Swords From the Desert by Harold Lamb Read Free Book Online Page A

not dismount to speak to a barbarian Nazarene.
    "I have heard of thee, Khalil." All at once she smiled, and it was pleasing. "Thou art a prince-of boasters. Men say thou dost ride in the quarters of the city behind a Greek trumpeter."
    Eh, there was a sting in the sweetness of this barbarian girl.
    "I ride in the fashion ordained by thine emperor," said I. "And at the court of this emperor I told the tales that were besought of me, but no man in this city of the Greeks hath heard my tongue boast of thy noble men and knights overthrown by this, my sword."
    "Yet even now a woman hears and likes it not," she cried at once, tossing her head. "Nor do I owe ought of fealty to the Greek or his lineage."
    It had not come into my mind to speak to this maiden. I had come to see the kohlani racer. Yet it stirred my interest when she maintained that she was no servant of Murtzuple. Why should a young barbarian girl dwell in Constantinople the Great, without kinsmen to guard her?
    "This horse," said I, "is of royal descent. How came he to thy hand?"
    Her eyes flashed and she smiled again.
    "By the sword, my lord Khalil," she cried in her clear voice. "He was taken from the paynims of Palestine by a great and very bold man, who gave him to me."
    "By whom?" I asked.
    She made answer with pride.
    "By Richard, Sieur de Brienne."
    "Ricard," I said after her, and thought that I had heard the name spoken before.
    But surely there were many knights of that name who had sewn the Nazarene cross upon their khalats and had sought death or honor in Palestine. It was clear that this paladin of the Franks had brought the gray racer to Constantinople as a gift to the maiden. And I did not think that he was father or brother to her. When I looked again into her eyes, I did not think he was her lover, because her pride was that of a child in a hero.
    "Take care not to overfeed the gray horse," I said when I had feasted my eyes upon him. "And keep a guard at his stable. There are more thieves than rats in this city, and there are many rats."
    "Try to take him!" she laughed up at me.
    "From thy Ricard, I would take the horse," I said, "but not from a child."
    It came to my mind that if there should be a battle between the Greeks and the Franks, the girl would be carried off by someone or other, and the gray horse might fall to me-
    "Thou art a bold warrior, 0 Khalil," she made answer, after a moment, "yet I do not think thee the boaster men proclaim thee."
    "Y Allah!" I cried. "Thou art a bold barbarian. Upon thee be the peace. I have seen the horse, and I go!"
    "Bethink thee, Lord Khalil," she said as I turned my rein, "the city will be a place of peril for paynimry within the week. Wilt thou not leave the walls before the Franks come with their power?"
    Indeed, until now, that had been my thought. But in the siege and the tumult there would be an opportunity to win the kohlani, and I decided to await this opportunity.
    "What is ordained may not be altered," I said to her. "Look well to the horse!"
    My people have a saying: "When God's earth is so wide, why dwell within walls?"
    Of this saying Abou Asaid reminded me when I came to his stall the following day to watch for the gray horse and the barbarian girl. He had sold most of his daggers and javelins to Greeks at high prices, and was bundling up his own belongings to fly from the city with the next karwan. He said that most of the Muslimin were leaving, for dread of the Franks, and he besought me earnestly to go with him.
    From Abou Asaid I learned the name of the barbarian girl. It was Irene. Every day she had passed through the street of the metalworkers on the gray horse, and her face had become known, being beautiful. She lived alone in the city in a small stone house close to the church of the Greek patriarch.
    The barbarian Irene was under the protection of the patriarch, so that the Nazarenes did not molest her. In the stone house with her were also an old woman and a man slave-the one I had seen