The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Enchanted CrusadeThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Enchanted CrusadeAuthor: Robert W. KreppsIllustrator: W. E. TerryRelease date: September 1, 2021 [eBook #66196]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ENCHANTED CRUSADE ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Enchanted CrusadeAuthor: Robert W. KreppsIllustrator: W. E. TerryRelease date: September 1, 2021 [eBook #66196]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: The Enchanted Crusade
Author: Robert W. KreppsIllustrator: W. E. Terry
Author: Robert W. Krepps
Illustrator: W. E. Terry
Release date: September 1, 2021 [eBook #66196]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ENCHANTED CRUSADE ***
Saracen blades held no fear for Godwin; butnow he faced Mufaddal's sorcery with the fate ofthe beautiful Ramizail—and England—resting uponThe Enchanted CrusadeBy Geoff St. Reynard[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromImagination Stories of Science and FantasyApril 1953Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Saracen blades held no fear for Godwin; butnow he faced Mufaddal's sorcery with the fate ofthe beautiful Ramizail—and England—resting upon
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromImagination Stories of Science and FantasyApril 1953Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Just as daybreak burst over the rim of the desert, the dying man heard the crunch of horses' hooves on sand. He lifted his head and croaked as loudly as collapsing lungs would let him, saying thrice over, "In the name of God, help!" Then he pitched on his nose again and lay still, unable to move so much as an eyelash.
There was the grit of sand under the light tread of men, and a voice said, "Name of all camels! What a collection of vulture-victuals this one is!"
"I doubt it was he cried out," said another voice. "He must have been dead for a decade." This voice then rendered a belch of classic proportions. "Damn those figs," it said.
"If you will eat three pounds at a breakfast, Godwin love," said a throaty feminine voice, all full of honey and laughter, "you must expect some few repercussions."
The dying man collected his will and the scraps of strength that were left in his tortured body, and shoving at the sand with one arm managed to roll over on his back. The horizon-cleared sun lanced sickeningly across his eyeballs, adding one more pain to the thousand which beset him. Three vague dark shapes bent above him.
"By the very God, he lives! Give him a drink."
Water, cool and terrible and yet incredibly wondrous to lips and blackened gums that had tasted nothing save blood for what must surely be centuries, dribbled down across his cheeks, ran into his mouth, reached through his rasped throat for his belly. He gurgled and thought he was drowning, and it seemed a splendid death.
But he had something to say, something of such importance that it had dragged him across this endless waste of hellish sand long after a missionless man would have given up and died. He recollected the message and blinked his nearly sightless eyes once or twice, and made futile little motions toward a sitting position. A brawny arm at his back tilted him upright. "Easy, man. You're all but dead. Don't strive so. Die easily."
"Godwin, you're a born diplomat," said the woman's voice. "Why don't you come right out and tell him he looks like two coppers' worth of dogmeat?"
"Well, he does," Godwin said grimly. "No sense in lying to a chap who's about to give up the spirit, Ramizail. No real man wants that."
"Listen," croaked the dying one. "Who are you?"
"Three adventurers," said the voice that had sworn by the very God. It was an elderly voice but full of vigor. "Three homeless travelers pledged to right wrongs and defeat hell's minions wherever they may be found."
"Thanks to the Holy Sepulcher," groaned the dying one. "Perhaps all may be well."
The man holding him up jerked with surprise. "Here," he said, with a kind of tender roughness, "are you a Crusader, man? Are you a Frank?"
"English," said he. "Sir Malcolm du Findley." He made a hideous rattling noise but from somewhere deep in his soul the power came to make him go on. "El Iskandariya. Big ship. Full of rats."
"What's he burbling about?" asked the deep voice of Godwin. "Poor devil's clean out of his head. Rats? Did rats do this to him?"
"Rats are full of plague," said Sir Malcolm faintly.
"Yes, yes," said the girl. "Ship full of rats, rats full of plague. Go on."
"Can a rat have the plague?" asked Godwin.
"Well, can it?" asked the girl. "Mihrjan, answer me."
A fourth voice, one like muted thunder over distant dunes, said, "Assuredly, O Mistress of My Life, though 'tis not known generally by men in this time."
"He knows it, evidently," said the girl. "Do go on, Sir Malcolm. What about these rats?"
"Ship at El Iskandariya. Going to England, spread plague, decimate whole country. No more Crusades. Saracen plot."
"Now by God and by God, no Saracen stoops that low!" shouted the elderly man.
"Yes. Whole crew of them. Leader—"
"Yes, man; the leader?" urged Godwin.
"Mufaddal al Mamun. Big black-faced swine. His gang can do—anything. Say they can wipe out nine-tenths of England with plague rats, then France, Germany. No more Crusades." He widened his bloody-veined eyes and retching, said, "Tell Richard! Get word to Richard! Got to sink that ship, slay Mufaddal al Mamun! Slay his sorcerers! Promise!"
"We promise," said Godwin. "Decimate England, eh? Plague-infested rats, ha? My halidom! I think not!"
Sir Malcolm, with a grimace that might have been a grin, collapsed in upon himself and died, as peacefully as a man can when he has come seventy miles on foot, over baking sand beneath a searing sun of brass, with a third of his skin flayed off.
CHAPTER II
Godwin stood up. "Where's El Iskandariya?" he asked.
El Sareuk rubbed his beard with one slim brown hand. "You call it Alexandria. About twenty-five leagues west it lies, my great-thewed friend, on the banks of the Mediterranean."
The Lord Mohammed El Sareuk was a man of sixty, slightly built, fanatic-faced, whose body always seemed on the point of disintegrating from sheer concentration of energy. His boots were of red Cordovan leather worked with gold thread; his clothing was blue silk and rose samite, topped by the green turban of a Hadji; under the soft robes he wore gold-washed Turkish light armor, and over the whole outfit a black Bedouin burnous. He was weaponed well: from his girdle hung a Damascus steel scimitar, and a beautiful gold-etched steel knife with a silver hilt and a ruby in the pommel. Once this man had led a great harka in the forces of Saladin; but love of Godwin had turned him to a rover, an adventurer who called no tent his own and no man his peer save the tall young Englishman he now addressed.
"What is it, Godwin? Twenty-five leagues to Alexandria, or eighty-odd to Richard the Lion Heart in Jaffa?"
The girl spoke before Godwin could answer. "Oh, heavens, uncle 'tis the twenty-five to the plague ship, without a doubt, because what would Godwin want with a thousand Crusaders at his back when he can wade in single-handed against an unknown number of enemies and grab the glory all for himself? An Englishman won't fight if he can't fight against odds, after all. Need you ask such a silly question?"
The girl, now: as tall and lovely a piece as ever came from the union of a crusading British knight and a Saracen lass who traced descent from Solomon. Her eyes were violet, pure clear liquid violet such as is seen once in a thousand years; her lips were sensuous, full and red; her hair was a rainbow-flashing mass of ink-black curls. Of her complexion nothing derogatory could be said, and of her full-breasted figure even less. She wore copper and cream-colored robes of as fine and yet tough silk as you might find anywhere in the world of 1191, with a black turban to which she managed to give a jaunty and most un-Moslem-like air. Once this girl had been a sorceress, and controlled the entire tribe of djinn by virtue of a golden sigil and ring bequeathed her by her mother; her home and heritage and much of her power she had given up, to be a nomad and traipse about the world, all for love of Godwin.
This Godwin said now, "Ye gods! How can there be any question of Alexandria or Jaffa?" He held up a big hard hand and ticked off points on his fingers. "One: Dick, or Richard the Lion Nose, or whatever the hell they call him, thinks I'm a madman. If I took him a tale of rats with plague being shipped to England, he'd have me locked up for an idiot, and I can hardly blame him. Two: it's a good eighty-five leagues to Jaffa, and then more than a hundred from there back to Alexandria, eating up God knows how many days, the way the Franks travel. We three can do it from here in two days' time. There are decent people in Alexandria who'll fight with us against any such hellish scheme, surely. El Sareuk is a Hadji and has a certain reputation. Can't you command help from the Arabs, old wolf?"
"I can. He has the right of it, my dear."
"Well, at least we can have Mihrjan's djinn transport us there in comfort, and aid us in the squelching of this silly plot of Mufaddal's," said the girl, wiping sweat off her patrician nose.
Godwin frowned. He tugged at his beard. "My dear, you know my sentiments about the djinn. It's not knightly to use their supernatural powers when all one's fighting is a pack of mortals. Besides, it takes the fun out of adventuring. If a man can cry up a legion of ten-foot bogies to do his bidding, how can he call himself a gentleman rover? No, we'll not employ Mihrjan. Not that I have anything against you, Mihrjan," he added hastily.
A voice from the air beside them said, like an enormous drum finding speech in its depths, "O Lord of Ten Thousand, I esteem thy principles without flaw. Truly thou art a man among men, and would be a djinni amongst djinn!"
"Oh, pooh," said the girl, Ramizail. "If I hadn't given you the ring in a rash moment of affection, Godwin, I'd lock it to the sigil and wish you home in England this minute, you hulking wonderful stupid baby."
Invisible Mihrjan chuckled, but made no other comment. Godwin said, "Let's mount and ride. The horses are fresh and even over this abominable sand we ought to make a good distance before sundown."
"What of Sir Malcolm?" asked Ramizail.
"What of him?" said Godwin. "I've laid him out properly. A Crusader doesn't expect to be buried when there's work afoot. Come on, to horse!" He went racing to his great Spanish charger and vaulted into the saddle from behind, a trick left over from his Crusading days, when he could do it in full weight of battle armor.
And this Godwin, what of him? A man of thirty-one hard winters and thirty-one baking summers that had leathered his skin and steeled his sinews, while leaving his spirit boyish and irrepressible. A tiger-muscled, blue-fire-eyed, yellow-bearded man, quick to rage, quick to forgiveness, quick to gorge food and drink and quick to go hungry when needs must. A man educated to horse and hound and every weapon, bred to the saddle and the brawl, reckless and headstrong, generous and full of brag and bounce. A man of six feet and four inches, weighing sixteen stone, with scarce a thought in his handsome head but of war and hunting and being a gentleman according to his lights, of loving Ramizail and trotting happily over the world righting wrongs and murdering villains and being Godwin, Godwin of England.
And there was more to the man than all this, too, for had he not been till this early winter of 1191 the King of England?
It mattered little now, for Godwin was Godwin and no more. Not that that was not quite enough! thought Ramizail, resignedly mounting her bay palfrey. Sometimes it was a vast deal too much. She cast a glance of affection at her affianced. She shook her lovely head. What a man!
CHAPTER III
Mufaddal al Mamun, a tall, bulky, brown-eyed, flat-nosed, dark-faced hulk of a man, was eating his midday meal. It consisted offulbeans fried insamn, millet bread, onions, cucumbers, and hard-boiled eggs, washed down with quarts of strongbuzah, beer brewed from fermented bread. It was a poor man's meal, but Mufaddal preferred to eat the cheapest of foods, for he thought that it made him appear fanatical and single-minded and self-sacrificing to his followers. As a matter of fact, they merely thought him a tasteless slob. He held the same warped opinion about his garments, and clad himself daily in a graygallabiyah, the gown-like dress of the fellahin, with long loose cotton pants and a soiled green skullcap. His cohorts made jokes about it and regarded him with distaste, for many of them were proud Turks and high-blooded Bedouins, who took a ferocious pride in garbing themselves as well as possible and eating the best provender available. They followed him, however, because he was a wild terrible fighter, because he was half-brother to three potent sorcerers, and because he could think up much dirtier plots against the infidel hordes of the Crusaders than any other Saracen alive.
As he popped the last egg whole into his broad gash of a mouth, and smashed it between great yellow snaggleteeth, wishing it were the skull of Richard Coeur de Lion, one of his sorcerers came sliding in the door. There was a cool wind blowing through the house from the sea, which lay not more than thirty yards from its portals; but the sorcerer's presence seemed to heat the breeze and taint it with the stench of sulphur and brimstone. Mufaddal looked even more irritable than usual.
"What do you want, offspring of a leprous unwed camel?"
"May you live a thousand years, Mufaddal, my brother."
"This is a noble sentiment. Did you interrupt my eating—that is to say, my meditation—to wish me long life, imbecile?"
The sorcerer looked meditatively at his left forefinger, which turned into a blue snake and hissed at the big dirty man across the laden cloth. Mufaddal jumped and said hastily, "This, of course, is only my rough manner of speaking, Heraj, and naturally you know you are my favorite brother and may come in any time you like."
"Yes. Well, I was going to say, Mufaddal, that complications are lifting their ugly heads in this business of the plague ship."
"What? Are the rats not loaded into the hold, and the job accomplished with but seventeen fellahin bitten? Did we not slay the seventeen before they could come near anyone? And is the ship not as sound as any ship that sails the Mediterranean, having new sails and a new mast, and her belly caulked no later than last month?"
"Ah, very true," agreed Heraj.
"Does every rat not carry at least one flea, cleverly infected with the plague by your own subtle methods?"
"Fleas and rats are as deadly as any Saracen blade, and the grisly death they carry will spread far and wide when they are let off the ship on the coasts of England."
"And lastly, is all not in readiness to sail come the day after tomorrow?"
"True," said Heraj gloomily. "But we can't send it out before then, as our chosen crew will not be assembled till that morning, especially the far-experienced Nubian slave who is coming from Tripoli to guide the ship on its perilous course; and by the wrath of Eblis, you and I may not live to see the dawn of that day, near though you deem it!"
"What are you talking about?" roared Mufaddal.
"I just had a message from a friend who happens to be a hawk in his present incarnation. He tells me that Godwin is coming."
"This is terrible news indeed," said Mufaddal, fiercely mimicking the sorcerer's worried tones. "I quake with fright. I throw myself on the infinite mercy of Allah." He rose and flexed his arms, that were each as thick as a youth's body. "Heraj, who in the name of the seven hells is Godwin?"
"You may well ask," said Heraj, even more gloomily than before. "Nobody seems to know exactly. I can't get a line on his history before a month ago, when he rode out of Jaffa in company with a renegade Saracen chieftain called El Sareuk and a girl named Ramizail. But he's a brawny young champion, whatever his antecedents, and his girl controls the djinn."
Mufaddal sat down on the floor with vast violence. His dark face turned purple. His yellow teeth showed in a grin of sudden terror. "I betake me to Allah!ThatRamizail?"
"Yes, that one. Well, this hawk says—"
"Can you understand the hawk tongue?"
"This one speaks Arabic. He's a fairly talented fellow, for a hawk. He says that Godwin and the others are pledged to go rampaging over the earth, righting wrongs, and they've heard of the plague ship and are on their way to destroy it. And us, I suppose," added Heraj.
"Name of forty goats," said Mufaddal worriedly. "I fear not this Godwin, but the djinn...." He stared up at the sorcerer. "Can't you do something to stop them? You and Pepi and Habu?"
"What? You know my limitations, and I'm the strongest of the three. I can do a lot, Mufaddal, but I can't combat djinn. The chief of them, Mihrjan, even travels with this Ramizail wench, personally. She controls him and his race by a sigil and ring that came down to her from Solomon."
"Curse it, Heraj, if this ship doesn't sail, England will continue to send Crusaders to the East until they have conquered every inch of desert and city! It's got to sail! How did these loathsome adventurers hear of it?"
"They happened across that Englishman who escaped us, Sir Malcolm du Findley. The one that we started to flay last Thursday, before he crawled out a window and treacherously disappeared."
Mufaddal got off the floor. He hitched up his pants and retied the string that held them around his muscular waist. "Heraj," he said grimly, "I give you an hour to think of some way to stop them. Djinn or no djinn, that ship sails!"
CHAPTER IV
By evening they had covered more than half the distance to Alexandria, and Godwin was persuaded to halt for a few hours of rest, the horses being weary with plunging through sand for such a long spell. "We'll ride again with the moon's zenith," said Godwin, as he went about picketing the horses. "Perhaps we can make the city by midday tomorrow."
Ramizail went off and stood by herself. "Mihrjan," she said softly.
"I am here, Beloved of Allah."
"Mihrjan, I'm sick of the same dreary food day after day. Godwin maintains that gentlemen rovers should fare roughly, to toughen their bodies. But I'm not a gentleman."
"Assuredly thou art not," said the invisible djinni, respect and male admiration nicely blended in his great voice.
"Then spread me a real feast! I wantcouscous, with almond stuffing, and wild rice, and some lemon juice, and certainly some white bread."
"Thy will is sweet, Mistress."
"Then oranges, andasida, and sugar. And about three gallons of sherbet. And Mihrjan, do you remember the time you brought me that confection out of a far time? The one you called silk chocolate?"
"Milk chocolate, O Daughter of All Delights."
"Bring me some of that, too. Put the meal on a damask cloth, with blue gauze to wipe the mouth, and the vessels must all be of purest crystal with gold rims."
"To hear is to obey, Little Queen of My Tribe."
"Be sure there's plenty for all of us, with a bowl of mice for Godwin's falcon Yellow-eyes, and remember that my lord and master eats like two-thirds of a regiment."
"Give me but four minutes, Mistress, and you shall see it spread beneath the trees of this oasis, beside the clear spring that bubbles through the sand."
She strolled back to her uncle and her betrothed, a secret smile on her lips. In the specified four minutes a banquet popped into sight just beside them. Godwin jumped.
"What the devil!"
"I'm hungry," said Ramizail, at once on the defensive.
"Mihrjan!" said Godwin, glaring at her. "You had him do this. How often must I tell you my sentiments concerning all this magic, witch-wench?"
"Never again, Godwin dear, for I know them by heart."
"Ramizail," he said angrily, his eyes sparkling blue, "this is going to stop here and now. When you gave me the ring, and thus shared your power over the djinn with me, you promised not to command Mihrjan to do anything I didn't approve of."
"Oh, well," grumbled the girl, "I'm hungry for real food!"
"Ramizail, give me the sigil!"
Her eyes blazed back at his. "Come and take it, you big oaf!"
El Sareuk leaned against a date palm and smiled to himself. It was always a toss-up as to which of these iron-willed people would win an argument. Godwin strode over to the girl, upsetting a goblet of pale pink sherbet with his foot, and took her by the shoulders. She hit him on the nose. He turned her over and smacked her on her lightly-clad bottom. She screeched and bit his leg. He dropped her on the sand and sat on her.
Mihrjan, invisible but no more than three feet from them, laughed deeply.
El Sareuk said to Yellow-eyes, the old peregrine falcon, who was sitting on his shoulder watching the brawl, "Thy master has met, if not his match, at least a very worthy foe!"
Godwin, after a great deal of fumbling, got hold of the sigil where it hung on a chain round her neck, and opened the clasp and took it off.
"Bully!" shrieked Ramizail. "Swaggering, bragging, girl-defeating bully! Give me that back!"
"Not a chance," said Godwin equably. He moved over and sat in the small of her back. He locked the sigil into the ring he wore on his little finger, and the designs of each caught the other and made a single lump of gold. "Now," he said, "I control the djinn."
"Have them transport me to the Isles of the Western Sea," said the girl savagely, "or by the Crescent and Cross, Godwin, I'll murder you when I get up!"
"Nothing so drastic. Mihrjan!"
"Yes, Lord?"
"I control you now absolutely, don't I?"
"Yes, Lord."
"You follow us for love, I know, but we can't really command you unless one of us holds both these baubles, isn't that so?"
"'Tis so, one of a Hundred Monarchs, though thou knowest I would answer any summons thou or my mistress made, Solomon's Seal or no. But the sigil and ring are life's and death's powers over me."
"Well, Mihrjan, you know my sentiments about the whole business, and by the mass, I'm growing weary of these tricks of hers. She's always having you save me when there's no need, and stepping in when I have a chance at a fight, and making banquets, and showing off your magic as if it were her own. So I want you to go away, Mihrjan."
"Lord?" said the djinn, disturbed and bewildered.
"Well, look, hang it all, I like you, I think you're a splendid chap, really, but this magic gets on my nerves. Now go on away, go besiege a castle, or throw an oyster fry, or take a wife, or something. We have the sigil and ring if we really need you, old fellow, but meantime please do go home. I'm sick of this soft living Ramizail forces on me by your thaumaturgy."
The djinni chuckled. "I see thy point, O King. I go. Remember that the Seal calls me to you in an eye's winking if need arises."
"It'll probably arise, if I know my luck, but I hope it won't. Good-bye, old fellow."
"Farewell, Master. Fare thee well, Moon of Incredible Beauty." There was a swishing noise, a faint scent of attar touched their nostrils, and the air rushed into a sudden-made vacuum beside them. The Moon of Incredible Beauty said ferociously, "If you don't let me up, you son of a jackal, I'll bite you in a vulnerable spot and you won't sit down for a week."
Godwin stood up. Ramizail rolled over and eyed him. There was malice in the gaze, but Godwin only laughed. He tossed her the sigil. She hung it round her neck.
"I'll hide the ring, kitten, so you can't steal it when I'm asleep. Now you're a plain woman, and by our lady, you'll stay that way!"
"What about the banquet?" said she. "I'm surprised you didn't have him take it back."
"Ah well, a man does now and again grow tired of figs and biscuits and water. We'll eat it. Just this once."
They all sat down, El Sareuk gave thanks to Allah and Godwin to his deity for the sumptuous repast, and they fell to. Yellow-eyes dipped her scarred, notched beak into her bowl of plump mice, and emitted a cry of pleasure. Everybody ate until four bellies well nigh burst with good food. Then they rolled up in their rugs and went to sleep.
CHAPTER V
Heraj looked into his crystal ball. Absently he flung out his right arm, which extended for seven feet and allowed the hand to grasp a beaker of honey wine sitting on a taboret across the room.
His eyes lit up greenly at what he saw in the ball. He tossed off the wine and hared out of his apartments, through the room where fourteen lieutenants of Mufaddal's force were playing at dice, and into his master's sleeping room. Mufaddal sat up from his rugs and howled.
"This damnable lack of privacy must cease! I—" Then he saw what his half-brother was doing casually with his left foot, and subsided. "Yes, Heraj? What is it?"
"Listen, al Mamun. I put a thought in Godwin's head this afternoon—just a suggestion, you know. He followed through beautifully."
"Good. Did he hang himself to a tree?"
"No, no. I suggested he get rid of that djinni. He did. Then he hid Solomon's ring, though where I don't know, and forgot where he hid it."
"By Osman ibn Affar, that was well done! Your power over men's minds astonishes even me, Heraj." The dark-faced fanatic was jubilant.
"I didn't make him forget it, he did that on his own hook. He's cooperative that way. He has a child's intellect." Heraj took a sweetmeat out of his ear and ate it. "Now the djinni's gone, Allah knows where, and won't come back till he's called by the sigil and ring. And they haven't got the ring."
"Oh, my brother," said Mufaddal, rubbing his hands together, "if you have indeed put this Godwin at our mercy, I shall give you a racing camel with a ruby-studded saddle!"
"I have, I have. But never mind the camel, I want Richard for my personal slave when we defeat the Crusaders."
"Done!" barked the leader. "Now tell me, subtle one, what will you do with Godwin?"
Heraj regarded his fingernails, which turned into ten little pieces of glass behind which miniature dancing girls performed various interesting contortions. At last he said smugly, "I've done it, Mufaddal. Just wait till that overgrown lout wakes up." He laughed. "What a shock he's got coming!"
CHAPTER VI
Godwin rolled over, opened an eye, and smacked his lips. He always awoke hungry. He scrabbled in the sand beside him until he found his bag of dates, popped one into his mouth, and got up. He pushed a bare toe against the backside of El Sareuk, who erupted with a startled curse. Yellow-eyes woke at that and screamed, and Ramizail sat up.
"Time to ride, old wolf," said Godwin. He went to the spring and drank deep. Then he walked past it toward the horses.
The horses were not there. He scowled, went through the palm trees, and made as if to set foot on the desert sands beyond.
The desert sands were not there.
He fell to his knees. His eyes snapped wide. Two inches before him the oasis came to an abrupt halt. There was nothing there but vacant space. The desert was gone. Everything was gone.
"What in the name of—"
He bent over the edge of the oasis. A thousand feet below him the desert shimmered coldly in the light of the stars. He could see their horses, the three saddle beasts and the two pack animals, standing in a knot with the Arabian camel they kept for emergencies. The creatures looked like insects, so far below him they were. He drew back with a gasp.
"El Sareuk! Ramizail!" he shouted. "Take care! The oasis has floated off its moorings!"
They came running to his side. Ramizail gave a little cry. "Godwin, darling! What's happened to us?"
"Lord knows. We're marooned up here, it seems." He lay down at full length and peered over the edge again. The oasis had indeed been torn from its base, and the roots of the palms dangled below the round disc of it, waving their filaments in the air. "By the rood," said Godwin, "if this doesn't strain the imagination! Does it happen often, old one?"
"Never to my knowledge before this night," said El Sareuk, running a hand through his grizzled beard. "Now by Allah! The sorcerers of Mufaddal have done this thing!"
"The ring, Godwin," snapped Ramizail. She was all business, and no man would have denied her anything in this sudden gust of her serious intent, for when she put by her humor and her playfulness, she was a force to be reckoned with. "We'll have to call up Mihrjan. None of your vaunted swashbuckling will cope with this ensorcelment."
"Yes, I suppose one must fight witchery with witchery, though it goes against my knightly grain." He made as if to take the ring from his finger. "Oh, I forgot. I hid it from you."
"Stupid ox! Give it here."
He groped in his silk and samite robes, then among the crevices of his gold-washed steel mesh Cairo armor. At last he stared sheepishly at her. "I forget what I did with it."
"Oh, you bumbling Englishman!" She leaped to him and ran swift questing fingers over his body. "It's big enough, it ought to make quite a lump. Ninety-nine names of the true One! It isn't here. Did you hide it in the sand?"
"No," said Godwin, blushing with shame. "I put it where I'd always have it near by. But I can't seem to recollect just where."
She put her hands to her head. "You—you—"
"Never mind," said Godwin. "I have an idea. If it doesn't work, you'll have to pick me up with a spoon, but I think it will."
He squared his broad shoulders and walked straight over the edge of the high-floating oasis.
CHAPTER VII
Godwin turned and looked back at them. In the moon's light he was an uncanny figure, standing on lofty immaterial nothingness.
"Well," he said testily, "come on. Can't you see it's all right?"
They gaped at him, eyes round as the declining moon. "How are you accomplishing that, comrade?" asked the Saracen.
"Accomplishing what? I'm only standing here."
"Yes, but on air, for the love of Allah! How can you stand on air?"
"I happen," said Godwin, distinctly and loudly, as though he were speaking to an imbecile. "I happen to be standing on the sands of the desert."
"He's mad, my child," groaned El Sareuk.
"If he is, he's doing as neat a job of being crazy as I ever saw," retorted Ramizail. "Does his insanity affect the pull of the earth?"
"Hmm," said the Hadji, "you're right. Well, let me join him in his madness. But if I vanish abruptly, niece, do you go back and sit by that spring until the oasis sinks of its own accord. I would not have your lovely brains splattered over a league of hot sand." He walked gingerly out to Godwin's side. "He's right, it's the desert!" he shouted.
She looked at the two of them, standing there in midair shaking hands solemnly with each other. She grinned. "Of course, it's a mirage, or a trick!" She went to them, treading on what seemed space, and it turned to solid dunes beneath her sandals. She looked back, and the oasis was there, settled firmly in the heart of the desert, with sleepy Yellow-eyes just flying out of the trees. "A neat stunt," said Ramizail. "Godwin, you're cleverer than I thought, and as brave as forty lions, to have tried such a thing!"
"A man takes his chances," said Godwin modestly.
They mounted and rode off toward the west, toward El Iskandariya and the ship full of rats, rats full of fleas, fleas full of bubonic plague. As they went, Ramizail nagged at Godwin, and Godwin tried unhappily to remember what he had done with the ring of Solomon. But he could not do it. He patted himself all over, and even looked into his Saracen-style helmet, which was a round shining steel cap surmounted by the golden figure of a rampant lion and resting upon a headpiece of soft white cloth that protected his neck from the sun; but he could not discover it. All he remembered was that he had put it in a safe place, a place that would never be farther from him than he could reach.
As the moon touched the faraway dunes, the sun came up. Gilded sands grew fiery beneath the hooves of their animals, and thekhamsin, that was like the breath of a devil drunk on hot mulled blood, arose to torture them.
A wide-breasted dune stretched before them. They topped the rise and Ramizail gave a cry, while the men checked their steeds and glanced at each other. "Another illusion?" asked Godwin.
"Who can tell? There are more beasts in the desert than are known to man," shrugged El Sareuk.
In the hollow formed by four dunes' meeting stood an enormous lion, all orange-red of hue, facing them with black mane bristling up like the spines of a porcupine. The odd thing about it, the thing that made it seem somewhat out of the ordinary even to men who had looked on a thousand wonders in their time, was the pair of broad silver wings that sprang from its shoulder blades and spread themselves high to left and right.
"Winged lion," said Ramizail. "No, I cannot call it to mind. I doubt one's been seen before, at least in Egypt."
The lion growled, crouched, and launched itself through the air straight at Godwin's head. El Sareuk shouted, "Allah defend us!" and leaned over in the saddle to slash at it with his scimitar; while Godwin hauled his fifty-pound broadsword from its leathern sheath and flung the point swiftly up before his face. The lion, its gigantic wings flapping like a vulture's, soared up and over him. Yellow-eyes the falcon left his shoulder, giving vent to shrill wrath at this horror of the desert.
"Coming back! Diving!" roared the Hadji. Godwin flung himself from a sitting start, straight over the head of his stallion. The extended claws of the terrible beast grazed his back as he fell and ripped four gashes in the silk of his outer robe. Yellow-eyes beat her wings about the lion's head, trying to confuse and harry it.
Still holding his weapon, Godwin of England rolled over on his back. Flying sand had sprayed his face and a grain had lodged in his left eye, making him squint and curse. The lion hovered over him, then dropped like a boulder, ignoring the peregrine. Godwin twitched the point of the sword upward and at the first prickling contact with its belly the monster screeched and shot forward beyond him.
El Sareuk made his horse leap, and stood by Godwin till he rose. "It's coming back," he said. "You are its target, obviously, lad. 'Tis no natural beast, I'll take oath on the Koran!"
The winged red lion came rushing at Godwin, half on sand and half in air, giving itself little pushes with its earth-touching paws. Godwin half-knelt, waited till it was within striking range, then gave a mighty slash with his iron sword. He missed, but the strange being, startled, rose up. Godwin saw one massive hind leg coming straight at him. He had no time to lift the broadsword again; neither could he drop in time to avoid a crushing stroke of the leg. Quicker than thought he let go his sword and flung his arms before him.
The leg struck him on the chest, but to ease the force he had already wrapped his swift arms about it. The lion beat its way upward, and before he knew it Godwin, clinging like death to the hind leg, looked down and found himself a hundred feet over the desert. El Sareuk's astonished shout and Ramizail's piercing scream of terror came up to him, dim and half-heard in the rushing wind of their passage. The falcon followed, skirling her anger.
The lion paused and writhed round on itself like a common bazaar cat going after a louse. Godwin swung his body up and kicked it on the nose. It coughed dismally as one sharp spur caught its tender snout and gashed a bloody trench. It snapped at him again, its big teeth missing by a fraction. Yellow-eyes thrust her beak at its eyes and it turned from Godwin to bite out at her.
Godwin tightened the grip of his left arm and let go with his right. He drew his curved Persian dagger from its thonged sheath and judged his blow. Then he struck.
The lion, its neck slit from ear to gullet, spewed blood and uttered a horrible gurgling bellow. Slowly it began to sink toward the earth. Godwin risked a quick look down. His head reeled. He was still a good eighty feet up. If the lion died too soon, he would be smashed to a pulp beneath its dead weight. He had thought only of slaying the thing, not of how he might land safely. He swore vividly.
"This proves Ramizail's contention that I have a one-track brain!" The winged beast drifted down in spirals, its hindquarters drooping, its wings feebly beating the air, and its head jerking back and forth. Godwin held his breath. It folded its wings and plummeted straight for sickening yards, then making a last try at rising, extended the pinions once more. Godwin saw that he was no more than ten feet off the ground. He loosed his hold. The dunes came up with a rush to meet him and he lit and rolled over. The lion above gave a final roar and crumpled, smacking the sand a yard from Godwin's feet. The warrior arose and wiped his forehead with a bloodied hand, as Yellow-eyes alit on his shoulder, ruffling her feathers.
"Whew! Lady,thatwas no illusion."
El Sareuk brought him his sword and charger, and mounting, he turned its head again to the west.
CHAPTER VIII
About the time that Godwin and his friends were fording the Rosetta Branch of the Nile, Heraj the sorcerer interrupted his leader again.
"He riddled out the levitating oasis, Mufaddal, and he slew the winged lion. I thought you'd like to know what sort of man is coming after us."
"If you had done your job at all well—" Mufaddal paused to thrust a piece of millet bread into his maw, and his half-brother interrupted him.
"You know my limitations. Allah curse it, what man ever stood up to the winged lion before today?" He took a piece of paper out of Mufaddal's chin, or seemed to, at any rate, and read a few words that were scribbled thereon. "Well, the dog is crossing the Rosetta now. I have a horrible feeling he can't be stopped." Heraj sprinkled salt on the scrap of paper and ate it meditatively. "Pepi wants to try the rolling sands stunt. I suppose we may as well. But this Godwin ... by theschedim, what an opponent! Djinn or no djinn, I like him not!" He left, and Mufaddal, having lost his appetite, went off to inspect the plague ship for the hundredth time that week.
It was his own idea. He was as proud of it as of his skill at torturing captured Crusaders, a score of whom languished now in his dungeon awaiting his displeasure. The ship lay at the wharf, a black swift vessel with dark lateen sails slanting high above her deck. A company of Seljuk Turks and other Saracen allies stood about the dock, on guard lest some ill-advised person attempt to board her. More were stationed on the ship, and from beneath their feet in the sealed hold came the frightful squeakings and squealings and multitudinous rustlings of thousands upon thousands of great gray rats, imprisoned there to fight and breed and die and wait their chance at sunlight again—sunlight that Mufaddal devoutly hoped they would view on the shore of England.
He massaged his hands together. What a picture it was! All these beauties, scampering over England, biting people, infecting masses of men and women, gnawing on children's feet, carrying the plague hither and yon until the whole island lay gasping out its fading breath, nine-tenths of its population covered with the applesized tumors and hideous purple spots of bubonic. Then let them see who sent out Crusaders! It would be Saracen hordes overrunning Britain, rather than red-faced Englishmen defiling the Holy Land!
Some six hundred and forty-eight years before, the plague had lashed through Constantinople, and slain ten thousand souls in a day's space. Say, conservatively, then, that ten thousand per day would die in England. How many days would it take....
He went aboard, the better to hear the gibberings of his ghastly phalanxes. The boards were hot under his bare feet. The grisly ravening of the packed throngs of rats rose all about him, and in an ecstasy of delight he knelt to lift a hatch cover, yearning to gaze on them once more.
"Lord!" A voice burst out behind him. "O Lord, do not open the hatch! Think what thou doest!"
Mufaddal turned, to see a Mameluke, an ex-slave converted to Islam and now a fine soldier, who was running toward him and waving his arms excitedly.
Mufaddal stood erect, a giant flat-nosed man of black face and blacker heart. He kimboed his arms and hissed, "What is this you say, slave?"
The Mameluke came to a halt before him. "O Lord, think if thou shouldst allow even a single rat to escape! Thou might be bitten, and we should have to drop thee into the sea!"
Mufaddal reached out. Very slowly his hands went around the soldier's neck, and the Mameluke was too startled to step backward. Mufaddal said softly, "Shall I throttle you? Hmm. No. There lies no pleasure in the strangling of a worm. Shall I heave you into the ocean, as you would do with me should I be bitten? Bah! Too easy a death, and you might be able to swim. Shall I drop you into the hold?" The Mameluke gave a half-stifled howl. "I think I shall. The pets need nourishment. I can't have them eating each other."
He bent, still holding the gasping Mameluke by one clamped-tight fist, and raised the hatch cover and propped it with his foot. Then he lifted the soldier by his neck, swung him a little so that his flailing heels kicked out behind, and lobbed him into the opening. There was a squashy sort of splash, as the man fell full length upon a turbulent blanket of milling, screaming rodents. At the same time there burst upon the upper air a horrible carrion stench, like that of a charnel house a hundred times augmented. The Mameluke gave a cry of pitiable terror, and another, and then was still. Perhaps he fainted, or perhaps the rats found his life in that instant.
Mufaddal knelt above the hatchway, chuckling in his greasy beard. His brown eyes lit with soft venomous delight.
Suddenly there shot from the blackness of the hold a single enormous rat, fascinated by the square of light and throwing all its nervous energy into one superb attempt to gain the outer world. Mufaddal quailed back in panic as it flew past his face and landed on the deck, slithering and floundering in an effort to regain its balance after the magnificent leap.
Lest more of them make the try, he dropped the lid to the coamings. He drew his scimitar. The rat, nearly blinded, jerked its blank gaze from side to side. Slowly he advanced on it, weapon lifted. It saw him, opened its evil mouth and squealed insane defiance.
He made a swipe at it, it dodged and leaped upon him. Its tiny sharp teeth met in hisgallabiyah, and it swung from the cloth, snarling like an angry cat. Frantic, he knocked it to the deck with the flat of his sword, slicing off a small portion of his own belly in the process. Then he smashed down the blade. It split the rat in two and clove into the deck, so deeply that it took him three hearty tugs to disengage it.
Bleeding, cursing, and shaking with the after-effects of fear, he stamped off the ship and across the dock to his house, where he called his private surgeon to bind up the wound. He began to think about Godwin, and eventually the Englishman and the rat became thoroughly confused in his dark mind; so that his impersonal hatred for Godwin became a very personal loathing and desire for vengeance.
CHAPTER IX
"Godwin dear," said Ramizail, in a voice which for her was small and deferential indeed.
"Yes?" he said. He had been dreaming in the saddle of battles he had fought and brawls he would engage in.
"Godwin, my own, I'm seasick."
He stared across at her. El Sareuk said, "Niece, you were straddling a pony before you could toddle! This is unworthy of you."
"I don't care. I'm seasick." Her face was pale and beads of sweat stood on her forehead. "I'm afraid I'm going to disgrace myself," she said, and promptly did.
Godwin started to laugh. Then he stopped, and put a hand tentatively to his own belly. "El Sareuk," he said, "I don't feel so sprightly myself."
The Arab chieftain nodded. "You look like a poisoned camel, my friend. What ails you?"
"God knows. I too was almost born a-horseback. But, hang it, there's something the matter with this steed. He keeps going buckety-clomp."
"What?"
"Buckety-clomp, that's what it feels like."
El Sareuk said, "Now that you mention it, my own fellow has developed a sort of stagger. Could they have drunk bad water?"
"They drank what we drank. Damn," said Godwin miserably. "You know what it is? It's some more sorcery. Those thrice-cursed warlocks of Mufaddal's are up to something again. Mohammed, we'll never get there at this rate."
"Cheer up, thou stalwart smiter of satans," said El Sareuk. "Despite their worst efforts, we've covered four-fifths of the distance already, and 'tis no more than midday!"
"I expected to be in Alexandria by now."
"I cannot imagine what this trick may be that works on you," went on the Saracen. "But luckily it leaves me untouched. As I am when in the saddle no more than an extension of my horse, I am naturally not susceptible to—"
After a long pause, Godwin cleared his throat and said, "Susceptible to what?"
"Never mind," said El Sareuk sorrowfully, and his lean face was faintly green. "I find that, after all, I am."
They rode on grimly, until at last Ramizail said, "I'm sorry, I've got to get off and rest a while. I'msick."
The two men thankfully reined in, and the party dismounted on the top of a dune. They all sat down. Shortly Ramizail said, "It's no good. I still feel awful. The desert's going up and down in front of my eyes."
"I noticed the same phenomenon," said Godwin.
"And I," agreed El Sareuk. "The sorcerers have poisoned us, surely."
There was another silence.
Godwin murmured, "That's curious."
"What?" asked El Sareuk, who was striving with might and main not to throw up.
"Well, I was watching the horizon swell and sink, swell and sink, swell and—"
"For heaven's sake, shut up," groaned Ramizail.
"And all of a sudden I noticed my horse doing the same thing." He turned his face toward them. "I mean he was watching it too, nodding his head. You know, it isn't just us. It's the land. Itisrising and falling. The dunes are rolling like ocean waves."
Ramizail raised herself on her elbows and stared out across the sands. "They are! We stopped atop a dune, now we're in a valley." She spat. "If this isn't the messiest miracle ever worked, and the dirtiest, and the foulest, then I am not the mistress of the djinn!"
"What'll we do?" moaned Godwin. "How can you fight a shifting desert? How can you make it lie down and be good?"
El Sareuk stood up. Strong though he was, strong as so much whip-thong and steel encased in leather, he could fight this nausea no more effectively than a puppy might engage in warfare with an active volcano. "Allah punishes me for sinful pride," he said, gagging. "Pride in my horsemanship. I, who have been to Mecca, still to harbor pride!" He shaded his eyes from the blazing sun, which was the only stable object in sight. "The magic cannot stretch from edge to edge of the desert, for such a thing is beyond the power of even the djinn."
"Speaking of which, have you found that ring, Godwin?" queried Ramizail with weak petulance.
"No, let me be," said the tallow-faced Godwin.
"I was going to say," continued El Sareuk, "that if we manage to survive for the few miles, I think we will pass these rolling sands. Can you stick on your horses?"
"While I'm alive, I can ride," said Godwin, but without much conviction.
"If you two can stand it, I can," nodded the girl.
Yellow-eyes, huddled on the cantle of her master's saddle, croaked out something that sounded like a blasphemy. The horses drooped their heads, and the camel bubbled and wailed. They made a pitiful group. But the humans mounted, and the falcon flew up, and the beasts staggered forward. They would start to plow up a dune, and slowly like a wave in slow motion, it would shift until they were heading down into a valley. The horizon before them was a shifting, mutable line. Never had any of them been so ill. They had all lost their breakfasts, and seemed to be trying to recall the supper from night before last. Not a one of them but would have been happy to lie down, could he have been sure that he would die. But they pressed on, taking a weak courage from each other.
And at last El Sareuk, who in his way was stronger even than the champion Godwin, blinked watery eyes and said, "We've passed it!"
They lifted incredulous heads, and found it was true. The shifting sands had stilled and the desert lay wrapped in its customary peace.
CHAPTER X
They were almost within sight of Alexandria before they found what they were seeking. Then, just at the last possible moment, they sighted a large cluster of the black tents of the Bedouins. "Await me here," said El Sareuk urgently. "I shall collogue with these men and see whether I cannot raise us an army." He galloped away to the encampment.
Shortly there was a bustle and stir therein, and many small energetic men of the Bedouin tribe came running toward the central tent, into which El Sareuk had vanished. The Bedouins were a cheerful and healthy lot, inured to hardship, habituated to a rough nomadic life. They were short and lean, and often looked fragile, but they were fiery, intractable fighters when aroused.
When some time had passed, Ramizail said, "He will win them. You'll see they'll be wild with desire to help us, and to avenge the soiled honor of Islam. That's the tack he's using—how Mufaddal has betrayed the dignity and integrity of the Moslem world by this fiendish trick of the pest ship, and how these Bedouins can expunge the stain by following us against his forces."
"Can you do soothsaying without the help of Mihrjan?" asked Godwin curiously. There was a great deal he did not know even yet about this strange tall child of Solomon's line.
"Oh, no. I'm just well acquainted with my uncle's ways of thinking and speaking and acting. I've seen him whip a crowd of assorted Saracens—Turks and Mamelukes and Arabs and Soldarii and Turcomans—into such a frenzy of fanatical zeal that they attacked a force nine times as large as their own, and cut it to ribbons. He's an old spell-binder."
And it turned out as she predicted, for quite soon El Sareuk came riding toward them at the head of a gang of horsemen, some half a hundred in all, waving their swords and bows over their heads. Godwin knew instinctively what to do. He rose in his stirrups and threw up his tremendous broadsword and howled in Arabic. "Death to all who defile the name and honor of Islam!" Although he was a good Christian knight this war-slogan did not seem inappropriate to him in the least; and it pleased and flattered the Bedouins no end, for El Sareuk had told them of this mighty-chested warrior who had dedicated himself to wrong-righting and oppression-ending, leaving the Crusade to travel for this purpose in company with an Arab prince and half-caste girl. They answered his hail with lusty yells and riding up to him and Ramizail they pressed upon them all manner of foods, roast lamb in palm leaves, legs of fowl, delicacies of every sort, goats' milk for Godwin and asses' milk for the woman. Greedily they ate and drank as they rode west, and finished the last crumb as they sighted the outskirts of Alexandria.
"We'll ride straight in," said Godwin, now grim and businesslike. "They're expecting us, so watch out for surprises. Their sorcerers have told them we're coming, I'll wager my left eye upon it. We'll find out which wharf the plague ship's moored to, and burn her to the water's edge. Then we'll seek out this Mufaddal swine, and pin him by his ears to an ant's nest!"
His band gave an ululating shout, and the horses were booted into a gallop.
It was then about two hours before sunset.
They rode down one of the principal streets, a rather dirty, narrow thoroughfare, overhung by the houses on either side. Above the roofs to their left they could see the pinnacle of Pompey's Pillar, the towering column of red granite which had stood in Alexandria for eight centuries. "'Twould be moored in the West Harbor, I think," said El Sareuk, who knew the city to some extent. He nudged his horse slightly into the lead and preceded the force through the heart of the place.
Few signs of life were in evidence. The air was hushed, even the wind off the sea had drawn back to avoid this silent city, and an atmosphere of expectancy held the blindly staring buildings. Only an occasional fellah or more substantial citizen would appear now and again, stare for a moment at the intent horsemen, and disappear from sight like a startled wild thing. Godwin tugged at his beard. They were not, as he had predicted, wholly unexpected. Word had somehow flown through the streets and bazaars of their coming, and of the imminent brawl. Perhaps magic was at work, too, though he felt and saw nothing to indicate it.
They approached the docks, catching glimpses of them at intervals in the houses, and Godwin grew even more tense and watchful. Then, as he and Ramizail and the chief of the Bedouins all abreast, with El Sareuk four hand-breadths in advance, galloped round a turn, the attack was launched upon them.
From the roof of a house on the corner a great net, like those used by fishermen, was flung out, weighted and tossed by experienced hands; it fell upon the four of them, an entangling, encumbering, maddening enemy, knocking Ramizail out of the saddle, tipping Godwin's helmet over his eyes, snaring all their drawn weapons and seeming to writhe about them as though it were a sentient creature. Godwin shouted, "Use your blades!" and began hacking away at the cords with his broadsword. It was not the razor-keen instrument that El Sareuk's scimitar was, however, and the old Saracen had to release him after cutting free himself. Ramizail was dodging on hands and knees between the legs of the terrified horses. The Bedouin leader yelled, "leave the beasts;" and Godwin realized that they must. It would take minutes to slice the net sufficiently to unscramble the steeds. He slid off his Spanish charger, picked up Ramizail by the waist, dodged under a reaching fold of the net and gained the free ground.