About half an hour short of noon according to my sand glass, we came to a ford on a tributary of the Halil Rud. Apparently it had offered a fairly easy crossing until lately: now the banks had slid, leaving them impassably steep. Detour would be difficult because of gullied ground and thorn thickets. As the drivers scratched their heads, Araxie called to her grandsire in a pleasantly excited tone and in a language I did not recognize. He answered gravely, then spoke to Nicolo through an interpreter.
“My granddaughter has reminded me of another crossing not two arrow casts from here. It is used by the villagers at Konsalmi, and is reached by a bridle path we crossed a stone’s throw back.”
“God’s grace upon you both, and you’ve earned your passage,” Nicolo replied.
We retreated the short distance and took up the path. Rough and little-used, it led into a natural amphitheater, its brush-grown rims about two hundred paces broad, and fronting on the stream. The ford looked easy but we were not to essay it yet.
With a low groan, Araxie’s grandsire clutched his throat and began to topple from his seat.
Three stout drivers checked his fall and eased him to the ground. At the same instant Araxie leaped down and ran to him, crying. Drawing his gray head into her lap, she began to stroke his brow, meanwhile murmuring a prayer.
The whole caravan had stopped in disorder. The marchers left their ranks to crowd about the fallen patriarch, and we horsemen in the van turned back to his help. Most of our number dismounted. I kept my seat with the thought of riding ahead to a village about half a mile beyond the ford, whose sun-baked white walls glimmered through the thorn scrub and whose oasis of date palms raised cool green plumes against the burning-glass sky.
Then I noticed that the Jew Daniel had not dismounted or made any other move to help the gaffer and was looking down at him with cold, alert eyes.
Daniel felt my angry glance and flushed. “I’m sorry I can’t join in the commiseration,” he told me in low tones.
“What do you mean?”
“This is a show of some kind. He knew those cameleers would catch him. I think the young beauty’s going to need twenty dinars for some rare drugs. I suspected her when the old man told that lie about the scarf.”
“What lie?”
“That she’d embroidered it herself. I saw it a good month ago in the stock of Kamul, the silk merchant, as he was loading his caravan at Shiraz.”
“Didn’t you know that caravan was ambushed by the Karaunas and wiped out?”
“What?”
I did not answer. Instead I wiped sweat from my brow, meanwhile peering through my fingers with every strength and effort of my eyes. I looked to the heavy thorn scrub that grew halfway down the walls of the amphitheater. A silver twinkle, instantly disappearing, was sunlight on a polished spearhead or harness metal. Then there was a stir off and on along the edge of the thickets, as if a giant serpent lying there were shifting his coils. It was inaudible and it would have been invisible except for the desperate probing of my eyes, and I would not have guessed its meaning if my mind had not already leaped to a dreadful truth.
The stir was caused by a line of a hundred or more horsemen slowly raising their bows.
Their mounts stood statue-still, silent at the scent of ours blown to them on the breeze, and this was not all their training. After the first flight of arrows they would leap down the steeps like stags, needing no guiding but a little shift of weight by their inhuman riders. Our horses and camels that did not fall or stampede at the first volley could not carry us far in the winged hail to follow. And for that little way, only our best steeds could keep pace with the Tatar ponies.
All this came to me as a vista revealed by lightning. I saw the arrows being nocked with slow, steady movements and the bows stealthily drawn. My mare was headed away from the ford. She bounded forward as I roweled her cruelly, but wheeled to my drawn bit. The quick turn fetched her on the course I must take and my howl had already drowned out every other sound and rang against the rocks.
“Karaunas! Karaunas! Follow me!”
Leaping from my spur, the mare did not quite clear an obstruction. I felt her front hoof sink into what seemed soft wet ground. No doubt the patriarch opened his eyes and saw the sky once more before darkness filled them, and his death scream had just started its sky climb as I dropped my reins over the pummel and bent low in the saddle. With one hand I clutched a big ropelike hank of Araxie’s hair. With the other I caught in her armpit as with a hook. Her upper garments ripped away and she screamed with pain, but my grip held, and by a great wrench of muscle and bone I heaved her in front of me, half in my lap in the chairlike saddle, and half jammed against the peak. She had little room to struggle and at once became helpless to do so under the press of my arm.
I made one dash straight away from the ambushed horde. For the instant I did not think they had eyes for anyone but my captive and me.
I began to wheel toward the ford. Our other horsemen bounded into their saddles and followed Nicolo on a cut that would intercept my course. With a half-turn I got between them and the bowmen. I was quite sure they would not let fly in my direction.
But with a howl like the hungry chorus of a hundred wolves, they broke from their ambush and came bounding down the slope. At least twoscore in the vanguard set off in our pursuit; the rest cut off the flight of the cameleers and surrounded the rest of the caravan. Yelling like devils, they shot arrows into the backs of all who tried to fly and drove lances into the breasts of the few who chose to fight rather than be sold for galley slaves.
I watched these killings over my shoulder and was very glad of Araxie’s close company on this ride.
We splashed through the ford—Nicolo leading now, Maffeo and seven other merchants in a band, I on the rear flank between them and our pursuers. As the Karaunas took a short cut to bring them on our flank, I dashed forward with joy in my heart that I wore such magic armor, protecting me and nine of my fellow travelers. Araxie might be the daughter of a Karauna chief, I thought; more likely she was his mistress.
Our horses ran with their necks stretched, tails arched a little, picking up their hoofs cleanly, for they were mostly excellent Badakhshans, costing up to two hundred dinars. But Darchill, a stingy Georgian Christian, had bought him a lowborn nag, priding himself upon his thrift; and now the jingle of the gold he had saved was a poor buckler against the nearing howls of the Tatars. Their ponies were shorter and shaggier, not quite as swift as ours on good ground, but wondrous coverers of rough going, impervious as their masters to heat or cold, and tireless as wild asses. Happily we were running on a cattle track between ford and village, and at the very longest, the race would be short.
“Let me go!” my captive wailed.
“In due course,” I answered, stopping her wriggling with my arm.
“It wasn’t my fault. I’ve been true to you, I swear before Jesu and all the saints! How could I know that the black horde lay in wait——”
“The beggar brought you word where to lead us. But you missed the chance for a clean sweep last night when I wouldn’t go with you outside the gate.”
“May I fall dead if I lie——”
I did not hear the rest. I was watching Darchill on his cheap scrub. He had dropped five yards behind our body, farther than the wildest Tatar arrow would miss its mark. At least ten came arching from the wild riders’ bows. The range was a hundred paces, aim was impossible from the bounding backs of the rough-gaited ponies, yet all but one of the ten passed within twelve feet of the horror-stricken rider. The tenth arrow took him at the base of the neck. He screamed, flung wide his arms, and tumbled to the dust.