Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures

a doorway on the other side of the broad chamber. Curved blades were whickering at his back, and as he slammed the door behind him, steel rang on the stout oak, and glittering points showed in the splintering panels. He shot the bolt and whirled, glaring about for an avenue of escape. His gaze fell on a gold-barred window nearby.

With a headlong rush and a straining gasp of effort, he launched himself full into the window. With a splintering crash the soft bars gave way, the whole casement was torn out before the impact of his hurtling body. He shot through into empty space, just as the door crashed inward and a swarm of howling figures flooded into the room.

V

In the Great East Palace, where slave-girls and eunuchs glided on stealthy bare feet, no echo reverberated of the hell that raged outside the walls. In a chamber whose dome was of gold-filigreed ivory, Al Hakim, clad in a white silk robe that made him look even more ghostly and unreal, sat cross-legged on a couch of gemmed ebony, and stared with his wide unblinking eyes at Zaida the Venetian who knelt before him.

Zaida was no longer clad in the rags of a slave. Her dolyman was of crimson Mosul silk, bordered with cloth-of-gold, her girdle of satin sewn with pearls. The fabric of her wide bag drawers was sheer as gossamer, seeming to glow softly with the pink flesh it scarcely veiled. Her ear-rings were set with great pear- shaped jewels. Her long lashes were touched with kohl, her fingers tipped with henna. She knelt on a cloth-of-gold cushion.

But amidst all this splendor, which outshone anything even this play-thing of princes had ever known, the Venetian’s eyes were shadowed. For the first time in her life she found herself actually to be a plaything. She had inspired Al Hakim’s latest madness, but she had not mastered him. A night, an hour, she had expected to bend him to her will. Now he seemed withdrawn from her, and there was an expression in his cold inhuman eyes which made her shudder.

Suddenly he spoke, ponderously, portentously, like a god voicing doom: “It is not meet that gods mate with mortals.”

She started, opened her mouth, then feared to speak.

“Love is human and a weakness,” he continued broodingly. “I will cast it from me. Gods are beyond love. And weakness assails me when I lie in your arms.”

“What do you mean, my lord?” she ventured fearfully.

“Even the gods must sacrifice,” he answered somberly. “Love of a human is blasphemy to the godhead. I give you up, lest my divinity weaken.”

He clapped his hands deliberately, and a eunuch entered on all-fours – a newly instituted custom.

“Send in the emir Othman,” ordered Al Hakim, and the eunuch bumped his head violently against the floor and backed awkwardly out of the presence.

“No!” Zaida sprang up in a frenzy. “Oh my lord, have mercy! You can not give me to that black beast! You can not – ”

She was on her knees, catching at his robe, which he drew back from her fingers.

“Woman!” he thundered. “Are you mad? Would you draw doom upon yourself? Would you assail the person of God?”

Othman entered uncertainly, and in evident trepidation; a warrior of barbaric Darfur, he had risen to his present high estate by wild fighting and a brutal form of diplomacy.

Al Hakim pointed to the cowering woman at his feet and spake briefly: “Take her!”

The Sudani never questioned the commands of his monarch. A broad grin split his ebon countenance, and stooping, he caught up Zaida, who writhed and screamed in his grasp. As he bore her out of the chamber, she twisted in his arms, extending her white hands in passionate entreaty. Al Hakim answered not; he sat with hands folded, his gaze detached and impersonal as that of a hashish eater. If he heard the screams of his erstwhile favorite, he gave no sign.

But another heard. Crouching in an alcove, a slim brown-skinned girl watched the grinning Sudani carry his writhing captive up the hall. Scarcely had he vanished when she fled in another direction, garments caught up above her twinkling brown legs.

Othman, the favored of the caliph, alone of all the emirs dwelt in the Great Palace, which was really an aggregation of palaces united in one mighty structure, which housed thirty thousand servants of Al Hakim. He dwelt in a wing that opened on to the southern quarter of the Beyn el Kasreyn. To reach it, it was not necessary for him to emerge from the palace. Following winding corridors, crossing an occasional open court paved with mosaics and bordered with fretted arches supported on alabaster columns, he came to his own house.

Black swordsmen guarded the door of black teak, banded with arabesqued copper which separated his quarters from the rest of the palace. But even as he came in sight of that door, down a broad panelled corridor, a supple form glided from a curtained doorway and barred his way.

“Zulaikha!” The black recoiled in almost superstitious awe; the woman’s slim white hands clenched and unclenched in a refinement of passion too subtle and deep for his brutish comprehension; and over the filmy yasmaq her eyes burned like gems from hell.

“A servant brought me word that Al Hakim had discarded the red-haired slut,” said the Arab. “Sell her therefore to me! For I owe her a debt that I fain would pay.”

“Why should I sell her?” objected the Sudani, fidgeting in animal impatience. “The caliph has given her to me. Stand aside, woman, lest I do you an injury.”

“Have you heard what the Berbers shout in the streets?” she asked.

He started, greying slightly. “What is that to me?” he blustered, but his voice was not steady.

“They howl for the head of Othman,” she said coolly and with venom. “They call you the murderer of Zahir el Ghazi. What if I went to them and told them that what they suspect is true?”

“But I had naught to do with it!” he exclaimed wildly, like a man caught in an unseen net.

“I can produce men to swear they saw you help Zaman cut him down,” she assured him.

“I’ll kill you!” he whispered.

She laughed in his face.

“You dare not, black beast of the grass lands! Now will you sell me the red-haired jade, or will you fight the Berbers?”

His hands slipped from their hold and let Zaida fall to the floor.

“Take her and begone!” he muttered, his black skin ashen.

“Take first your pay!” she retorted with vindictive malice, and hurled a handful of coins full in his face. He shrank back like a great black ape, his eyes burning red, his dusky hands opening and closing in helpless blood- lust.

Ignoring him, Zulaikha bent over Zaida, who crouched dazed with sick helplessness, crushed by the realization of her impotence against this new conqueror, against whom, as a member of her own sex, all the witchery and wiles she had played against men were helpless. Zulaikha gathered the Venetian’s red locks in her fingers and forcing her head brutally back, stared into her eyes with a fierce and hungry possessiveness that turned Zaida’s blood to ice.

The Arab clapped her hands and four Syrian eunuchs entered.

“Take her up and bear her to my house,” Zulaikha ordered, and they laid hold of the shrinking Venetian and bore her away. Zulaikha followed, her pink nails sinking into her palms, as she breathed softly between her clenching teeth.

VI