Cahal turned away shortly, irritated by the fellow’s manner and by his boasting. Yet for all the soldier’s wrath, it seemed to the Gael that a vagrant twinkle lighted his fierce eyes as though he shook with inward mirth. Then Cahal forgot him. A wail went up from the house-tops where the helpless people watched their oncoming doom. The horde had swept into sight, up from the hazes of the Jordan’s gorge.
The skies shook with the clamor of the kettledrums; the earth trembled with the thunder of the hoofs. The headlong speed of the yelling fiends numbed the minds of their victims. From the steppes of high Asia these barbarians had fled before the Mongols like thistle-down flying before the wind. Drunken with the blood of slaughtered tribes, ten thousand strong they surged on Jerusalem, where thousands of helpless folk knelt shuddering.
Cahal saw anew the hideous figures which had haunted his half-delirious dreams as he swayed in the saddle on that long flight: tall rangy steeds on which crouched the broad forms of the riders in wolfskins and mail – square dark faces, eyes glaring like mad dogs’ from beneath high fur caps or peaked helmets; standards with the heads of wolves, panthers and bears.
Headlong they swept down the Damascus road – leaping their horses over the broken walls, crowding through the ruined gates at breakneck speed – and headlong they smote the clump of defenders which spurred to meet them – smote them, broke them, shattered them, trampled them down and under, and over their mangled bodies, struck the heart of the doomed city.
Red hell reigned rampant in the streets of Jerusalem, where helpless men, women and children ran screaming before the slayers who rode them down, howling like wolves, spitting babes on their lances and holding them on high like gory standards. Under the frenzied hoofs pitiful forms fell writhing and blood flooded the gutters. Dark blood-stained hands tore the garments from shrieking girls and lance-butts shattered doors and windows behind which cowered terrified prey. All objects of worth were ripped from their places and screams of agony rose to the smoke-fouled heavens as the victims were tortured with steel and fire to make them give up their pitiful treasures. Death stalked howling through the streets of Jerusalem and men blasphemed their gods as they died.
In the first irresistible flood of that charge, such defenders as were not instantly ridden down had been torn apart and swept back in utter confusion. The weight of the impact had swept Red Cahal’s steed away as on the crest of a flood, and he found himself reining about in a narrow alley, where he had been tossed as a bit of driftwood is flung into a back-eddy by a rushing tide. He had lost sight of the patriarch and had no doubt that he lay among the trampled dead before the Damascus Gate.
His sword was red to the hilt, his soul ablaze with the battle-lust, his brain sick with fury and horror as the cries of the butchered city smote on his ears.
“I’ll leave my corpse before the Sepulcher,” he growled, and wheeling, spurred up the alley. He raced down a narrow winding street and emerged upon the Via Dolorosa just as the first Kharesmian came flying along it, scimitar dripping crimson. The red stallion’s shoulder brushed the barbarian’s stirrup and Cahal’s sword flashed like a sunburst. The Kharesmian’s head leaped from his shoulders on an arch of crimson and the Gael yelped with murderous exultation.
And now came another riding like the wind, and Cahal saw it was Akbar. The soldier reined in and shouted, “Well, good sir, are you still determined to sacrifice both our lives?”
“Your life is your own – my life is mine!” roared Cahal, eyes blazing.
He saw that a group of horsemen had ridden up to the Sepulcher from another street and were dismounting, shouting in their barbaric tongue, spattering the holy stones with blood-drops from their blades. In a red mist of fury Cahal smote them as an avalanche smites the pines. His whistling sword cleft buckler and helmet, severing necks and splitting skulls; under the hammering hoofs of his screaming charger, men rolled with smashed heads. And even in his madness Cahal was aware that he was not alone. Akbar had charged after him; his great voice roared above the clamor and the heavy scimitar in his left hand crashed through mail and flesh and bone.
The men before the Sepulcher lay in a silent gory heap when Cahal reined back and shook the bloody mist from his eyes. Akbar roared in a strange tongue and smote him thunderously on the shoulders.
“Ride on,” answered Cahal, shaking the red drops from his blade. “Here I die.”
“Well,” laughed Akbar, “if you wish to throw away your life here where it will do no good – that’s your affair! The heathen may thank you, but your brothers scarcely will, when the raiders smite them suddenly! The horsemen are all dead or hemmed in the alleys. Only you and I escaped that charge. Who will carry the news of the raid to the Frankish barons?”
“You speak truth,” said Cahal shortly. “Let us go.”
The pair wheeled away and galloped down the street just as a howling horde came flying up the other end. Beyond the shattered walls Cahal looked back to see a mounting flame. He hid his face in his hands.
“Wounds of God!” he groaned. “They are burning the Sepulcher!”
“And defiling the Al Aksa mosque too, I doubt not,” said Akbar tranquilly. “Well, that which is written will come to pass, and no man may escape his fate. All things pass away, yea, even the Holy of Holies.”
Cahal shook his head, soul-sick. They rode through toiling bands of fugitives who screamed and caught at his stirrups, but Cahal steeled his heart. If he was to bear warning to the barons, he could not be burdened by helpless ones.
The roar of pillage and slaughter faded into the distance; only the smoke stood up among the hills, mute witness of the horror. Akbar laughed gustily.
“By Allah!” he swore, smiting his saddlebow, “these Kharesmians are woundy fighters! They ride like Tatars and slay like Turks! Right well would I lead them into battle! I had rather fight beside them than against them.”
Cahal made no reply. His strange companion seemed to him like a faun, a soulless fantastic being full of titanic laughter at all human things – a creature outside the boundaries of men’s dreams and reverences.
Akbar spoke abruptly. “Here our roads part for a space,
“Why to Cairo, Akbar, or Haroun, or whatever your name is?” asked Cahal.
“Because I have business with that great oaf, Baibars, whom the devil fly away with!” yelled Akbar, and his shout of laughter floated back above the hoof-beats.
It was hours later when Cahal, pushing his horse as hard as he dared, met the travellers – a slender knight in full mail and vizored helmet, with a single attendant, a big carle with a rough red beard, who wore a horned helmet and a shirt of scale-mail and bore a heavy ax. Something slumbering stirred in Cahal as he looked on that fierce bluff face, and he reined in.
“Man, where have I seen you before?”
The fierce frosty eyes met his levelly.
“By Odin, that I can’t say. I’m Wulfgar the Dane and this is my master.”
Cahal glanced at the silent knight with his plain shield. Through the bars of the vizor, shadowed eyes looked at him – great God! A shock went through Cahal, leaving him bewildered and shaken with a thousand racing chaotic thoughts. He leaned forward, striving to peer through the lowered vizor, and the knight drew back with an almost womanish gesture of rebuke. Cahal reddened.
“I crave your pardon, sir,” he said. “I did not intend this seeming rudeness.”
“My master has taken a vow not to speak or reveal his features until he has accomplished his penance,” broke in the rough Dane. “He is known as the Masked Knight. We journey to Jerusalem.”
Sorrowfully Cahal shook his head.
“No Christian may ride thither. The paynim from the outer steppes have swept over the walls and the Holy of Holies lies in smoking ruins.”
The Dane’s bearded mouth gaped.
“Jerusalem – taken?” he mouthed stupidly. “Why, good sir, that can not be! How would God allow his Holy City to fall into the hands of the infidels?”
“I know not,” said Cahal bitterly. “The ways of God and His infinite mercy are past my knowledge – but the streets of Jerusalem run with the blood of His people and the Sepulcher is black with the flames of the
