Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures

before.

“Al Kuds is mine for the taking,” he said lazily. “I will cleanse the mosques – aye, by Allah, the Kharesmians shall do the work, most piously. They’ll make good Moslems. And winged war-men. With them I sow the thunder – who reaps the tempest?”

“Yet you fought against them at Jerusalem,” Cahal reminded bitterly.

“Aye,” frankly admitted the amir, “but there they would have cut my throat as quick as any Frank’s. I could not say to them: ‘Hold, dogs, I am Baibars!’ ”

Cahal bowed his lion-like head, knowing the futility of arguing.

“Then my work is done; I demand safe-conduct from your camp.”

Baibars shook his head, grinning. “Nay, malik, you are thirsty and weary. Bide here as my guest.”

Cahal’s hand moved involuntarily toward his empty girdle. Baibars was smiling but his eyes glittered between narrowed lids and the slaves about him half-drew their scimitars.

“You’d keep me prisoner despite the fact I am an ambassador?”

“You came without invitation,” grinned Baibars. “I ask no parley. Di Zaro!”

A tall lank Venetian in black velvet stepped forward.

“Di Zaro,” said Baibars in a jesting voice, “the malik Cahal is our guest. Mount ye and ride like the devil to the host of the Franks. There say that Cahal sent you secretly. Say that the lord Cahal is twisting that great fool Baibars about his finger, and pledges to keep him aloof from the battle.”

The Venetian grinned bleakly and left the tent, avoiding Cahal’s smoldering eyes. The Gael knew that the trade-lusting Italians were often in secret league with the Moslems, but few stooped so low as this renegade.

“Well, Baibars,” said Cahal with a shrug of his shoulders, “since you must play the dog, there is naught I can do. I have no sword.”

“I’m glad of that,” responded Baibars candidly. “Come, fret not. It is but your misfortune to oppose Baibars and his destiny. Men are my tools – at the Damascus Gate I knew that those red-handed riders were steel to forge into a Moslem sword. By Allah, malik, if you could have seen me riding like the wind into Egypt – marching back across the Jifar without pausing to rest! Riding into the camp of the pagans with mullahs shouting the advantages of Islam! Convincing their wild Kuran Shah that his only safety lay in conversion and alliance!

“I do not fully trust the wolves, and have pitched my camp apart from them – but when the Franks come up, they will find our hordes joined for battle – and should be horribly surprized, if that dog di Zaro does his work well!”

“Your treachery makes me a dog in the eyes of my people,” said Cahal bitterly.

“None will call you traitor,” said Baibars serenely, “because soon all will cease to be. Relics of an outworn age, I will rid the land of them. Be at ease!”

He extended a brimming goblet and Cahal took it, sipped at it absently, and began to pace up and down the pavilion, as a man paces in worry and despair. The memluks watched him, grinning surreptitiously.

“Well,” said Baibars, “I was a Tatar prince, I was a slave, and I will be a prince again. Kuran Shah’s shaman read the stars for me – and he says that if I win the battle against the Franks, I will be sultan of Egypt!”

The amir was sure of his chiefs, thought Cahal, to thus flaunt his ambition openly. The Gael said, “The Franks care not who is sultan of Egypt.”

“Aye, but battles and the corpses of men are stairs whereby I climb to fame. Each war I win clinches my hold on power. Now the Franks stand in my path; I will brush them aside. But the shaman prophesied a strange thing – that a dead man’s sword will deal me a grievous hurt when the Franks come up against us – ”

From the corner of his eye Cahal saw that his apparently aimless strides had taken him close to the table on which stood the great candle. He lifted the goblet toward his lips, then with a lightning flick of his wrist, dashed the wine onto the flame. It sputtered and went out, plunging the tent into total darkness. And simultaneously Cahal ripped a hidden dirk from under his arm and like a steel spring released, bounded toward the place where he knew Baibars sat. He catapulted into somebody in the dark and his dirk hummed and sank home. A death scream ripped the clamor and the Gael wrenched the blade free and sprang away. No time for another stroke. Men yelled and fell over each other and steel clanged wildly. Cahal’s crimsoned blade ripped a long slit in the silk of the tent-wall and he sprang into the outer starlight where men were shouting and running toward the pavilion.

Behind him a bull-like bellowing told the Gael that his blindly stabbing dirk had found some other flesh than Baibars’. He ran swiftly toward the horse-lines, leaping over taut tent-ropes, a shadow among a thousand racing figures. A mounted sentry came galloping through the confusion, firelight gleaming on his drawn scimitar. As a panther leaps Cahal sprang, landing behind the saddle. The memluk’s startled yell broke in a gurgle as the keen dirk crossed his throat.

Flinging the corpse to the earth, the Gael quieted the snorting, plunging steed and reined it away. Like the wind he rode through the swarming camp and the free air of the desert struck his face. He gave the Arab horse the rein and heard the clamor of pursuit die away behind him. Somewhere to the north lay the slowly advancing host of the Christians, and Cahal rode north. He hoped to overtake the Venetian on the road, but the other had too long a start. Men who rode for Baibars rode with a flowing rein.

The Franks were breaking camp at dawn when a Venetian rode headlong into their lines, gasping a tale of escape and flight, and demanding to see de Brienne.

Within the baron’s half-dismantled tent, di Zaro gasped: “The lord Cahal sent me, seigneur – he holds Baibars in parley. He gives his word that the memluks will not join the Kharesmians, and urges you to press forward – ”

Outside a clatter of hoofs split the din – a lone rider whose flying hair was like a veil of blood against the crimson of dawn. At de Brienne’s tent the hard-checked steed slid to its haunches. Cahal leaped to the earth and rushed in like an avenging blast. Di Zaro cried out and paled, frozen by his doom – till Cahal’s dirk split his heart and the Venetian rolled, an earthen-faced corpse, to Walter de Brienne’s feet. The baron sprang up, bewildered.

“Cahal! What news, in God’s name?”

“Baibars joins arms with the pagans,” answered Cahal.

De Brienne bowed his head.

“Well – no man can ask to live forever.”

VII

Through the drear gray dusty desert the host of Outremer crawled southward. The black and white standard of the Templars floated beside the cross of the patriarch, and the black banners of Damascus billowed in the faintly stirring air. No king led them. The Emperor Frederick claimed the kingship of Jerusalem and he skulked in Sicily, plotting against the pope. De Brienne had been chosen to lead the barons and he shared his command with Al Mansur el Haman, war-lord of Damascus.

They went into camp within sight of the Moslem outposts, and all night the wind that blew up from the south throbbed with the beat of drums and the clash of cymbals. Scouts reported the movements of the Kharesmian horde, and that the memluks had joined them.

In the gray light of dawn Red Cahal came from his tent fully armed. On all sides the host was moving, striking tents and buckling armor. In the illusive light Cahal saw them moving like phantoms – the tall patriarch, shriving and blessing; the giant form of the Master of the Temple among his grim war-dogs; the heron-feathered gold helmet of Al Mansur. And he stiffened as he saw a slim mailed shape moving through the swarm, followed close by a rough figure with ax on shoulder. Bewildered, he shook his head – why did his heart pound so strangely at sight of that mysterious Masked Knight? Of whom did the slim youth remind him, and of what dim bitter memories? He felt as one plunged into a web of illusion.

And now a familiar figure fell upon Cahal and embraced him.

“By Allah!” swore Shaykh Suleyman ibn Omad, “but for thee I had slept in the ruins of my keep! They came like