He slipped the housing and the heavy saddle from the horse's back and took the great bit from his mouth, replacing a portion of the housing to serve as a cooler until the horse should be less heated, nor once did he glance at the princess until he had finished caring for his horse.
Then he turned and faced her. She was standing leaning against a tree, looking at him.
'Thou art brave, sir knight,' she said softly, and then added, arrogantly, 'but still a boor.'
Blake smiled, wanly. He was very tired and had no wish to argue.
'I'm sorry to ask you to do it,' he said, ignoring what she had said to him, 'but Sir Galahad here will have to be kept moving about a bit until he cools off and I'm too fagged to do it.'
The Princess Guinalda looked at him in wide-eyed amazement. 'Ye—ye,' she stammered, 'ye mean that I should lead the beast? I, a princess!'
'I can't do it, Guinalda,' replied Blake. 'I tell you I'm just about all in, lugging all these skid chains about since sunrise. I guess you'll have to do it.'
'Have to! Durst thou command, knave?'
'Snap out if it, girl!' advised Blake curtly. 'I'm responsible for your safety and it may all depend on this horse. Get busy, and do as I tell you! Lead him back and forth slowly.'
There were tears of rage in the eyes of the Princess Guinalda as she prepared to make an angry retort, but there was something in Blake's eyes that silenced her. She looked at him for a long moment and then turned and walked to the black. Untying the rope that tethered him to the tree she led him slowly to and fro, while Blake sat with his back against a great tree and watched out across the plain for the first sign of pursuit.
But there was no pursuit, for the knights of Nimmr had taken the Knights of the Sepulcher and the two forces were engaging in a running fight that was leading them farther and farther away toward the City of the Sepulcher upon the north side of the valley.
Guinalda led the black for half an hour. She led him in silence and in silence Blake sat gazing out across the valley. Presently he turned toward the girl and rose to his feet.
'That'll be good,' he said, approaching her. 'Thank you. I'll rub him a bit now. I was too exhausted to do it before.'
Without a word she turned the black over to him and with dry leaves he rubbed the animal from muzzle to dock. When he had finished he threw the housing over him again and came and sat down beside the girl.
He let his eyes wander to her profile—to her straight nose, her short upper lip, her haughty chin. 'She is beautiful,' thought Blake, 'but selfish, arrogant and cruel.' But when she turned her eyes toward him, even though they passed over him as though he had not been there, they seemed to belie all the other evidence against her.
He noticed that her eyes were never quiet. Her glances roved from place to place, but most often into the depths of the wood and upward among the branches of the trees. Once she started and turned suddenly to gaze intently into the forest.
'What is it?' asked Blake.
'Methought something moved within the wood,' she said. 'Let us be gone.'
'It is almost dusk,' he replied. 'When it is dark we can ride to Nimmr in safety. Some of Bohun's knights may still be searching for you.'
'What!' she exclaimed. 'Remain here until dark? Knowest thou not where we be?'
'Why, what's wrong with this place?' demanded the man.
She leaned toward him, her eyes wide with terror. 'It be the Wood of the Leopards!' she whispered.
'Yes?' he queried casually.
'Here lair the great leopards of Nimmr,' she continued, 'and after night falls only a camp with many guards and beast fires be safe from them. And even so not always then, for they have been known to leap upon a warder and, dragging him into the wood, devour him within hearing of the camp.
'But,' suddenly her eyes responded to a new thought, 'I hadst forgot the strange, roaring weapon with which thou slew the knights of Bohun! Of a surety with that thou couldst slay all the leopards of the wood!'
Blake hesitated to undeceive her and add to her alarm. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'it will be as well to start now, for we have a long ride and it will soon be dark.'
As he spoke he started toward Sir Galahad. He had almost reached the horse when the animal suddenly raised its head and with up-pricked ears and dilated nostrils looked into the gathering shadows of the wood. For an instant Sir Galahad trembled like a leaf and then, with a wild snort, he lay back with all his weight upon the tether, and as it parted with a snap he wheeled and raced out upon the plain.
Blake drew his gun and peered into the wood, but he saw nothing nor could his atrophied sense of smell catch the scent that had come so clearly to the nostrils of Sir Galahad.
Eyes that he could not see were watching him, but they were not the eyes of Sheeta the leopard.
Chapter Twenty
'I Love You!'
LORD TARZAN rode with Sir Bertram in the wake of the Knights of Nimmr, nor did they overtake them until after Blake had borne Guinalda out of the battle which had followed immediately the hosts of Gobred had overhauled the Knights of the Sepulcher.
As the two approached, Tarzan saw opposing knights paired off in mortal combat. He saw a Knight of Nimmr go down before an adversary's lance and then the victor espied Tarzan.
'Have at you, sir knight!' cried he of the Sepulcher, and couched his lance and put spurs to his charger.
This was a new experience for the ape-man, a new adventure, a new thrill. He knew as much about jousting as he did about ping-pong, but from childhood he had wielded a spear, and so he smiled as the knight charged upon him.
Lord Tarzan waited, and the Knight of the Sepulcher was disconcerted to see his adversary awaiting him, motionless, his spear not even couched to receive him.
Lord Bertram had reined in his horse to watch the combat and observe how this English peer accounted for himself in battle and he too was perplexed. Was the man mad, or was he fearful of the issue?
As his antagonist approached him, Tarzan rose in his stirrups and carried his lance hand above and behind his head, and when the tip of the other's lance was yet five paces from him the ape-man launched the heavy weapon as he had so often launched his hunting spear and his war spear in the chase and in battle.
It was not Viscount Greystoke who faced the Knight of the Sepulcher; it was not the king of the great apes. It was the chief of the Waziri, and no other arm in the world could cast a war spear as could his.
Forward his spear hand shot, straight as an arrow sped the great lance. It struck the shield of the Knight of the Sepulcher just above the boss and, splitting the heavy wood, drove into the heart of Tarzan's foe, and at the same instant the ape-man reined his horse aside as that of his fallen antagonist thundered past.
Sir Bertram shook his head and spurred to meet an antagonist that had just challenged him. He was not sure that the act of Lord Tarzan had been entirely ethical, but he had to admit that it had been magnificent.
The fortunes of the battle carried Tarzan toward the west. His lance gone, he fought with his sword. Luck and his great strength and wondrous agility carried him through two encounters. By this time the battle had drawn off toward the northeast.
Tarzan had accounted for his second man since he had lost his lance and a Knight of the Sepulcher had slain a Knight of Nimmr. Now these two remained alone upon the field, nor did the other lose a moment in shouting his challenge to the ape-man.
Never in his life had Tarzan seen such fierce, bold men, such gluttons for battle. That they gloried in conflict and in death with a fierce lust that surpassed the maddest fanaticism he had ever witnessed filled Tarzan's breast with admiration. What men! What warriors!
Now the last knight was upon him. Their swords clashed on ready buckler. They wheeled and turned and struck again. They passed and spurred once more to close quarters. Each rose in his stirrups to deliver a terrified cut, each sought to cleave the other's skull.
The blade of the Knight of the Sepulcher glanced from Tarzan's buckler and bit into the skull of the ape-man's
