Swords From the West (57 page)

"Now," said Friedrich "they are lighting candles for us."

Off on either flank stacks of old hay blazed up, glowing red in the thin ground mist. Yes, the Lithuanians were drawing back, punished. Von Prauen waited for the moment when he could launch his horsemen across clear ground, to scatter them and make an end of the night's hunt. Already he was thinking it had been a good sally, giving his Prussian infantry a valuable lesson in night work.

And then he saw the movement on the ground, out from the oak grove off to his flank. The Swabian also looked that way, intent and silent. A disciplined body advanced there at a trot, horsemen who kept an even front. Lances raised-lances longer than any von Prauen had seen before. Strange wings bobbed at the riders' backs, and armor gleamed on them.

Polish knights, von Prauen thought. Szary's brothers. He could make out the red banner of Krakow, and the white eagle standard. So, they had been held back in ambush!

"Get the riders moving!" the Swabian grunted suddenly. "Hide of the devil, are you moonstruck, man? Get into motion!"

"Go, you!" von Prauen shouted. "The first company to the left! The second to follow! Wheel them into column-"

But the Swabian had already left his side, riding fast. The Knights on the left had seen the new attack and were turning. Then von Prauen saw the Poles launch into a gallop. Their horses kept close ranks at incredible speed. He thought: "Those men are riders."

The long lances came down with a clash, leveling just as the Polish charge struck his flank. Bright sparks flew where the steel struck, and a rending roar drowned the komtur's voice. He motioned to the trumpeters behind him, and they blew for a wheel to the left.

"Pikemen form on me," von Prauen shouted, raising his helmet on his sword tip. Only the nearest men heard him, because the smashing of wood and metal on the flank drowned his voice. The blare of his trumpets cut through the tumult. And the disciplined Germans began their wheel by companies.

Through the shrilling of the horns, he heard a new sound, an undertone of voices, rising and falling. It sounded familiar, this slow cadence of prayer. He caught a few words: "Ave Maria gratia plena"-and it seemed strange to him that the voices of the Poles as they prayed should reach his ears. He did not believe at first that they could be so close. Their long swords slashed before their eagles' wings. They were shearing through his moving men, their great horses racing. They picked openings and came through with swinging swords. They were almost at his mound.

The uproar of that charge beat at his ears. Beyond it the red flames leaped in the mist, and von Prauen felt cold sweat on his skin. He had been shouting and no one had heard him. Why, all this was not to be believed. Hay burning and dogs howling, and mad men praying and weeping through the shriek of steel pounding and breaking. Riders speeding like stone balls from his cannon, and horses overthrown like stacks of wheat-

He was watching a nightmare, under the witchery of that lantern in the sky. He was trying to drive away the nightmare by his voice. And all the while his brain reasoned clearly. Item: The long lances of the Poles had overreached the German weapons. Item: The momentum of the Poles had thrown them like stones through his first and second companies. Because, by sheer carelessness he had allowed his Knights to be caught at a foot pace, in the beginning of a wheel, by an unforeseen charge on the flank.

So, the answer of course was to hold the mound with his Prussian pikes. The disciplined Knights would form on the company leaders and fight their way to a new line at the forest, where they must rally on him.

A Knight without a helmet broke from a knot of wheeling horses. Von Prauen saw, for that instant, the face of the Swabian turned toward him. A Polish rider struck him at an angle, and the Swabian's tired horse went over. The Pole swung down with his sword as he passed.

A hand pulled at von Prauen's rein. The white face of his trumpeter peered up at him. The man's voice quavered: "Sir Komtur, what is the order?"

Von Prauen's mind repeated the order clearly: To draw back to the forest. They must cut their way back to Vorberg. Then he heard a man laughing. It was such a jest, this nightmare on the plain, where the damp mist hid his straining, panting men and the white cross of the Poles moved toward him like the wind. His trumpeter tugged, groaning at his rein. And von Prauen knew that he himself was laughing, because no one, now, could hear him give an order.

His clear, orderly mind had betrayed him, and he felt only hot anger. His knees gripped the tired horse under him. His fingers gripped his sword hilt, and he rode down from the mound into that tossing sea of steel.

A blow he took on his shield. His sword smashed out at the buffalo horns on a head, and the head became dark with blood, cracked like a dried melon by the good sword. Something ground into the iron links binding his chest, and he lowered his head. His dry mouth felt damp and sweet, and the red fire before his eyes grew dim. He felt the bones cracking in his chest.

And he looked through half-closed eyes at a clear morning sun. Wet grass cooled his neck, and his empty fingers felt dirt when he moved them.

The heads of two men, unhelmed, looked down at him. Szary's dark face shone with sweat; his eyes blinked wearily. Szary, von Prauen thought, was hurt again, but Szary was alive. Yes, he could smile.

"Sir Komtur," said Szary, "do you hear what I say?"

"Of course."

"Can you ride?"

Von Prauen nodded, and set his teeth against the pain of broken bones grating. The other man spoke. They were waiting for him, if he could sit a horse, to surrender Vorberg to them. By now those of his men who had been fighting their way back through the forest without a leader had yielded themselves in surrender. They had been surrounded in the forest.

"You see," said Szary wearily, "you cannot defend even such a castle as Vorberg without men."

All this, von Prauen thought, could not be so. Even when he rode across the bridge of boats, still intact over the river, that noon, and saw the water gate of Vorberg standing open, with the people of the countryside thronging through, staring at the deserted battlements, he did not believe his eyes. The courtyard of Vorberg was silent, and empty except for that foolish girl perched on the chapel steps, waving her head veil at Szary as if such an absurd action could have some meaning.

"It is impossible, this surrender!" von Prauen shouted.

"Perhaps," Szary said. "But it sometimes happens, when a castle is built on a land that will not endure it."

Chapter I

From the Roof of the World we led out our steeds, to follow the wind for a little play.

Where the banners of Islam were unfurled on the ramparts of Sarai.

Not for wall or door did we draw our reins, till the last of the banners were laid away,

And the shout of "Allah" was heard no more on the ramparts of Sarai.

-The Minstrel's Song

It was a year of many omens. Lightning made the sign of the cross in the sky, and meteors fell along the road to Jerusalem. When the dry season began, locusts came and destroyed the vineyards.

In that year, early in the thirteenth century of our Lord, the mailed host of the crusaders was idle. There was a truce between it and the Saracens who had reconquered Jerusalem and all of the cities of Palestine except the seacoast and the rich province of Antioch.

Before the truce the crusaders had suffered heavily in an attempt to take the port of Egypt, Damietta, and its triple wall. And the retreat over the desert to Ascalon had taken its further toll of the lives of peers and men-at-arms alike. Meanwhile, on three sides of the strip of seacoast, the Moslems gathered their power for the blow that would send the Croises back into the sea from which they had come.

So the omens were interpreted as a warning.

The veriest springald of a squire of dames, new come from Venice or Byzantium and gay with curled ringlets and striped hose, knew that the truce would not last. The older men-at-arms who had fought under the banner of Richard of England, a generation ago, shook their heads and spent their days in the taverns.

Why not? The omens were evil-so the monks said. And the truce had been arranged by the paynim Saracen-an interval before the storm. The monks also said, it is true, that the locusts had eaten the vineyards but had spared the corn, and that this was a warning to drunkards. But the older warriors preferred to drown thought in their wine cups.

In the great northern province of Antioch, the nobles took refuge from the heat of the dry season. Led by Hugo, Marquis of Montserrat and lord of Antioch, they crossed the long valley of the Orontes and made their way to a castle on the western March, a stronghold in the hills where they might hunt and listen to the tales of minstrel and troubadour.

Robert, castellan of Antioch, made his way out of a labyrinth of clay gullies and gave his bay charger the rein. A glance to right and left revealed no human being astir on the yellow desolation of sand over which he was passing to gain the thicket of reeds ahead.

These withered rushes, he knew, bordered the Orontes River, now low in its bed. The horse lengthened its stride as it scented the water, and Sir Robert urged it on with knee and voice. The bay was dark with sweat, for the knight had pushed on at a round pace since sunup, when they left the last mud hovels of Port St. Simeon and lost sight of the sea.

But they had still far to go before nightfall, and the valley of the Orontes was an ill place to linger-without a strong following of spears. And Sir Robert rode alone.

He had landed the day before at St. Simeon with his horse and little else. Two years ago he had been wounded in the Egyptian campaign and had been made prisoner by the mamelukes at the wall of Damietta. It had taken many a month to arrange for his release, for among his enemies Sir Robert bore a name that set him apart from his fellows. By reason of the great sword he carried-a straight, tapering blade, a full four feet of blue steel-they called him Longsword.

And so did the minstrels name him when they made a song about him thereafter.

As he entered the rushes he drew rein sharply and turned in the saddle to stare down at a fresh trail that ran athwart the path he was following. Many a man would have passed it by with a casual glance. But the cas tellan had been born in the hills that towered over Antioch, and he knew the sandy wastes of the Orontes as his father before him had known the courtyard of an earl's hold in England.

The trail was a narrow one, yet possibly a hundred horses had passed over it. The tracks were made by unshod hoofs, so the riders must have come in from the desert. And they had kept to the rushes instead of the main path, higher up where the clay was firmer.

They had wished to hide their tracks as far as possible, yet they had chosen a route in the open where they would be easily observed, unless-the castellan fancied they had traveled at night.

He would have liked to follow the trail. But a sound from the heights he had just left caused him to glance up quickly. The faint drumming of hoofs was unmistakable. An arrow's flight distant, he noticed dust rising above the red clay ridges that lined the gullies.

Waiting long enough to be sure that only one rider was coming after him, he put the bay at the ford and crossed over the river, restraining the horse from stopping to drink. Nor did he look back as he rode slowly up the far bank.

Entering a dense growth of gray tamarisk, higher than the crest of his helm, Robert halted and wheeled his horse to face the back trail where it turned sharply. Pulling the long, triangular shield from its loop over his shoulder, he slid his left arm through its bands and took his sword in his right.

Sir Robert smiled, and his gray eyes, under the steel of the helm, lighted with pleasure. The day's ride, that had been dull and hot until now, promised entertainment.

When he heard hoofs thudding over the sand he pricked the flanks of the bay with his spurs and the two horses met shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the tamarisks. And the castellan, learning forward, thrust the top of his shield over the stranger's sword hilt, gripping the weapon in the fingers of his left hand.

The other rider was not slow to act. A twist of the reins, and his horse lunged aside. But the weapon, held by Sir Robert under the shield, slipped from its scabbard and remained in the hands of the knight.

"Ma kaharani!" said the stranger under his breath. "And what now?"

He was a man gray-haired and massive of limb, clad in splendor of embroidered vest and kaftan, and his brown eyes were shrewd. A Moslem by his garments and turban, yet a Moslem who did not sit in the saddle like a Turk or Arab.

Slung over his shoulder, instead of a shield, was a lute. Behind his saddle, a prayer rug. Sir Robert thought him to be a wandering minstrel.

"Your name!" he demanded, for he ever liked plain words.

Arabic came easily to his tongue, as he had been raised among his father's slaves.

"I am Abdullah ibn Khar, the teller of tales, the cup-companion of an emperor."