“Aye, so they would! But they would likewise cut you to pieces. And the Sudani would aid them; neither loves the Turks. Berbers and blacks together will cut down every Turk in Cairo. Then where is your ambition, when your head is off? I will die, yes; but if I set Sudani, Turk and Berber to slaying each other, perchance the rebellion will whelm them all, and I will have gained in death what I could not in life.”
Es Salih Muhammad recognized the grim determination which lay behind the Castilian’s words.
“I see I must slay you, after all!” he muttered, drawing his scimitar. The next instant the chamber resounded to the clash of steel.
At the first pass de Guzman realized that the Turk was the finest swordsman he had ever met; he was ice where the Spaniard was fire. To his reluctance to kill Es Salih was added the knowledge that he was opposed by a greater swordsman than himself. And the thought nerved him to desperate fury, so that the headlong recklessness that had always been his weakness, became his strength. His life did not matter; but if he fell in that blood-stained chamber, Castile fell with him.
Outside the walls of El Kahira the mob surged and ravened, torches showered sparks, and steel drank and reddened. Inside the chamber of dead Zulaikha the curved blades sang and whistled. Smite, Diego de Guzman! (they sang). Spain hangs on your arm. Strike for the glories of yesterday and the splendors of tomorrow. Strike for the thunder of arms, the rustle of banners in the mountain winds, the agony of endeavor, and the blood of martyrdom; strike for the spears of the uplands, the black-haired women, fires on the red hearths, and the trumpets of empires yet to be! Strike for the unborn kingdoms, the pageantry of glory, and the great galleons rolling across a golden sea to a world undreamed! Strike for the wonder that is Spain, aged and ever ageless, the phoenix of nations, rising for ever from the ashes of a dead past to burn among the standards of the world!
Through his parted lips Es Salih Muhammad’s breath hissed. Under his dark skin grew an ashy hue. Skill nor craft availed him against this blazing-eyed incarnation of fury who came on in an irresistible surge, smiting like a smith on an anvil.
Under the brown-crusted bandage de Guzman’s wound was bleeding afresh, and the blood poured down his temple, but his sword was like a flaming wheel. The Turk could only parry; he had no opportunity to strike back.
Es Salih Muhammad was fighting for personal ambition; Diego de Guzman was fighting for the future of a nation.
A last gasping heave of thew-wrenching effort, an explosive burst of dynamic power, and the scimitar was beaten from the Turk’s hand. He reeled back with a cry, not of pain or fear, but of despair. De Guzman, his broad breast heaving from his exertions, turned away.
“I will not cut you down myself,” he said. “Nor will I force an oath from you at sword’s edge. You would not keep it. I go to the Berbers, and my doom – and yours. Farewell; I would have made you vizir of Egypt!”
“Wait!” panted Es Salih, grasping at a hanging for support. “Let us reason this matter! What do you mean?”
“What I say!” De Guzman wheeled back from the door, galvanized with a feeling that he had the desperate game in his hand at last. “Do you not realize that at the instant you hold the balance of power? The Sudani and the Berbers fight each other, and the Cairenes fight both! Neither faction can win without your support. The way you throw your Memluks will be the deciding factor. You planned to support the Sudani and crush both the Berbers and the rebels. But suppose you threw in your lot with the Berbers? Suppose you appeared as the
Es Salih, who had been listening like a man in a dream, gave a sudden shout of laughter, like a drunken man. Realization that de Guzman wished to use him as a pawn to crush a foe of Spain was drowned in the heady wine of personal ambition.
“
VII
In the great square in el Mansuriya, the tossing torches blazed on a maelstrom of straining, plunging figures, screaming horses, and lashing blades. Men brown, black and white fought hand-to-hand, Berber, Sudani, Egyptian, gasping, cursing, slaying and dying.
For a thousand years Egypt had slept under the heel of foreign masters; now she awoke, and crimson was the awakening.
Like brainless madmen the Cairenes grappled the black slayers, dragging them bodily from their saddles, slashing the girths of the frenzied horses. Rusty pikes clanged against lances. Fire burst out in a hundred places, mounting into the skies until the herdsmen on Mukattam awoke and gaped in wonder. From all the suburbs poured wild and frantic figures, a roaring torrent with a thousand branches all converging on the great square. Hundreds of still shapes, in mail or striped
The square lay in the heart of the Sudani quarter, into which had come ravening the blood-mad Berbers while the bulk of the blacks had been fighting the mob in other parts of the city. Now, withdrawn in haste to their own quarter, the ebony swordsmen were overwhelming the Berbers with sheer numbers, while the mob threatened to engulf both hordes. The Sudani, under their captain Izz ed din, maintained some semblance of order, which gave them an advantage over the unorganized Berbers and the leaderless mob.
The maddened Cairenes were smashing and plundering the houses of the blacks, dragging forth howling women; the blaze of burning buildings made the square swim in an ocean of fire.
Somewhere there began the whir of Tatar kettle-drums, above the throb of many hoofs.
“The Turks at last,” panted Izz ed din. “They have loitered long enough! And where in Allah’s name is Othman?”
Into the square raced a frantic horse, foam flying from the bit-rings. The rider reeled in the saddle, gay-hued garments in tatters, ebony skin laced with crimson.
“Izz ed din!” he screamed, clinging to the flying mane with both hands. “
“Here, fool!” roared the Sudani, catching the other’s bridle and hurling the horse back on its haunches.
“Othman is dead!” shrieked the man above the roar of the flames and the rising thunder of the onrushing kettle-drums. “The Turks have turned on us! They slay our brothers in the palaces! Aie! They come!”
With a deafening thunder of hoofs and an earth-shaking roll of drums, the squadrons of mailed spearmen burst upon the square, cleaving the waves of carnage, riding down friend and foe alike. Izz ed din saw the dark exultant face of Es Salih Muhammad beneath the blazing arc of his scimitar, and with a roar he reined full at him, his house- troops swirling in behind him.
But with a strange war-cry a rider in Moorish garb rose in the stirrups and smote, and Izz ed din went down; and over the slashed bodies of his captains stormed the hoofs of the slayers, a dark, roaring river that thundered on into the flame riven night.
On the rocky spurs of Mukattam the herdsmen watched and shivered, seeing the blaze of fire and slaughter from the Gate el Futuh to the mosque of Ibn Tulun; and the clangor of swords was heard as far south as El Fustat, where pallid nobles trembled in their garden-lapped palaces.
Like a crimson foaming, frothing, flame-faceted torrent, the tides of fury overflowed the quarters and gushed through the Gate of Zuweyla, staining the streets of El Kahira, the Victorious. In the great Beyn el Kasreyn, where ten thousand men could be paraded, the Sudani made their last stand, and there they died, hemmed in by helmeted Turks, shrieking Berbers and frantic Cairenes.
It was the mob which first turned its attention to Al Hakim. Rushing through the arabesqued bronze doors of
