Swords From the West (71 page)

Throwing back his head, he laughed, white teeth flashing through his beard.

"By the white horse Kotwan, by the sky dancers, that was a ride we made, from your gate to this gate! These men of Khar be liars! Aye, the men of Khar have tasted fear, and the day is at hand when they will eat shame! Bokhara's wall will be level with the plain and herds will graze where the palaces stood."

Thinking of the prophecy of the dead sheikh, Robert held his peace.

"In Bokhara," resumed Chepe Noyon with relish, "I sang your praises, so that the shah would hear, and demand to see you; then Osman would not dare put you to the torture as he planned. Hai-it happens oftentimes that a pit is dug for a tiger and an ox is trapped. Behold what happened. The imams and the mullah besought Muhammad to make you emir of the city, to lead its defense. And now you may surrender to Genghis Khan, winning honor thereby. If Bokhara resists it will fare no better than Otrar."

Robert held up his hand.

"Is a promise made at sunrise to be broken at sundown?"

"Not the promise of a true man."

"Then I will defend Bokhara. My word is passed, and I will not unsay it."

For a full moment Chepe Noyon gazed up at the vault of the sky and sniffed into his nostrils the odor of the warm sand.

"Tell me this, 0 companion of the road. Can one man cast himself into the water and so stem the rush of a river in flood?"

The crusader was silent, having no answer, and Chepe Noyon did not seem ill pleased.

"The men of Khar are foxes, apt at stealing and flying to cover. I have lived among foxes on the steppe. You know not the depth of treachery in these Moslems as I do, who have sung my songs in diwan and riwan-in council and feast. Each one lusts for the treasure of Khar."

"Is the throne of gold in Bokhara?"

"Aye, well hidden. It lies below ground-so much a drunken priest babbled. The wazir knows the way to it, but priests stand guard over it, and Osman cannot hew them down because his foes would cry sacrilege and muster enough Moslems to cut him and his men to pieces."

He laughed again shortly.

"0 fool-to think they gave you honor in good faith! I overheard the talk between Muhammad and his advisors in the righistan where his elephant took stand. He would have waited to bear off the treasure, but Osman's men declared that he must leave the gold as surety that Bokhara would be relieved by him. He fears Osman and his own mother."

The Mongol looked long at Robert.

"Your eyes would be opened in time, but then it would be too late," he added. "The shah left you behind as a figurehead, to deprive Osman of honor. The mullah took your part because he has a dread of the Kanka- lis-without someone to hold them in check. Osman is shrewd; you cannot deal with him. Bokhara is doomed. We are clear of the gate. Ride then with me. I go to Genghis Khan and the fellowship of true men."

"Go!" said Robert briefly. "I will keep to my place."

"By the eyes of !" cried the Mongol. "Bold words, but what deeds will follow? Summon your men-or they will question you about me. Hai-I will lead them a chase."

He gathered up his reins, and the horse, sensing the purpose of its rider, reared impatiently.

"Nay, there is peace between us, for you saved my life."

"The debt is even, since you shielded me in Palestine. Now the sword is between us."

He lifted his muscular hand to his forehead and lips.

"Ahatou koke Mongku-hai!"

Although Robert did not know it, Chepe Noyon had given him the salute of the royal Mongols.

He listened awhile to the drumming of hoofs on the baked clay of the road and then turned back to the gate reflectively. Abdullah, or Chepe Noyon, had been a wayward kind of friend, but Robert found that he missed the minstrel now that the Mongol was gone for good.

The next day the men on the walls of Bokhara watched columns of Mongols move up from the east and spread out over the plain. All day the dust hung in clouds over masses of riders and herds of horses. The sun gleamed on the horns of cattle and the spears of the guards that shepherded thousands of captives from Otrar.

Robert, studying the array, saw that the Mongol warriors were all mounted, and all looked the same. He could not pick out the leaders. All wore the dust-stained leather and skins, and crude, rusted armor was on a few; here and there above the masses of the Horde moved immense standards-the horns of a stag or buffalo, trimmed with streaming tails, on long poles.

When the dust settled, lines of gray tents, built over a wooden framework, stood in place; back of these the captives and the cattle were herded on the open plain, with the heavy carts of the Horde forming fences around them. Robert bade Will try to count the warriors, and the yeoman estimated a trifle over a hundred thousand, the knight somewhat less.

"By the foul fiend, his cloven hoof!" muttered the archer. "Here is woundy work, i' faith. Our foes be quartered already, and the day is not yet done. A besieger now in Christendom would set about the work in seemly wise. Aye, he would first fashion him out of beam from his baggage-train a fair array of battering engines-mangonels and trebuchets. Aye, stone-casters and rams-chats and foxes and eke towers of assault. Then in another week he would cut and fit together storming-ladders, and we would harry him with a-many cloth-yard shafts and cast back his ladders on his poll-"

"The Mongols lack siege engines to my thinking, Master Will."

"Then do they lack sense, Master Robert. Rede me this riddle: How may men ride horses up a wall? Or tear down the wall with their hands? 'Tis a thing impossible."

He rubbed his long chin and scowled.

"This paynim wizarder hath the right o' the matter. My lord, as he says, we should sally out and fall upon the foe, pikes and bills-sa ha!"

Osman had suggested a sortie of the garrison, arguing that the Bokharians outnumbered the Mongols. But Robert would not give assent to the plan. The Horde puzzled him, and he wished to see what they were about before trusting the Moslem soldiery against them on open ground.

Meanwhile the besiegers established mounted patrols that cut off all communication with the world outside, and this pleased the knight. The shah had given him authority within Bokhara, and now no message could reach the city gainsaying this authority, and he meant to hold the command until the Mongols were beaten off. Beyond that he had made no plans.

By noon of the second day he noticed work in progress within the Mongol lines. Ox-sleds dragged up loads of earth, which was dumped along a front of a hundred yards, facing a portion of the wall where no towers stood. The captives labored at this spot, thousands of them, and the earth mound grew in height as it neared the wall.

"A causeway," he explained to Will. "And a great one. They will push it nearer until it reaches the rampart of our wall."

Whereupon he set to work to place on platforms built behind the menaced point, machines for casting sheaves of arrows and stones.

Throughout the night the Mongols kept at their labor, and the creaking of the carts sounded nearer. The defenders kindled cressets on the rampart and contented themselves with shouted insults and laughter, while Robert slept in a tent under the wall and the archer dozed at the tent entrance. An hour before dawn the knight roused and went to the battlement.

The causeway had crept forward and mounted higher. Now it reared against the stars about a hundred feet back from the edge of the ditch. Robert sent a warrior for Jahan Khan, the leader of the Kankalis, and the atabeg came, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and cursing under his breath. He was a slender man, glittering from knee to throat in gilded mail. Pearls were sewn into his turban, and a heron's plume marked him apart from his men. The right sleeve of his khalat was turned back on a supple shoulder and held by a diamond chain-this marking him for a notable swordsman-yet his eyes were heavy with the after-sleep of opium as he made his salaam.

"Take twice a hundred of your bowmen to the rampart," ordered Robert without salutation, "and scatter the workers upon the mole."

"Ma'shallah!" The atabeg smiled. "Am I a captain of bowmen? Bid me sally forth from the gates, and I will bring you the head of the Mongol chief on a spear."

"You are a bahator, chief of thirty thousand. Can you check the advance of the causeway?"

Robert permitted the torchlight to flash on the signet ring he wore, and after a moment it was clear to the Kankali that the Nazarene meant to be obeyed. Robert dismissed him and ordered food to be brought to the tent. He broke his fast with keen relish, after instructing Will to mount to the wall and mark the progress made by the defenders.

The archer came back indignant. The Mongols had brought up to the head of the mound wooden frames, upon which raw hides had been stretched. These frames were triangular in shape at the front and while they covered the besiegers, permitted earth and stones to be dumped down into the angle and the causeway moved forward as steadily as before. The Moslem archers with their short weapons were doing no damage at all.

"Bid the khan," Robert ordered one of his followers, "set the engines to work."

Response came back promptly that Jahan Khan declared the handling of stone-casters was not in the order given him.

"Then say to the khan that he is to come to my tent for a new order."

The knight was finishing the last of his rice and fruit and washing his hands when Jahan Khan approached and made as if to sit beside him.

"Stand," said Robert quietly, and while a hundred pairs of eyes watched intently he commanded two bowmen who came with the chief to chain Jahan Khan's arms and lead him away to his tent, there to guard him until relieved.

"What shame is this?" yelled the startled khan. "Am I dirt-I, Jahan Khan, the bahator?"

He gripped his scimitar hilt convulsively, and a great sigh went up from the crowd that had gathered about them.

It was the first real test Robert had made of the power given him, and he sat on his carpet without stirring or looking up at the raging chief. If he had started to explain his action, Jahan Khan might have pushed the quarrel to blows; if the crusader put hand to weapon, the man would strike first and claim afterward that he had done so in defense of his life. In the shadows at his back he heard Will Bunsley slip an arrow from quiver.

After awhile he motioned toward one of the younger begs, the tallest of the officers present. This sign among Moslems was as if Robert had beckoned, and after a second's hesitation the warrior strode forward, the crusader waiting until he saw fit to make a salaam.

"Ho, Moslems," snarled Jahan Khan, "this Nazarene takes upon his shoulders the mantle of the shah, and that is a shame upon us all."

It was just too late to appeal to the religious zeal of the Kankalis, because now they had grown curious as to what Robert wanted of the younger beg. They pressed closer to stare, and after a little reflection Jahan Khan took his hand from his weapon, choosing to make the conflict one of words.

"Do you," Robert remarked to the attentive younger warrior, "take the leadership of the Kankalis, and fight as a man should. And you-" he turned to the doubtful bowmen-"confine this atabeg until he has slept off the opium in his tent. You have leave to go!"

With that he turned his back and no more words were spoken. Jahan Khan was too surprised to argue, and one or two laughed as he went off. Robert had made good his authority against the most troublesome adherent of the wazir, and he knew that the account of the quarrel would be in every quarter of the city by dawn. It was well worth the risk he had taken.

To help the new leader, he sent Will Bunsley to the wall to show the Moslem archers how to loose their arrows in a high arc, to fall behind the protecting shield. The tumult above grew louder, and the grind and thud of catapult and mangonel sounded above the whistling of the arrows as the sun rose. Although the Mongols suffered from the fire, they pressed the work. The remnants of the captives were sent to the rear, and lines of armed men bore sacks of earth and stones up the causeway. The shields were wrecked, and, for a time the bodies of men fell over the head of the causeway as thickly as the sacks.

Then arrows began to fly from the Mongol lines and sweep the battlement.

"Ha, lord," muttered Will, "mark how yonder shafts cleave the paynim shields! They be stoutly sped, with a true eye. Would I had fourscore Lincolnshire lads here upon the rampart!"

He sighed and presently uttered an exclamation of astonishment.

Under cover of the arrow-flights the Mongols began a new building-up of the causeway, which had ceased to move forward. The ox-carts were driven out of the camp by hundreds and steered up the incline.

Men with torches herded the bellowing animals up the causeway, and once the mass started forward, the oxen kept on, goaded by spears and the smoking torches. The first carts reached the brink of the embankment and rolled over and the rest came after in a steady stream of frantic beasts and splintering wagons. The arrows of the Moslems fell fruitlessly among them, and Robert saw that the carts were loaded with sand and stone. Men, caught in the rush of surging animals, stood up and shouted defiance at the wall. One powerful warrior in a tigerskin hurled his torch at the Kankalis and leaped out from the cart, to fall into the ditch and be crushed by the carts that came after him.

When the causeway stood upon the edge of the ditch, as high as the wall and some twenty feet from it, the Mongols withdrew and quiet settled down. Robert left the Kankalis in charge opposite the causeway and rode to seek out Kutchluk Khan, who was camped across the city with his Turkomans.

The one-eyed chief came forward on foot, and the crusader did not dismount, for he was entitled to speak to the old warrior from the saddle.

"Take half your men-ten thousand of the best armed-and clear away the stalls and sheds of the suk. Quarter yourselves in the marketplace which is in the center of the city. When a wide space is cleared, assemble your men and report to me. Can you reach any point in the wall, riding four abreast from the suk?"