Swords From the West (3 page)

Piculph, the sergeant at arms, always made his rounds in the city of Tana at dusk. In that hour, after vesper bells and the muezzin's call, wine flowed in the taverns and blood in the alleys. A watchful fellow like Piculph could always pick up something good.

Tana was a slave port-the last post of Europeans in Asia-at the far end of the Charnomar, that is now called the Black Sea. Over this sea the galleys from Constantinople brought Christian slaves, boys and young women, Greeks and all sorts, to be sold to rich Moslems. And from the East, along the caravan road, came the turbaned folk bringing red leather and hemp and musk and opium and sword blades. And Tana had never been noisier at dusk than this evening of the year of grace 1402.

Piculph went warily, turning the corners wide, with his ear cocked to the bickering and brawling that went on, only half seen. It was the hour, he had said more than once, when the Horned One held open market. Piculph himself was a Lombard redbeard with a knack of stabbing and a nice touch for stealing. He served Messer Andrea, the master of the slave brokers, and he held himself to be better than the masterless rogues, the ribalds of the alleys-such rogues as he now paused to watch.

In the deep shadow under the stone arch of an open gate in the city wall some half dozen ragged figures were clustered, looking out at the road. Piculph, being mounted, could see over their heads. Beyond this gate, out on the plain, the glow of sunset lingered. And Piculph's curiosity grew as he watched.

Often he had watched stout Turks driving laden asses through that gate and sallow Armenians moving through the dust raised by their sheep and grim Tatars whirling lariats as they trotted beside the herds of their shaggy ponies. But he had never seen a man leading a horse.

And now a tall man was approaching with the long stride of one who had come far on foot. He wore boots of soft leather laced to his knees, a faded mantle gray with dust, and a tarnished steel cap set a little upon one side of his yellow head. Great of bone he was, and though alone, he did not seem to fear the darkness under the gate. The sword slung upon his hip in its leather scabbard was too heavy and too long to be handy in a brawl. So thought Piculph.

And so thought the ribalds under the arch who had seen that the stranger led a lame horse, a gray Arab racer whose saddlecloth was gleaming cloth of gold. Since the stranger was alone and the horse one of price, the thieves made ready to slay the man-there in the darkness under the arch that smelled of charcoal and sheepskins.

Piculph grinned in his beard, for he saw what they were about, and he meant to ride in upon them after their work was done and seize the horse himself.

The stranger entered the arch, and the masterless men thronged about him.

"Yah huk-yah huk!" they yelled in unison, the beggar's cry of Asia's streets. And at their call a pockmarked devil in a tattered cloak came running up with a lantern as if to light the way before the tall man. Instead he thrust the lantern close to the stranger's eyes-clear gray eyes that looked at them out of a lean, sun-darkened face.

"Give, in God's name!" whined a beggar, pushing through his mates until his groping hands closed upon the right arm of the stranger. The beggar was blind, his pupils white-filmed, his lids eaten by flies.

His comrades pressed in closer then, and Piculph saw that for which he had been looking. Behind the blind beggar appeared a stout Levantine boatman grasping a short ax, watching his chance to strike. The thieves clamored louder, and the boatman shifted his weight to his left foot, and the corners of his lips twitched in a snarl. Suddenly he struck, full at his victim's eyes.

But the tall man had caught the flicker of steel in the light of the lantern. His right arm shot forward, thrusting the blind beggar back, and he himself bent back from the hips. The boatman's ax swung harmlessly through the air.

At the same instant the stranger pulled clear his sword. The point of the long blade swept out and down, and the boatman shrieked. The sword's edge had caught his wrist and cut through it. The ax, still gripped in hairy fingers, dropped to the earth.

The boatman staggered against the stones of the arch and fell. At the flash of the long sword his companions vanished, as dogs flee the rush of the wolf-the blind beggar scrambling after them. The stranger picked up the lantern quickly and hooked it to his belt, a broad leather belt, Piculph noticed, set with silver plates and a miniature shield.

"Poor Bacco!" exclaimed the big Lombard, drawing closer, "what a cut that was!"

He had spoken in Italian, and the stranger neither answered nor sheathed his sword. Piculph saw now that he was younger than he had thought, but with the narrowed eyes and the lines about the mouth that came from hardship and long service.

"Whence are you, Messer Swordsman?" he asked, in the lingua franca that was the common speech of the Levant.

"From the road," the stranger answered calmly, and Piculph was no wiser than before.

The Lombard glanced at the bloodstained ax and shrugged a plump shoulder.

"Well, you had an ill welcome. They will use their teeth, and a good sword is worth a hundred ducats in Tana tonight. Aye, many souls are fleeing the gates, and few are coming in. A bit of trouble always cheapens women and raises the price of horses. Yesterday a Greek virgin, skilled at dancing and the guitar, sold for thirty-five pieces of gold. I saw it-I, captain of Messer Andrea's men, and I swear by --"

"Enough!" said the tall man. "Lead me to your master."

"And may the foul fiend sit upon me, Your Grace, but I know not what he serves or seeks. He is no Frank or Lombard or man of Genoa like your illustrious lordship, and he keeps his tongue in his mouth. He wears the belt of a lord, but he came in alone from the Jerusalem road, and if he were a ghost and not a living Wight, I would name him a mad crusader. 'Twas a sweet slice he dealt that clapper-claw-Zut!-and the dog's paw was off. But he says he was sent to Your Illustrious Grace."

Thus Piculph delivered himself to his master, Andrea the Genoese, sometimes called the Counter by reason of his great wealth in slaves and ships.

They were talking in the open gallery of the citadel, overlooking the flat roofs of the town and the bare masts of the galleys beyond. The last of the sunset glow had left the sky, and above the sputtering torch in its socket behind Messer Andrea, the points of the Pleiades shimmered. Against the stars rose the dark bulk of the donjon and corner towers, upon which moved slowly the vague figures of watchers.

Outside the glare of the torch Prince Theodore lay at ease upon a divan, a handsome young Greek, mindful of the dressing of his dark beard and the hang of the miniver cloak upon his shoulders, but at this moment sulky and out of patience.

Erect, clad in severe black velvet, Messer Andrea sat at a narrow ebony table inlaid with ivory, a roll of parchment between his bony fingers. His sallow face was dry and aged, his eyes expressionless. Men in debt to the Counter feared that shrill voice more than the slither of drawn steel, and Prince Theodore-who tried to drown in his cups the memory that Tana had once been his and was now in the hands of the Counter-would say when he was very drunk that the Genoese knew the art of making silver out of copper and gold out of human souls.

Messer Andrea glanced up fleetingly at the tall stranger, who had not understood what Piculph said.

"A belted knight in Tana," he observed dryly. "Young sir, I do not know your name?"

"Bruce," responded the swordsman, looking about him calmly.

"Bruce-of Famagosta? Vassal of the Sieur de Rohan? Rohan is dead!"

Three times the man called Bruce of Famagosta nodded assent, and Messer Andrea reflected. He knew of John of Rohan, a Count of Flanders, who had come to the East to wield his sword in the holy war against the Moslems. Adventurers served John of Rohan, among them this youth out of Scotland who was named Bruce and who had no property. Rohan and his men had been drawn into the crosscurrents of wars that swirled around Venice and Constantinople. Messer Andrea heard of them fighting at Smyrna, and in the long galleys of the Doge; they had besieged Famagosta and had in turn been besieged, and there John of Rohan had been slain not by a Moslem scimitar but by a Greek crossbow bolt-John of Rohan, who had been Messer Andrea's friend. Who had borrowed from him a large sum of money and had died still owing it.

"Faith," remarked the Scot, "'Twas Rohan sent me hither."

"And why?" Messer Andrea wondered how this man had found his way to Tana, through the danger that now beset the road.

"For his daughter."

On the divan in the shadows the Greek prince stirred and would have spoken had not Messer Andrea signed to him to be silent.

"And where is she, Sir Bruce?"

"Here."

For a moment Messer Andrea was silent, his thin lips pinched. True, the daughter of Sieur de Rohan was in Tana, under his protection. Rohan had requested him to safeguard her.

"What token bring ye as warranty of your mission?" he asked. "A writing, Sir Bruce?"

The Scottish swordsman looked calmly at the merchant. "Ye wit well, Messer Andrea, that my lord of Rohan could not write a paternoster. I am saying that he spoke with me after he had been cut down, and he bade me go to you and take in my charge his daughter, to shield and guard her to her home."

Messer Andrea lowered his eyes and stroked his long chin. The daughter of the dead seigneur, Marie de Rohan was still a child-but a child who was beginning to be beautiful. She was thin and white, and grieving had darkened the shadows under her eyes. Still, there was the hue of fire in her hair, with a glint of gold running through it. Such hair was the fashion in Venice, and Messer Andrea knew certain noblemen who would pay two hundred ducats of full weight for Marie de Rohan.

Her father had never paid his debt to the Counter, and Marie had no kinsmen to protect her. Messer Andrea was not minded to yield her to a wandering swordsman.

"How will you find a way," he asked, sharply, "back to Christian lands?"

"By the caravan route."

Prince Theodore propped himself up on an elbow and exclaimed shrilly: "By the hide and hair of the Evil One, this is madness! With forty lances I would not set foot upon that road."

"Betimes, my lord," responded Sir Bruce, "a maid is safer upon the road than behind walls."

The smooth brow of the Greek darkened, and his hand caught at the hilt of the long dagger in his girdle.

"Your Mightiness!" The Counter's dry voice was like the flicker of a whip. "Allow me to warn our guest of the peril outside the walls. Piculph-see thou to the watch. Send in cupbearers with Cyprian wine."

The Greek sank back upon the divan deeper into the shadow, stifling his anger with whispered oaths. At first he would not touch the silver goblet of cool white wine offered him by the two Circassian women who came unveiled, silent and graceful as animals upon the soft carpet. Then he clutched his cup, gulped it down and signed for more.

Sir Bruce waited to see him drink first, and in the pause the keen ears of the Scot caught the movement of armed men all about him-the clank of the iron butts of crossbows against stone parapets, the crackle and flare of the cresset newly lighted that showed him the steel caps of a score of bowmen, the dark arms of mangonels and the bronze tubes of flame throwers on the outer wall. Even in the alleys below, the night was full of sounds-a man's sudden oath, the clatter of hoofs, and the ceaseless wail of beggars.

"You have noticed, young man, that Tana is strongly held. I have been warned." Messer Andrea tapped the parchment in his fingers. "There is one near at hand who fears not the wrath of God nor the weapons of man.

"And here is the message he sends me." Messer Andrea unrolled the parchment and held it so the Scot could see the strange writing-tiny scrolls and curlicues-that covered it. Some of the marks were inscribed in red upon a gilt circle.

"'Tis Arabic, with a royal name emblazoned," commented Sir Bruce. "I ken-" he was silent for a moment. "Read it, I cannot."

"That name," assented the Genoese, "is Tamerlane."

Sir Bruce looked up reflectively. In bazaar and caravansary he had heard men speak of Tamerlane, a lame Tatar king who had emerged with his horde from the unknown steppes of the east.

Messer Andrea read slowly:

"By command of TAMERLANE, King of all Kings, the Victorious, Lord of Fortunate Happenings-to the master of Tana, these words are sent. With sharp sword edges and swift horses we are passing thy city. Send out to us therefore a suitable gift, and no harm will befall thee at our hand."

Messer Andrea was silent a moment, studying the parchment. He resumed:

"If the tribute is not sufficient, we will turn aside and make war upon ye. We will set the red cock crowing. We will build a pyramid of the heads of the slain. Do as thou wilt. It is all one to me. I send this writing-I, SUBAI GHAZI, lord of the lords of Tamerlane's host."

He loosed the parchment from his fingers, and it coiled itself like a snake upon the table.

"I have heard it said," he mused, "that Tamerlane's Tatars make towers out of the skulls of their foes."