scarcely restrain. Stumblingly he made his way to a gold-barred window. Under his massive hands the thin gold rods twisted and buckled. He tumbled through, pitching head-first to the ground in the midst of a great rose bush. Oblivious of bruises and scratches, he rose, careening like a ship on a tack, and oriented himself. He was in a broad garden; all about him waved great white blossoms; a breeze shook the palm leaves, and the moon was rising.
None halted him as he scaled the wall, though thieves skulking in the shadows eyed his rich garments avidly as he lurched through the deserted streets.
By devious ways he came to his own quarters and kicked his slaves awake.
“Horses, Allah curse you!” His voice crackled with exultation.
Ali, his captain of horse, came from the shadows.
“What now, lord?”
“The desert and Syria beyond!” roared Shirkuh, dealing him a terrific buffet on the back. “Shawar has swallowed the bait! Allah, how drunk I am! The world reels – but the stars are mine!
“That bastard Giles rides to Amalric – I heard Shawar give him his instructions as I lay in feigned slumber. We have forced the vizier’s hand! Now Nour ed din will not hesitate, when his spies bring him news from Jerusalem of the marching of the iron men! I fumed in the caliph’s court, checkmated at every turn by Shawar, seeking a way. I went into the galleys of the corsairs to cool my brain, and Allah gave into my hands a red-haired tool! I filled the lord Giles full of ‘drunken’ boastings, hoping he would repeat them to Shawar, and that Shawar would take fright and send for Amalric – which would force our overly cautious sultan to act. Now follow marching and war and the glutting of ambition. But let us ride, in the devil’s name!”
A few minutes later the Emir and his small retinue were clattering through the shadowy streets, past gardens that slept, a riot of color under the moon, lapping six-storied palaces that were dreams of pink marble and lapis lazuli and gold.
At a small, secluded gate, a single sentry bawled a challenge and lifted his pike.
“Dog!” Shirkuh reined his steed back on its haunches and hung over the Egyptian like a silk-clad cloud of death. “It is Shirkuh, your master’s guest!”
“But my orders are to allow none to pass without written order, signed and sealed by the vizier,” protested the soldier. “What shall I say to Shawar – ”
“You will say naught,” prophesied Shirkuh. “The dead speak not.”
His scimitar gleamed and fell, and the soldier crumpled, cut through helmet and head.
“Open the gate, Ali,” laughed Shirkuh. “It is Fate that rides tonight – Fate and Destiny!”
In a cloud of moon-bathed dust they whirled out of the gate and over the plain. On the rocky shoulder of Mukattam, Shirkuh drew rein to gaze back over the city, which lay like a legendary dream under the moonlight, a waste of masonry and stone and marble, splendor and squalor merging in the moonlight, magnificence blent with ruin. To the south the dome of Imam Esh Shafi’y shone beneath the moon; to the north loomed up the gigantic pile of the Castle of El Kahira, its walls carved blackly out of the white moonlight. Between them lay the remains and ruins of three capitals of Egypt; palaces with their mortar yet undried reared beside crumbling walls haunted only by bats.
Shirkuh laughed, and yelled with pure joy. His horse reared and his scimitar glittered in the air.
“A bride in cloth-of-gold! Await my coming, oh Egypt, for when I come again, it will be with spears and horsemen, to seize ye in my hands!”
Allah willed it that Amalric, king of Jerusalem, should be in Darum, personally attending to the fortifying of that small desert outpost, when the envoys from Egypt rode through the gates. A restless, alert and wary king was Amalric, bred to war and intrigue.
In the castle hall the Egyptian emissaries salaamed before him like corn bending before a wind, and Giles Hobson, grotesque in his dusty silks and white turban, louted awkwardly and presented the sealed packet of Shawar.
Amalric took it with his own hands and read it, striding absently up and down the hall, a gold-maned lion, stately, yet dangerously supple.
“What talk is this of royal bastards?” he demanded suddenly, staring at Giles, who was nervous but not embarrassed.
“A lie to cozen the paynim, your majesty,” admitted the Englishman, secure in his belief that the Egyptians did not understand Norman French. “I am no illegitimate of the blood, only the honest-born younger son of a baron of the Scottish marches.”
Giles did not care to be kicked into the scullery with the rest of the varlets. The nearer the purple, the richer the pickings. It seemed safe to assume that the king of Jerusalem was not over-familiar with the nobility of the Scottish border.
“I have seen many a younger son who lacked coat-armor, war-cry and wealth, but was none the less worthy,” said Amalric. “You shall not go unrewarded. Messer Giles, know you the import of this message?”
“The wazeer Shawar spoke to me at some length,” admitted Giles.
“The ultimate fate of Outremer hangs in the balance,” said Amalric. “If the same man holds both Egypt and Syria, we are caught in the jaws of the vise. Better for Shawar to rule in Egypt, than Nour ed din. We march for Cairo. Would you accompany the host?”
“In sooth, lord,” began Giles, “it has been a wearisome time – ”
“True,” broke in Amalric. “ ’Twere better that you ride on to Acre and rest from your travels. I will give you a letter for the lord commanding there. Sir Guiscard de Chastillon will give you service – ”
Giles started violently. “Nay, lord,” he said hurriedly, “duty calls, and what are weary limbs and an empty belly beside duty? Let me go with you and do my devoir in Egypt!”
“Your spirit likes me well, Messer Giles,” said Amalric with an approving smile. “Would that all the foreigners who come adventuring in Outremer were like you.”
“An they were,” quietly murmured an immobile-faced Egyptian to his mate, “not all the wine-vats of Palestine would suffice. We will tell a tale to the vizier concerning this liar.”
But lies or not, in the grey dawn of a young spring day, the iron men of Outremer rode southward, with the great banner billowing over their helmeted heads, and their spear-points coldly glinting in the dim light.
There were not many; the strength of the Crusading kingdoms lay in the quality, not the quantity, of their defenders. Three hundred and seventy-five knights took the road to Egypt: nobles of Jerusalem, barons whose castles guarded the eastern marches, Knights of Saint John in their white surcoats, grim Templars, adventurers from beyond the sea, their skins yet ruddy from the cold sun of the north.
With them rode a swarm of Turcoples, Christianized Turks, wiry men on lean ponies. After the horsemen lumbered the wagons, attended by the rag-and-tag camp followers, the servants, ragamuffins and trulls that tag after any host. With shining, steel-sheathed, banner-crowned van, and rear trailing out into picturesque squalor, the army of Jerusalem moved across the land.
The dunes of the Jifar knew again the tramp of shod horses, the clink of mail. The iron men were riding again the old road of war, the road their fathers had ridden so oft before them.
Yet when at last the Nile broke the monotony of the level land, winding like a serpent feathered with green palms, they heard the strident clamor of cymbals and
Mobility was always an advantage possessed by the Moslems. It took time to gather the cumbrous Frankish host, time to move it.
Riding like a man possessed, the Mountain Lion had reached Nour ed din, told his tale, and then, with scarcely a pause, had raced southward again with the troops he had held in readiness since the first Egyptian campaign. The thought of Amalric in Egypt had sufficed to stir Nour ed din to action. If the Crusaders made themselves masters of the Nile, it meant the eventual doom of Islam.
