Swords From the West (5 page)

"I have not lied," he cried-aware now that the issue was at hand. "Be ye witnesses that she is mine." His left hand dropped from Marie's shoulder and gathered up his reins.

Subai Ghazi made a gesture as if casting something from him. "Strike!" he commanded.

The officers nearest him freed their swords and pulled up their horses' heads. But Sir Bruce did not let them rush in upon him. He drove in his spurs and the gray Arab leaped toward Subai Ghazi.

Sir Bruce had no chance to escape or defend himself. The ring of warriors broke and closed in, as wolves leap at a stag. An arrow crashed against his helmet and sent it spinning underfoot. He heard the whistle of steel at his ear and flung up his left arm-and felt the edge of a saber bite into the mesh of his mail.

He rose in his stirrups and lashed down with his sword. The long blade caught the Tatar in front of him and cut through the man's uptossed shield and arm and shoulder, crushing the bones of his chest. Sir Bruce freed his sword with a wrench as a second rider shouldered aside the rearing pony of the dying man. He had not time to strike again, but he leaned forward, dashing the iron pommel of his heavy sword into the scowling face of the Tatar.

No one was between him and Subai Ghazi.

The Tatar chieftain might have pulled back among his men; instead, he reined forward, his broad face alight with eagerness. His scimitar flashed down at the knight's uncovered head. But the long blade parried his cut, and Subai Ghazi half wheeled his rearing horse, to take Sir Bruce upon the left hand.

And then he flung himself back, only warding with a desperate twist of his wrist the point of the long blade that leaped at his throat.

Before Subai Ghazi could recover his seat in the saddle-before anyone could come between them-Sir Bruce caught the Tatar's right forearm in the mailed fingers of his left hand and thrust back. Subai Ghazi's knees bent, and his shoulders were forced down to the rump of his horse. Under the red coat his massive body tensed and strained against the arm that held him helpless on his back. He slipped his feet from the stirrups and would have slid to the ground, but in that instant the point of Sir Bruce's long sword darted down through his beard, through the skin under his chin-and stopped, with half an inch of steel in his throat muscles.

Subai Ghazai's big body lay passive. The Tatars who had been about to cut down the solitary swordsman checked their horses. Blunt fingers released taut bow cords slowly. A warrior on foot stepped forward and grasped the reins of the white horse, holding him quiet, lest he swerve or rear.

"Two lives for thine, Subai Ghazi!" Sir Bruce said deep in his throat. "Mine and the khanim's!"

"Ahai!" the Tatar grunted. Blood was trickling from his beard.

A flashing thought had stayed the knight's hand. He held the life of Subai Ghazi in his fingers. If he freed the savage chieftain, there was a chance that Subai Ghazi might release the girl and himself-without him she would be lost. Somewhere he had heard that Subai Ghazi's word would stand.

The green eyes glared up at him malevolently, and the muscles in the Tatar's throat worked. Suddenly he gave his answer in his own way. He spat weakly toward the tense face above him, and growled a single word "Strike!"

A clamor of amazement, rage, and sorrow burst from his followers. Then there was utter silence. Sir Bruce had lifted his sword and sheathed it in its scabbard.

"Subai Ghazi bahator," he smiled. "A brave man, thou."

The Tatar, who had once sworn that he would never yield to a foe sat up in the saddle, found his stirrups-took up his reins and lifted the scimitar that he still grasped. Curiously he gazed at his foe, indifferent to the blood dripping down his beard.

"Thou hast sheathed thy sword!" he exclaimed. "Thy head is bare-and," he added grimly, "I did not pledge thee life!"

"Nay," Sir Bruce assented gravely, "but now thou art witness that my word is true. This woman is mine. Would I stand between thee and-a gift?"

Sir Bruce smiled, because he had played his last stake and the game was out of his hands.

"Kai!" the Tatar growled. "The dog -born dog in Tana sent out to me another man's wife. Veil thy wife and go!"

At the end of that night sitting on a height by the pavilion where Marie slept, Sir Bruce kept watch over a camp deserted by all but the horses. He looked back into the darkness along the way they had come. Leagues distant, against the faint glimmer of the sea, a point of flame rose and sank. Smoke drifted against the stars.

Subai Ghazi had galloped far that night. And now at dawn, in Tana, the red cock crowed.

Sir Bruce needed no guide to follow the edge of the sea, over the dry steppe. With Marie at his side, he rode through the barren land where only the eagles of the sky and the wild marmots watched them-until the girl saw a long dust line moving across their path, and in the dust the nodding heads of beasts. "The caravans!" she cried.

"Aye, the caravans." The eyes of Sir Bruce kindled and he smiled. "And now yell be after coming home-wi' me."

The winter's blanket of snow lay deep on the land. It stretched from the frozen tundras down to the southern sea-down to the shallow, tideless gray water of the Sea Gate.

Here clear skies and a warm sun melted the snow. Reed-bordered lakes overflowed into the alleys of the Gate itself. And lines of galleys jostled like feeding dogs along the embankment of the caravan road. Out of these galleys swarmed men of all kinds-warriors striding under their gear and slaves bent under hemp sacks-to the bank where sable-clad merchants argued in many tongues and riders in wolfskins spattered them with mud, unheeded. The jangling bells of mules echoed the grunting of lines of camels kneeling for their loads.

For this Sea Gate, as the newcomers called it, was the port of Tana. To the north and east of it stretched a new and limitless empire, an empire ruled by horsemen and filled with unknown treasures. The caravan road that began at Tana went by thousand-mile stages into the heart of Cathay.

To Cathay where, in this year of the Leopard in the second cycle of his reign, the great Khan Kublai ruled all the Hordes.

Mardi Dobro sniffed the morning air with relish and went down to the waterfront to begin his day's work. Being a shaman, he lived by his wits. He knew the tricks of conjuring and telling omens; he was an old hand at making or unmaking spells and writing prayers for the sick to swallow.

In his soiled red robe, with a white bearskin pulled over his high shoulders, Mardi Dobro pushed through the tumult to a dry spot by a fire. His green eyes, framed in the tangle of his long black hair, seemed to take no notice of the men around him as he knelt and picked a glowing ember from the fire.

"Ai-ha!" The watchers breathed expectantly.

Without haste the shaman placed the ember on a bone, the cleaned shoulder bone of a sheep. As the ember scorched the bone, tiny cracks appeared around it.

"0 lord of omens," someone asked, "what do the signs foretell?"

From the tangle of his hair, Mardi Dobro had been watching the crowd that gathered as usual to the omen-telling.

"Great powers are arising, unseen," he muttered, and waited.

"Against whom?" asked the questioner.

Mardi Dobro glanced at him and saw only a fat Tatar.

"The powers," he explained, "are like snakes in the dark. They are moving against the feet of the Lord of the West and the East."

"That is Barka Khan." The Tatar nodded.

"They have poison in them, and they will strike him unless he slay them first."

Behind the shaman a rider reined in for a moment. Mardi Dobro did not turn his head; but he watched the horseman move away and, without waiting to hold out his bowl for payment, he got to his feet and followed.

The horseman passed slowly through the crowd, staring about him. He had the beak and eyes of a hawk, and his close-clipped beard flamed red. Mardi Dobro laid a hand upon his stirrup.

"Ai, tura," exclaimed the shaman, "0 master, I have tidings for your nobility."

He spoke in Arabic, seeing that this stranger was a Christian from the lands of the Franks, and a merchant. Most merchants knew something of Arabic.

"Y'allah," cried the horseman. "Go on. I have naught for thee!"

"But a woman! 0 master, I have seen such a girl-"

"I have naught for girls."

Mardi Dobro kept his grip upon the stirrup, shaking his great head reproachfully.

"Yet the woman is of the race of your nobility. She is in the caravan of Yashim the Bokharian. She is beautiful as a white, swift camel. Look!"

The stranger looked. He was, as Mardi Dobro had guessed, a merchant. He was also a rich man, owning four cargo ships and warehouses upon
the Dark Sea,*
being one of the astute Genoese who were gleaning fortunes out of the new Eastern trade. Although he traveled about alone and apparently without weapons, he had agents in every port and could summon an armed following with a word. The name of Messer Paolo Tron was known from Constantinople to Baghdad.

He did not need to ask what girl Mardi Dobro meant. Yashim's caravan occupied a courtyard behind a wall, which served to screen it from the eyes of common men on foot, while horsemen could look over it. In the shade of the far wall a rug had been spread and groups of unveiled girls sat in noisy talk under guard of a giant swordsman.

Tron uttered an exclamation of surprise and urged his horse through the open gate. He ran no risk in doing so, because these girls were certainly slaves, and as certainly placed here for sale, unveiled. One sat apart from the rest, and the sun struck upon the mass of her red-gold hair. Her drowsy eyes looked up at him curiously.

When he asked a brief question, she answered in a low, clear voice. For a moment he weighed the worth of her beauty in his mind, and then, as the swordsman came up, turned away.

"Eh," cried Mardi Dobro at the gate, "will your nobility not buy her away from that black dog, Yashim?"

"Nay," said Tron impatiently, "she is only a mountain girl, a barbarian. Why did you lie, saying that she was of my people?"

"Her hair is like yours. Such as she-these fair mountain women-are strong and faithful. She is worth a high price, and you may find a great profit in her."

"I buy no slaves." The Genoese rubbed his saddlehorn with a gloved hand thoughtfully. "Why did you say, at the fire, that enemies were rising against Barka Khan?"

Mardi Dobro held out his bowl, pointing to the sheep bone.

"Eh, the fire itself spoke. By this sign-"

With a grunt of impatience Tron brushed the bowl aside with his foot and rode off.

"A man," the shaman muttered to himself, "who trusts his ears and not his eyes will come to a bad end."

But as he stood in the alley, bowl in hand, he used his own ears which were keen as a hound's. He was following a scent where a hunting dog could not follow it, through a multitude of men. Listening, he heard a babble of voices on the embankment-a babble of many tongues-and he made his way toward it.

His path was blocked by two men. One, with turban awry, stumbling at every other step, knelt at a command from the other, a Tatar soldier carrying a drawn saber. Before Mardi Dobro could pass, the Tatar placed himself behind the kneeling man and reached his free hand over the turban, catching two fingers in the other's nostrils. Then the soldier bent back the head without haste and thrust the curved edge of the saber across his victim's throat.

"Agh-a-a-"

A wild scream was choked off, and the Tatar executioner drew his sword free with a jerk, severing the backbone as he did so. He let the head fall, wiped his bloodied blade on the garments of the body and hastened toward the tumult. An execution mattered little; but brawling was forbidden by Barka Khan.

Together, the soldier and Mardi Dobro came out on the embankment. At a table by a stairhead a Chinese secretary sat with his seals and record rolls. Around him had gathered a throng of interpreters and beggars. The Chinese officer, Mardi Dobro knew, was supposed to write down the names of all who came from the ships to the port, to list their occupations and destinations, whether they were Russian princes or negro slaves.