Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures M

by Robert E. Howard

  Clinging there by his fingernails in the dank rushing blackness, Giles Hobson was so frozen with horror that it did not even occur to him to call on the various saints he ordinarily blasphemed. He merely hung on to the irregularly round, slippery object his hands had found, frantic with the fear of being torn away and whirled down that black slimy tunnel, feeling his arms and fingers growing numb with the strain, and slipping gradually but steadily from their hold.

  His last ounce of breath went from him in a wild cry of despair, and – miracle of miracles – it was answered. Light flooded the shaft, a light dim and gray, yet in such contrast with the former blackness that it momentarily dazzled him. Someone was shouting, but the words were unintelligible amidst the rush of the black waters. He tried to shout back, but he could only gurgle. Then, mad with fear lest the trap should shut again, he achieved an inhuman screech that almost burst his throat.

  Shaking the water from his eyes and craning his head backward, he saw a human head and shoulders blocked in the open trap far above him. A rope was dangling down toward him. It swayed before his eyes, but he dared not let go long enough to seize it. In desperation, he mouthed for it, gripped it with his teeth, then let go and snatched, even as he was sucked into the black hole. His numbed fingers slipped along the rope. Tears of fear and helplessness rolled down his face. But his jaws were locked desperately on the strands, and his corded neck muscles resisted the terrific strain.

  Whoever was on the other end of the rope was hauling like a team of oxen. Giles felt himself ripped bodily from the clutch of the torrent. As his feet swung clear, he saw, in the dim light, that to which he had been clinging: a human skull, wedged somehow in a crevice of the slimy rock.

  He was drawn rapidly up, revolving like a pendant. His numbed hands clawed stiffly at the rope, his teeth seemed to be tearing from their sockets. His jaw muscles were knots of agony, his neck felt as if it were being racked.

  Just as human endurance reached its limit, he saw the lip of the trap slip past him, and he was dumped on the floor at its brink.

  He grovelled in agony, unable to unlock his jaws from about the hemp. Someone was massaging the cramped muscles with skilful fingers, and at last they relaxed with a stream of blood from the tortured gums. A goblet of wine was pressed to his lips and he gulped it loudly, the liquid slopping over and spilling on his slime-smeared mail. Someone was tugging at it, as if fearing lest he injure himself by guzzling, but he clung on with both hands until the beaker was empty. Then only he released it, and with a loud gasping sigh of relief, looked up into the face of Shawar. Behind the vizier were several giant Sudani, of the same type as those who had been responsible for Giles’ predicament.

  “We missed you from the audience hall,” said Shawar. “Sir Hugh roared treachery, until a eunuch said he saw you follow a woman slave off down a corridor. Then the lord Hugh laughed and said you were up to your old tricks, and rode away with the lord Geoffrey. But I knew the peril you ran in dallying with a woman in the Caliph’s palace; so I searched for you, and a slave told me he had heard a frightful yell in this chamber. I came, and entered just as a black was replacing the carpet above the trap. He sought to flee, and died without speaking.” The vizier indicated a sprawling form that lay near, head lolling on half-severed neck. “How came you in this state?”

  “A woman lured me here,” answered Giles, “and set blackamoors upon me, threatening me with the well unless I revealed Amalric’s plans.”

  “What did you tell her?” The vizier’s eyes burned so intently on Giles that the fat man shuddered slightly and hitched himself further away from the yet open trap.

  “I told them nothing! Who am I to know the king’s plans, anyway? Then they dumped me into that cursed hole, though I fought like a lion and maimed a score of the rogues. Had I but had my trusty sword – ”

  At a nod from Shawar the trap was closed, the rug drawn over it. Giles breathed a sigh of relief. Slaves dragged the corpse away.

  The vizier touched Giles’ arm and led the way through a corridor concealed by the hangings.

  “I will send an escort with you to the Frankish camp. There are spies of Shirkuh in this palace, and others who love him not, yet hate me. Describe me this woman – the eunuch saw only her hand.”

  Giles groped for adjectives, then shook his head.

  “Her hair was black, her eyes moonfire, her body alabaster.”

  “A description that would fit a thousand women of the Caliph,” said the vizier. “No matter; get you gone, for the night wanes and Allah only knows what morn will bring.”

  The night was indeed late as Giles Hobson rode into the Frankish camp surrounded by Turkish mamluks with drawn sabres. But a light burned in Amalric’s pavilion, which the wary monarch preferred to the palace offered him by Shawar; and thither Giles went, confident of admittance as a teller of lusty tales who had won the king’s friendship.

  Amalric and his barons were bent above a map as the fat man entered, and they were too engrossed to notice his entry, or his bedraggled appearance.

  “Shawar will furnish us men and boats,” the king was saying; “they will fashion the bridge, and we will make the attempt by night – ”

  An explosive grunt escaped Giles’ lips, as if he had been hit in the belly.

  “What, Sir Giles the Fat!” exclaimed Amalric, looking up; “are you but now returned from your adventuring in Cairo? You are fortunate still to have head on your shoulders. Eh – what ails you, that you sweat and grow pale? Where are you going?”

  “I have taken an emetic,” mumbled Giles over his shoulder.

  Beyond the light of the pavilion he broke into a stumbling run. A tethered horse started and snorted at him. He caught the rein, grasped the saddle peak; then, with one foot in the stirrup, he halted. Awhile he meditated; then at last, wiping cold sweat beads from his face, he returned with slow and dragging steps to the king’s tent.

  He entered unceremoniously and spoke forthwith: “Lord, is it your plan to throw a bridge of boats across the Nile?”

  “Aye, so it is,” declared Amalric.

  Giles uttered a loud groan and sank down on a bench, his head in his hands. “I am too young to die!” he lamented. “Yet I must speak, though my reward be a sword in the belly. This night Shirkuh’s spies trapped me into speaking like a fool. I told them the first lie that came into my head – and Saint Withold defend me, I spoke the truth unwittingly. I told them you meant to build a bridge of boats!”

  A shocked silence reigned. Geoffrey Fulcher dashed down his cup in a spasm of anger. “Death to the fat fool!” he swore, rising.

  “Nay!” Amalric smiled suddenly. He stroked his golden beard. “Our foe will be expecting the bridge, now. Good enough. Hark ye!”

  And as he spoke, grim smiles grew on the lips of the barons, and Giles Hobson began to grin and thrust out his belly, as if his fault had been virtue, craftily devised.

  All night the Saracen host had stood at arms; on the opposite bank fires blazed, reflected from the rounded walls and burnished roofs of el Fustat. Trumpets mingled with the clang of steel. The Emir Shirkuh, riding up and down the bank along which his mailed hawks were ranged, glanced toward the eastern sky, just tinged with dawn. A wind blew out of the desert.

  There had been fighting along the river the day before, and all through the night drums had rumbled and trumpets blared their threat. All day Egyptians and naked Sudani had toiled to span the dusky flood with boats chained together, end to end. Thrice they had pushed toward the western bank, under the cover of their archers in the barges, only to falter and shrink back before the clouds of Turkish arrows. Once the end of the boat bridge had almost touched the shore, and the helmeted riders had spurred their horses into the water to slash at the shaven heads of the workers. Shirkuh had expected an onslaught of the knights across the frail span, but it had not come. The men in the boats had again fallen back, leaving their dead floating in the muddily churning wash.

  Shirkuh decided that the F
ranks were lurking behind walls, saving themselves for a supreme effort, when their allies should have completed the bridge. The opposite bank was clustered with swarms of naked figures, and the Kurd expected to see them begin the futile task once more.

  As dawn whitened the desert, there came a rider who rode like the wind, sword in hand, turban unbound, blood dripping from his beard.

  “Woe to Islam!” he cried. “The Franks have crossed the river!”

  Panic swept the Moslem camp; men jerked their steeds from the river bank, staring wildly northward. Only Shirkuh’s bull-like voice kept them from flinging away their swords and bolting.

  The Emir’s profanity was frightful. He had been fooled and tricked. While the Egyptians held his attention with their useless labor, Amalric and the iron men had marched northward, crossed the prongs of the Delta in ships, and were now hastening vengefully southward. The Emir’s spies had had neither time nor opportunity to reach him. Shawar had seen to that.

  The Mountain Lion dared not await attack in this unsheltered spot. Before the sun was well up, the Turkish host was on the march; behind them the rising light shone on spear-points that gleamed in a rising cloud of dust.

  This dust irked Giles Hobson, riding behind Amalric and his councillors. The fat Englishman was thirsty; dust settled greyly on his mail; gnats bit him, sweat got into his eyes, and the sun, as it rose, beat mercilessly on his basinet; so he hung it on his saddle peak and pushed back his linked coif, daring sun-stroke. On either side of him leather creaked and worn mail clinked. Giles thought of the ale-pots of England, and cursed the man whose hate had driven him around the world.

  And so they hunted the Mountain Lion up the valley of the Nile, until they came to el Baban, The Gates, and found the Saracen host drawn up for battle in the gut of the low sandy hills.

  Word came back along the ranks, putting new fervor into the knights. The clatter of leather and steel seemed imbued with new meaning. Giles put on his helmet and rising in his stirrups, looked over the iron-clad shoulders in front of him.

  To the left were the irrigated fields on the edge of which the host was riding. To the right was the desert. Ahead of them the terrain was broken by the hills. On these hills and in the shallow valleys between bristled the banners of the Turks, and their nakirs blared. A mass of the host was drawn up in the plain between the Franks and the hills.

  The Christians had halted: three hundred and seventy-five knights, plus half a dozen more who had ridden all the way from Acre and reached the host only an hour before, with their retainers. Behind them, moving with the baggage, their allies halted in straggling lines: a thousand Turcoples, and some five thousand Egyptians, whose gaudy garments outshone their courage.

  “Let us ride forward and smite those on the plain,” urged one of the foreign knights, newly come to the East.

  Amalric scanned the closely massed ranks and shook his head. He glanced at the banners that floated among the spears on the slopes on either flank where the kettle-drums clamored.

  “That is the banner of Saladin in the center,” he said. “Shirkuh’s house troops are on yonder hill. If the center expected to stand, the Emir would be there. No, messers, I think it is their wish to lure us into a charge. We will wait their attack, under cover of the Turcoples’ bows. Let them come to us; they are in a hostile land, and must push the war.”

  The rank and file had not heard his words. He lifted his hand, and thinking it preceded an order to charge, the forest of lances quivered and sank in rest. Amalric, realizing the mistake, rose in his stirrups to shout his command to fall back, but before he could speak, Giles’ horse, restive, shouldered that of the knight next to him. This knight, one of those who had joined the host less than an hour before, turned irritably; Giles looked into a lean beaked face, seamed by a livid scar.

  “Ha!” Instinctively the ogre caught at his sword.

  Giles’ action was also instinctive. Everything else was swept out of his mind at the sight of that dread visage which had haunted his dreams for more than a year. With a yelp he sank his spurs into his horse’s belly. The beast neighed shrilly and leaped, blundering against Amalric’s war-horse. That high-strung beast reared and plunged, got the bit between its teeth, broke from the ranks and thundered out across the plain.

  Bewildered, seeing their king apparently charging the Saracen host single-handed, the men of the Cross gave tongue and followed him. The plain shook as the great horses stampeded across it, and the spears of the iron-clad riders crashed splinteringly against the shields of their enemies.

  The movement was so sudden it almost swept the Moslems off their feet. They had not expected a charge so instantly to follow the coming up of the Christians. But the allies of the knights were struck by confusion. No orders had been given, no arrangement made for battle. The whole host was disordered by that premature onslaught. The Turcoples and Egyptians wavered uncertainly, drawing up about the baggage wagons.

  The whole first rank of the Saracen center went down, and over their mangled bodies rode the knights of Jerusalem, swinging their great swords. An instant the Turkish ranks held; then they began to fall back in good order, marshalled by their commander, a slender, dark, self-contained young officer, Salah ed din, Shirkuh’s nephew.

  The Christians followed. Amalric, cursing his mischance, made the best of a bad bargain, and so well he plied his trade that the harried Turks cried out on Allah and turned their horses’ heads from him.

  Back into the gut of the hills the Saracens retired, and turning there, under cover of slope and cliff, darkened the air with their shafts. The headlong force of the knights’ charge was broken in the uneven ground, but the iron men came on grimly, bending their helmeted heads to the rain.

  Then on the flanks, kettle-drums roared into fresh clamor. The riders of the right wing, led by Shirkuh, swept down the slopes and struck the horde which clustered loosely about the baggage train. That charge swept the unwarlike Egyptians off the field in headlong flight. The left wing began to close in to take the knights on the flank, driving before it the troops of the Turcoples. Amalric, hearing the kettle-drums behind and on either side of him as well as in front, gave the order to fall back, before they were completely hemmed in.

  To Giles Hobson it seemed the end of the world. He was deafened by the clang of swords and the shouts. He seemed surrounded by an ocean of surging steel and billowing dust clouds. He parried blindly and smote blindly, hardly knowing whether his blade cut flesh or empty air. Out of the defiles horsemen were moving, chanting exultantly. A cry of “Yala-l-Islam!” rose above the thunder – Saladin’s war-cry, that was in later years to ring around the world. The Saracen center was coming into the battle again.

  Abruptly the press slackened, broke; the plain was filled with flying figures. A strident ululation cut the din. The Turcoples’ shafts had stayed the Saracens’ left wing just long enough to allow the knights to retreat through the closing jaws of the vise. But Amalric, retreating slowly, was cut off with a handful of knights. The Turks swirled about him, screaming in exultation, slashing and smiting with mad abandon. In the dust and confusion the ranks of the iron men fell back, unaware of the fate of their king.

  Giles Hobson, riding through the field like a man in a daze, came face to face with Guiscard de Chastillon.

  “Dog!” croaked the knight. “We are doomed, but I’ll send you to hell ahead of me!”

  His sword went up, but Giles leaned from his saddle and caught his arm. The fat man’s eyes were bloodshot; he licked his dust-stained lips. There was blood on his sword, and his helmet was dinted.

  “Your selfish hate and my cowardice has cost Amalric the field this day,” Giles croaked. “There he fights for his life; let us redeem ourselves as best we may.”

  Some of the glare faded from de Chastillon’s eyes; he twisted about, stared at the plumed heads that surged and eddied about a cluster of iron helmets; and he nodded his steel-clad head.

  They rode together into the melee. Their s
words hissed and crackled on mail and bone. Amalric was down, pinned under his dying horse. Around him whirled the eddy of battle, where his knights were dying under a sea of hacking blades.

  Giles fell rather than jumped from his saddle, gripped the dazed king and dragged him clear. The fat Englishman’s muscles cracked under the strain, a groan escaped his lips. A Seljuk leaned from the saddle, slashed at Amalric’s unhelmeted head. Giles bent his head, took the blow on his own crown; his knees sagged and sparks flashed before his eyes. Guiscard de Chastillon rose in his stirrups, swinging his sword with both hands. The blade crunched through mail, gritted through bone. The Seljuk dropped, shorn through the spine. Giles braced his legs, heaved the king up, slung him over his saddle.

  “Save the king!” Giles did not recognize that croak as his own voice.

  Geoffrey Fulcher loomed through the crush, dealing great strokes. He seized the rein of Giles’ steed; half a dozen reeling, blood-dripping knights closed about the frantic horse and its stunned burden. Nerved to desperation they hacked their way clear. The Seljuks swirled in behind them to be met by Guiscard de Chastillon’s flailing blade.

  The waves of wild horsemen and flying blades broke on him. Saddles were emptied and blood spurted. Giles rose from the red-splashed ground among the lashing hoofs. He ran in among the horses, stabbing at bellies and thighs. A sword stroke knocked off his helmet. His blade snapped under a Seljuk’s ribs.

  Guiscard’s horse screamed awfully and sank to the earth. His grim rider rose, spurting blood at every joint of his armor. Feet braced wide on the blood-soaked earth, he wielded his great sword until the steel wave washed over him and he was hidden from view by waving plumes and rearing steeds.