like a pack of hounds, and the fires were dwindling behind us.
We struck the open desert, flying like the wind, and my heart was glad. The blood of my foe was on my blade, a good steed between my knees, the stars of the desert above me, the night wind in my face. A Turk need ask no more.
The bay was a better horse than the one I had left in the camp, and the saddle was a goodly one, richly brocaded and worked in Persian leather.
For a time I rode with a loose rein, then as I heard no sound of pursuit, I slowed the bay to a walk, for who rides on a weary horse in the desert, dices with Death. Far behind me I saw the twinkling of the camp-fires and wondered that a hundred Kurds were not howling on my trail. But so swiftly had the deed been done and so swiftly had I fled, that the avengers were bemused and though men followed, hot with hate, they missed my trail in the dark, I learned later.
I had ridden west by blind chance and now I came on to the old caravan route that once led from Edessa to Kizilshehr and Shiraz. Even then it was almost abandoned because of the Frankish robbers. It came to me that I would ride to the caliphs and lend them my sword, so I rode leisurely across the desert which here is a very broken land, flat, sandy levels giving way to rugged stretches of ravines and low hills, and these again running out into plains. The breezes from the Persian Gulf cooled me and even while I listened for the drum of hoofs behind me, I dreamed of the days of my early childhood when I rode, night-herding the ponies, on the great upland plains far to the East, beyond the Oxus.
And then after some hours, I heard the sound of men and horses, but from in front of me. Far ahead I made out, in the dim starlight, a line of horsemen and a lurching bulk I knew to be a wagon such as the Persians use to transport their wealth and their harems. Some caravan bound for Muhammad’s camp, or for Kizilshehr beyond, I thought, and did not wish to be seen by them, who might put the avengers on my trail.
So I reined aside into a broken maze of gullies, and sitting my steed behind a huge boulder, I watched the travellers. They approached my hiding place and I, straining my eyes in the vague light, saw that they were Seljuk Turks, heavily armed. One who seemed a leader sate his horse in a manner somehow familiar to me, and I knew I had seen him before. I decided that the wagon must contain some princess, and wondered at the fewness of the guards. There was not above thirty of them, enough to resist the attack of nomad raiders, no doubt, but certainly not a strong enough force to beat off the Franks who were wont to swoop down on Moslem wayfarers. And this puzzled me, because men, horses and wagon had the look of long travel, as if from beyond the Caliphate. And beyond the Caliphate lay a waste of Frankish robbers.
Now the wagon was abreast of me, and one of the wheels creaking in the rough ground, lurched into a depression and hung there. The mules, after the manner of mules, lunged once and then ceased pulling, and the rider who seemed familiar rode up with a torch and cursed. By the light of the torch I recognized him – one Abdullah Bey, a Persian noble high in the esteem of Muhammad Khan – a tall, lean man and a somber one, more Arab than Persian.
Now the leather curtains of the wagon parted and a girl looked out – I saw her young face by the flare of the torch. But Abdullah Bey thrust her back angrily and closed the curtains. Then he shouted to his men, a dozen of whom dismounted and put their shoulders to the wheel. With much grunting and cursing they lifted the wheel free, and soon the wagon lurched on again, and it and the horsemen faded and dwindled in my sight until all were shadows far out on the desert.
And I took up my journey again, wondering; for in the light of the torch I had seen the unveiled face of the girl in the wagon, and she was a Frank, and one of great beauty. What was the meaning of Seljuks on the road from Edessa, commanded by a Persian nobleman, and guarding a girl of the Nazarenes? I concluded that these Turks had captured her in a raid on Edessa or the kingdom of Jerusalem and were taking her to Kizilshehr or Shiraz to sell to some emir, and so dismissed the matter from my mind.
The bay was fresh and I had a mind to put a long way between me and the Persian army, so I rode slowly but steadily all night. And in the first white blaze of dawn, I met a horseman riding hard out of the west.
His steed was a long limbed roan that reeled from fatigue. The rider was an iron man – clad in close meshed mail from head to foot, with a heavy vizorless helmet on his head. And I spurred my steed to a gallop for this was a Frank – and he was alone and on a tired horse.
He saw me coming and he cast his long lance into the sand and drew his sword, for he knew his steed was too weary to charge. And as I swooped down as a hawk swoops on its prey, I suddenly gave a shout and lowering my blade, set my steed back on his haunches, almost beside the Frank.
“Now by the beard of the Prophet,” said I, “we are well met, Sir Eric de Cogan!”
He gazed at me in surprize. He was no older than I, broad shouldered, long limbed and yellow haired. Now his face was haggard and weary as if he had ridden hard without sleep, but it was the face of a warrior, as his body was that of a warrior. I lack but an inch and a fraction of six feet in height as the Franks reckon a man’s stature, but Sir Eric was half a head taller.
“You know me,” said he, “but I do not remember you.”
“Ha!” quoth I, “we Saracens look all alike to you Franks! But I remember you, by Allah! Sir Eric, do you not remember the taking of Jerusalem and the Moslem boy you protected from your own warriors?”
Aye, I remembered! I was but a youth, newly come to Palestine, and I slipped through the besieging armies into the city the very dawn it fell. I was not used to street fighting. The noise, the shouting and the crashing of the shattered gates bewildered me, the dust and the foul smells of the strange city stifled me and maddened me. The Franks came over the walls and red Purgatory broke in the streets of Jerusalem. Their iron horsemen rode over the ruins of the gates and their horses tramped fetlock deep in blood. The Crusaders shouted hosannas and slew like blood-mad tigers and the mangled bodies of the Faithful choked the streets.
In a blind red whirl and chaos of destruction and delirium, I found myself slashing vainly against giants who seemed built of solid iron. Slipping in the filth of a blood-running gutter I hacked blindly in the dust and smoke and then the horsemen rode me down and trampled me. As I staggered up, bloody and dazed, a great bellowing monster of a man strode on foot out of the carnage swinging an iron mace. I had never fought Franks and did not then know the power of the terrible blows they deal in hand-to-hand fighting. In my youth and pride and inexperience I stood my ground and sought to match blows with the Frank, but that whistling mace shivered my sword to bits, shattered my shoulder-bone and dashed me half dead into the blood-stained dust.
Then the giant bestrode me, and as he swung up his mace to dash out my brains, the bitterness of death took me by the throat. For I was young and in one blinding instant I saw again the sweet upland grass and the blue of the desert sky, and the tents of my tribe by the blue Oxus. Aye – life is sweet to the young.
Then out of the whirling smoke came another – a golden haired youth of my own age, but taller. His sword was red to the hilt, but his eyes were haunted. He cried out to the great Frank, and though I could not understand, I knew, vaguely, as one knows in a dream, that the youth asked that my life be spared – for his soul was sick with the slaughter. But the giant foamed at the mouth and roared like a beast, as he again raised his mace – and the youth leaped like a panther and thrust his long straight sword through his throat, so the giant fell down and died in the dust beside me.
Then the youth knelt at my side and made to staunch my wounds, speaking to me in halting Arabic. But I mumbled: “This is no place for a Chagatai to die. Set me on a horse and let me go. These walls shut out the sun and the dust of the streets chokes me. Let me die with the wind and the sun in my face.”
We were nigh the outer wall and all gates had been shattered. The youth caught one of the riderless horses which raced through the streets, and lifted me into the saddle. And I let the reins lie along the horse’s neck and he went from the city as an arrow goes from a bow, for he too was desert bred and he yearned for the open lands. I rode as a man rides in a dream, clinging to the saddle, and knowing only that the walls and the dust and the blood of the city no longer stifled me, and that I would die in the desert after all, which is the place for a Chagatai to die. And so I rode until all knowledge went from me.
II
Shall the grey wolf slink at the mastiff’s heel? Shall the ties of blood grow weak and dim? – By smoke and
