clotted red, and a gory heap of corpses beneath him gave mute evidence of his berserk fury.
“Cahal!”
The Gael dropped to his knees beside the slender figure of the Masked Knight. He lifted off the helmet – to reveal a wealth of unruly black tresses – gray eyes luminous and deep. A choked cry escaped him.
“Saints of God! Elinor! I dream – this is madness – ”
The slender mailed arms groped about his neck. The eyes misted with growing blindness. Through the pliant links of the hauberk blood seeped steadily.
“You are not mad, Red Cahal,” she whispered. “You do not dream. I am come to you at last – though I find you but in death. I did you a deathly wrong – and only when you were gone from me forever did I know I loved you. Oh, Cahal, we were born under a blind unquiet star – both seeking goals of fire and mist. I loved you – and knew it not until I lost you. You were gone – I knew not where.
“The Lady Elinor de Courcey died then, and in her place was born the Masked Knight. I took the Cross in penance. Only one faithful servitor knew my secret – and rode with me – to the ends of the earth – ”
“Aye,” muttered Cahal, “I remember him now – even in death he was faithful.”
“When I met you among the hills below Jerusalem,” she whispered faintly, “my heart tore at its strings to burst from my bosom and fall in the dust at your feet. But I dared not reveal myself to you. Ah, Cahal, I have done bitter penance! I have died for the Cross this day, like a knight. But I ask not forgiveness of God. Let Him do with me as He will – but oh, it is forgiveness of you I crave, and dare not ask!”
“I freely forgive you,” said Cahal heavily. “Fret no more about it, girl; it was but a little wrong, after all. Faith, all things and the deeds and dreams of men are fleeting and unstable as moon-mist, even the world which has here ended.”
“Then kiss me,” she gasped, fighting hard against the onrushing darkness.
Cahal passed his arm under her shoulders, lifting her to his blackened lips. With a convulsive effort she stiffened half erect in his arms, her eyes blazing with a strange light.
“The sun sets and the world ends!” she cried. “But I see a crown of red gold on your head, Red Cahal, and I shall sit beside you on a throne of glory! Hail, Cahal, chief of Uland; hail, Cahal Ruadh,
She sank back, blood starting from her lips. Cahal eased her to the earth and rose like a man in a dream. He turned toward the low slope and staggered with a passing wave of dizziness. The sun was sinking toward the desert’s rim. To his eyes the whole plain seemed veiled in a mist of blood through which vague fantasmal figures moved in ghostly pageantry. A chaotic clamor rose like the acclaim to a king, and it seemed to him that all the shouts merged into one thunderous roar:
He shook the mists from his brain and laughed. He strode down the slope, and a group of hawk-like riders swept down upon him with a swift rattle of hoofs. A bow twanged and an iron arrowhead smashed through his mail. With a laugh he tore it out and blood flooded his hauberk. A lance thrust at his throat and he caught the shaft in his left hand, lunging upward. The gray sword’s point rent through the rider’s mail, and his death-scream was still echoing when Cahal stepped aside from the slash of a scimitar and hacked off the hand that wielded it. A spear- point bent on the links of his mail and the lean gray sword leaped like a serpent-stroke, splitting helmet and head, spilling the rider from the saddle.
Cahal dropped his point to the earth and stood with bare head thrown back, as a gleaming clump of horsemen swept by. The foremost reined his white horse back on its haunches with a shout of laughter. And so the victor faced the vanquished. Behind Cahal the sun was setting in a sea of blood, and his hair, floating in the rising breeze, caught the last glints of the sun, so that it seemed to Baibars the Gael wore a misty crown of red gold.
“Well,
Cahal laughed and blood started from his lips. With a lion-like gesture he threw up his head, flinging high his sword in kingly salute.
“Lord of the East!” his voice rang like a trumpet-call, “welcome to the fellowship of kings! To the glory and the witch-fire, the gold and the moon-mist, the splendor and the death! Baibars, a king hails thee!”
And he leaped and struck as a tiger leaps. Not Baibars’ stallion that screamed and reared, not his trained swordsmen, not his own quickness could have saved the memluk then. Death alone saved him – death that took the Gael in the midst of his leap. Red Cahal died in midair and it was a corpse that crashed against Baibars’ saddle – a falling sword in a dead hand that, the momentum of the blow completing its arc, scarred Baibar’s forehead and split his eyeball.
His warriors shouted and reined forward. Baibars slumped in the saddle, sick with agony, blood gushing from between the fingers that gripped his wound. As his chiefs cried out and sought to aid him, he lifted his head and saw, with his single, pain-dimmed eye, Red Cahal lying dead at his horse’s feet. A smile was on the Gael’s lips, and the gray sword lay in shards beside him, shattered, by some freak of chance, on the stones as it fell beside the wielder.
“A hakim, in the name of Allah,” groaned Baibars. “I am a dead man.”
“Nay, you are not dead, my lord,” said one of his memluk chiefs. “It is the wound from the dead man’s sword and it is grievous enough, but bethink you: here has the host of the Franks ceased to be. The barons are all taken or slain and the Cross of the patriarch has fallen. Such of the Kharesmians as live are ready to serve you as their new lord – since Kizil Malik slew their khan. The Arabs have fled and Damascus lies helpless before you – and Jerusalem is ours! You will yet be sultan of Egypt.”
“I have conquered,” answered Baibars, shaken for the first time in his wild life, “but I am half-blind – and of what avail to slay men of that breed? They will come again and again and again, riding to death like a feast because of the restlessness of their souls, through all the centuries. What though we prevail this little Now? They are a race unconquerable, and at last, in a year or a thousand years, they will trample Islam under their feet and ride again through the streets of Jerusalem.”
And over the red field of battle night fell shuddering.
The Black Prince scowled above his lance, and wrath in his hot eyes lay,“I would that you rode with the spears of France and not at my side today.A man may parry an open blow, but I know not where to fend;I would that you were an open foe, instead of a sworn friend.“You came to me in an hour of need, and your heart I thought I saw;But you are one of a rebel breed that knows not king or law.You – with your ever smiling face and a black heart under your mail –With the haughty strain of the Norman race and the wild, black blood of the Gael.“Thrice in a night fight’s close-locked gloom my shield by merest chanceHas turned a sword that thrust like doom – I wot ’twas not of France!And in a dust-cloud, blind and red, as we charged the Provence lineAn unseen axe struck Fitzjames dead, who gave his life for mine.“Had I proofs, your head should fall this day or ever I rode to strife.Are you but a wolf to rend and slay, with naught to guide your life?No gleam of love in a lady’s eyes, no honor or faith or fame?”I raised my face to the brooding skies and laughed like a roaring flame.“I followed the sign of the Geraldine from Meath to the western seaTill a careless word that I scarcely heard bred hate in the heart of me.Then I lent my sword to the Irish chiefs, for half of my blood is Gael,And we cut like a sickle through the sheafs as we harried the lines of the Pale.“But Dermod O’Connor wild with wine, called me a dog at heel,And I cleft his bosom to the spine and fled to the black O’Neill.We harried the chieftains of the south; we shattered the Norman bows.We wasted the land from Cork to Louth; we trampled our fallen foes.“But Conn O’Neill put on me a slight before the Gaelic lords,And I betrayed him in the night to the red O’Donnell swords.I am no thrall to any man, no vassal to any king.I owe no vow to any clan, nor faith to any thing.“Traitor – but not for fear or gold, but the fire in my own dark brain;For the coins I loot from the broken hold I throw to the winds again.And I am true to myself alone, through pride and the traitor’s part.I would give my life to shield your throne, or rip from your breast the heart“For a look or a word, scarce thought or heard. I follow a fading fire,Past bead and bell and the hangman’s cell, like a harp-call of desire.I may not see the road I ride for the witch-fire lamps that gleam;But phantoms glide at my bridle-side, and I follow a nameless Dream.”The Black Prince shuddered and shook his head, then crossed himself amain:“Go, in God’s name, and never,” he said, “ride in my sight again.”The starlight silvered my bridle-rein; the moonlight burned my lanceAs
