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

accompanying her. Abou Asaid did not know where the gray horse was kept.
    "On thy head be the folly!" he said in farewell. "At any hour the emperor may give order to close the gates. Come away while ye may!"
    "The horse is to my liking."
    "Oh Khalil, are there not maids enough in Yamen, that thou should'st cast eyes upon an infidel?"
    Then a sudden thought struck him, and he demanded that I go with some of his lads and seize the maiden, and the horse, too, if I willed, and he would send his pack animals and servants by way of the stone house and halt there, under pretense of shifting the loads. Thereupon-so said he-I should bring forth the barbarian captive, veiled, and place her among his family. At once the karwan would move on with a great tumult and pass through the gate. At Tanais or Sarai such a beautiful Frank would fetch three to four hundred gold bezants.
    So planned Abou Asaid, promising that a hundred gold pieces should be mine, in addition to the horse. There was great confusion and running about in the city, and all this might easily be done.
    Abou Asaid was only a seller of goods, and desired greatly the aid of my sword on the journey.
    "And if we be stopped at the gate?" I asked, to try him.
    "Have I not eyes and ears, 0 son of Abd 'Ullah? Four days ago I went to the Domastikos of the imperial palace, after paying silver to his officers. To him I gave gold in a purse and when he had weighed the purse he gave me a talsmin. Look!"
    Abou Asaid drew from his cloak a little staff, like a mace. Only there was a crown on the head of the staff, a gilded crown, and letters.
    "With this token from the high lord I may pass with my goods and family and servants through any gate, save the palace itself. Who, then, would stop us?"
    "Many," I made response, "if I rode the gray racer. Surely he is known from Galata to the Seven Towers!"
    Abou Asaid combed his beard.
    "I will give thee half the price of the girl Irene. Leave, then, the horse."
    "Nay," I said, and again, "nay!"
    When did a son of my clan soil his honor by taking the payment of a slave dealer? I could not drag the barbarian girl from her house like a pigeon from the toils. And Abou Asaid lacked heart to make the attempt himself.
    He lifted his hands, shook his head and hurried forth to berate his boys at the packs. So he ceased to make plots for me, nor did I ever see him again. Yet I remembered the little mace with the writing upon it.
    Instead of going with Abou Asaid, I went to look at the stone house where the gray horse was kept. It was on the side of the little river, facing Galata. And it was inside the brick wall of the place called a monastic.
    The monastic had a garden of olive trees and poplars, and in a corner of this garden beside a dry canal was the house, a tiny house of veined marble with wooden pillars by the door. The space between the house and the corner of the brick wall was fenced in, and here the gray horse was penned.
    When I spoke to him he came forward and permitted me to touch his neck and stroke him behind the ears. Then he pretended to bite at my hand and sprang away.
    Eh, it would have been a simple matter to jump on his back-once a bridle was slipped over his head-and make him leap the canal, and rush through the outer gate.
    But there was the garden. On this side of the canal it sheltered blind and aged men, Nazarenes who were cared for by the patriarch; and on the other side was the monastir, where monks walked to and fro in garments of brown hair.
    They showed no anger at sight of me-I had slung my sword within my cloak. It was a place of peace. Pigeons stalked about in the sun, and by the edge of the canal sat a group of young girls with white cloths on their heads-as fair as lilies.
    At the knee of a black-robed priest stood a boy of nine years who read aloud from a parchment roll in his hand. What he read I knew not, but his voice was clear as a flute, and the damosels listened attentively.
    Beyond the trees, in the center of