The Making of the Morning Star/Chapter 15

OBERT had been without sleep for a day and a night and the part of another day, so he had not been an hour in his dungeon before his head sank to the rushes and he fell into a dreamless stupor.

The opening of the door brought him back to consciousness, but his wounds ached and his limbs were stiff. He heard guttural voices that dwindled and left him to sit up and to wonder first why he was in the dungeon and then—as the events of the last morning flashed back into his mind—why the door had been opened. The men who had come to his cell had merely glanced in and passed on.

He tried to get up and cursed the massive weight that cramped his arms. Picking up the spiked ball with an effort, he went to the door and thrust it wide.

The sun was setting, and the minarets of Bokhara were touched with the last crimson of the western sky. For a while he gazed at the courtyard and listened, suspecting some new trick of the wazir's making. Every detail of the place was familiar to him, and yet everything was different. It was the hour of evening prayer, but no call of the muezzin was to be heard; no lights hung in the palace gardens, and no men moved about the courtyard. The gate stood open.

Robert picked up the morning star and walked out into the street, and his eyes puckered thoughtfully. The street was deserted. Opposite him was a potter's bench with a half-formed jar on the stone wheel and water in the bowl beside it. A dog trotted across the alley and entered the door of a shop. Bokhara was wrapped in silence. Although he listened Robert could not hear even the whine of a beggar or the grunting of a camel. He surveyed the alley reflectively, wondering if his senses had not failed him. Then he set out to walk painfully toward the house where he had left Ellen and Will.

At the first crossing, near the righistan, he heard horses approach, and blinked at the glare of torches. Three riders came up and reined in when they saw him—slant-eyed, squat warriors with spears slung at their backs. They wore wolfskin cloaks and rode small, long-haired ponies, and Robert saw that they were Mongols. They exchanged a few words, and one started to draw his sword, when another uttered an exclamation and pointed to the knight's surcoat on which the red cross was still to be made out. Robert caught the word “noyon”—chief—and guessed that the warrior had recognized him as the leader of the garrison.

They stared indifferently at his chains and the iron ball, and motioned him to accompany them, slowing their ponies to a walk to keep about him.

Entering the righistan, they joined other mounted patrols and headed for the Jumma mosque. At the steps two of the warriors took Robert by the arms and rode their ponies up the stair into the pillared transept. Here they dismounted and led him within the mosque itself, where torches glittered on white marble and gold and the great tiles of the flooring. Gathered near the entrance he found groups of the chief imams and khadis. They were holding the bridles of several Mongol ponies. Beside the noblemen were ranged scores of the Shah's singing-girls, guarded by armed Mongols. Robert asked the nearest Moslem what had taken place in the city. The man only seized his beard in both hands and bowed his head.

“Hush!” whispered another. “The wrath of God stands near us.”

“Where are the people of Bokhara?”

“Where is the snow of last year? Wo! Wo! All were ordered out on the plain save the grandees, and we—we must tend the conqueror's horses, aye, feed them with hay from the Koran boxes. Ai-a—a-i-a!”

“How did the Mongols enter the city?”

The khadi glanced fearfully toward the rear of the mosque and tore at his beard. His plump cheeks glistened with sweat.

“How? Allah be compassionate to his servants! They rode in through the gates before sunset, for the keys of Bokhara were rendered up to them.”

“Why?”

Now the man looked at Robert and knew him.

“It happened thus, O captain of many. Osman and Jahan Khan decided on a sortie of the garrison, for the Mongols seemed to be withdrawing in confusion. Nay, it was a trick. When the warriors of Islam rode forth they were cut to pieces as a hare is torn by dogs. The plain is covered with the bodies of the Kankalis and Persians, and Jahan Khan fled toward Herat like a leaf before the wind. Then we within the city gave up the keys on promise of our lives.”

Robert started and gripped the man's shoulder.

“What of the other Franks?”

The khadi moaned.

“What of one bird in a storm? Ask of him if you dare!”

A solitary rider sat in the saddle of a white horse under the colored dome of the mosque, apart from the captives. He wore no armor or insignia of rank. In the shadows at the rear of the edifice he might have been a statue cast out of iron. Even the white horse was motionless on the black marble flooring.

“Who is he?” Robert asked.

“He is the scourge that has come out of the desert. Aye, the Great Khan, Genghis Khan.”

The crusader glanced with quick interest at the conqueror, measuring the spread of the high shoulders and the sinews of wrist and forearm. Only the keen black eyes of the Mongol moved, and Robert fancied they glinted with amusement when they lingered on the grandees holding the horses.

A touch of his arm made him turn, and he saw Chepe Noyon standing beside him; but a Chepe Noyon that no longer resembled Abdullah, the teller of tales. The chieftain had cast back upon his shoulders the tiger muzzle, and Robert noticed that the hair on his head had been shaved except for a long scalp-lock that fell from his skull to the tigerskin.

“Where are the Nazarene maid and the archer?” Robert asked him.

Chepe Noyon chewed his lip reflectively, glancing from Genghis Khan to the imams who were tending the ponies. Throughout the mosque there was only to be heard the snapping of the torches and the munching of the horses that were feeding from the Koran boxes.

“From that high place Nur-Anim was accustomed to read the book of the Moslems.”

Chepe Noyon nodded at a miniature tower, some dozen feet in height, that rose behind Genghis Khan. It was shaped like a minaret with a platform and cupola in which rested on a sandalwood stand a massive Koran.

“There is the book that no one but Nur-Anim might touch.”

He looked at Robert reflectively.

“Your archer slew Osman, which was a good deed. I have him and the maid in man's attire, in my tent. I came upon them when I followed the wazir. But Nur-Anim I have not yet unearthed. In all Bokhara there is no trace of his passing, yet he must have fled from the city.”

He snarled in sudden anger.

“What avails the capture of the city without Nur-Anim?”

“The mullah? Nay, he is harmless”

“As the fangs of an adder! You were slow to see the evil in these servants of the Shah. Osman was no more than a cup-shot fool, and he died like one, striving to put his hand on a woman. Nur-Anim used him for a moment, no more. The mullah was the true master of Bokhara, for he had the treasure in his hands.”

Chepe Noyon laughed grimly.

“The mullah persuaded the Shah to leave the treasure in the hands of their god, Allah. I have spoken with one or two of his priests with a dagger in my hand, and I know that Nur-Anim wanted you to be ameer because he feared Kutchluk Khan, who was a wolf. Then he overthrew you and whispered to Osman and Jahan Khan to lead forth the army, and they knew no better.”

He made a gesture as of gathering up sand in his fist and casting it into the air.

“A little trick served to break their formation, and then the Horde rode them down.”

“But why did Nur-Anim”

“O little son, you held the wall like a man and a noyon. But you know not the ways of snakes. Muhammad is already shaken, and his power grows less; Bokhara will be razed to the plain, yet the treasure is hidden beneath it, and Nur-Anim knows the hiding-place. When we have passed on he will come out and dig it up again. A hundred thousand have died that he might do this thing.”

A warrior spoke to the chief, who took Robert's arm.

“Genghis Khan summons you.”

Robert took up his shackles and stepped forward at once, Chepe Noyon walking at his side.

“I can not aid you now. Speak boldly!”

A sigh of relief went up from the Moslems as Robert was singled out to face the man on the white horse, but he himself was too weary to feel either excitement or fear. For several moments he waited by the muzzle of the Khan's pony, while the eyes of Genghis rested on him. Chepe Noyon, after making his salutation, stood to one side to act as interpreter.

“The Khan asks,” he said briefly, “if you are one of the heroes of the Franks who came over the sea?”

“I am a Frank.”

“Are you he who held the wall against our assault?”

“Aye.”

The gray eyes of the knight sought the broad, lined face that looked down at him, utterly without expression.

“And if treachery had not put these chains upon me I would have kept the wall.”

Chepe Noyon interpreted, and the old conqueror glanced at the iron weight that hung from Robert's wrists. He spoke slowly in his deep gutturals and raised his hand.

“He says—” the Tiger Lord drew Robert aside—“that no man has stood so long before the rush of the Horde. The chains are to be taken off, and you are to eat and sleep. On the morrow you will be matched against a man as great in strength as you. The Khan will watch. If you slay the other, you are free to go where you will.”

S ROBERT turned to go back to his guards Chepe Noyon signed for him to remain. The white horse of Genghis Khan had grown restive and was pawing the marble flooring. As if the mood of the horse had aroused the chieftain, Genghis turned in the saddle and pointed at the Moslem grandees, his dark eyes snap ping with anger.

“O ye imams and khadis,” cried Chepe Noyon, translating the words, “the Khan bids you to reveal the riches that are hidden in the ground. What is above-ground his men will care for. Who among you knows the hiding-place of the treasure of Khar?”

The nobles answered with many voices that they knew nothing of the hiding-place. Some cast themselves on their knees, and the echoes of their cries were flung back by the dome in the roof.

“We have fire and steel that will wring the truth from you,” pointed out Chepe Noyon dispassionately.

Several began to relate how their personal hoards might be discovered, but all insisted that Nur-Anim alone could lead the Mongols to the treasure of Muhammad. Chepe Noyon turned to Robert.

“The throne of gold and the jewels must be near to a mosque,” he observed. “Have you come upon the way to Nur-Anim's secret?”

“I think it lies beneath the grounds of this mosque. Osman disclosed as much.”

Robert, in fact, cared little what became of the hoard. It had passed out of his reach, and his only wish was that Muhammad and the Moslems would not regain it, possibly to use it against the crusaders in later years.

Chepe Noyon spoke briefly with Genghis Khan.

“The floor at this place rings strangely when the horse stamps. Is there a space beneath?”

Echoes sprang to life as some of the priests of the mosque made answer that there was no chamber beneath.

“I would believe them more readily if some had said they did not know,” muttered the Tiger Lord, frowning. “Why do you think it is near to us, O little son?”

“Because Nur-Anim must have kept it where he could watch, and his own dwelling is small and scanty. The garden of the mosque would not be safe. Besides, Muhammad came hither when he entered Bokhara.”

He paused to watch Genghis Khan who, without touching the reins, was kneeing his pony back and forth over the square of black marble. And it did seem to Robert that the tread of the horse echoed differently when it passed under the reader's stand. Genghis Khan dismounted and moved to the tower, as clumsy on foot as he was graceful in the saddle.

He climbed the tiled steps to the cupola, while Chepe Noyon issued a command to the Mongol warriors about the door. A score of them went out, to return quickly with heavy blacksmith sledges.

Meanwhile Genghis Khan had caught up the great Koran, which must have weighed as much as Robert's shackles and ball, and poised it over his head. Then he flung it out, over the edge of the stand, and it crashed down on the marble beneath.

“He said,” muttered Chepe Noyon to the knight, “that if the Kharesmians had spent their gold for walls along the river and if they had fed the army of the beggars and the sick in the city they would not be captives now.”

Once more the echoes of the vast interior started up as the Mongols began to smash at the marble—some kneeling upon the flooring, from which the white horse drew back at once, others standing about the walls, pounding down the gold plaques with the Arabic inscriptions.

The Moslems, who had quivered and crouched as the great Koran was flung down, fell on their faces beating with their fists against the tiles. The women huddled together in a corner, and the night wind whisking in through the wide-flung portals moaned an under-note to the hideous clamor of the echoes; but no thunderbolt came down from the sky to crush the man who had thrown under the legs of his horse the sacred Koran of the Jumma.

Robert thought of the Gates in the Mountains, that had barred the way to Khar for a thousand years. Now the bars were falling. Whole segments of mosaic crumpled up and rained down from the walls, and the gold plates toppled out and down.

In spite of his weariness and his hunger Robert drew closer to the men with the hammers. He was seeing the empire of Islam cracked asunder—something that the crusaders had striven in vain to bring to pass for a hundred years; and his pulse leaped. The thin marble blocks were split into fragments on the floor and tossed aside, revealing an under surface of brick. Once more the hammers went to work, and more torches were brought.

Two of the sledges smashed through the brick at the same time, and the Mongols leaped back. The square that they had uncovered sagged and disappeared in a cloud of dust, leaving a hole wider than a man could leap.

Chepe Noyon flung back his head and roared with laughter. Robert peered down, dazzled by the reflection of the torches on a hundred glittering surfaces. As the dust eddied and settled, he beheld a chamber of considerable size below the floor of the mosque. Near the opening stood a long ivory table, covered with silver, bronze and jade caskets.

He was looking at the riches of Islam, the spoil of Bagdad and Nineveh—the plunder of Balkh and India. It shone from the hilts of weapons hung upon the walls of the vault—it sparkled from the piles of jars and incense holders, of necklaces and anklets upon the floor. And almost under the opening gleamed the throne of gold.

Who had fashioned it and how long ago, the knight could not know. Assuredly it was older than the wall of Bokhara, for in the massy metal of it were inscribed arrows and darts and emblems of another age. Perhaps Alexander and perhaps Darius had sat upon it. But just then—and Chepe Noyon had been the first to perceive him—Nur-Anim crouched against it, staring up with writhing lips, a dagger gripped in his hand.

“Ho, the snake is in its hole!” cried the Tiger Lord.

Some food and a water-sack and several candles showed that the mullah had planned to lie hidden for some time. Robert noticed steps running up into a corridor near the priest, and judged that they led to a door concealed somewhere in the reader's stand.

Chepe Noyon drew his sword at a sign from Genghis Khan. Turning to Robert, he explained swiftly that the knight was to go to a tent in the Mongol camp with the warriors who had brought him to the mosque.

“What of the maid? I must see her,” Robert demanded.

“You will see her on the morrow.”

With that the chieftain leaped bodily into the chamber below, and Robert saw Nur-Anim spring into the dark corridor. He heard Chepe Noyon laugh again, and as he moved away to join his guards the Moslem grandees moaned and gripped their beards. From the opening in the floor arose a scream that swelled and dwindled to a hoarse babble.