fear wading in the muck – anyway, I fight better on foot. Well, I cleared a space with a sweep or so of my sword, and the fallen knight, the press being lightened, came up roaring like a bull and swinging his blood-clotted mace with such fury he nearly brained
“ ‘Who are you and who is your master?’ said he.
“ ‘I am Cormac FitzGeoffrey and I have no master,’ said I. ‘I followed young Eamonn Fitzgerald to the Holy Land and since he fell before the walls of Acre, I seek my fortune alone.’
“ ‘What think ye of me as a master?’ asked he, while the battle raged half a bow-shot about us.
“ ‘You fight reasonably well for a man with Saxon blood in his veins,’ I answered, ‘but I own allegiance to no English king.’
“He swore like a trooper. ‘By the bones of the saints,’ said he, ‘that had cost another man his head. You saved my life, but for this insolence, no prince shall knight you!’
“ ‘Keep your knighthoods and be damned,’ said I. ‘I am a chief in Ireland – but we waste words; yonder are pagan heads to be smashed.’
“Later he bade me to his royal presence and waxed merry with me; a rare drinker he is, though a fool withal. But I distrust kings – I attached myself to the train of a brave and gallant young knight of France – the Sieur Gerard de Gissclin, full of insane ideals of chivalry, but a noble youth.
“When peace was made between the hosts, I heard hints of a renewal of strife between the Fitzgeralds and the Le Boteliers, and Lord Shamus having been slain by Nial Mac Art, and I being in favor with the king anyway, I took leave of Sieur Gerard and betook myself back to Erin. Well – we swept Ormond with torch and sword and hanged old Sir William le Botelier to his own barbican. Then, the Geraldines having no particular need of my sword at the moment, I bethought myself once more of Sieur Gerard, to whom I owed my life and which debt I have not yet had opportunity to pay. How, Sir Rupert, dwells he still in his castle of Ali-El-Yar?”
Sir Rupert’s face went suddenly white, and he leaned back as if shrinking from something. Cormac’s head jerked up and his dark face grew more forbidding and fraught with somber potentialities. He seized the Norman’s arm in an unconsciously savage grip.
“Speak, man,” he rasped. “What ails you?”
“Sieur Gerard,” half whispered Sir Rupert. “Had you not heard? Ali-El-Yar lies in smoldering ruins and Gerard is dead.”
Cormac snarled like a mad dog, his terrible eyes blazing with a fearful light. He shook Sir Rupert in the intensity of his passion.
“Who did the deed? He shall die, were he Emperor of Byzantium!”
“I know not!” Sir Rupert gasped, his mind half stunned by the blast of the Gael’s primitive fury. “There be foul rumors – Sieur Gerard loved a girl in a sheik’s harem, it is said. A horde of wild riders from the desert assailed his castle and a rider broke through to ask aid of the baron Conrad von Gonler. But Conrad refused – ”
“Aye!” snarled Cormac, with a savage gesture. “He hated Gerard because long ago the youngster had the best of him at sword-play on shipboard before old Frederick Barbarossa’s eyes. And what then?”
“Ali-El-Yar fell with all its people. Their stripped and mutilated bodies lay among the coals, but no sign was found of Gerard. Whether he died before or after the attack on the castle is not known, but dead he must be, since no demand for ransom has been made.”
“Thus Saladin keeps the peace!”
Sir Rupert, who knew Cormac’s unreasoning hatred for the great Kurdish sultan, shook his head. “This was no work of his – there is incessant bickering along the border – Christian as much at fault as Moslem. It could not be otherwise with Frankish barons holding castles in the very heart of Muhammadan country. There are many private feuds and there are wild desert and mountain tribes who own no lordship even to Saladin, and wage their own wars. Many suppose that the sheik Nureddin El Ghor destroyed Ali-El-Yar and put Sieur Gerard to death.”
Cormac caught up his helmet.
“Wait!” exclaimed Sir Rupert, rising. “What would you do?”
Cormac laughed savagely. “What would I do? I have eaten the bread of the de Gissclins. Am I a jackal to sneak home and leave my patron to the kites? Out on it!”
“But wait,” Sir Rupert urged. “What will your life be worth if you ride on Nureddin’s trail alone? I will return to Antioch and gather my retainers; we will avenge your friend together.”
“Nureddin is a half-independent chief and I am a masterless wanderer,” rumbled the Norman-Gael, “but you are Seneschal of Antioch. If you ride over the border with your men-at-arms, the swine Saladin will take advantage to break the truce and sweep the remnants of the Christian kingdoms into the sea. They are but weak shells, as it is, shadows of the glories of Baldwin and Bohemund. No – the FitzGeoffreys wreak their own vengeance. I ride alone.”
He jammed his helmet into place and with a gruff “Farewell!” he turned and strode into the night, roaring for his horse. A trembling servant brought the great black stallion, which reared and snorted with a flash of wicked teeth. Cormac seized the reins and savagely jerked down the rearing steed, swinging into the saddle before the pawing front hoofs touched earth.
“Hate and the glutting of vengeance!” he yelled savagely, as the great stallion whirled away, and Sir Rupert, staring bewilderedly after him, heard the swiftly receding clash of the brazen-shod hoofs. Cormac FitzGeoffrey was riding east.
II THE CAST OF AN AX
White dawn surged out of the Orient to break in rose-red billows on the hills of Outremer. The rich tints softened the rugged outlines, deepened the blue wastes of the sleeping desert.
The castle of the baron Conrad von Gonler frowned out over a wild and savage waste. Once a stronghold of the Seljuk Turks, its metamorphosis into the manor of a Frankish lord had abated none of the Eastern menace of its appearance. The walls had been strengthened and a barbican built in place of the usual wide gates. Otherwise the keep had not been altered.
Now in the dawn a grim, dark figure rode up to the deep, waterless moat which encircled the stronghold, and smote with iron-clad fist on hollow-ringing shield until the echoes reverberated among the hills. A sleepy man-at- arms thrust his head and his pike over the wall above the barbican and bellowed a challenge.
The lone rider threw back his helmeted head, disclosing a face dark with a passion that an all-night’s ride had not cooled in the least.
“You keep rare watch here,” roared Cormac FitzGeoffrey. “Is it because you’re so hand-in-glove with the Paynim that you fear no attack? Where is that ale-guzzling swine you call your liege?”
“The baron is at wine,” the fellow answered sullenly, in broken English.
“So early?” marveled Cormac.
“Nay,” the other gave a surly grin, “he has feasted all night.”
“Wine-bibber! Glutton!” raged Cormac. “Tell him I have business with him.”
“And what shall I say your business is, Lord FitzGeoffrey?” asked the carl, impressed.
“Tell him I bring a passport to Hell!” yelled Cormac, gnashing his teeth, and the scared soldier vanished like a puppet on a string.
The Norman-Gael sat his horse impatiently, shield slung on his shoulders, lance in its stirrup socket, and to his surprize, suddenly the barbican door swung wide and out of it strutted a fantastic figure. Baron Conrad von Gonler was short and fat; broad of shoulder and portly of belly, though still a young man. His long arms and wide shoulders had gained him a reputation as a deadly broadsword man, but just now he looked little of the fighter. Germany and Austria sent many noble knights to the Holy Land. Baron von Gonler was not one of them.
His only arm was a gold-chased dagger in a richly brocaded sheath. He wore no armor, and his costume, flaming with gay silk and heavy with gold, was a bizarre mingling of European gauds and Oriental finery. In one hand, on each finger of which sparkled a great jewel, he held a golden wine goblet. A band of drunken revellers reeled out behind him – minnesingers, dwarfs, dancing girls, wine-companions, vacuous-faced, blinking like owls in
