Swords From the West (82 page)

An open valley, the slopes rising on either hand like an amphitheater. The empty road running through the pit of this amphitheater to the shadowy entrance of another defile at the far end. Daimen thought it was like the great stadium of Byzantium where the emperor held his games. Only the heights of this valley were full of armed men. To his left he saw lines of men in dull armor standing by horses, some of them kneeling around a high, gilt cross-Christians, they must be.

To his right, among thickets and huts, were massed horsemen he had never seen before-bearded men in cloaks of all colors, wearing turbans and glittering helmets. He tried to count them and gave it up, because he could not count over twenty and there were hundreds of twenties yonder. The faint roar of their restlessness was like the surging of surf against a shore. Skol put down his bundle between two rocks and stood up to tighten his belt and swing the long ax once around his head.

"Well," Daimen said then, "we have come in time for a battle." Skol began to walk down the road into the valley. He was going to join the men under the cross, up yonder; but the slope near him was covered with brush and it would be easier to climb from the bed of the valley. So he went down the road. He strode along swiftly, because he knew that once those horsemen were in motion a man on foot would have trouble getting to where he could strike a blow. But the men up there made no move toward their horses, although several Moslem riders were down on the midway point of the road, jeering at them.

Then the jeering stopped. The three Arabs had seen Skol and Daimen, and in a moment one of them urged his horse toward the wanderers. He could make out the crosses on their mantles, and he thirsted for the honor that came to a follower of Allah who slew the first infidel in a battle. Moreover the fall of the tall Christian with the horned helmet would be an omen-a sign of victory for the banners of Islam and doom for the crusaders.

"Come into the brush!" cried Daimen, who had already leaped nimbly up the bank from the road.

But Skol's blue eyes, no longer drowsy, gleamed with fierce exultation.

"By Thor's thunder!" he growled. "I have not walked for two years to turn my rump to the first foeman. Stay there, little man, for this road is no place for the like of you."

While he spoke he lifted high the iron shield on his left arm, and his right hand gripped the long ax shaft halfway to the head. The oncoming rider had challenged him, and never had the manslayer held back from a challenge. Daimen shivered, and the Arab came on at a gallop, his scimitar swinging by his right knee, his small round shield well out on his rein arm.

Once the Moslem shouted, kneed his horse to the left and leaned over to slash down with his scimitar. Beneath the flashing arc of steel, Skol flung up both arms.

The scimitar clanged against his iron shield. But the long point of the great ax came up inside the Arab's shield and caught the man beneath the beard. He rose in his stirrups as a stricken deer starts up, and the giant Northman staggered, holding to the ax shaft with both hands.

The horse ran on with an empty saddle, and the quivering body of the Arab dangled from the ax point that had pierced to the bones of his head. Before Skol laid it down, all life had left the body.

"Ha!" roared the Northman, drawing free his weapon carefully and wiping each hand in turn on his hip.

Daimen cried a warning, but the manslayer was watching the other two Moslems who reined toward him, scattering dust and stones in the haste of desert clansmen to avenge a death. They came together, steel swirling over their hooded heads, as merciless as striking wolves, and no single man could have stood his ground in the road before them.

Skol did not. He swung his ax slowly about his head from left to right, his knees bent until he could have struck the foam-flecked muzzle of a horse. Then he leaped to the bank at the left of the road. But as he leaped he whirled and struck, the ax extended in his long arms.

The hammer head brushed aside the sword of the nearer horseman, crushed in the light leather shield, and crashed into the man's face. And the Arab rolled over the horse's tail with his skull shattered.

"Allah!" cried the other, reining in and wheeling his horse swiftly. And swiftly he slashed with his scimitar.

Yet the manslayer was watching the blow. Skol's blue eyes were cold, his breathing unhurried as the sweep of his great arms when he stepped down into the road again. This was his skill, this weapon play. He caught the stroke of the scimitar upon the curved ax head, and the thin steel blade snapped with a sound like the breaking of ice.

The Moslem flung himself to the side of his saddle and pulled his horse away, but the ax reached after him with a twisting motion. The watchers on the hillsides-and thousands were watching now-saw him ride back a little way, apparently unhurt, while Skol looked after him. Then the rider wavered and slid to the ground, with one side of his groin torn out.

A cry rose from the Moslem ranks, and was echoed by a deep-throated shout from across the valley. Three horsemen had gone down under three blows.

"Come back," cried Daimen. "Is it mad ye are?"

Skol was not mad, but the mist of fighting was upon him. His own song was in his ears, and that was a song of the breaking of sword blades and the clashing of shields. No more foemen remained on the road, but others sat their horses up the hill. Skol shouldered his ax and went up to them, singing. Daimen stumbled after him.

For a moment the valley was silent except for the chanting of the giant. Then a score of Arabs rode at him. And the six thousand crusaders climbed into their saddles. The cross of the patriarch was lifted. No horns blared and no leaders cried them on; in silence they broke from a trot into a gallop, gripping sword and spear. They had seen one man with the cross on his shoulder marching against an armed host. They had been desperate before, but now they were ashamed.

The charge rolled across the valley and roared as it came.

"Christ and the Sepulcher!"

Eleven thousand Moslems flung themselves against that charge. And they were beaten back by the long swords of the crusaders. The cross wavered, and then went up to the crest of the Arabs' hill; then the mailed host wheeled and charged back again, and broke up into fiercely smiting groups that sheared through the throngs of the desert men. Still the crusaders pressed on, and the Moslems scattered and rode off, their green banners merging into the sunset.

Daimen, watching from the nest of rocks where he had taken refuge, had been able to see Skol for a time, when the twenty horsemen first closed around the giant Northman; he saw Skol's ax rise and fall, and come up red in a new place, as the manslayer leaped, twisting himself among his foes. A horse reared there, and a hooded head flew from its body. Then the rush of the Arab charge swept over the spot.

And Daimen was running toward it, through the last ruck of the fighting, when he heard horns blaring. The crusaders were trotting into ranks on the hillside about him. But they did not wait for the ranks to be formed. Down in the twilight of the defile they had left that afternoon resounded a clamor of cymbals and kettledrums. And in the valley road appeared the first groups of the caliph's army that had pursued them hither and had hastened forward, hearing the tumult of battle.

The men of Outre-mer looked, and put spurs to their jaded horses. It was a mad kind of charge that slid and stumbled and plunged down upon the head of the caliph's column. The bewildered Moslems were caught standing, and were crushed by the flailing swords-driven back upon their fellows in the ravine, lashed into headlong flight. Then darkness, lighted by torches where the crusaders sought for their wounded.

The red duke caught Daimen by the shoulder and blew the blood clots from his bearded lips.

"By God's grace, find me that mate of thine-he who showed the way to us this day."

Bells tolled and chimed, ringing out a lament for the fallen and exultation in the victory; light streamed from the doors of the churches, al though the hour was near dawn. The voices of men chanted a Te Deum, "We praise Thee, 0 Lord-"

The long hall of the hospital of Jerusalem was filled with laymen and warriors bearing candles and lanterns among the dead. On the bed by the fireplace lay Skol, his leather and iron cut off his body, and the great slashes bandaged. A white linen sheet was thrown over his body, and his sweat-matted head was propped on a soft velvet pillow.

"Skol," cried Daimen, "this is Jerusalem that we passed through without knowing it."

The blue eyes turned toward the minstrel, and Skol made a sign that he understood. A dozen knights-he knew them by the little shields in their belts and by their spurs-were sitting around the bed, drinking wine. They looked at Skol when they spoke, and one of them lifted a tankard. The same Russian priest who had spoken to him that afternoon was coming toward the bed slowly, and his brown robe was covered by cloth of silver and gold. More priests followed him with lighted candles, bearing something covered with a white cloth. They said things in Latin, and the knights stood up.

The priests even gave Skol a little wine from a silver cup and a small piece of bread. When they went away, Skol turned his head. Two tall candles had been placed a little behind his head, one on each side.

He looked at them, and at the men sitting by him. He listened to the distant chiming of bells and chanting, and his clotted beard wrinkled in a smile.

"'Tis a good place," he whispered, "a good place, and a fine sitting-by for my dying. A man cannot ask more than that."

He'd been listening to us quietly, there across the aisle in the ancient restaurant car of the Paris express. I figured him to be a strictly average retired Frenchman, with the usual red ribbon on the lapel of his neat black coat, and his white hair parted dead center, listening in on two foreign officers grousing about their jobs with NATO, which called for setting up military installations in a country like France that didn't seem to want them.

This was almost two years ago-June of'S i -when General Eisenhower was beginning to build a defense around and about, setting up skeleton divisions against a swarm of armies. Regiments against hordes. What, if it came to the pitch, was there in Western Europe to stop the manpower of the East? You know how we gripe.

The Frenchman looked up as if he were going to put in a word, but he sipped his coffee instead.

"We have our civilization, Bob," grinned Noel, digging into his brandied cherries. Being a member of His Britannic Majesty's Forces, Squadron Leader Noel laps up French cooking like a hungry pup.

"Do we?" I asked him. We'd all been reading how our Western civilization is on the downcurve, and how this world is whirling into an era of power politics, with armed manpower coming out on top. In other words, with the rule of the Eurasian, or Soviet, state on top. "Then where do we keep it?" I asked. "It doesn't seem to be around here."

Our obsolescent wagon restaurant was creaking through a gray twilight, because in order to save juice, no one had switched on the lights. Outside the window I perceived exactly one human being, the color of dirt, steering a plow behind a horse.

"It's in Paris, Bob," Noel told me cheerfully, spooning up the brandy, "'specially the opera house-the Masked Ball for us tomorrow night. It's also across the Seine, where the youngsters make love under the stars."

How can you argue with a guy like that? Noel reads ancient poetry and works out those double acrostics, while I like to keep my facts separate from such fancies. "That's fine," I conceded. "So we have our civilization in Paris. Where's your army to defend it? Are you going to mobilize an Allied army of one commanding general and those youngsters playing along the Seine, and these"-I pointed out the window-"farm- hands? It could happen that you'd have to defend a line somewhere against the combined armies of Asia."

Our French neighbor leaned over. "It did happen," he said in good enough English. "Yes, monsieur le capitaine, in the battle of long ago."

Evidently he knew insignia of rank when he saw it. A network of wrinkles around his dark eyes showed that life had not been all operas and brandied cherries for him, but he grinned like a kid as he explained that his name was Vesny. His red ribbon of the Legion of Honor might mean that he was either an ex-professor or an ex-soldier.