Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures M

by Robert E. Howard

  There was no sound except the clangor of steel, the gasp of hard-driven breath, and the thud and shuffle of the fighters’ feet. The sheer power of the Cossack began to tell. From a whirlwind offensive, Osman found himself gradually forced back on the defense, using all his strength and skill to parry the Cossack’s terrible sweeping blows. With a gasping cry he staked all on a desperate onslaught and leaped like a tiger, scimitar glittering above his head. He was aware of an icy pang under his heart, and convulsively clutching with his naked hand the blade that had impaled him, he slashed with his last ounce of strength at his slayer’s head. Ivan caught the stroke on his upflung left arm; the keen edge bit through mail-links and flesh to the bone. The scimitar dropped from Osman’s nerveless hand, and he slid off the impaling blade to the blood-soaked earth. And from his pallid lips burst words in a strange tongue, “God ha’ mercy on me – I’ll see Devon no more!”

  Ivan started violently, blenching, and then with a cry dropped to his knees beside him, forgetful of his own blood-spurting wound. Gripping his foe he shook him fiercely, crying in the same tongue, “What did ye say? What did ye say?”

  The glazing eyes rolled up at him, and Ivan tore the helmet from the wounded man’s head. And he cried out as if Osman had stabbed him.

  “God’s mercy! Roger! Black Roger Bellamy! Don’t ye know me, lad? ’Tis John Hawksby – old Jack Hawksby, that fought wi’ ye and for ye when we were lads together in Devon! Ah, God forgive us, that we should meet like this! And in a naked land, unknowing. How come ye in such pagan guise, Roger?”

  “A long yarn and scant time to tell it,” muttered the renegade. “Nay, John,” as the big man began tearing strips from his garments to staunch the blood he had just let so willingly, “nay, I’m done for. Let me bide. I was with Drake when he struck for Lisbon and lost so many good ships and stout lads. I was one the Spaniards took. They bound me to a galley’s oar. Something broke in me as I toiled there beneath the lash. I forgot England, aye, and God too.

  “A Barbary rover took the galley and the kapudan-pasha – Seyf-ed-din it was – offered the slaves their lives if they became Moslems. The galleys make a man forget much – even that he was a Christian. ’Tis maybe no great step from buccaneer to corsair. I only wanted to hammer Spain, at first. Then as I rose in power I forgot more and more the blood in me. I swept the seas o’ Christian and Muhammadan alike. Aye, now the tang o’ paynim fame and red glory is dust in my mouth. How come you in the manner of a Cossack?”

  “Drink and the women, lad,” answered Ivan Sablianka, who had been John Hawksby of Devon. “I couldn’t bide in Devon because o’ feuds and fights wi’ divers people. I wandered eastward until I lost the memory and feeling o’ England. Sink my bones, I’ve been as great a heathen as you, Roger. But do ye mind the great old days when we pounded the Dons on the Main?”

  “Remember?” the dying man’s eyes blazed and he lurched up on his elbow, blood gushing from his mouth. “God, to sail again with Drake and Grenville! To laugh with them as we laughed when we ripped Philip’s Armada to shreds! – Let go the weather braces! – that’s Sidonia’s flagship! – man the pumps, bullies, I’ll not strike while there’s a plank beneath my feet! – give ’em a broadside – the starboard guns – hangers and pistolets, there – ”

  He sank back, the babble of delirium dying on his lips. Ivan, kneeling beside the dead man, was lost in memory until a clink of steel on stone brought him round instinctively, sword ready. Togrukh stood near him in the gathering twilight.

  “I see you’ve run down the dog. The lads have gone back into the tunnel. There’s only nine of ’em left to run, besides ourselves. The gorge is full of Turks. We’ll have to make our way across the cliffs to where we left the horses. What are you about?”

  Ivan had spread the corsair’s mantle over the dead pirate.

  “I’m going to lay stones over him, so the vultures can’t pick his bones,” he answered stolidly.

  “But his head!” expostulated the other. “His head to show the sir brothers!”

  The giant faced about in the dusk so grimly that Togrukh involuntarily stepped back.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Aye, right enough.”

  “And you’ll bear witness to the sir brothers that I killed him, won’t you?”

  “Yes, but – ”

  “Then let it rest there,” grunted Ivan, bending his powerful back as he began to lift the stones and heap them in place.

  Miscellanea

  Untitled Fragment

  (The Track of Bohemund)

  As the moon glided from behind a mass of fleecy clouds, etching the shadows of the woods in a silvery glow, the man sprang into a dark clump of bushes, like a hunted thing that fears the disclosing light. As a clink of shod hoofs came plainly to him, he drew further back into his covert, scarcely daring to breathe. In the silence a nightbird called sleepily, and he heard, in the distance, the lazy lap of waters against the shore. The moon slid again behind a drifting cloud, just as the horseman emerged from the trees on the other side of the small glade. The man, hugging his covert, cursed silently. He could make out only a vague moving mass; could hear only the clink stirrups and the creak of leather. Then the moon came out again, and with a deep gasp of relief, the hider sprang from among the bushes.

  The horse reared and snorted, the rider yelped a startled oath, and a short spear gleamed in his lifted hand. The apparition which had so suddenly sprung to his horse’s head was not one calculated to reassure a lonely wayfarer. It was a tall, rangily powerful man, naked but for a loin cloth, his steely muscles rippling in the moonlight.

  “Back, or I run you through!” snarled the horseman, in Turki. “Who are you, in Satan’s name?”

  “Roger de Cogan,” answered the other in Norman-French. “Speak softly. We are scarce a mile from a Moslem rendezvous, and they may have scouts out. I marvel that you have not been taken. Up the shore, in a small bay screened with tall trees, there are three galleys hidden, and I saw the glitter of arms ashore. This night I escaped from the galley of the famed pirate, the Arab Yusef idbn Zalim, where I have toiled for months at the oars. He made the rendezvous, for what reason I know not, but fearing treachery of some sort from the Turks, anchored outside the bay. And now he lies at the bottom of the gulf, for I broke my chain, came quietly upon him as he drowsed in the bows, strangled him, and swam ashore.”

  The horseman grunted, sitting his horse like a statue, etched in the moonlight. He was tall, clad in grey chain-mail which did not hide the hard lines of his rangy limbs, an iron cap pushed back carelessly on his steel-hooded head. Even in the uncertain light, the fugitive was impressed by the man’s hawk-like, predatory features.

  “I think you lie,” he said, speaking Norman-French with a peculiar accent. “You a galley slave, with your hair new cropped and your face freshly shaven? And what Moslem galleys would dare hide on the European shore, so close to the city?”

  “Why, by God,” answered the other in evident surprize, “you can not deny that I am a Christian. As to my hair and beard, I think it a poor thing that a cavalier should allow himself to become sloven, even in captivity. One of the captives on board the galley was a Greek barber, and only this morning I prevailed upon him to shear and shave me. As for the other, all men know that the Moslems steal up and down the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora almost at will. But we risk our lives standing here babbling. Give me a stirrup and let us be gone.”

  “I think not,” muttered the horseman. “You have seen too much.”

  And with a powerful heave of his whole frame, he drove the spear straight toward the other’s broad breast. So unexpected was the action, that it was only the instinctive movement of the victim which saved him. Caught flat-footed, his steel-trap coordination yet electrified him a flashing fraction of an instant quicker than the driving steel, which cut the skin on his shoulder as it hissed past him. But it was not blind instinct which caused him to grasp the spear-shaft and jerk back savagely
. Rage at the unprovoked woke the killing lust in his brain. The avoiding of the blow and the jerk at the spear-shaft were the work of an instant. Over-reached and off balance from the missed stroke, the horseman tumbled headlong from the saddle, full on his antagonist’s breast, and they crashed to the ground together, the horseman’s carelessly worn helmet falling from his head. The horse snorted and bolted to the edge of the trees.

  The stranger had released the spear as he fell, and now, close locked, the fighters rolled across the open space and crashed among the bushes. The mailed hand clutched at the sheathed dagger, but de Cogan was quicker. With a volcanic heave, he reared himself above his antagonist, clutching a heavy stone on which his fingers had blindly closed. The dagger was out, gleaming in the moonlight, but before it could drive home, the stone crashed with stunning force on the mail-clad head. The flexible coif was not enough protection against such a blow. The pliant links did not part, but they gave, and beneath them the striker felt the skull crunch under the blow. And with fully roused ferocity, the ex-slave struck again and again, until his foeman lay motionless beneath him, blood seeping sluggishly from beneath the iron hood.

  Then, panting, he rose, flinging aside the crude weapon, and glared down at the vanquished. Still shaken with fury and surprize, he shook his head bewilderedly. Then a sudden thought came to him, and he wondered that it had not occurred to him before. The horseman had come from the direction of the Moslem camp. Surely it had been impossible for him to have ridden past it unchallenged. He must have been in the camp itself. Then that meant that the fellow was somehow in league with the paynim, and again Roger shook his head. He had learned much of the ways of the East since he had ridden down the Danube in the vanguard of Peter the Hermit. Byzantine and Moslem were not always at each other’s throats. Sometimes they dealt together secretly, to the confounding of the westerners. But Roger had never heard of a Crusader turning renegade – and this man, in the armor of a Cross Wearer, was no Greek.

  Yielding to urgent necessity, Roger began to strip the dead. The dead man was clean shaven, with square-cut yellow hair. As far as appearances went, he might have been a Norman, but de Cogan remembered his alien accent. The ex-galley slave hurriedly donned the harness, settled the sword belt more firmly about his lean loins, and looked about for the iron cap which he placed on his tawny locks. All fitted him as if made for him. Inch for inch, the unknown attacker and he had been a perfect match. He stroked the hilt of the long broad sword, and felt like a man again, for the first time in months. The clink of the scabbard against his mail-sheathed thigh reminded him that he was again Sir Roger de Cogan, knight of the Cross, and one of England’s surest swords.

  No sound save the distant twittering of night birds disturbed the magic silence as he caught the charger which was calmly gazing at the edge of the woods. As he swung into the saddle, the long months of degradation and grinding toil fell away from him like a cast-off mantle, leaving only a grim determination to pay the debt he owed the worshippers of Muhammad. He smiled bleakly as he remembered the dying gurgles of Yusef ibn Zalim, but his face darkened as another visage rose before him, mocking in the moonlight – a lean hawk-face, crowned by a peaked helmet with a heron’s feather. Prince Othman, son of Kilidg Arslan, the Red Lion of the Seljuks. The phantom mocked, but there would be another day, and scant in all other things, Norman patience, when laid toward vengeance, was deep and abiding as the North Sea which bred it.

  Roger left the spear where it lay, but he unslung the kite-shaped shield which hung at the saddle-bow, and wary as a wolf, plunged into the shadows of the trees, in the direction in which he had been going before the adventure. There was no insignia on the shield, but on the breast of the hauberk a strange emblem was worked in gold – something that looked like a falcon, and was unmistakably Grecian in its artistry.

  The woods through which he rode were now as deserted as if he were the last man on earth. He followed the shore line as near as he dared, guiding his course by the distant lap of the waves, and the terrain was rolling and uneven. After some three hours, the lights of Constantinople blazed through the trees, as he mounted rises, then vanished as he dipped into hollows. It was, he calculated, somewhat past midnight when he rode into the outskirts of the city, which, separate from the greater metropolis and yet a part of it, sprawled along the northern bank of the Golden Horn. This was the quarters of the Venetian traders and other foreign merchants – straggling streets of carved wooden buildings and more substantial houses of stone. But before he reached the heart of the city, a wall halted him, and the watch at the gate hailed him. A torch in a mailed hand was reached down, to be brandished almost in his face, but before he could name himself, he saw a figure in black velvet lean from the wall and scrutinize him closely. There followed a few low words in Greek, and the gates swung open, to clang behind him as he reined his steed through. He prepared to ride away down the street, when the velveted figure darted out and caught his rein.

  “Light! light!” exclaimed this person impatiently. “What is in your mind? Have you forgotten our master’s instructions? Here, Manuel, take this steed to the pier. Come with me, my lord Thorvald. Wait! Some one may recognize you! I had not known you, in those western trappings, and without your beard, but for the golden falcon on your hauberk. But some one might – take this silken scarf and mask your features with it.”

  Sir Roger took it and wrapped in loosely about his coif, so that only his steely eyes were visible. It was apparent that he had been mistaken for the man he had slain. It was almost certain that he was going into danger, but it was as certain that if he declared his identity, he would just as quickly find himself in danger. The name of Thorvald stirred some faint recollection at the back of the Norman’s mind, and he instinctively touched the hilt of the sword at his girdle.

  The guide led the way through narrow, deserted streets, until Roger knew that they were not far from piers that gave on to the strait, and halted at the door of a squat stone tower, evidently a relic of an earlier, ruder age. Some one looked out through a slit in the door.

  “Open, fool!” hissed the man in velvet. “It is Angelus and the lord Thorvald the Smiter.”

  Hinges creaked as the door swung inward. Sir Roger followed, in a maze of fantastic speculations. Thorvald the Smiter – so that was the man he had battered to death with a stone in the glade. He had heard of the Norseman who was the grimmest swordsman in the Varangian Guards, that band of mercenaries, Northern slayers maintained by the Greeks. He had seen them about the palace of the Emperor – tall bearded men, in crested helmets and scarlet-edged cloaks and gilded mail. But what was a Varangian captain doing riding from a Turkish rendezvous in the night, clad in the mail of a Crusader?

  Roger began to feel that he had stepped into a pit full of hidden snakes in the dark, but he drew the scarf closer about his features, and followed his guide through a short dark corridor into a small, dim-lit chamber. Some one was sitting in a great ornate chair, and to this figure the guide bowed almost to the floor, and withdrew, closing the door behind him. The Norman stood straining his eyes, and as they became accustomed to the dim candle-light, the form in the chair slowly took form. It was a short, stocky man who sat there, wrapped in a plain dark satin cloak which hid all other details of his costume. A featherless slouch hat and a mask lay on a table close at hand, arguing that the man had come in secrecy, fearing recognition. The knight’s eyes were drawn to the other’s face; the blue-black beard was carefully curled, the dark locks bound back from the broad forehead with a cloth-of-gold band; beneath it wide brown eyes gleamed with an innate vitality. Sir Roger started violently. In God’s name, into what dark undercurrent of plot and intrigue had he fallen? The man in the chair was Alexis Comnene, emperor of the Byzantine empire.

  “You have come quickly enough, Thorvald,” said the emperor – and Sir Roger did not reply, being too busy wondering what mysterious matter had brought the emperor of the East from his marble-pillared palace in the dead of night t
o an obscure tower in the outer city.

  “You ride with a loose rein. The messenger I sent did not tell you why I wished your presence?”

  Sir Roger shook his head, at a venture. Alexis nodded.

  “I told him to only bid you hasten here. But tell me – in your cruisings among the Black Sea corsairs, have they ever suspected your true identity?”

  Again Sir Roger shook his head.

  Alexis smiled.

  “Sparing of speech as ever, old wolf! It is well. But just now I have work for you even more important than keeping an eye on the Moslem pirates. So I sent for you –

  “Thorvald, since you went spying among the Turks, the hosts of the Franks have come and gone. They did not come as came Peter the Hermit and Gautier-sans-Avoir – rabbles of paupers and knaves. They came with war-horses, and wagon trains, cavaliers, and women, archers, pikemen and men-at-arms – all afire with zeal for recovering the Holy Sepulcher.