hostile country which lies between?”
“Because a handful of Franks
Cahal’s cold eyes gleamed and he laughed aloud as the lurking madness in his soul responded to the madness of the proposal. His hard hand smote against the brown palm of Renault d’Ibelin.
“Doom hovers over all Outremer, and Death is no grimmer met on a mad quest than in the locked spears of battle! East we ride to the Devil knows what doom!”
The sun had scarce set when Cahal’s ragged servant, who had followed him faithfully through all his previous wanderings, stole away from the ruined walls and rode toward Jordan, flogging his shaggy pony hard. The madness of his master was no affair of his and life was sweet, even to a Cairo gutter-waif.
The first stars were blinking when Renault d’Ibelin and Red Cahal rode down the slope at the head of the men-at-arms. A hard-bitten lot these were, lean taciturn fighters, born in Outremer for the most part – a few veterans of Normandy and the Rhineland who had followed wandering lords into the Holy Land and had remained. They were well armed – clad in chain-mail shirts and steel caps, bearing kite-shaped shields. They rode fleet Arab horses and tall Turkoman steeds, and led horses followed. It was the capture of a number of fine steeds which had crystallized the idea of the raid in Renault’s mind.
D’Ibelin had long learned the lesson of the East – swift marches that went ahead of the news of the raid, and depended on the quality of the mounts. Yet he knew the whole plan was madness. Cahal and Renault rode into the unknown land and far in the east the vultures circled endlessly.
IV
The bearded watcher on the tower above the gates of El Omad shaded his hawk-eyes. In the east a dust-cloud grew and out of the cloud a black dot came flying. And the lean Arab knew it was a lone horseman, riding hard. He shouted a warning and in an instant other lean, hawk-eyed figures were at his side, brown fingers toying with bow- string and cane-shafted spear. They watched the approaching figure with the intentness of men born to feud and raid.
“A Frank,” grunted one, “and on a dying horse.”
They watched tensely as the lone rider dipped out of sight in a dry wadi, came into view again on the near side, clattered reelingly across the dusty level and drew rein beneath the gate. A lean hand drew shaft to ear, but a word from the first watcher halted the archer. The Frank below had half climbed, half fallen from his reeling horse, and now he staggered to the gate and smote against it resoundingly with his mailed fist.
“By Allah and by Allah!” swore the bearded watcher in wonder. “The Nazarene is mad!” He leaned over the battlement and shouted: “Oh, dead man, what wouldst thou at the gate of El Omad?”
The Frank looked up with eyes glazed from thirst and the burning winds of the desert. His mail was white with the drifting dust, with which likewise his lips were parched and caked. He spoke with difficulty.
“Open the gates, dog, lest ill befall you!”
“It is Kizil Malik – the Red King – whom men call The Mad,” whispered an archer. “He rode with the lord Renault, the shepherds say. Hold him in play while I fetch the Shaykh.”
“Art thou weary of life, Nazarene,” called the first speaker, “that thou comest to the gate of thine enemy?”
“Fetch the lord of the castle, dog,” roared the Gael. “I parley not with menials – and my horse is dying.”
The tall lean form of Shaykh Suleyman ibn Omad loomed among the guardsmen and the old chief swore in his beard.
“By Allah, this is a trap of some sort. Nazarene, what do ye here?”
Cahal licked his blackened lips with a dry tongue.
“When the wild dogs run, panther and buffalo flee together,” he said. “Doom rushes from the east on Moslem and Christian alike. I bring you warning – call in your vassals and make fast your gates, lest another rising sun find you sleeping among the charred embers of your hold. I claim the courtesy due a perishing traveller – and my horse is dying.”
“It is no trap,” growled the Shaykh in his beard. “The Frank has a tale – there has been a harrying in the east and perchance the Mongols are upon us – open the gates, dogs, and let him in.”
Through the opened gates Cahal unsteadily led his drooping steed, and his first words gained him esteem among the Arabs.
“See to my horse,” he mumbled, and willing hands complied.
Cahal stumbled to a horse block and sank down, his head in his hands. A slave gave him a flagon of water and he drank avidly. As he set down the flagon he was aware that the Shaykh had come from the tower and stood before him. Suleyman’s keen eyes ran over the Gael from head to foot, noting the lines of weariness on his face, the dust that caked his mail, the fresh dints on helmet and shield – black dried blood was caked thick about the mouth of his scabbard, showing he had sheathed his sword without pausing to cleanse it.
“You have fought hard and fled swiftly,” concluded Suleyman aloud.
“Aye, by the Saints!” laughed the prince. “I have fled for a night and a day and a night without rest. This horse is the third which has fallen under me – ”
“Whom do you flee?”
“A horde that must have ridden up from the dim limbo of Hell! Wild riders with tall fur caps and the heads of wolves on their standards.”
“They were apparently fleeing some greater horde,” answered Cahal. “Let me tell the tale swiftly – the Sieur Renault and I rode east with all his men, seeking the fabled city of Shahazar – ”
“So that was the quest!” interrupted Suleyman. “Well, I was preparing to sweep down and stamp out that robbers’ nest when divers herdsmen brought me word that the bandits had ridden away swiftly in the night like the thieves they were. I could have ridden after, but knew that Christians riding eastward but rode to their doom – and none can alter the will of Allah.”
“Aye,” grinned Cahal wolfishly, “east to our doom we rode, like men riding blind into the teeth of a storm. We slashed our way through the lands of the Kurds and crossed the Euphrates. Beyond, far to the east, we saw smoke and flame and the wheeling of many vultures, and Renault said the Turkomans fought the Horde. But we met no fugitives and I wondered then – I wonder not now. The slayers rode over them like a wave out of the night and none was left to flee.
“Like men riding to death in a dream, we rode into the onrushing storm and the suddenness of its coming was like a thunderbolt. A sudden drum of hoofs over a ridge and they were upon us – hundreds of them, a swarm of outriders scouting ahead of the horde. There was no chance to flee – our men died where they stood.”
“And the Sieur Renault?” asked the Shaykh.
“Dead!” said Cahal. “I saw a curved blade cleave his helmet and his skull.”
“Allah be merciful and save his soul from the hell-fire of the unbelievers!” piously exclaimed Suleyman, who had sworn to kill the luckless adventurer on sight.
“He took toll before he fell,” grimly answered the Gael. “By God, the heathen lay like ripe grain beneath our horses’ hoofs before the last man fell. I alone hacked my way through.”
The Shaykh, grown old in warfare, visualized the scene that lay behind that simple sentence – the swarming, howling, fur-clad horsemen with their barbaric war cries, and Red Cahal riding like a wind of Death through that maelstrom of flashing blades, his sword singing in his hand as horse and rider went down before him.
