Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures

the Great East Palace, the ragged hordes streamed howling down the corridors through the Golden Gates into the great Golden Hall, tearing aside the curtain of gilt filigree to reveal an empty golden throne. Silk embroidered tapestries were ripped from the friezed walls by grimed and bloody fingers; sardonyx tables were overthrown with a clatter of gold enamelled vessels; eunuchs in crimson robes fled squeaking, slave-girls screamed in the hands of the ravishers.

In the Great Emerald Hall, Al Hakim stood like a statue on a fur-strewn dais. His white hands twitched, his eyes were clouded; he seemed like a drunken man. At the entrance of the hall clustered a handful of faithful servants, beating back the mob with drawn swords. A band of Berbers ploughed through the motley throng and closed with the black slaves, and in that storm of sword-strokes, no man had time to glance at the white rigid figure on the dais.

Al Hakim felt a hand tugging at his elbow, and looked into the face of Zaida, seeing her as in a dream.

“Come, my lord!” she urged. “All Egypt has risen against you! Think of your own life! Follow me!”

He suffered her to lead him. He moved like a man in a trance, mumbling: “But I am God! How can a god know defeat? How can a god die?”

Drawing aside the tapestry she led him into a secret alcove and down a long narrow corridor. Zaida had learned well the secrets of the Great Palace during her brief sojourn there. Through dim spice-scented gardens she led him hurriedly, through a winding street amidst flat-topped houses. She had thrown her khalat over him. None of the few folk they met heeded the hastening pair. A small gate, hidden behind clustering palms, let them through the wall. North and east El Kahira was hemmed in by empty desert. They had come out on the eastern side. Behind them and far away down the south rose the roar of flames and slaughter, but about them was only the desert, silence and the stars. Zaida halted, and her eyes burned in the starlight as she stood unspeaking.

“I am God,” muttered Al Hakim dazedly. “Suddenly the world was in flames. Yet I am God – ”

He scarcely felt the Venetian’s strong arms about him in a last terrible embrace. He scarcely heard her whisper: “You gave me into the hands of a black beast! Whereby I fell into the clutches of my rival, who dealt me such shame as men do not dream of! I guided your escape because none but Zaida shall destroy you, Al Hakim, fool who thought you were a god!”

Even as he felt the mortal bite of her dagger, he moaned: “Yet I am God – and the gods can not die – ” Somewhere a jackal began to yelp.

Back in El Kahira, in the Great East Palace, whose mosaics were fouled with blood, Diego de Guzman, a blood- stained figure, turned to Es Salih Muhammad, equally disheveled and stained.

“Where is Al Hakim?”

“What matter?” laughed the Turk. “He has fallen; we are lords of Egypt this night, you and I! Tomorrow another will sit in the seat of the caliph, a puppet whose string I pull. Tomorrow I will be vizir, and you – ask what you will! But tonight we rule in naked power, by the sheen of our swords!”

“Yet I would like to drive my saber through Al Hakim as a fitting climax to this night’s work,” answered de Guzman.

But it was not to be, though men with thirsty daggers ranged through tapestried halls and arched chambers until to hate and rage began to be added wonder and the superstitious awe which grows into legends of miraculous disappearances, and through mysteries invokes the supernatural. Time turns devils and madmen into saints and hadjis; afar in the mountains of Lebanon the Druses await the coming again of Al Hakim the Divine. But though they wait until the trumpets have blown for the passing of ten thousand years, they will be no nearer the portals of Mystery. And only the jackals which haunt the hills of Mukattam and the vultures which fold their wings on the towers of Bab el Vezir could tell the ultimate destiny of the man who would be God.

The Outgoing of Sigurd the Jerusalem-Farer

The fires roared in the skalli-hall,     And a woman begged me stay – But the bitter night was falling And the cold wind calling     Across the moaning spray.How could I stay in the feasting-hall     When the wild wind walked the sea? The feet of the winds drew out my soul To the grey waves and the cloud’s scroll Where the gulls wheel and the whales roll,     And the abyss roars to me.Man the sweeps and bend the sail –     We need no oars tonight, For the sharp sleet drives before the gale That dashes the spray across the rail To freeze on helmet and corselet scale,     And the waves are running white.I could not bide in the feasting-hall     Where the great fires light the rooms – For the winds are walking the night for me And I must follow where gaunt lands be, Seeking, beyond some nameless sea,     The dooms beyond the dooms.

The Road of Azrael

I

Towers reel as they burst asunder,     Streets run red in the butchered town; Standards fall and the lines go under     And the iron horsemen ride me down. Out of the strangling dust around me     Let me ride for my hour is nigh, From the walls that prison, the hoofs that ground me,     To the sun and the desert wind to die.

Allaho akbar! There is no God but God. These happenings I, Kosru Malik, chronicle that men may know truth thereby. For I have seen madness beyond human reckoning; aye, I have ridden the road of Azrael that is the Road of Death, and have seen mailed men fall like garnered grain; and here I detail the truths of that madness and of the doom of Kizilshehr the Strong, the Red City, which has faded like a summer cloud in the blue skies.

Thus was the beginning. As I sat in peace in the camp of Muhammad Khan, sultan of Kizilshehr, conversing with divers warriors on the merits of the verses of one Omar Khayyam, a tent-maker of Nishapur and a doughty toper, suddenly I was aware that one came close to me, and I felt anger burn in his gaze, as a man feels the eyes of a hungry tiger upon him. I looked up and as the fire-light took his bearded face, I felt my own eyes blaze with an old hate. For it was Moktra Mirza, the Kurd, who stood above me and there was an old feud between us. I have scant love for any Kurd, but this dog I hated. I had not known he was in the camp of Muhammad Khan, whither I had ridden alone at dusk, but where the lion feasts, there the jackals gather.

No word passed between us. Moktra Mirza had his hand on his blade and when he saw he was perceived, he drew with a rasp of steel. But he was slow as an ox. Gathering my feet under me, I shot erect, my scimitar springing to my hand and as I leaped I struck, and the keen edge sheared through his neck cords.

Even as he crumpled, gushing blood, I sprang across the fire and ran swiftly through the maze of tents, hearing a clamor of pursuit behind me. Sentries patrolled the camp, and ahead of me I saw one on a tall bay, who sat gaping at me. I wasted no time but running up to him, I seized him by the leg and cast him from the saddle.

The bay horse reared as I swung up, and was gone like an arrow, I bending low on the saddle-peak for fear of shafts. I gave the bay his head and in an instant we were past the horse-lines and the sentries who gave tongue