Swords From the West (10 page)

"Here is thy dagger." He laid it in her hand. "But why dost thou cherish it? "

She looked as pleased as a child when a toy is given back.

"It hath a sigil, a charm, written upon it." Her slender finger rested briefly on the gold inlaid inscription. "To others it would be naught. To me it is much. Thou art generous." Swiftly as before she seemed to change, to become older, a troubled light in her eyes. "Allah knows I have no worthy gift to give thee in return, Lord Ni-al."

She came closer, her head touching his shoulder, and whispered so low that even a cat could not have heard in the room near them.

"Promise me one thing. If there is war-sudden and fierce as the black windstorm-thou wilt ride hither, at once, turning aside for nothing at all."

Her eyes pleaded silently.

"To aid me," she breathed softly, "for I will need it."

"If there be war, aye."

Nial turned away abruptly, made his way down into the courtyard past the empty slippers. He did not trust himself longer with Shedda. He mounted the gray charger swiftly and trotted back to thrust the money into Mahmoud's hand.

"A noble steed and a princely buyer," cried the blind man. "Come again to look at Mahmoud's horses."

But Nial was already beyond hearing, riding heedlessly, a strange fever in his veins.

From the screened balcony Shedda watched him go, and settled back listlessly on the cushions as a man in a red robe, covered by a dervish's camelhair surcoat, crawled through the window and reproached her.

"Eh, has the tall warrior robbed you of wisdom? What said you to him at the end?"

Shedda sat up suddenly.

"What concerns thee not at all, who art a snake, to crawl and steal from these strangers."

It was a chance shot, but it made Mardi Dobro chuckle.

"Eh, the jewels from the sack! While thou and yonder swordsman were exchanging blows and endearments in the serai, I ferreted it out, with the skill of a swooping hawk. But the jewels were shining and worthless. They would not buy one sick camel."

The sorcerer rocked thoughtfully on his heels, his lined face puckered.

"This youth knows naught of the game that is to be played," he murmured.

"Nothing," she assented. "He hath honor in him, and his thoughts can be seen in his face."

"Already he loves thee, 0 most splendid of women. But as to Tron we know no more than before." Mardi Dobro glanced about him cautiously. "What brought thee to this place? Eh, even the mules shy at this gate of Mahmoud's where the girls he calls his wives wear no veils."

"Yet the girls come and go, and Mahmoud is blind. Much can be seen through this lattice. I have seen hundreds go forth on fresh horses." Shedda shrugged her shoulders and fell to playing with the dagger, flashing the bright steel in the flecks of sunlight, while Mardi Dobro waited patiently for her brooding to end.

"Ahmed and Yashim," she whispered at last, "feed their men with suspense. It is true they number more than twelve thousand. Mahmoud has furnished the horses, while Tron, who knows their plans, hath ships waiting for them at Tana."

"Ships? What have they to do upon the sea?"

"Perhaps they will flee when this thing is done. They will rise and strike and flee."

The shaman considered this.

"Today," he muttered, "a writing came by the courier from Tana. Ku Yuan says that-" he barely breathed the words-"the khan hath left the army. Alone, he rides the northern road, very swiftly, changing horses by day and night."

"Alone!"

"To Sarai he draws his reins. He could not loose the army from the war, nor could a single regiment of the Horde keep pace with him. He comes to strike down these heads that are rising up against him here."

"But alone." Shedda tossed her head proudly, even while sudden fear darkened her eyes. "What if the Moslems know of his coming? They will wait at the gates like panthers hunting in the dark."

The shaman's thin fingers caught at his hair.

"If they take him-"

"Alive, they could not. But if they slay him and fling his head into the palace!"

Mardi Dobro cringed. Barka Khan ruled with an iron hand, yet without him the alleys of Sarai and all the steppes would be drenched with blood. If the Moslems had spies with the army, word of the khan's coming might reach Sarai ahead of him. A messenger pigeon would outstrip the fastest post horses. And now there was no way to reach Barka Khan with a fresh warning. He might enter Sarai the next day. He might even now be dismounting at some tavern.

"The omens," Mardi Dobro cried.

"Oh, I am weary of portents." Shedda sheathed her dagger angrily. "Go off to thy white bones and smoke!" But as the sorcerer shuffled to his feet, she motioned him back, to whisper, "What say the omens concerning the-this Lord Ni-al of thine."

"Of thine, rather," grumbled Mardi Dobro. "It is as I told thee before at Tana. Then I beheld the ring of misfortune around a silver moon, and a reading of the bone foretold this: that one would come out of the sea marked by a great fortune, yet unaware. Aye, he would give aid to the khan with his sword, unknowing. As the signs foretell, it must be."

At his own courtyard Nial reined in, to look to right and left. There were perhaps a hundred gray chargers like this one in Sarai, but he did not want to be seen leading it into his quarters. The alley was deserted.

Nial led in his horse and, after rubbing it down with hay, gave it some water and barley. He hung up the saddle and cast a blanket over it, then made his way up to Tron's room.

The merchant lifted his pallid face as he bent over the glowing brazier.

"At last! I see you have the nag. Now must we work apace." His red beard twitched as he spoke. "You must go tonight to the Altyn-dar."

Nial's pulse quickened and he drew a long breath.

"Faith," he said, "I'll eat supper first." He ate heartily of the food the Greek brought up, but Tron only drank goblet after goblet of wine.

"In the bazaar," he explained, "the rumor runs, Messer Nial, that Barka Khan will ride into Sarai at any hour. I had not looked for that. When the khan is here, the place swarms like a hive, and the Altyn-dar will be full of Tatars. We must try it tonight, after the guard is changed at the fourth hour."

Nial nodded. That would be in about three hours, since the first hour of the night began at sunset.

From his wallet the merchant drew a folded slip of white silk upon which a plan had been sketched.

"Know ye how to read a map, Messer Nial? Good. This is the upper floor of the treasury, where the rarer things are kept. I worked therein, judging precious stones, for hours once. See where the corridors run from the stairhead. This central chamber is called the heart, and it holds the Green Lion with some other jewels of the khan."

Taking the silk in his hand, Nial studied it between mouthfuls.

"You will have this small iron saddle-lantern that burns oil. The Tatars hook them to their belts. I was told the Green Lion stands alone on a marble block."

"And if it doth not-if it is not to be found?"

"Nay, it will be there. I know the khan bath not taken it into the field, and it is always kept in its place." Tron hesitated. "There is a tale that it hath some unseen guard about it, mayhap a spell laid upon it by some ranting pagan sorcerer like the one who carried a bone about in Tana."

He explained that the Altyn-dar was a huge structure, and that once past the guards at the entrance, Nial might see no one until he came out. Nial had watched the Tatars in the street, and had seen them salute each other; and Tron had taught him a word or two of greeting. Unlike the Moslems, the Tatars rarely talked.

"All this I know," put in the swordsman quietly, "but where is the talsmin?"

Reluctantly, as if surrendering his own blood, Tron drew from the breast of his tunic a silk-wrapped package. Unrolling it, he held out a strange object, a flat oblong of bronze as long as his hand and more than an inch in width.

"Here," he said slowly, "is the key that will unlock all gates and yield to you all that you ask."

Nial took it and examined it. A hole had been pierced in one end and the other bore, in raised gold, a lion's head. Between the two ran an inscription. The characters of the writing were not Arabic or anything known to him, but they seemed familiar. The inscription on Shedda's dagger had been in these characters, but-Nial had an eye for details-not just the same.

"What says it?" he asked.

"'By command of Barka Khan, the Lion Lord, obedience shall be given to him who holds this.' It is the Mongol speech, written in Uighur char acters. 'Tis called a paizah, or tablet. But the tiger and falcon tablets are held by couriers or generals of the Horde. This lion paizah grants to its possessor the veritable authority of the khan himself. I think there are not ten of them in all the lands of the Horde."

Nial wondered what had been written on Shedda's dagger.

"Are not these ten possessors known to all men-to all the officers of the khan?" he mused.

"Nay, some are envoys in far lands, and some are secret agents. I had a man who got one into his hands long enough to make, unseen, a fair impression in wax. From the wax I had this imitation made in Genoa, exact in every item."

Then Tron showed Nial how to hang the paizah upon a cord of twisted silk and wear it about his throat under his outer garment.

"In an hour," he muttered, "you will have the great emerald, and this talisman, which could open a way to Tana as fast as the swiftest post horses could gallop."

"Or," added Nial thoughtfully, "I may be hung up for torture like a plucked raven. Have you a sword for me?"

The Genoese looked blank.

"Nay, by God's head, I forgot."

"Then," Nial said, "will I take mine own, for better or for worse."

After the fourth hour of the night he rode out upon the gray horse. From boots to eagle feather he was a Tatar gur-khan. Even his skin had been oiled and the lines about his eyes touched up by the careful Tron. At the first corner he passed a hurrying Moslem, who drew back with a mutter of fear. Nial smiled and rode on leisurely toward the palace. Off to his right he could hear the wail of a muezzin calling a summons:

"Come to prayer-come to prayer ... Come to the house of praise ... No God but God..."

This would be the night prayer after the fourth hour, and the punctual Tatars would have changed their guard at the palace. Nial headed through the empty streets toward the height, dim against the stars. Skirting the wall of the Moslem cemetery, he began to ascend a long slope, guiding himself by a fire at the top.

Presently he could make out the helmets of soldiers squatting by the fire, and then their faces. His horse shied suddenly. Looking down, he made out a heap of dark objects that smelled of rotting bone. They were human heads, some shrunk to the bone and others picked bare by the kites. Tightening his rein, he rode past this place of execution, and was saluted by a solitary horseman who glanced at him, lifting his right hand and carrying it to his mouth.

"Ahatou!" Nial muttered acknowledgment.

He was by the outer guard, and the loom of rock walls fell behind him. His horse neighed as he trotted along the stone fence of a remount corral-the Horde kept its horses close at hand-and a mounted guard turned to watch him casually. Tron had told him how to go; by the well beyond the corral, past the barrack and the dark palace of Barka Khan, to the dome of the Altyn-dar.

When he reined in, with the mass of the dome over his head and a high, blank wall confronting him, he delayed an instant before dismounting. He could still turn back and ride down into Sarai, and every instinct in him cried out to do so. Narrow embrasures peered at him, like veiled eyes, and he knew that human eyes were watching him.

He had proof of this at once because the arched gate, looming black in the gray wall, creaked, and by the glimmer of his small lantern he saw one half of it swing toward him. It opened enough for a horse to pass through, and a Tatar with a shield came out and stood aside casually.

He could not hesitate, because uncertainty would bring questions that he could not answer. Swiftly he reflected that the men of the Horde went everywhere in the saddle, even from one end of a street to the other. And surely there would be other guards with lights somewhere within. This man could only be a gatekeeper. Nial urged his horse forward, bending his head under the arched portal.

He was in a square chamber with blank stone walls except on the right where an inclined way led gradually up.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the guard close the half of the gate and bar it. Lights gleamed at the head of the ramp a stone's throw away, and Nial started to ascend it, his ears strained for a challenge.

The darkness behind him remained soundless as a tomb. Nial noticed that narrow embrasures pierced the inner wall upon his left. And holes appeared in the arched ceiling. Arrows and fire could be showered upon any invaders of the ramp. His horse plodded up, switching his tail and pricking his ears forward. Torches flared and smoked above them at the head of the inclined way.

Here he was halted. A guard stepped forward and caught his rein. Nial swung down from his stirrup, rubbing his hands against his hips to dry them. Under his long blue coat hung his sheathed sword.

One of the Tatars called out, and the darkness of the ramp echoed in answer. Nial saw that in front of him a similar inclined way led down, and he wondered briefly what lay below. Then an officer confronted him with a guttural question.

Without hurrying, Nial drew the paizah from the breast of his coat. At once the Tatars, even the torch bearers, fell to their knees, lowering their heads to the floor. Nial forced himself to wait until the officer had risen; then he replaced the tablet, unhooked the lantern from his belt and turned to ascend the stairs on his left.

He moved stiffly as if he had been long in the saddle, and he did not look behind him.

"They may send an arrow or a man after me," he thought, "but at least they can't talk to me now."

At the turning of the stair he glanced down. The Tatars were tying the horse to a ring in the wall. Only the officer stared after him, as if puzzled. Nial drew a long breath of relief as he climbed the last steps. And then he stopped in his tracks.