“Men are my pawns, friend,” said the Atabeg. “I turn adversity into triumph. I had long sought an excuse to attack Jabar Kal’at, which will make a strong outpost against the Franks once I have taken it and repaired the dents I have made, and filled it with my memluks. I knew my captives would ride hither; that is why I broke camp and took up the march before my scouts found their tracks. It was their logical refuge. I will have the castle and the Franks, which last is most vital. Were the Caphars to learn now of my intrigue with the emperor, my plans might well come to naught. But they will not know until I strike. Du Courcey will never bear news to them. If he does not fall with the castle, I will tear him between wild horses as I promised, and the infidel girl shall watch, sitting on a pointed stake.”
“Is there no mercy in your soul, Zenghi?” protested the Arab.
“Has life shown mercy to me save what I wrung forth by the sword?” exclaimed Zenghi, his eyes blazing in a momentary upheaval of his passionate spirit. “A man must smite or be smitten – slay or be slain. Men are wolves, and I am but the strongest wolf of the pack. Because they fear me, men crawl and kiss my sandals. Fear is the only emotion by which they may be touched.”
“You are a pagan at heart, Zenghi,” sighed Ousama.
“It may be,” answered the Turk with a shrug of his shoulders. “Had I been born beyond the Oxus and bowed to yellow Erlik as did my grandsire, I had been no less Zenghi the Lion. I have spilled rivers of gore for the glory of Allah, but I have never asked mercy or favor of Him. What care the gods if a man lives or dies? Let me live deep, let me know the sting of wine in my palate, the wind in my face, the glitter of royal pageantry, the bright madness of slaughter – let me burn and sting and tingle with the madness of life and living, and I quest not whether Muhammad’s paradise, or Erlik’s frozen hell, or the blackness of empty oblivion lies beyond.”
As if to give point to his words, he poured himself a goblet of wine and looked interrogatively at Ousama. The Arab, who had shuddered at Zenghi’s blasphemous words, drew back in pious horror. The Atabeg emptied the goblet, smacking his lips loudly in relish, Tatar-fashion.
“I think Jabar Kal’at will fall tomorrow,” he said. “Who has stood against me? Count them, Ousama – there was ibn Sadaka, and the Caliph, and the Seljuk Timurtash, and the sultan Dawud, and the king of Jerusalem, and the count of Edessa. Man after man, city after city, army after army, I broke them and brushed them from my path.”
“You have waded through a sea of blood,” said Ousama. “You have filled the slave-markets with Frankish girls, and the deserts with the bones of Frankish warriors. Nor have you spared your rivals among the Moslems.”
“They stood in the way of my destiny,” laughed the Turk, “and that destiny is to be sultan of Asia! As I will be. I have welded the swords of Irak, el Jezira, Syria and Roum, into a single blade. Now with the aid of the Greeks, all Hell can not save the Nazarenes. Slaughter? Men have seen naught; wait until I ride into Antioch and Jerusalem, sword in hand!”
“Your heart is steel,” said the Arab. “Yet I have seen one touch of tenderness in you – your affection for Nejm- ed-din’s son Yusef. Is there a like touch of repentance in you? Of all your deeds, is there none you regret?”
Zenghi played with a pawn in silence, and his face darkened.
“Aye,” he said slowly. “It was long ago, when I broke ibn Sadaka beside the lower reaches of this very river. He had a son, Achmet, a girl-faced boy. I beat him to death with my riding-scourge. It is the one deed I could wish undone. Sometimes I dream of it.”
Then with an abrupt “Enough!” he thrust aside the board, scattering the chessmen. “I would sleep,” said he, and throwing himself on his cushion-heaped divan, he was instantly locked in slumber. Ousama went quietly from the tent, passing between the four giant memluks in gilded mail who stood with wide-tipped scimitars at the pavilion door.
In the castle of Jabar, the Seljuk commander held counsel with Sir Miles du Courcey. “My brother, for us the end of the road has come. The walls are crumbling, the towers leaning to their fall. Shall we not fire the castle, cut the throats of our women and children, and go forth to die like men in the dawn?”
Sir Miles shook his head. “Let us hold the walls for one more day. In a dream I saw the banners of Damascus and of Antioch marching to our aid.”
He lied in a desperate attempt to bolster up the fatalistic Seljuk. Each followed the instinct of his kind, and Miles’ was to cling with teeth and nails to the last vestige of life until the bitter end. The Seljuk bowed his head.
“If Allah wills, we will hold the walls for another day.”
Miles thought of Ellen, into whose manner something of the old vibrant spirit was beginning to steal faintly again, and in the blackness of his despair no light gleamed from earth or heaven. The finding of her had stung to life a heart long frozen; now in death he must lose her again. With the taste of bitter ashes in his mouth he bent his shoulders anew to the burden of life.
In his tent Zenghi moved restlessly. Alert as a panther, even in sleep, his instinct told him that someone was moving stealthily near him. He woke and sat up glaring. The fat eunuch Yaruktash halted suddenly, the wine jug half-way to his lips. He had thought Zenghi lay helplessly drunk when he stole into the tent to filch the liquor he loved. Zenghi snarled like a wolf, his familiar devil rising in his brain.
“Dog! Am I a fat merchant that you steal into my tent to guzzle my wine? Begone! Tomorrow I will see to you!”
Cold sweat beaded Yaruktash’s sleek hide as he fled from the royal pavilion. His fat flesh quivered with agonized anticipation of the sharp stake which would undoubtedly be his portion. In a day of cruel masters, Zenghi’s name was a byword of horror among slaves and servitors.
One of the memluks outside the tent caught Yaruktash’s arm and growled, “Why flee you, gelding?”
A great flare of light rose in the eunuch’s brain, so that he gasped at its grandeur and audacity. Why remain here to be impaled, when the whole desert was open before him, and here were men who would protect him in his flight?
“Our lord discovered me drinking his wine,” he gasped. “He threatens me with torture and death.”
The memluks laughed appreciatively, their crude humor touched by the eunuch’s fright. Then they started convulsively as Yaruktash added, “You too are doomed. I heard him curse you for not keeping better watch, and allowing his slaves to steal his wine.”
The fact that they had never been told to bar the eunuch from the royal pavilion meant nothing to the memluks, their wits frozen with sudden fear. They stood dumbly, incapable of coherent thought, their minds like empty jugs ready to be filled with the eunuch’s guile. A few whispered words and they slunk away like shadows on Yaruktash’s heels, leaving the pavilion unguarded.
The night waned. Midnight hovered and was gone. The moon sank below the desert hills in a welter of blood. From dreams of imperial pageantry Zenghi again awoke, to stare bewilderedly about the dim-lit pavilion. Without, all was silence that seemed suddenly tense and sinister. The prince lay in the midst of ten thousand armed men; yet he felt suddenly apart and alone, as if he were the last man left alive on a dead world. Then he saw that he was not alone. Looking somberly down on him stood a strange and alien figure. It was a man, whose rags did not hide his gaunt limbs, at which Zenghi stared appalled. They were gnarled like the twisted branches of ancient oaks, knotted with masses of muscle and thews, each of which stood out distinct, like iron cables. There was no soft flesh to lend symmetry or to mask the raw savagery of sheer power. Only years of incredible labor could have produced this terrible monument of muscular over-development. White hair hung about the great shoulders, a white beard fell upon the mighty breast. His terrible arms were folded, and he stood motionless as a statue looking down upon the stupefied Turk. His features were gaunt and deep-lined, as if cut by some mad artist’s chisel from bitter, frozen rock.
“Avaunt!” gasped Zenghi, momentarily a pagan of the steppes. “Spirit of evil – ghost of the desert – demon of the hills – I fear you not!”
“Well may you speak of ghosts, Turk!” The deep hollow voice woke dim memories in Zenghi’s brain. “I am the ghost of a man dead twenty years, come up from darkness deeper than the darkness of hell. Have you forgotten my promise, Prince Zenghi?”
“Who are you?” demanded the Turk.
“I am John Norwald.”
“The Frank who rode with ibn Sadaka? Impossible!” ejaculated the Atabeg. “Twenty-three years ago I doomed him to the rower’s bench. What galley-slave could live so long?”
“I lived,” retorted the other. “Where others died like flies, I lived. The lash that scarred my back in a thousand
