the upper rim of his heavy shield. The hosts gave tongue as the knights shocked together with a rending crash. Both lances shivered to the hand-grips, and the horses were hurled back on their haunches. But Roger kept his seat, though half-stunned by the terrible impact, while Butumites was dashed from his saddle as though by a thunder- bolt. He lay where he had fallen, his burnished steel-clad limbs crumpled in the dust, blood oozing from his cracked helmet.
Roger reined in his rearing steed and slid to earth dazedly, his head still ringing. The breaking lance of the Byzantine, glancing from the rim of his shield, had torn his bassinet from his head, and all but ripped loose the tendons of his neck. He advanced rather stiffly to the group which had formed about the prostrate Greek. The caque with its nodding plumes had been lifted off, and Butumites looked up at the faces above him with glazed eyes. It was evident that the man was dying. His breast-plate was shattered, and his whole breast-bone caved inward. Adhemar leaned above him, rosary in hand, muttering rapidly.
“My son, have you any confession?”
The dying lips worked, but only a dry rattle came from them. With a terrible effort the Greek muttered, “Doryleum – Kilidg Arslan – Bohemund – ” blood gushed from his lips, and he stiffened, a still figure of burnished metal, steel-sheathed limbs falling awry.
Godfrey went into instant action.
“To horse!” he shouted. “A steed for Sir Roger! Bohemund needs aid and by the favor of God, he shall not call in vain!”
The throng yelped and the scene became a medly of confusion, knights mounting, men-at-arms buckling on their armor.
“Wait!” exclaimed St. Gilles. “We can not go racing over these hills, wagons and footmen – some one must guard the supplies – ”
“Do you this thing, my lord Raymond,” said Godfrey, a-fire with impatience. “Get the wagons under way, and follow with them and the footmen. My horsemen and I will push forward. Roger, lead the way!”
Cormac FitzGeoffrey rides into a city that the Turkomans are looting. He arrives to late to share in the loot, but he captures an Arab slave girl, Zuleika, whose owner has just been murdered by a Turkoman. He kills the Turkoman and carries her off with him, riding to the castle of Sieur Amory. There he divulges his plan. He has noticed a striking resemblance between Zuleika and the daughter of Abdullah bin Kheram, the princess Zalda, who had been carried off three years before by Kurdish raiders, on the verge of her wedding to Khelru Shah, chief of the Seljuk Turks, who rules the hill-town of Kizil-hissar, the Red Castle. Amory keeps the girl with him, and Cormac rides to Kizil-hissar. He tells Khelru Shah that he has found the vanished princess, and that he will delivers her up to him for ten thousand pieces of gold. Khelru Shah threatens to keep him as hostage, but Cormac laughs at him, telling him that if he, Cormac, has not returned in a certain time, the princess’s throat will be cut. Khelru Shah refuses to believe that the princess still lives, and decides to ride to Amory’s castle with Cormac and see for himself. They set out with three hundred riders, and even before they set forth, one Ali, an Arab trader, who has spied upon their council, races southward on a swift camel. Meanwhile Amory has become somewhat interested in his fair captive, to the extent of attempting to ravish her, but refraining for some reason he himself cannot understand. Zuleika has fallen in love with her captor, but Amory, wild, and hardened by years of intrigue and battle, cannot believe himself in love with her. Cormac and Khelru Shah ride up to the castle wall and Amory displays Zuleika on the tower. Khelru Shah is puzzled; he finally decides that it is the princess Zalda, and demands a night to think the matter over. He retires with all his force a mile away and goes into camp, while Cormac enters the castle. Just at dark, a crippled beggar howls for admission at the castle gate and is allowed to enter and sleep in the castle hall. The Arab girl is locked into her chamber with a soldier on guard and Cormac and Amory drink and converse in another chamber. The walls are closely guarded in event of a surprize attack. When all the castle is silent, the crippled beggar rises stealthily, disclosing the countenance of an Egyptian right-hand man of Khelru Shah’s. He steals to the girl’s chamber, strangles her guard, enters, binds and gags her, and steals out of the castle. He conceals her in the stable, then slays the soldier guarding the postern gate and opens it, then sets fire to the castle. Khelru Shah’s men, who have stolen up on foot in the darkness, rush through the postern gate. Meanwhile, Cormac and Amory have quarrelled. Amory declares he will not let the girl go, and while the two are fighting hand to hand, a soldier rushes in shouting that the courtyard swarms with Turks. The handful of men in the castle cut their way out of the blazing hold, but are surrounded in the court-yard and about to be cut to pieces, when Abdullah bin Kheram rides up with a thousand men. The trader Ali has told him his daughter is captive there. Fighting ceases as all learn in wonder that Zuleika is indeed the princess Zalda. Khelru Shah is slain by Cormac who hacks his way through the Arabs and escapes, and Zalda makes known her love to Amory. The Sheikh gives his consent that they should marry and a powerful alliance is formed between the Arabs and Amory, for life.
Outside the clamor mounted deafeningly. The rasp of steel on steel mingled with yells of blood-lust and yells of wild triumph. The young slave girl hesitated and looked about the chamber in which she stood. There was resigned helplessness in her gaze. The city had fallen; the blood-drunk Turkomans were riding through the streets, burning, looting, slaughtering. Any moment might see the victorious savages running red handed through the house of her owner.
From another part of the house a fat merchant came running. His eyes were distended with terror, his breath came in gasps. He bore gems and worthless gew-gaws in his hands – belongings snatched blindly and at random.
“Zuleika!” His voice was the screech of a trapped weasel, “Open the door quickly, then bar it from this side – I will escape through the rear. Allah il Allah! The Turkish fiends are slaying all in the streets – the gutters run red – ”
“What of me, master?” the girl asked humbly.
“What of you, hussy?” screamed the man, striking her heavily, “Open the door, open the door, I tell you – ahhhhhh!”
His voice snapped brittle as glass. Through an outer door came a wild and fearsome figure – a shaggy, ragged Turkoman whose eyes were the eyes of a mad dog. Zuleika in frozen terror saw the wide glaring eyes, the lanky hair, the short boar-spear gripped in a hand that dripped crimson.
The merchant’s voice rose in a frenzied squeaking. He made a desperate dash across the chamber but the tribesman leaped like a cat on a mouse and one lean hand gripped the merchant’s garments. Zuleika watched in dumb horror. She had reason to hate the man – reasons of outrage, punishment and indignity, but from the depths of her heart she pitied the howling wretch as he writhed and shrank from his fate. The boar-spear ripped upward; the screams broke in a fearful gurgle. The Turkoman stepped over the ghastly red thing on the floor and stalked toward the terrified girl. She shrank back, unspeaking. Long she had learned the cruelty of men and the uselessness of appeal. She did not beg for her life. The Turkoman gripped her by the breast of the single scanty garment she wore and she felt his wild beast eyes burn into her’s. He was too far gone in the slaughter-lust for her to rouse another desire in his wild soul. In that red moment she was only a living thing, pulsing and quivering with life, for him to still forever in blood and agony.
She sought to close her eyes but she could not. In a clear white light of semi-detachment she welcomed death, to end a road that had been hard and cruel. But her flesh shrank from the doom her spirit accepted and only her attacker’s grasp held her erect. Grinning like a wolf he brought the keen point of the spear against her breast and a thin trickle of blood started from the tender skin. The tribesman sucked in his breath in fierce ecstacy; he would drive the blade home slowly, gradually, twisting it excruciatingly, glutting his cruelty with the agonized writhings and screamings of his fair victim.
A heavy step sounded behind them and a rough voice swore in an unfamiliar tongue. The Turkoman wheeled,
