CHAPTER I
"Reeling on that day the heaven shall reel,
And stirring shall the mountains stir
On that day shall they be thrust with thrusting to the fire of Hell
What! is this magic, then?"
--The Koran: The Mountain
SEPTEMBER was hot, evilly hot, that year in the Holy Land.
The sun, a great sentient enemy of fiery brass, hurled down a myriad lances of flame that baked the earth until it cracked across, shriveled the sycamore trees, and darted through men's skins to bubble and roil the blood in their veins as if it were so much red wine being mulled with white-hot pokers. The mountain streams, which had dwindled to a series of shallow pools in July, now gave up the ghost entirely and became parched gutters of mud as hard as the rocks they ran between. Only the deepest wells yielded water, and that more often than not tasted warm and brackish. The slightest breeze touched the flesh with the scorching torridity of the Egyptian khamsin.
The Turks and Bedouins in their tents lolled out their tongues, dabbed their lips with cloth soaked in lotions, and called on Allah for relief, for a little precious rain. The French and English Crusaders swore in hoarse voices that God was gone from the land, and they would all die before they saw Jerusalem. It was September, in the year of grace 1191.
And out on a red limestone hill overlooking a plain of shimmering, heat-racked barrenness, Godwin of England lay on his belly clad in chain armor; his head encased in a great cylinder of steel, the close-fitting hauberk covering every inch of his body, and sweat running in rivulets from each pore.
Beside him lay a second man, also in full panoply of grand hauberk and vizored helmet.
The sun hammered down at them, turning the suits of metal armor into hellish instruments of torment.
Godwin of England pushed up his vizor--it was a new one and moved easily--to tap his nose with one gloved finger, so that the sweat which had been collecting on the handsomely prominent nose flew off in a fine spray. "Dick," he said, puffing a little, "it's a warm day."
The other man dropped his head on the hard earth of the hill and gave a loud sarcastic groan.
"And this sweat," went on Godwin, "it tickles like a pack of fleas in my beard. Blast such a country! September ought to be cool."
"The Greek fire and blazing sulphur can't be any hotter than this ring-mail, I don't give a damn what they say," grunted Dick. "If we had any sense we'd wear Saracen robes and turbans."
"Like the Frankish colts, eh?" said Godwin scornfully. "Catch the King of England dressing like those soft, effeminate, gone-native, wishy-washy leftovers of the early Crusades! Ha!" he bit off a short bark of a laugh. "Armor's the proper garb for a gentleman, and don't you forget it, young Dick. No compromise with comfort or luxury!"
"Oh, I know, I know... When will it rain?"
"Morvren the sorcerer says not for three weeks."
"I shall be warped and wizened to a twig by then," moaned Dick, who was a brawny, pleasantly homely warrior of some fifteen stone weight, standing six feet two in his steel shoes. "You'll be able to carry me in your scabbard, for all my juice'll be baked out by the infernal sun."
"I never heard you complain about anything before today, Dick," said England's King. "What's wrong? Are you sick?"
"Sick of loitering around waiting unfruitfully for Saracens, Godwin. Sick of sitting quiet in this furnace. Do you know when we had our last fight?"
"Three days since."
"A lousy skirmish! I mean a fight. The seventh of September, that's when we battled last!" He wriggled impatiently in his heavy armor, as though he felt that a brawl would cool him off.
"The seventh. And today's the fourteenth. You're right," said Godwin seriously. "It's been a week. Grip my vitals! When I came on this Crusade I expected some real fighting." He tapped his nose again. "Well, if that spy was right, we'll see a troop of Turks debauching out of that defile this afternoon, and have a little sport before supper. Ah, thou!" he exclaimed suddenly. A great peregrine falcon had swooped down and alighted on his wrist. "Thou," he said tenderly, "where hast thou been, dear cleaver of clouds?"
The hawk turned her head and stared unwinking into her master's eyes. She was a giant of a bird, with a notched, scarred beak and very battered plumage. She had never been hooded or jessed; Godwin had raised her from a downy chick, and there was a fierce affection between them. "Thou," said the King again. "Thou hast blood half-dried on the feathers. Yellow-eyes, thou hast slain since thy master. Would that I could fly!"
"There's a picture," said Dick, fiddling with his vizor. "Godwin of England cavorting overhead in chain mail, flapping his arms?"
"Look there," snapped Godwin, abruptly all business. "Is that or isn't it the gleam of a Turkish helmet?"
Dick squinted through the heat haze. "By my halidom, it is!"
"To horse, son," said Godwin cheerfully, bouncing up to his feet like a boy of ten. "Ride my shoulder, thou ferocious bird: there's work for the hands today." He prodded the falcon, which fluttered up to his shoulder with a disgruntled cry. Godwin ran across the barren hilltop, placed his hands on the crupper of his steed, and vaulted into the saddle without touching stirrup or rein. Dick was swift to follow him, and they turned their horses' heads and booted them down the slope.
Across the baking plain rode a double file of Saracen warriors. They sat their light-boned coursers easily, with hands on hips and heads turned to talk with their comrades. Their faces were finely chiseled, some dark and hard and others paler with features more exquisite than a European's; their eyes were sharp, their hands well-bred with tapered fingers and perfectly kept nails. Headpieces of soft white cloth were topped by shining steel helmets. Meshed Persian armor clad their bodies, with cloaks or Arab djelabies over the steel for sun protection. Their weapons were varied: stout little bows, curved three-foot scimitars, iron horseman hooks, long etched-bladed knives, small round shields, and here and there a battle-axe hanging from the pommel of a high, gaudily-draped saddle. There were twenty Saracens; at their head rode the leader, a tall gaunt man in gold-washed armor and a black Bedouin burnous, with a drummer beside him.
Down the hill to cut them off came Godwin of England on his enormous Spanish charger, a horse of such power and bulk and ferocity that he alone struck terror to the hearts of Godwin's enemies in battle. Behind him, though not far behind, galloped Dick, the companion of the King. Two thundered over the rockhard plain to engage twenty. The odds were typical. Neither Englishman would have had them more favorable.
To the rings of the mail on Godwin's shoulder clung the talons of the giant falcon, Yellow-eyes. Her beak opened and she screamed a hawk's curse on the Saracen files.
Then the leader sighted them, and standing in his stirrups shouted a warning to his men. The lines turned and stood at gaze. Godwin drew his broadsword--it was not his heaviest one, though it weighed fifty pounds--and waved it around his head in sweeping arcs. "God and the Holy Sepulcher!" he bawled out his war cry. "Death to the Moslem!"
Dick joined his bull's roar to his master's. "A Godwin! Godwin, Godwin, a Godwin!"
As they pounded to the onset, the Saracen leader spoke one cool word. Instantly his archers sped a flight of arrows, following them with a second that left the bows even as the first curved in the air. The Englishmen caught them on their great kite-shaped shield, and Godwin laughed. This was the beginning of life! To hell with the heat and the inactivity!
Several of the Moslems twisted in their saddles. They had seen the Franks fight, ah, yes, they knew the incredible smashing drive of the infidel. They glanced at their leader, but all he said was "'Meet them!" So the two lines began to trot forward, and the drummer rattled delicate hands up and down on a pair of tomtoms, and someone started the ululating chant of Islam: Allah il-allahzi! Allah akbar! Ul-ul-ul-ul-allah akbar!
Godwin slapped down the vizor of his helmet. Yellow-eyes left his shoulder and circled watchfully above the plain. With a noise like an explosion in a smithy, the two met the twenty, and sheared and swore and hacked, and were through the ranks and turning to meet them again; and four Saracens had fallen from their ponies, their heads cloven, their arms lopped off, or their bodies divided at the waist.
"A Godwin" yelled Dick happily, his voice rattling in his helmet and echoing in his armor all the way down to his toes. "At 'em, sire!"
Godwin, whooping with glee, engaged two of the Turks together. His right arm, a flawless engine of swift destruction, swung the great broadsword now right, now left. Parry with the big shield, then slash--two more rode cautiously in at him, and he felt the dull crash of blades on his armor. Some well-hurled missile clanged on his helm. He blinked through the slit in his vizor, and swept his weapon down in an overhand blow that cleft a Saracen to the breast and made even the horse beneath his corpse stagger and flounder from its force.
Now a tall supercilious-looking foeman leaned forward to catch the King, with an iron horseman-hook, to drag him from the saddle. He reckoned without the Spanish horse, for the animals of the knights were taught to fight as splendidly as their masters; great yellow teeth clamped horribly on his forearm; he shrieked with pain, and Godwin's point flicked mercifully out and drank from his jugular vein. Blood spattered the King's armor in scarlet fountains as he hacked and smote from side to side, a skillful giant driving off angry flies. There was no opponent worthy of his serious consideration here, and he bowled and laughed and bounced happily in the saddle as he went about his grisly work.
Somewhere in back of him Dick was slaying Saracens in his accustomed manner, roaring between breaths the name of his beloved King: "A Godwin, Godwin and England!
Technically, the two young Crusaders were fighting for the glory of God, battling to win their way to Jerusalem and capture the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the Moslems: but actually they had come to the East in search of loot, brawling, and much similar lusty action, which they were now enjoying right heartily.
Finding himself alone, Godwin threw up his vizor and pirouetted his horse to seek out more enemies. He was just in time to see Dick haul a Saracen off his horse and, holding him by the neck with his left hand, smash in his helmet and his skull with the huge iron ball that formed the pommel of his sword. Dick was a bloody one, thought Godwin, shaking his head and grinning. Where were all those scoundrels who had been here but a moment before?
Dead they were, all but the black burnoused leader and his fresh-faced young drummer, who were flying together across the plain toward the defile whence they had come. Godwin bawled, "Come along, Dick!" and wheeling his mount dug in the spurs so that the animal leaped out like a greyhound. Side by side they hammered after the Saracens.
"Coward!" shouted Godwin, in the Moslem's own language. "Stay and do battle, dog of a sweeper!" But the leader fled on.
The peregrine falcon came down to ride the King's shoulder again, her feathers ruffling in the wind of their passage. Godwin said, "Thou bloodthirsty young duckling!" and waved his sword cheerfully. Turning his head, he saw Dick on his charger bucketing along abreast of him; there was a clear course before them, not so much as a bush to bar the way; and the Saracen's pony, which was bleeding from a bad neck wound, had begun to falter and slow its pace. The drummer held in the frantic horse he rode, so that he should not outdistance his leader; he put up a narrow patrician hand and fiddled with his vividly-hued turban, as though ludicrously afraid for its safety in this flight from doom.
Like twin engines of death rolling down a hillside to smash all before them, the Crusaders went rocketing to the kill,
The Saracen glanced back over his shoulder. He was so close that Godwin could see that the eyes in the gaunt fanatical face were slategray under bushy black brows. Then disaster struck.
As though their forelegs had been simultaneously caught by a noose, the two great horses stumbled and fell sprawling. Momentum of the headlong rush hurled Godwin and Dick over their saddlebows, and like ungainly projectiles from a ballista the King of England and the Baron Richard of Gascony shot twenty feet through the air and lit on their faces, ploughing up little ridges of the baked ground with their helmets as they slid to a halt.
The Saracen and his young drummer galloped on and disappeared into the gut of the valley.
Godwin rolled over on his back, sat up slowly, took off his gloves of mail, wrestled with his cylindrical helmet, got it loose, plucked it off, hurled it passionately at his quivering horse, touched his nose gently, found it and his forehead raw and skinned, put his hands on his mailed knees, and gave vent to an incredibly lengthy and involved string of purple oaths.
Dick turned his head where he lay, painfully pushed open his vizor, and as Godwin came to the end of his breath and his curses, took up where his master had left off and added a few choice adjectives of his own.
Then they looked at each other and began to laugh.
"If you ever say a word of this to anyone, Dick, I'll carve my name on your gizzard, I promise you!"
"I looked as ridiculous as you, I'll be sworn ... wasn't I painting a portrait in words half an hour since, of you flapping your arms and flying through the air? A puissant prophecy."
"God damn," said Godwin, climbing to his feet. "What a cropper! Ouch! Here, you beast," he growled at his horse, that was skittishly backing and filling, "stand quiet. Let me see those legs." He bent and held one foreleg, then the other. "Dick," he said, truly sober for the first time that day, "Look here a minute."
His comrade put his head down beside the King's. They stared at the Spanish stallion's legs.
"That's the burn of a hempen rope, or I'm a blind idiot," said Dick.
"Hmm. That's what I'd have said too. Do you spy any rope on this plain?"
"Not so much as a thin leather thong."
"Catch your nag." Dick did so, and brought it over. There were oozing raw wounds on both forelegs. "Great God," said the King uncomfortably.
Dick muttered, "They stopped together, as though they'd hit a breasthigh wall. 'Twas the mercy of our good angels that the poor beasts didn't snap all their limbs. And here's four burns on 'em, all at the same height from the ground?" he broke off, and glanced about him fearfully. "Godwin," he said, "no mortal barrier stopped us on this accursed plain."
The King of England crossed himself. "Let's go back to the place where they were halted. Mayhap there's a normal explanation."
"Of course," said Dick. But neither of them felt quite happy.
They quartered the ground between them, like two hounds at fault on the trail of a fox. The earth was torn where the horses had galloped against the invisible impediment, and Godwin went back and forth over the spot until the heat made his keen vision blur. He wiped his eyes with the back of a hand and stared down again. Then he knelt, picked up an infinitesimal something from the hard ground, and slowly walked over to his henchman.
"This," he said, glaring at Dick as though he was half enraged and half terrified--which he was?"this miserable object is the only thing loose within five hundred yards. Look at it! Did that stop us, and save two Saracen lives?"
He held out between thumb and forefinger a single long strand of black hair, jet and fine and gleaming; a hair from the head of a woman.
Dick looked at it very thoughtfully. Then he put on his helmet and shut the vizor with a clang.
"I don't know how you feel," he said hollowly through the slitted opening, "but as for me, I'd give twenty thousand dinars to be home in England. Come on, sire! Camp's five long miles away. Let's get off this unholy plain!"
So without even looting the Moslem dead, they clambered onto the horses and pointed their noses toward the orchards of Jaffa, where a hundred thousand Crusaders awaited them. As they rode, King Godwin twirled the mysterious hair between his fingers, and Yellow-eyes, sitting on his wrist, made playful little jabs at it with her cruel curved beak.
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