier, while Byzantium formed the eastern frontier, as in the days of Omar and the conquering Companions, holding back the horns of the Crescent that else had met in middle Europe to form an inexorable circle. And the Crescent was never dead; it only slept, and even in its slumber throbbed the drums of empire.

  Europe, in the grip of feudalism, was weaker internally than on her borders. The nations were already taking shadowy shape, but as yet there was no real national spirit. In France there was neither Charlemagne nor Martel – only starving, plague-harried pea
santry, warring fiefs, and a land torn by strife between Capet and Norman duke, overlord and rebellious vassal. And France was typical of Europe.

  There were, it is true, strong men in the West: Canute the Dane, ruling Saxon England; Henry of Germany, Emperor of the shadowy Holy Roman Empire. But Canute was almost like the king of another world, in his sea-girt isolation, and the Emperor had his hands full in seeking to weld his rival realms of Germany and Italy, and in beating back the encroaching Slavs.

  In Byzantium the glorious reign of Basilius Bulgaroktonos was drawing to a close. Already long shadows were falling from the east across the Golden Horn. Byzantium was still Christendom’s mightiest bulwark; but westward from Bokhara were moving the horsemen of the steppes destined swiftly to wrest from the Eastern Empire her last Asiatic possession. The Seljuks, blocked on the south by the glittering Indo-Iranian empire of Mahmud of Ghazni, were riding toward the setting sun, not to be halted until their horses’ hoofs splashed the waters of the Mediterranean.

  In Bagdad the Persian Buides fought in the streets with the Turkish mercenaries of the weak Abbasside caliph. But Islam was not crushed, but only broken into many parts, like the shards of a shining blade. Active strength lay in Egypt, in Ghazni, in the marauding Seljuks. Potential strength slumbered in Syria, in Irak, in Arabia, in the restless tribes of the Atlas – strength enough to burst the western barriers of Christendom, were the various separate elements united under a strong hand.

  Byzantium was still unassailable; but let the Spanish kingdoms fall before a sudden onrush from Africa, and the hordes would gush into Europe almost without opposition. Such was the picture of the age: both East and West divided and inert; in the West was yet unborn that flaming spirit which, seventy-five years later, stormed eastward in the Crusades; in the East neither a Saladin nor a Genghis Khan was apparent. Yet, let such a man appear, and the horns of the revived Crescent might yet complete the circle, not in central Europe, but over the crumbling walls of Constantinople, assailed from north as well as south.