Night Creatures Read online

  Meantime the beset giant swung his flailing bloody blade, chopped an arm from one attacker, lopped the head off of another neatly as a scullion beheads a fowl, and dropping his brand leaped upon the one remaining Assassin, raised him high above his head, and hurled him to the roadway with such force that his bones cracked like breaking pots.

  Now they looked at each other, Gaussin and the sole survivor of the beset party, and Gaussin drew his breath in as he recognized the other. He had seen such men as this—though not of such great stature—during his captivity in Cairo. For all the butter-color of his skin the giant was of ruddy countenance, his eyes were sharply slanted toward the outer corners, and his mustache drooped in two long plaited braids. He was dressed in armor of black lacquer ornamented with designs in golden damascene. The leather helmet on his head was pot-shaped and from its top a horse-tail trailed. Upon his feet were felt boots with soles at least two inches thick, the sword he held was long as a Crusader’s blade but curved and double-edged, and fitted with a cross-guard almost a foot long. A Mongol, one of those fierce riders from High Tartary who periodically swept from their deserts to overrun the lowlands, take whatever might be new and precious, then drift back to their northern steppes, leaving desolation in their wake. What was he doing here?

  The giant addressed him in fair Arabic. ‘My thanks to thee, most noble Frank, for that thou camest when thou did. What art thou called, and where is thy retinue? If thou wilt call them to thee I shall be glad to take thee to the tent of my commander, who will require thee for thy courtesy.’

  Gaussin laughed. A short, hard, cachinating laugh containing neither gayety nor humor. ‘One name will serve as well as any for such as I. As for my retinue, I stand surrounded by it. These be my followers, the winds, the rains, the tempests, the jackals, and the carrion-crows that haunt deserted battlefields.’

  The giant Tartar looked at him inquiringly, and, glad at last to have an auditor, Gaussin poured out the story of his lost love, his trial, and his degradation. If his tale affected the great Mongol he could not tell, for the yellow ruddy features were impassive, the eyes void of expression till he had finished. Then:

  ‘A fool thou wert, but no knave,’ the giant decided. ‘Also I have seen thy swordplay, and it likes me. Dost know the country hereabout?’

  ‘Like the lines of mine own hand.’

  ‘Good. Would’st take service with him who rules the earth?’

  ‘Thou mean’st the Holy Father at Rome?’

  ‘I mean the Kha Khan of the world, whose empire stretches from the Carpathians to Cathay. Captive princes bow their foreheads to the dust before him, ten times a hundred caravans bring him tribute every day, ten times a hundred thousand mighty men of war wait on his word.’

  ‘Why, then, this puissant lord of thine is just the master I would serve,’ replied Gaussin. If what the Mongol said were true, or even partly true, there would be fighting in this army, and loot, and glory, and a chance to make a new name for himself.

  So to the north and east they rode upon two horses retrieved from the scattered herd, and when they came at last to the great Mongol camp Gaussin’s eyes were like to pop from his head at the wonders they beheld.

  The camp was circular in form with streets running in a series of concentric circles round a hub composed of a great hemispherical pavilion of black felt. It spread across a plain at least two miles square, yet it was closely crowded with men and horses and the gear of war. Besides the horses there were oxen, trains of camels, flocks of fat-tailed sheep. The soldiers of the Great Khan seemed as numerous as sands upon the seashore, slim, high-shouldered men in armor of black lacquered leather or link-mail, with helmets shaped like pots, their long hair braided and their lips adorned with long, fierce, drooping mustaches. Each wore a long curved sword against his thigh, at every back there was a short horn bow with a quiverful of arrows. Most carried long light lances tipped with steel and targets of bullhide thickly studded with brass bosses. The officers sat on saddles rich with cloth of gold, their cloaks were sable or gray wolfskin, silver weighed their bridles, and the hilts of their swords flashed with precious stones. On ox-carts were the mighty siege engines, mangonels and trebuchets, battering-rams and scaling-towers made in sections ready to be put together at a moment’s notice, and giant cranes from whose arms swung monstrous claws of iron capable of seizing stones in castle walls and plucking them away as a man might drag a weed up by the roots. There were even clumsy mortars to throw bombs of gunpowder, and a regiment of Chinese engineers to serve them.

  Gaussin made quick calculation. The host could hardly number less than three-score thousand men, he figured, but when he spoke of it to his conductor the giant laughed. This was but an outpost of the vanguard. The main force was encamped at Baghdad where the walls had been torn down stone by stone, the city sacked, and the calif smothered under carpets. The young knight trembled as he listened. Baghdad the mighty had been overthrown, its calif killed. These were not men, but devils.

  In the carpeted pavilion of the Tura [general] in command of the encampment Gaussin made supreme obeisance in the manner of the Tartars, dropping to his knees and bending till his forehead touched the rug of leopardskin spread before the general’s divan: ‘My life between thy hands, O mighty one.’ Then while he squatted cross-legged on a pillow his conductor told how he had fought the Assassins, praising his skill with the sword and his courage, and ending with the declaration that he begged leave to join the Great Khan’s army.

  So it was arranged. Gaussin was renamed Mangoli and put in command of a troop of Uigar—named Christian—horsemen. He was given boots of heavy felt, a shirt of Persian chain-mail with a cuirass of black lacquered leather damascened with gold. Double plates of leather reinforced with iron bands flared on his shoulders; in his waist-shawl he wore two swords, one a long curved battle blade, one a straight-edged Persian weapon. His helmet was a hemisphere of lacquered leather with a flaring lobster-tail to guard his neck, and on its top was set a horse’s tail for crest. He shaved the short beard from his chin and let his mustache grow until it drooped in twin braids from the corners of his mouth. Gaussin de Solliès, godson of a bishop and degraded knight of Acre, was no more. In his place rode Mangoli, captain in the horde of the Kha Khan, lord of all the lands between the plains of Poland and Korea.

  Like the mighty car of Juggernaut the Mongol horde proceeded, and the rumble of their hoofbeats was like earth-shaking thunder, the beating of their kettle-drums was maddening. There was magic and insistence and terror in the throbbing of the booming hollow tones of the taut skins. The peoples of the earth heard it and were afraid. The sultan of Mosul made his submission, Haython, king of Armenia, bowed the knee and offered tribute. Bohemund, the Christian prince of Antioch, sent ambassadors with gifts and assumed vassalage. Cairo heard the rumble of the distant battle-drums and trembled.

  Gaussin acquired merit in the eyes of his commander. His knowledge of languages and the customs of the people made him valuable as an ambassador, his courage in the field won approbation. Within two months he had been given command of a regiment of hawk-nosed Turcomans who went to battle as to a feast, had his own standard of two horse-tails borne before him, and five kettle-drummers to announce his presence when he rode before his cavalry at parade. When the war council was called and the Tura and his colonels drank fermented mare’s milk from the silver-plated skulls of dead enemies he was always among those present. Often he remained as guest of the general and played chess until the false dawn brightened in the sky.

  One night the Tura paused as he advanced his queen’s knight, looking at Gaussin with one of his rare smiles. ‘Methinks I have an embassy for thee, my Mangoli,’ he announced.

  ‘Hearing and obeying, O Magnificence,’ responded Gaussin as military etiquette required. ‘Thy wishes are thy slave’s desires. Where would’st that I should go?’

  ‘To the castle of the Shaikh al Jebal at Alamut.’

  ‘The stronghold of the Old Man of the M
ountain?’ Gaussin almost gasped. Many had gone through the portal of that place of terror, but those who came back had been few as those who returned from the grave.

  ‘In sooth. These thrice-accurst ones have seen fit to attempt to levy tribute on us. ’Tis time they learned the Kha Khan takes but does not give. You ride for Alamut with the dawn and bear our summons to surrender to the Master of the Assassins. Go boldly and fear not. The might of the Great Khan goes with thee.’

  Clad in his armor of black lacquer, Gaussin stood before the Shaikh al Jebal, Grand Master of the Assassins. For ten days he had ridden with an escort of four Kirghiz horsemen, one of whom bore the Kha Khan’s long blue banner that all might know he traveled on official business, and relays of fresh horses waited them at every stopping-place. At the foot of the tall peak on which the castle of the Shaikh stood, his escort was commanded to await his return, while he was led up a long spiral causeway to the very heart of the Assassin’s spider-web.

  Despite the realization that he had ambassadorial immunity, Gaussin shuddered as he gazed upon the Shaikh al Jebal, Lord of Death.

  Surrounded by a group of giant guardsmen stood a dais of gilded sandalwood, and on it was a huge black cushion filled with some soft wadding. In this a man sank till he seemed almost enveloped in its sable folds. He was a little man, hardly more than a dwarf, but the head that topped his narrow shoulders was enormous, and its size was magnified by the huge turban that he wore. All black, the monstrous pillow, the robe of him who sat upon it, the turban wound about his head. But his face was pasty-pale, and from it looked a pair of hot, dry, glittering eyes unchanging in expression, unwinking in their fixed, set stare as those of some great snake.

  The creatures of his court fawned on the Master of the Assassins, but Gaussin neither bowed nor bent the knee. He was the emissary of the Kha Khan, ruler of the world from Krakow to Cathay.

  ‘What petition does thou make to Sinan, the Shaikh al Jebal, Lord of Death, O herald of the Barbarians?’ asked a chamberlain.

  Then Gaussin answered, keeping bold eyes leveled on the gnome-like creature squatting on the sable cushion: ‘Thus saith the Kha Khan, ruler of the earth—fling open wide thy gates and submit. If thou dost, this peace shall be granted thee. If thou dost otherwise, that will happen which will happen, and what it is to be we know not. The Lord of Heaven only knows. I have spoken.’

  Silence utter and abysmal as the stillness in the craters of a long-dead world fell at his words. Then a titter ran about the ranks of white-robed retainers who waited on the Shaikh al Jebal.

  ‘Say,’ came the reply from the Old Man of the Mountain, ‘that Sinan, Lord of Alamut and Lord of Life and Death, bids the gipsy Kha Khan get back to his pig-sty villages beyond the mountains while he has life to go. He who triumphed over Saladin the Victory-Bringer, and took tribute from the Lion-Hearted Malik Ric of England fears no outland horde. Get thee back to herding swine and driving sheep while yet I let thee live. I have spoken.’

  Gaussin turned upon his heel, two retainers put a bandage round his eyes and led him through the winding exits of the castle of the Assassins.

  The causeway leading from the castle wound in a steep spiral no wider than to let two horsemen ride abreast, and with a strong watch-tower at each turn. A handful of determined men could hold it against a host. Gaussin trod warily, for the slippery roadway had no parapet, and a false step meant a fall of half a thousand feet. At last he reached the gateway in the wall that circled round the mountain foot, passed through the guard of hot-eyed, lean-faced soldiers, and paused upon the outer threshold to draw a breath of clean air. It was like coming from a charnel house, this exit from the Krak al Jebal.

  ‘Ho, comrades,’ he called to his waiting escort. ‘I am come out again!’

  No answer came. Could they be sleeping? ‘Hai,’ he shouted, ‘where be ye, sons of nearly noseless mothers, brothers of indifferently moral sisters?’ Only silence answered him, and he strode forward angrily.

  The stamping of a horse attracted his attention, and as he turned toward it he caught the gleam of sheepskins in the darkness.

  ‘Rouse ye, sons of calamity, uncles of ten thousand uncouth cockroaches!’ he roared. ‘Stand on thy misshapen feet and tell me why ye dare sleep thus——’

  His voice snapped like a frayed rope under sudden strain. The escort lay upon their backs, feet crossed, arms out as if they had been crucified against the ground, and from each breast there protruded the red handle of Assassins’ murder-knives. Each body terminated in a bloody neck, and from four stakes four severed heads grinned at him. The Kha Khan’s long blue banner lay upon the earth, tattered, trampled, smeared with mud and filth.

  ‘By Allah and the good Saint John the Baptist, by the Lord Gotama Boodh, an hundred heads shall fall for each hair in thy beards, my comrades!’ Gaussin swore. ‘And as for this insult to the Great Khan’s standard——’

  ‘Whatever falls or stands, ’twill make small difference to thee, O Tartar.’ Silent as shadows, four retainers of the Old Man of the Mountain had emerged from the darkness, and ranged themselves before him. The moonlight glittered on their slim curved cimeters and on the hard white teeth beneath their black mustaches.

  ‘Thou camest bearing insults to the Lord of Death,’ their leader said. ‘Behold, we send the Kha Khan back his messengers, and though they may not speak, methinks the message they take back will be well understood. Bow thy neck to the sword, O Tartar upstart, thy day of doom has come.’

  Then they were on him like the wolf-pack on a stag, slashing at him with the sickles of their cimeters, digging for the joints of his harness with their venomed daggers.

  He drew his battle-sword and met their charge with a mad bellow of defiance. ‘God wills it!’

  But at the first stroke he felt consternation surging through him like cold fever. He had been disarmed when he went through the gate of Alamut, and his weapon had been returned to him in its sheath. Not suspecting perfidy, he had made no test of it, but now, as he swung it, the blade snapped in his hand where it had been sawed almost through with files.

  The Assassins screamed with glee as the sword parted in his grasp, but they reckoned without that far strain of Northern blood which had trickled into Gaussin’s veins from some Norse berserker. If he was formidable when armed, he was terrible in his unarmed fury.

  With a mighty shout he leaped upon the foremost Assassin, grasped him in his bare hands, and raised him overhead, crashing him against two others with a force that sent them sprawling in a heap. Then, before they could rise from their stunned fall, he seized a rock as great as a man’s girth and smashed it down on them so fiercely that the cracking of their bones was like the sound of snail-shells trodden underfoot.

  But while he dealt thus with the three, the fourth Assassin had leaped on his back and slashed his knife across his brow. He felt the poisoned steel shear through his flesh and grate against the bone as if it had been iron reddened in the fire, felt the spate of hot blood rush into his eyes, heard a terrible, wild baying, as of a wolf that closes for the kill, heard the squeaking, screaming shriek of his assailant as he loosed the strangle-hold upon his neck and dropped off of his shoulder. Then, blood-blinded and in torment from the wound the venomed dagger made, he fell fainting to the ground beside his headless comrades.

  Sylvanette had worn her wolfish form like a hair-shirt for almost a year. When she first realized the dreadful change that had come on her she was so prostrated with horror that she could but lie upon the orchard grass and whimper like a beaten cur, but in a little while she rose and stretched her shaggy limbs, finding a kind of pleasure in their strength and suppleness. By morning she was ravenous and trotted out in search of food. A flock was grazing in a nearby meadow, and the shepherd ran screaming at her approach, but when she seized a little woolly lamb in her jaws and heard its piteous blasts for mercy she could not find the heart to kill it, bur ran with it until she overtook its panic-stricken mother and dropped the trembling baby by th
e ewe’s side. Then, hungrier than ever, she galloped through the wood until she came upon a cotter’s croft and saw a joint of mutton hanging from a hook. Pursued by frenzied curses of the farmer, she made off with the haunch of meat, feasted at her leisure, and slept until the sun went down and it was time to quest for food again.

  Now and then she met with other wolves. As human maid she had been terrified at the mere mention of a wolf, but in her changed shape she not only had no fear of them, but, finding herself larger than the largest of them, swaggered through their midst, helped herself to their kills, and turned with savage snarls if they disputed her queenship. Once an old she-wolf would have stood against her, but Sylvanette charged at her, bore her down, and shook her as a terrier shakes a rat. Only when the other’s carcass dangled limply from her jaws did she relax her hold. After that the wolf-pack gave her room, and yielded up their kills without dispute.

  Northward she traveled, sometimes fifty or a hundred miles a day, seeking with her new-found beast’s instinct for the solitudes of the Taurus. Presently she came upon the ashes of the circling watch-fires of a mighty Tartar camp. Food was there in abundance—knuckles of fat sheep, joints of beef scarce touched by carvers’ knives, broken meats from goat stew, all that she could eat, and more. Why run the woods and fight with other wolves when here was provender in plenty, ready for the taking? So she followed the cold campfires from Armenia almost to the shores of the Sea of the Ravens.

  One day as she was foraging among the trenches where the oxen had been roasted whole, she heard the drum of hoof-beats, and, true to her instincts, sank down upon her belly until her gray-furred body seemed to melt and disappear against the gray wood-ashes of the pit. Then, suddenly, she smelled it. Not exactly a perfume, but sweeter to her twitching nostrils than the finest scent of Araby or far Cathay. Long since she’d noticed that each animal and man had a scent of his own, but this was like no other, it was . . . it was . . .