The Thief of Kalimar; Captain Sinbad; Cinnabar

by Graham Diamond

  “I — I’m sorry I let you down, mi capitan” choked Rudolpho, opening blurry eyes and straining to see.

  Sinbad mopped the sweat from his brow. “You didn’t let me down, young friend. You fought well, as well as any man I’ve ever known … ”

  Rudolpho smiled through his pain and sighed. Father Augusto, sword still in hand, stood over him and prayed softly. The child was dying, but perhaps it was well, for at least he would not have to witness the end, when Pansa would burn to rubble and its people to ashes.

  Rudolpho pulled at Sinbad’s collar; his lips trembled and he fought to get the words out. “I can hear them, Captain Sinbad,” he mumbled. “The horns of your ship, come to save the village … ”

  Sinbad stared at him briefly, then turned to Methelese. The wise Greek shook his head. “He’s delirious, Sinbad … ” The grip tightened, and Rudolpho sputtered, “Listen, Sinbad. Listen!” Then the grip released; Rudolpho took a long breath and slumped his head on the captain’s shoulder.

  Sinbad got up slowly, tears in his eyes, hands trembling. “They’ll pay for this,” he vowed, and he spun around, knife in hand, to greet the next line of bandits scurrying over the wall. To his shock, there were none. The ropes and ladders were still there — but no one was climbing.

  Elisa stared at him bewildered. Methelese began to say something but stopped at the low wail of a horn coming from the direction of the harbor.

  Sinbad scampered across the tower and leaned himself far over the parapet. Amid the haze of battle he could see only a jumble of activity throughout the village. His eyes burned like the devil from the rising smoke and he held his breath as he stared through the mist.

  “What’s going on?” cried Elisa.

  The dumbfounded mariner held out his hands and shrugged. And then it came again, the same blast, only louder and closer.

  Father Augusto and Methelese ran to his side. The priest wiped grime and splattered blood from his eyes and peered into the distance. “Sails,” he whispered. “I see sails … ”

  Sinbad clutched at the wall, not daring to believe. Then he saw them, too, the wide, billowing sails of a great ship. But it was not the Sherry, no certainly not the Sherry; he would recognize his own vessel at once.

  He stared and gasped. The swan-necked prow came into view. It was a long ship, a Nordic ship. And another right beside it.

  “King Harald!”

  Onto the fiery dock, brandishing battleaxes and heavy broadswords, charged a hundred and more of Denmark’s finest Vikings. Sinbad looked on dumbly, disbelieving his eyes. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be … Yet there they were, rampaging into Pansa like swarming locusts, routing Suliman’s forces in the plaza, sending the bandit army reeling back in the direction of the hills.

  “A miracle!” cried the priest, crossing himself.

  “More than that, Father,” responded Methelese.

  Don Manuel and his daughters began to cheer, clapping their hands and urging the new attackers on.

  “Stay put,” Sinbad barked to his companions. Then he looked to the frog and grinned. “Well, Giovanni? Are you coming — or do you want to miss all the fun?”

  With a croak, the frog hopped to Sinbad’s shoulders. Then the mariner grasped a siege rope and before the startled eyes of everyone swung himself down into the fray.

  Cries of “Odin!” and “Thor!” and “For Denmark!” resounded through the air. Bandits were fleeing this way and that, running like crazed men at the very sight of the furred Vikings setting upon them. Sinbad held his ground only briefly; he stuck out his foot, tripped a bandit, and watched as the fellow cringed when a mighty Viking ax came sailing down to split his skull. The victor of the skirmish stood over the lifeless body, hands on hips, and bellowed a laugh before raising his weapon and cleaning the blood off the blade. In the darkness and the heavy smoke, Sinbad recognized that laugh. It was the fearsome king of Denmark himself.

  “My liege!”

  Harald turned abruptly, squinted his steely eyes, and searched the dark to see who had called him. Sinbad stepped from the shadows, his features flickering in the glow of the fires.

  Harald stared at him and roared, “Ah, so it’s you! Captain Sinbad! By Odin, I’m glad to find you alive!”

  Sinbad glanced at the menacing ax, almost as big as he was, and gulped. He quickly remembered that the last time the king had laid eyes on him he had vowed to kill him.

  Harald chuckled and scratched at his flowing beard. All around him more Vikings were rushing helter-skelter, flinging weapons, heaving screaming bandits into ditches and cesspools and fires.

  “How … How did you get here? … I don’t understand … ”

  Harald slapped the mariner so hard on the back that Sinbad almost toppled over. “The storm,” bellowed the king. “The storm that Methelese conjured up so you could escape the Cretans. The weather was so bad, for so long, that even my ships could not weather it. We put into harbor, off course, and found ourselves in your damned Moorish Cordoba.”

  Sinbad was astounded; events were happening so fast that he could not keep up with them. “But how did you know where we were? Who told you of Pansa?”

  Here the king’s eyes gleamed; he turned Sinbad around, pointing him in the direction of the flaming harbor. And there she stood, quietly in the bay, not a hundred meters from the village. The Scheherazade, sails furled, as shipshape as ever. Milo had not let him down.

  “We anchored off Tarragona,” went on the blustery Harald, “and stayed on a few days to make repairs. Moors attacked us several days ago, and took a few of my men prisoner … ”

  “Suliman!” gasped Sinbad.

  “Aye. The very same. We would have made short shrift of his filthy little army had they not all fled for the hills.” Here he shrugged. “And we were ready to set sail for home when your own ship slipped from her hiding place at the cove.” He laughed jovially. “What a storm, Sinbad! I’ve never seen one like it!”

  Sinbad groaned at the memory. “But continue,” he said, “what happened next?”

  “Well,” said Harald with a sigh, “the sight of the Scheherazade was certainly one we did not expect, as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. As a matter of fact, my first inclination was to burn and sink you, hang your crew, and drag you home to Roskilde in chains … ”

  Sinbad swallowed hard; Harald’s broad smile remained. “However, I must admit that I was talked into not taking such rash action.”

  Scratching his head, Sinbad said, “By whom?”

  Harald squeezed the mariner’s shoulder. “By my daughter, Thruna, that’s who! Come, come, my dear Arabic friend, surely you know that Thruna fell in love with you the minute she first saw you!”

  “My lord! Never! Why, I … ” He turned crimson.

  Harald bellowed again. “Don’t seem so shocked; believe it or not, Thruna saved your life. Had she not begged — begged at my feet, I tell you — I would have taken your puny ship and … ” He closed his fist slowly, saying nothing, but the implication was all too clear.

  “Anyway,” Harald went on, “We stopped your vessel and Felicia implored me to let bygones be bygones. She offered all your treasures stolen from Phalus if I would only make haste and follow the Sherry to this place, Pansa.”

  Sinbad’s eyes narrowed. “All the treasures?”

  Harald nodded somberly. “Everything.”

  “And you took it?”

  Here the wily king smiled. “All of it — including Felicia herself, whom I intend to make my next wife.”

  The captain from Baghdad was astounded; he took a deep breath of smoke-filled air and whistled.

  “Never mind,” said Harald in fatherly fashion. “All’s fair in love and war, as they say. But you need not feel angered or jealous, Captain. I’ll tell you what: Why don’t you come back to Roskilde with me? Perhaps we can have a double wedding.”

  Sinbad held up his hands, palms forward, and shook his head with a slightly bemused grin. “Forgive me, my liege, but —
er — your daughter, lovely though she is, is not the woman I intend to marry. I already have someone waiting for me, someone far, far away, back home in Baghdad.” The king of Denmark frowned. “A pity; I think I would have enjoyed having you for a son-in-law. Are you certain you won’t change your mind?”

  The two men faced each other evenly and Sinbad shook his head. “I’m sorry, Harald, but I can’t … ”

  At first the king’s features darkened at the rebuke, but slowly a smile worked its way over his chiseled face and soon he was grinning. “I think I understand,” he said with a sigh. “Thruna is going to be very disappointed. Still, she’ll find another.” He rubbed thoughtfully at his chin. “Perhaps one of those Britons … ”

  Trumpets were blasting from the direction of the road; a vanguard of Suliman’s horsemen were forming to block the Viking thrust from the plaza. The Norsemen were pressing on undaunted but taking a terrible toll as at last the bandit army had mustered its strength and, smarting from the licking they had taken from the foreigners, were now attempting to regain the upper hand.

  Stoically the Vikings formed a shielded wedge and, with heaving axes and shouts to the gods of old, forced their penetration through the strongest mounted ranks.

  Seeing the battle wax hot before him, Harald tightened the grip on his ax and darted for the fray. “Stand beside me, Sinbad,” he shouted back to the mariner, “Let’s show these bandits a thing or two about war!” And into the tumult he dove.

  The frog on Sinbad’s shoulder looked at him curiously, and Sinbad shrugged. Sweeping up a fallen sword, he quickly followed the burly Norseman’s footsteps.

  With fires raging all around, Harald sprang up like a cat and smashed his blows against Suliman’s best men. Lancers were sent sprawling from their steeds, footmen reeling back and toppling over one another. A mounted bandit lowered in the saddle, arched forward and brandished his curved blade, heading straight ahead to cut down the king. Harald deftly spun, eyes afire, and with a whoop and a swish of his ax flailed upward and clove the attacker from collarbone to groin. As the rider tumbled into the dirt, those charging on his heels took one look at the fearsome Lion of Roskilde and threw down their blades. Harald’s ax sailed as they turned to run; its recipient never felt the blow — his neatly severed head went flying in one direction, his torso cavorting in another before tumbling in a crimson heap.

  Shouts everywhere, calls to arms, attack and retreat trumpet blasts swelled in a terrible crescendo; Sinbad fought boldly alongside the laughing king, pushing back the Moorish bandits and clambering over their fallen corpses. He whirled at the sound of racing footsteps behind and held his sword with both hands, ready to swing out at the attackers. Silhouettes were racing through the smoke, and as he prepared to meet them head on, it was Don Giovanni who called, “Still your blade; it’s our crew!”

  And there they came, Mongo leading the charge of the Sherry’s crew; beside him on one side Abu, brandishing a sword and clenching a pirate knife firmly between his teeth; flanking him, faithful Milo, come back to Pansa as promised, heaving a farmer’s scythe above his head and urging on the sailors behind. Sinbad stared at the incredible sight, tears in his eyes.

  Elisa hurried from the tower and ran down the steps of the church. It took her only a moment to find Sinbad and she threw her arms about him gleefully, letting him lift her off her feet, smothering him with wet kisses as she squealed with delight. “We’re saved, Sinbad! We’re really saved!”

  Sinbad kissed her fully on the lips, oblivious of the hotly contested battle still raging all around him.

  “A pretty sight this is,” came a voice.

  He put Elisa down and turned to find Felicia, the future queen of the Danes, with her shoulders back, her hands to her hips, and her hair tossing freely in the morning breeze. The fiery pirate glared up and down at the clinging Elisa, tapping her boot impatiently in the dirt. “I thought you needed to be rescued,” she commented icily to Sinbad, “But it looks like your time has been well spent.”

  King Harald bellowed with laughter at the sight of the two women smoldering with mutual jealousy.

  “Thank Allah you made it here in time,” said Sinbad to Felicia.

  Without answering, Felicia turned, her skirt swirling, and threw her arms around Harald. The king of Denmark winked back at the mariner from Baghdad. “I’ll wager there’ll be hell to pay when this fight is finished,” he said with a laugh.

  Sinbad bit his lip and didn’t answer. Nearby, Thruna stood impassively watching, and the sight of the longlegged, hard-drinking Viking girl only made matters worse.

  By this time the church doors were opened wide and the villagers were streaming into the plaza, ready to give a hand in pushing back the last of Suliman’s forces. They scooped up clubs and bows, knives and axes, and followed Harald’s men into battle. Sinbad looked on in wonder. It was truly something extraordinary to behold, these Norsemen and Spaniards and Arabic sailors joining together to swamp the bandit army.

  Over splintered limbs and broken bodies the defenders pressed, thoroughly routing the last vestiges of Suliman’s army. By the first cracks of dawn the battle was all but over. Fully nine-tenths of the bandit army lay scattered across the plaza and roads, in the ditches, or hung limply and luridly over the crumbling walls. Those who managed to escape had been forced to flee on foot, hobbling in the direction of the southern hills and the frontier of Cordoba. As for the Suliman himself, he was never found. It was rumored in years to come that, disgraced and made a laughingstock at Pansa, he was forced to give up all aspirations to military glories and spend the remaining years of his life as a beggar in the back alleys of Tarragona, broken and embittered, spat upon by children and barked at by dogs.

  And so morning came to Pansa. The last of the smoke was blown away by a strong wind off the sea. Face smeared with grease and sweat, a weary Sinbad observed the carnage. Here and there an occasional arrow sailed, and a scream would pierce the air as a hiding bandit was found and swiftly put to death. The sad-hearted women of the village roamed through the plaza and examined the dead, weeping as the stilled form of a loved one was found. Then Father Augusto would come, Bible in hand, and whisper a prayer in Latin before the body was wrapped in a blanket and brought to the church for burial.

  “I can’t believe it’s done,” Sinbad sighed, squeezing Elisa’s hand and walking slowly toward the church.

  Elisa nodded and gazed down sadly at the blood-splattered steps. “Nor I. It’s going to take the village a very long time to rebuild.”

  Sinbad looked around at the flattened roofs, the cinders where the fishing docks had been. Save for the church, the village was totally destroyed. Yet the people of Pansa had doggedly fought adversity all their lives. Surely now was a new beginning for them.

  “And you, Sinbad,” Elisa asked. “Now that your ship is here, what will you do?”

  He stopped on the steps, glanced up at the perfect blue sky, and sighed deeply. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in going on with our voyage past the Pillars of Hercules,” he said wistfully. “Now that we’ve found the Red Dahlia … ”

  Elisa sniffed; she gently put her hand to his chin and lifted his head so that he was forced to look at her. Then she kissed him softly. “I only wish I could have been more help to you. I’m sorry, Sinbad, sorry you didn’t find the magic you need … ”

  The bell rang again in the tower, causing all eyes to look up. A hand was frantically waving, and Sinbad saw that Maria Victoria was leaning over the crumbled wall, trying to get his attention. “The harbor, Sinbad!” she cried. “There’s a ship coming into the harbor!”

  Sinbad ran from the church, past the burned-out homes that lined the sandy path to the dock, and stared out at the calm waters. Felicia was already there; so was King Harald. The Viking squinted his eyes and focused on the strangely shaped vessel flying flags he had never seen before.

  But to Felicia the ship was no stranger — nor was it to Sinbad. “It … it can’t be!” muttere
d the mariner, exchanging a stunned look with the pirate.

  “But it is,” whispered the girl in reply.

  The gold and speckled black of the banners left no doubt: The vessel flew the seals of Baghdad. And Sinbad knew he had seen this very ship before. Its carved bowsprit and silken sails left no doubt about that. This was the very vessel that had followed the Scheherazade all the way from Jaffa, the same one that Sinbad saw attacked by pirates so long before, attacked and nearly sunk …

  Sinbad swallowed hard as the sails slacked and the bow dipped into the half-moon bay. As she drew closer he could make out the forms of a captain and officers upon the bridge shouting commands to the crew; and among the officers one stood out from the rest. A stout fellow, tall and proud, dressed in the flowing robes of a minister — a caliph’s minister.

  Sinbad held his breath as the anchor was thrown, and soundlessly mouthed the name, “Dormo.”

  Felicia paled and looked at the captain. “What … what are we to do?”

  Sinbad shook his head; King Harald put his thick hand on his future bride’s shoulder and asked, “What is this ship, Sinbad? Why are you so concerned?”

  “It is a very long tale, my liege, but this very ship has been after us since the day we set sail. Indeed, it’s been following me since I was forced to flee Baghdad. And can you see the hawk-nosed fellow in the crimson robe? He’s the First Minister of Schahriar’s court — come to arrest me and drag me back in chains.”

  Harald furrowed thick brows and peered at the Arabian ship. “Never fear, my friend. They won’t harm a single hair on your head. Not while I’m alive.” A roaring shout brought forward dozens of his fiercest Vikings. Shields in hand, they formed two lines along the edge of the burnt pier, first rank kneeling, second rank standing behind it, axes in hand.