Swords From the West (46 page)

"No matter," grunted Rudolfo. "Messer Soranzi, verily you are a greater fool than I took you for. The guile of Master Bearn bewitched you. Not only would you have let him ride free, but you would have followed where he led-to his allies the Tatars or fiends or whatever they be."

He leaned from his saddle to jerk Michael, who was more than a little hurt, to his feet.

"So, my friend," he sneered, "you would hide your knowledge from us and bargain for it! By the Pope's head! Tonight I promise myself we will know all you know. Gian has a rare knack with a dagger's point inserted in a man's ear. There is no time for't now; this is a perilous place-"

Whereupon the men-at-arms set Michael on a horse, binding his wrists together behind him with the wrappings taken from the escaped Tatar. The Breton was badly shaken and bleeding from the mouth, but they handled him in no wise gently.

The minds of the servitors were full of the idea of satanic powers pursuing them. Since Michael showed no fear and had familiar knowledge of the pagan tribes, these men had no doubt that he was in league with the powers of darkness that their superstition conjured up.

Soranzi was torn between fear and greed. The astrologer in Venice had assured him of profits passing through his hands such as he had never seen before.

As for Clavijo, he was burning in the fires of conscience. He had lied. In his story before the Venetians he had repeated that his followers had been slain at the edge of terra incognita, and that the spirits of the wasteland had dogged his footsteps.

And now these two things had happened. He felt as if he were under a spell and found himself looking about for the tower of skulls that he had included in his tale. Only Rudolf o was free from superstition.

Under his quick orders the bulkier and less valuable portions of baggage and stores were abandoned. Sick horses were set loose. When they had mounted, Clavijo saw that no provision had been made for the sick servant or the dying soldier.

"You would not leave them, signor?" he cried.

Rudolf o shrugged.

"They will die anyway-"

When the cavalcade of mounted men and pack-animals moved off, Bembo slipped from the thicket where he had hidden during the hurried departure and ran among the horses, clinging to Soranzi's stirrup. The merchant, reduced to a state of panic by the events of the past hour, drove him off with kicks and blows.

"Leave the fool to his folly," gibed Gian, who noticed Bembo's frantic efforts to keep up.

"To leave him would be to reveal our course to those who pursue us," observed Michael. So Bembo was suffered to hold his friend's stirrup.

Chapter IX

The Ravine

There is a subtle intoxicant of fear in the hurry of many persons to be the first to reach a point of safety. The trot of the horses broke at times into a gallop. Some of the stores fell from the packs. Soranzi alternately cried upon God to witness the loss of valuable goods and prayed for greater haste.

The sun was obscured, a thin mist veiled the pine thickets and the stretches of sandy ground on either hand. The heat wilted their strength. Rudolfo turned many times, apparently thinking to throw pursuers off their track, but the track of a score of horses could not be concealed, Michael knew.

As evening closed in they were threading through gorges that hastened the coming of darkness. Often they looked back in the failing light. No one desired to be last. And then Rudolfo, in the lead, halted abruptly.

Before them in the twilight stood a great mound of human skulls.

"'Tis the Sign o' the Skull," muttered Bembo, "where we will sleep the night."

The jester voiced the fear that had come upon the party with the evening. Clavijo had ordered a huge fire to be lighted near the mound of human bones, and the ruddy glare of the flames shone upon a hundred grinning masks that had been men. Nor was it any chance collection of skeletons piled together on a battlefield. The pyramid of skulls was regular in shape and no body bones were visible.

The lighting of the fire brought night upon them with a rush, down the black bulk of the mountain slopes and the mouths of the rock gullies that opened into the gorge on either side. Instinctively the men kept close to the blaze, and they ate little dinner although they had fasted since morning. Michael sat apart under guard of a sentry and without food. By Rudolfo's orders he had been bound hand and foot and only the unexpected sight of the monument of skulls had delayed the torture that was preparing at Gian's hands.

Sight of the pyramid told Michael something unknown to the others and only guessed by Rudolfo. The condottiere had lost his way.

During the panicky run of the afternoon, when the sun was invisible behind clouds, Rudolfo unwittingly had doubled again on his course. Whereas Clavijo had started them north that morning; since then they had been circling blindly to the south and east.

And they had penetrated to the terra incognita-the gateway of the unknown land about which Clavijo had babbled. And to the place that Michael had known as the Gate of Shadows, where the five Christians had been buried.

It was a rare jest, thought Michael. Rudolfo was entering the place he had tried to shun, whither Michael had intended to lead him-and Clavijo, the liar, had beheld reality.

He heard a footfall behind him in the gloom and turned his head cautiously, for it was not the sentry's step. The soldier had moved off a score of paces toward the fire and stood leaning on a spear, his back toward Michael.

A foot from his eyes Michael made out the glimmer of steel in the faint light, and stiffened. A cloaked form took shape behind the dagger-a figure bent and stealthy. The knife was thrust forward even as Michael saw it, and its edge sliced away the bonds at his wrists.

Next, food on a wooden platter was placed in his cramped bands.

"Eat, for love of San Marco," breathed a trembling voice. "Brave Master Bearn, worthy captain, hearken but do not turn your head. I have given to the sentry-a murrain on his greed-a whole purse of good silver dinari, that he be blind and deaf for a short moment."

It was Soranzi, and a terrified Soranzi. Michael, as he munched the meat, reflected that Rudolfo's men were capable of taking a leaf from their master's book in selling their services.

"Pietro Rudolfo has dropped his mask with me," began the Venetian swiftly. "Alack! You spoke the truth this noon. I am ruined-beggared! He holds me captive and will take my goods-aye, every packet and bale. Every soldi's worth."

He wrung his hands and plucked at his thin beard viciously.

"Once in Trebizond again, under the weak rule of the Comneni, Rudolfo claims all my store and the fine presents for the Cham as his, as payment for saving our lives, he said. 0 body of San Marco, 0 blessed head of the Pope! He will hold me for ransom-a prince's ransom-" Soranzi sighed, whereat his meager teeth fell to chattering.

"Do you not see the rest, Master Bearn? The varlets, save his bra vi, are dead or will be. Clavijo cannot impeach him, for dread of the retribution of the council. You he will first try to bribe, believing that you, like himself, are bent on spoil. If you refuse his offer Gian will handle you till you reveal the way by which we may return to Trebizond."

"This is no news," said Michael shortly. "It means merely that Rudolfo knows that he has lost his way and is losing patience."

"But you will never see the walls of Trebizond. You will be left in a grave at Cabasica. Nay, more. Rudolfo, see you, with my goods and per son in his hand, will attack and overpower the small Venetian outpost in the city. He will sell his spoils and perchance his sword to Genoa, which will pay a rare price. It was for this he sailed with us. Oh, we are lost! Yet the wise astrologer of my house in Venice predicted sight of extraordinary profits for me on this venture-the like of which I had never handled before."

Soranzi crept closer and clutched Michael's shoulder in a sweating hand.

"Good Master Bearn, you know this country. You are intimate with the pagan Moors and other infidels. I will pay well for a quick hand to aid me. Is it true you can lead us back from this accursed spot?"

Until now the Breton had been surveying the changing shadows on the black mountain walls that seemed to press down toward the fire.

"It is the Gate of Shadows," he said. "The tengeri darband. The Turks say that the spirits of a thousand dead, slain by this sword, walk in the valley of nights. It is the site of a massacre a generation ago. They shun it. Aye, it is a pass in the Ectag Mountains, through which Fra Odoric made his way out of the unknown land that lies beyond."

Even in his panic the merchant was struck by his companion's tone.

"You were here before? How may I know it?" Inbred suspicion struggled with his new desire to propitiate Michael.

"Behind the tower of skulls, in the sand of the gorge between two rocks that have the semblance of men's faces, you will find a grave with a cross, Soranzi."

"I have seen it."

"Five men are buried there. They were my mates, Christian slaves taken from a French caravel off the Anatolian shore."

"In the name of , why did you return hither?"

Michael stretched his stiff arm and laughed.

"To see the face of the king who did not fear the Turk."

The merchant's fears were thronging upon him.

"Hearken, Master Bearn. I see Rudolfo talking with Gian. You are a man of your word; I never doubted it. If I free your feet with this dagger-the knots be overstrong for fingers-and give you the weapon, will you stab Rudolfo when he comes hither? He will think you bound. The sentry is my man. He and I will set upon Gian, until you can join us. Money and their own fears will deliver the other two soldiers to us-"

"And if I will not?"

"Gian's knife in your ear. You want a larger bounty? Name it."

By now Rudolf o and his lieutenant were moving toward them slowly. Soranzi fairly capered in anxiety, holding the dagger just beyond Michael's reach.

"Swear!" he whispered. "Five hundred gold byzants-nay, seven hundred of Venetian weight and measure-"

"A pox on your mouthing," grunted Michael. "Be still!"

He was studying the surrounding darkness with interest. A stone had rolled from the mouth of a nearby gorge. From the plain outside the ravine he could make out the soft click-click where a horse's hoof struck upon rock.

Riders were closing in on the men by the fire. Michael had expected them for some time. Rudolfo, after carelessly letting the Tatar slip away, had left a trail broad enough for a blind man to follow.

Then, as if this were not enough, the Venetians had made a bonfire in the ravine that would indicate the exact position of their camp.

The question in Michael's mind was-were the newcomers Tatars or Turks? Evidently the former, since the Ottoman bands shunned the gorge that they had named the Gate of Shadows.

As he reached this conclusion Michael made out the figure of a horseman at the edge of the circle of firelight. It was a Tatar and the same Tatar that Michael had captured that noon.

One of the men-at-arms beheld the newcomer at the same moment and gave a startled cry. The cry was echoed by Michael's shout.

"Cast down your weapons, fools!"

He knew the danger of resistance if men of the Tatar horde had surrounded them. The dozen Christians, afoot and framed against the fire, would not be a match for half their number of mounted warriors, armed with bows.

Too startled to heed the warning, or believing that Michael meant to betray them to the riders who were emerging out of the shadows, the manat-arms who had given the alarm cast his spear at the foremost rider.

Michael rose, felt the hindrance of the cords on his ankles, caught the knife from the petrified Soranzi, slashed himself free of bonds and thrust the weapon back into the merchant's hand.

Soranzi was clawing at him.

"Guard me! I will pay what you ask."

A score of horsemen rode into the firelight. The Venetian who had cast the spear was cut down by the Tatar who had dodged the missile easily.

Again Michael shouted to his party:

"Stand back! Sheath your swords if you do not love death. Ah, the cattle-" as the men ran about, seeking their weapons and sending a hasty arrow or two at the riders who swept over them with a quick rush of snorting horses and a red flash of swords in the firelight.

Gian ran close to the fire and wheeled, to cast a javelin at a gnome-like rider. The man went down, but a second Tatar caught the lieutenant's sword-thrust on his small round shield and split Gian's steel cap with a sweep of a heavy curved sword.

With a clash of armor Gian fell prone. The sentry who had been standing by Michael as if paralyzed now turned to flee into the dark, crying:

"The fiends of hell are loose! God have mercy upon our souls."

Michael reflected even as he ran toward the fire, avoiding the rush of a horseman, that men who fled from sword strokes and cried on God for help merited little mercy.

The sentry's shout of fear turned to a moan as the Tatar who had passed Michael overtook him in the outer rocks. Soranzi had fallen to his knees and being patently unarmed-the knife had dropped from his trembling hands-was spared for the moment.

Michael saw that Rudolfo had taken a stand between the fire and the tower of skulls, his sword gleaming, his thin lips writhing.

A rider spurred upon the condottiere -Michael noticed that the Tatar horses seemed trained to go anywhere, even near flames-and a squat black body swung from the saddle. The Tatar leader leaped at Rudolfo's head, taking the thrust of the Venetian's sword on his shield.

The weight of the flying body broke the blade like glass and the two men grappled on the ground.

"My left arm for a moment's truce!" thought Michael, turning to face the riders who were trotting up to him. The last of the men-at-arms had been struck down.

"Pax. Oh verily pax! Peace, my gentle dogs. If you are men, bethink you, there has been enough of slaying; if hellions, begone to purgatory, I conjure you-avaunt!"

With the exception of the warrior who was locked in Rudolfo's arms the Tatars reined in and looked up with exclamations of wonder. They saw Bembo.