The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 2 Read online

  “This missive is addressed to Ibrahim, the Wezir,” she said abruptly. “Why does he want Gottfried’ s head?”

  “Because of a wound he gave the Sultan at Mohacz,” muttered Tshoruk uneasily.

  “And you, you lower-than-a-dog,” she smiled mirthlessly, “you fired the mine by the Karnthner! You and your spawn are the traitors among us.” She drew and primed a pistol. “When Zrinyi learns of you,” she said, “your end will be neither quick nor sweet. But first, you old swine, I’m going to give myself the pleasure of blowing out your cub’s brains before your eyes –”

  The older Armenian gave a choking cry. “God of my fathers, have mercy! Kill me – torture me – but spare my son!”

  At that instant a new sound split the unnatural quiet – a great peal of bells shattered the air.

  “What’s this?” roared Gottfried, groping wildly at his empty scabbard.

  “The bells of Saint Stephen!” cried Sonya. “They peal for victory!”

  She sprang for the sagging stair and he followed her up the perilous way. They came out on a sagging shattered roof, on a firmer part of which stood an ancient stone-casting machine, relic of an earlier age, and evidently recently repaired. The tower overlooked an angle of the wall, at which there were no watchers. A section of the ancient glacis, and a ditch interior to the main moat, coupled with a steep natural pitch of the earth beyond, made the point practically invulnerable. The spies had been able to exchange messages here with little fear of discovery, and it was easy to guess the method used. Down the slope, just within long arrow-shot, stood up a huge mantlet of bullhide stretched on a wooden frame, as if abandoned there by chance. Gottfried knew that message-laden arrows were loosed from the tower roof into this mantlet. But just then he gave little thought to that. His attention was riveted on the Turkish camp. There a leaping glare paled the spreading dawn; above the mad clangor of the bells rose the crackle of flames, mingled with awful screams.

  “The Janizaries are burning their prisoners,” said Red Sonya.

  “Judgment Day in the morning,” muttered Gottfried, awed at the sight that met his eyes.

  From their eyrie the companions could see almost all of the plain. Under a cold gray leaden sky, tinged a somber crimson with dawn, it lay strewn with Turkish corpses as far as the sight would carry. And the hosts of the living were melting away. From Semmering the great pavilion had vanished. The other tents were now coming down fast. Already the head of the long column was out of sight, moving into the hills through the cold dawn. Snow began falling in light swift flakes.

  The Janizaries were glutting their mad disappointment on their helpless captives, hurling men, women and children living into the flames they had kindled under the somber eyes of their master, the monarch men called the Magnificent, the Merciful. All the time the bells of Vienna clanged and thundered as if their bronze throats would burst.

  “They shot their bolt last night,” said Red Sonya. “I saw their officers lashing them, and heard them cry out in fear beneath our swords. Flesh and blood could stand no more. Look!” She clutched her companion’s arm. “The Akinji will form the rear-guard.”

  Even at that distance they made out a pair of vulture wings moving among the dark masses; the sullen light glimmered on a jeweled helmet. Sonya’s powder-stained hands clenched so that the pink, broken nails bit into the white palms, and she spat out a Cossack curse that burned like vitriol.

  “There he goes, the bastard, that made Austria a desert! How easily the souls of the butchered folk ride on his cursed winged shoulders! Anyway, old warhorse, he didn’t get your head.”

  “While he lives it’ll ride loose on my shoulders,” rumbled the giant.

  Red Sonya’s keen eyes narrowed suddenly. Seizing Gottfried’s arm, she hurried downstairs. They did not see Nikolas Zrinyi and Paul Bakics ride out of the gates with their tattered retainers, risking their lives in sorties to rescue prisoners. Steel clashed along the line of march, and the Akinji retreated slowly, fighting a good rear-guard action, balking the headlong courage of the attackers by their very numbers. Safe in the depths of his horsemen, Mikhal Oglu grinned sardonically. But Suleyman, riding in the main column, did not grin. His face was like a death-mask.

  Back in the ruined tower, Red Sonya propped one booted foot on a chair, and cupping her chin in her hand, stared into the fear-dulled eyes of Tshoruk.

  “What will you give for your life?”

  The Armenian made no reply.

  “What will you give for the life of your whelp?”

  The Armenian started as if stung. “Spare my son, princess,” he groaned. “Anything – I will pay – I will do anything.”

  She threw a shapely booted leg across the chair and sat down. “I want you to bear a message to a man.”

  “What man?”

  “Mikhal Oglu.”

  He shuddered and moistened his lips with his tongue. “Instruct me; I obey,” he whispered.

  “Good. We’ll free you and give you a horse. Your son shall remain here as hostage. If you fail us, I’ll give the cub to the Viennese to play with –” Again the old Armenian shuddered.

  “But if you play squarely, we’ll let you both go free, and my pal and I will forget about this treachery. I want you to ride after Mikhal Oglu and tell him –”

  Through the slush and driving snow, the Turkish column plodded slowly. Horses bent their heads to the blast; up and down the straggling lines camels groaned and complained, and oxen bellowed pitifully. Men stumbled through the mud, leaning beneath the weight of their arms and equipment. Night was falling, but no command had been given to halt. All day the retreating host had been harried by the daring Austrian cuirassiers who darted down upon them like wasps, tearing captives from their very hands.

  Grimly rode Suleyman among his Solaks. He wished to put as much distance as possible between himself and the scene of his first defeat, where the rotting bodies of thirty thousand Muhammadans reminded him of his crushed ambitions. Lord of western Asia he was; master of Europe he could never be. Those despised walls had saved the Western world from Moslem dominion, and Suleyman knew it. The rolling thunder of the Ottoman power re-echoed around the world, paling the glories of Persia and Mogul India. But in the West the yellow-haired Aryan barbarian stood unshaken. It was not written that the Turk should rule beyond the Danube.

  Suleyman had seen this written in blood and fire, as he stood on Semmering and saw his warriors fall back from the ramparts, despite the flailing lashes of their officers. It had been to save his authority that he gave the order to break camp – it burned his tongue like gall, but already his soldiers were burning their tents and preparing to desert him. Now in darkly brooding silence he rode, not even speaking to Ibrahim.

  In his own way Mikhal Oglu shared their savage despondency. It was with a ferocious reluctance that he turned his back on the land he had ruined, as a half-glutted panther might be driven from its prey. He recalled with satisfaction the blackened, corpse-littered wastes – the screams of tortured men – the cries of girls writhing in his iron arms; recalled with much the same sensations the death-shrieks of those same girls in the blood-fouled hands of his killers.

  But he was stung with the disappointment of a task undone – for which the Grand Vizier had lashed him with stinging word. He was out of favor with Ibrahim. For a lesser man that might have meant a bowstring. For him it meant that he would have to perform some prodigious feat to reinstate himself. In this mood he was dangerous and reckless as a wounded panther.

  Snow fell heavily, adding to the miseries of the retreat. Wounded men fell in the mire and lay still, covered by a growing white mantle. Mikhal Oglu rode among his rearmost ranks, straining his eyes into the darkness. No foe had been sighted for hours. The victorious Austrians had ridden back to their city.

  The columns were moving slowly through a ruined village, whose charred beams and crumbling fire-seared walls stood blackly in the falling snow. Word came back down the lines that the Sultan wou
ld pass on through and camp in a valley which lay a few miles beyond.

  The quick drum of hoofs back along the way they had come caused the Akinji to grip their lances and glare slit-eyed into the flickering darkness. They heard but a single horse, and a voice calling the name of Mikhal Oglu. With a word the chief stayed a dozen lifted bows, and shouted in return. A tall, gray stallion loomed out of the flying snow, a black-mantled figure crouched grotesquely atop of it.

  “Tshoruk! You Armenian dog! What in the name of Allah –”

  The Armenian rode close to Mikhal Oglu and whispered urgently in his ear. The cold bit through the thickest garments. The Akinji noted that Tshoruk was trembling violently. His teeth chattered and he stammered in his speech. But the Turk’s eyes blazed at the import of his message.

  “Dog, do you lie?”

  “May I rot in hell if I lie!” A strong shudder shook Tshoruk and he drew his kaftan close about him. “He fell from his horse, riding with the cuirassiers to attack the rear-guard, and lies with a broken leg in a deserted peasant’s hut some three miles back – alone except for his mistress Red Sonya, and three or four Lanzknechts, who are drunk on wine they found in the deserted camp.”

  Mikhal Oglu wheeled his horse with sudden intent.

  “Twenty men to me!” he barked. “The rest ride on with the main column. I go after a head worth its weight in gold. I’ll overtake you before you go into camp.”

  Othman caught his jeweled rein. “Are you mad, to ride back now? The whole country will be on our heels –”

  He reeled in his saddle as Mikhal Oglu slashed him across the mouth with his riding-whip. The chief wheeled away, followed by the men he had designated. Like ghosts they vanished into the spectral darkness.

  Othman sat his horse uncertainly, looking after them. The snow shafted down, the wind sobbed drearily among the bare branches. There was no sound except the receding noises of the trudging column. Presently these ceased. Then Othman started. Back along the way they had come, he heard a distant reverberation, a roar as of forty or fifty matchlocks speaking together. In the utter silence which followed, panic came upon Othman and his warriors. Whirling away they fled through the ruined village after the retreating horde.

  VII

  None noticed when night fell on Constantinople, for the splendor of Suleyman made night no less glorious than day. Through gardens that were riots of blossoms and perfume, cressets twinkled like myriad fireflies. Fireworks turned the city into a realm of shimmering magic, above which the minarets of five hundred mosques rose like towers of fire in an ocean of golden foam. Tribesmen on Asian hills gaped and marvelled at the blaze that pulsed and glowed afar, paling the very stars. The streets of Stamboul were thronged with crowds in the attire of holiday and rejoicing. The million lights shone on jeweled turban and striped khalat – on dark eyes sparkling over filmy veils – on shining palanquins borne on the shoulders of huge ebony-skinned slaves.

  All that splendor centered in the Hippodrome, where in lavish pageants the horsemen of Turkistan and Tatary competed in breath-taking races with the riders of Egypt and Arabia, where warriors in glittering mail spilled one another’s blood on the sands, where swordsmen were matched against wild beasts, and lions were pitted against tigers of Bengal and boars from northern forests. One might have deemed the imperial pageantry of Rome revived in Eastern garb.

  On a golden throne, set upon lapis lazuli pillars, Suleyman reclined, gazing on the splendors, as purple-togaed Caesars had gazed before him. About him bowed his viziers and officers, and the ambassadors from foreign courts – Venice, Persia, India, the khanates of Tatary. They came – including the Venetians – to congratulate him on his victory over the Austrians. For this grand fête was in celebration of that victory, as set forth in a manifesto under the Sultan’s hand, which stated, in part, that the Austrians having made submission and sued for pardon on their knees, and the German realms being so distant from the Ottoman empire, “the Faithful would not trouble to clean out the fortress (Vienna), or purify, improve, and put it in repair.” Therefore the Sultan had accepted the submission of the contemptible Germans, and left them in possession of their paltry “fortress”!

  Suleyman was blinding the eyes of the world with the blaze of his wealth and glory, and striving to make himself believe that he had actually accomplished all he had intended. He had not been beaten on the field of open battle; he had set his puppet on the Hungarian throne; he had devastated Austria; the markets of Stamboul and Asia were full of Christian slaves. With this knowledge he soothed his vanity, ignoring the fact that thirty thousand of his subjects rotted before Vienna, and that his dreams of European conquest had been shattered.

  Behind the throne shone the spoils of war – silken and velvet pavilions, wrested from the Persians, the Arabs, the Egyptian memluks; costly tapestries, heavy with gold embroidery. At his feet were heaped the gifts and tributes of subject and allied princes. There were vests of Venetian velvet, golden goblets crusted with jewels from the courts of the Grand Moghul, ermine-lined kaftans from Erzeroum, carven jade from Cathay, silver Persian helmets with horse-hair plumes, turban-cloths, cunningly sewn with gems, from Egypt, curved Damascus blades of watered steel, matchlocks from Kabul worked richly in chased silver, breastplates and shields of Indian steel, rare furs from Mongolia. The throne was flanked on either hand by a long rank of youthful slaves, made fast by golden collars to a single, long silver chain. One file was composed of young Greek and Hungarian boys, the other of girls; all clad only in plumed head-pieces and jeweled ornaments intended to emphasize their nudity.

  Eunuchs in flowing robes, their rotund bellies banded by cloth-of-gold sashes, knelt and offered the royal guests sherbets in gemmed goblets, cooled with snow from the mountains of Asia Minor. The torches danced and flickered to the roars of the multitudes. Around the courses swept the horses, foam flying from their bits; wooden castles reeled and went up in flames as the Janizaries clashed in mock warfare. Officers passed among the shouting people, tossing showers of copper and silver coins amongst them. None hungered or thirsted in Stamboul that night except the miserable Caphar captives. The minds of the foreign envoys were numbed by the bursting sea of splendor, the thunder of imperial magnificence. About the vast arena stalked trained elephants, almost covered with housings of gold-worked leather, and from the jeweled towers on their backs, fanfares of trumpets vied with the roar of the throngs and the bellowing of lions. The tiers of the Hippodrome were a sea of faces, all turning toward the jeweled figure on the shining throne, while thousands of tongues wildly thundered his acclaim.

  As he impressed the Venetian envoys, Suleyman knew he impressed the world. In the blaze of his magnificence, men would forget that a handful of desperate Caphars behind rotting walls had closed his road to empire. Suleyman accepted a goblet of the forbidden wine, and spoke aside to the Grand Vizier, who stepped forth and lifted his arms.

  “Oh, guests of my master, the Padishah forgets not the humblest in the hour of rejoicing. To the officers who led his hosts against the infidels, he has made rare gifts. Now he gives two hundred and forty thousand ducats to be distributed among the common soldiers, and likewise to each Janizary he gives a thousand aspers.”

  In the midst of the roar that went up, a eunuch knelt before the Grand Vizier, holding up a large round package, carefully bound and sealed. A folded piece of parchment, held shut by a red seal, accompanied it. The attention of the Sultan was attracted.

  “Oh, friend, what has thou there?”

  Ibrahim salaamed. “The rider of the Adrianople post delivered it, oh Lion of Islam. Apparently it is a gift of some sort from the Austrian dogs. Infidel riders, I understand, gave it into the hands of the border guard, with instructions to send it straightway to Stamboul.”

  “Open it,” directed Suleyman, his interest roused. The eunuch salaamed to the floor, then began breaking the seals of the package. A scholarly slave opened the accompanying note and read the contents, written in a bold yet feminine h
and:

  To the Soldan Suleyman and his Wezir Ibrahim and to the hussy Roxelana we who sign our names below send a gift in token of our immeasurable fondness and kind affection.

  Sonya of Rogatino, and Gottfried von Kalmbach

  Suleyman, who had started up at the name of his favorite, his features suddenly darkening with wrath, gave a choking cry, which was echoed by Ibrahim. The eunuch had torn the seals of the bale, disclosing what lay within. A pungent scent of herbs and preservative spices filled the air, and the object, slipping from the horrified eunuch’s hands, tumbled among the heaps of presents at Suleyman’s feet, offering a ghastly contrast to the gems, gold and velvet bales. The Sultan stared down at it and in that instant his shimmering pretense of triumph slipped from him; his glory turned to tinsel and dust. Ibrahim tore at his beard with a gurgling, strangling sound, purple with rage.

  At the Sultan’ s feet, the features frozen in a death-mask of horror, lay the severed head of Mikhal Oglu, Vulture of the Grand Turk.

  Echoes from an Anvil

  I leave to paltry poets

  The tabor and the lute;

  I sing in drums and tom-toms

  The black abysmal brute –

  My voice is of the people,

  That giant wild and mute.

  (With blood of all the ages

  His broken nails are black,

  The whole world weights and burdens

  His hairy bestial back;

  He shambles down forever

  A blind and tangled track.)

  I bring no polished diamonds,

  No gems from London town;

  No cultured whim or fancy

  My rugged verses crown;

  You find here naught but power

  That breaks a city down.

  I spill no words of beauty,

  Coins from a silver purse,

  My hands are built of iron,

  And iron is in my verse.