The Eye of Zeitoon, Talbot Mundy [fantasy books to read txt] 📗

No! No, no, no! An' you no tell 'im. You 'ear me? You no tell 'im! You go now—go to 'im, or else 'e is get suspicious—understan'? My men—they go an' get that woman. When they finish getting that woman, then I send for you an' you come quick—understan'?"

I nodded.

"Listen! If you tell your frien's—if you tell that Frrred, or those others—then I not only keel you, but my men put out your eyes first an' then pull off your toes an' fingers—understan'?"

I shrugged my shoulders, suggesting an attempt to seem at ease.

"Besides—I warn you! You tell Kagig anything against me an' Kagig is at once your enemy!"

I nodded, and tried to look afraid. Perhaps the speculation that the last boast started in my mind helped give me a look that convinced her.

Fred began calling again.

"You go!" she ordered imperiously, with a last effort to impress me with her mental predominance. "Go quickly!"

I made motions of hand and face as nearly suggestive of underhanded cunning as I could compass, and climbed out through the window without further invitation. Seeing me emerge, Fred beckoned from fifty yards away and turned his back. Morning was just beginning to descend into the valley, suddenly bright from having finished all the dawn delays among the crags higher up; but there were deep shadows here and especially where one roof overhung another.

Jumping from roof to roof to follow Fred, I was suddenly brought up short by a figure in shadow that gesticulated wildly without speaking. It was below me, in a narrow, shallow runway between two houses, and I had been so impressed by my interview with Maga that assassination was the first thought ready to mind. I sprang aside and tried to check myself, missed footing, and fell into the very runway I had tried to avoid.

A friend unmistakable, Anna—Gloria's self-constituted maid—ran out of the darkest shadow and kept me from scrambling to my feet.

"Wait!" she whispered. "Don't be seen talking to me. Listen!"

My ankle pained considerably and I was out of breath. I was willing enough to lie there.

"Maga has made a plot to betray Zeitoon! She has been talking with that Turkish colonel who was captured. I don't know what the plot is, but I listened through a chink in the wall of the prison, and I heard him promise that she should have Will Yerkes!"

"What else did you hear?"

"Nothing else. There was wind whistling, and the straw made a noise."

At that moment Fred chose to turn his head to see whether I was following. Not seeing me, he came back over the roofs, shouting to know what had happened. I got to my feet but, although he hardly looks the part, he is as active as a boy, and he had scrambled to a higher roof that commanded a view of my runway before my twisted ankle would permit me to escape.

"So that's it, eh? A woman!"

"Keep an eye on Miss Gloria!" I whispered to Anna, and she ducked and ran.

If I had had presence of mind I would have accepted the insinuation, and turned the joke on Fred. Instead, I denied it hotly like a fool, and nothing could have fed the fires of his spirit of raillery more surely.

"I've unearthed a plot," I began, limping along beside him.

"No, sir! It was I who unearthed the two of you!"

"See here, Fred—"

"Look? I'd be ashamed! No, no—I wasn't looking!"

"Fred, I'm serious!"

"Entanglements with women are always serious!"

"I tell you, that girl Maga—"

"Two of 'em, eh? Worser and worser! You'll have Will jealous into the bargain!"

"Have it your own way, then!" I said, savage with pain (and the reasons he did not hesitate to assign to my strained ankle were simply scandalous). "I'll wait until I find a man with honest ears."

"Try Kagig!" he advised me dryly.

And Kagig I did try. We came on him at our end of the bridge that overhung the Jihun River. Our party were waiting on the far side, and Fred hurried over to join them. Kagig was listening to the reports of a dozen men, and while I waited to get his ear I could see Fred telling his great joke to the party. It was easy to see that Gloria Vanderman did not enjoy the joke; nor did I blame her. I did not blame her for sending word there and then to Anna that her services would not be required any more.

As soon as Kagig saw me he dismissed the other men in various directions and made to start across the bridge. I called to him to wait, and walked beside him.

"I've uncovered a plot, Kagig," I began. "Maga Jhaere has been talking with the Turkish prisoner."

"I know it. I sent her to talk with him!"

"She has bargained with him to betray Zeitoon!"

For answer to that Kagig turned his head and stared sharply at me—then went off into peals of diabolic laughter. He had not a word to offer. He simply utterly, absolutely, unqualifiedly disbelieved me—or else chose to have it appear so.

Chapter Eighteen "Per terram et aquam." AND HE WHO WOULD SAVE HIS LIFE SHALL LOSE IT

The fed fools beat their brazen gong
For gods' ears dulled by blatant praise,
Awonder why the scented fumes
And surplices at evensong
Avail not as in other days.
Shrunken and mean the spirit fails
Like old snow falling from the crags
And priest and pedagog compete
With nostrums for the age that ails,
But learn not why the spirit lags.
Tuneless and dull the loose lyre thrums
Ill-plucked by fingers strange to skill
That change and change the fever'd chords,
But still no inspiration comes
Though priest and pundit labor still.
Lust-urged the clamoring clans denounce
Whate'er their sires agreed was good,
And swift on faith and fair return
With lies the feud-leaders pounce
Lest Truth deprive them of their food.
Dog eateth dog and none gives thanks;
All crave the fare, but grudge the price
Their nobler forbears proudly paid,
That now for moonstruck madness ranks—
The only true coin—Sacrifice!

The man who is a hero to himself perhaps exists, but the surface indications are no proof of it. I don't pretend to be satisfied, and made no pretense at the time of being satisfied with my share in Maga's treachery. But I claim that it was more than human nature could have done, to endure the open disapproval of my friends, begun by Fred's half-earnest jest, and continued by my own indignation; and at the same time to induce them to take my warning seriously.

Will avoided me, and walked with Gloria, who made no particular secret of her disgust. Fred naturally enough kept the joke going, to save himself from being tripped in his own net. He had probably persuaded himself by that time that the accusation was true, and therefore equally probably regretted having made it; for he would have been the last man in the world to give tongue about an offense that he really believed a friend of his had committed.

Monty, who believed from force of habit every single word Fred said, walked beside me and was good enough to give me fatherly advice.

"Not the time, you know, to fool with women. I don't pretend, of course, to any right to judge your private conduct, but—you can be so awfully useful, you know, and all that kind of thing, when you're paying strict attention. Women distract a man."

All, things considered, I might have done worse than decide to say no more about the plot, but to keep my own eyes wide open. (I was particularly sore with Gloria, and derived much unwise consolation from considering stinging remarks I would make to her when the actual truth should out.)

Monty began making the best of my, in his eyes, damaged character by explaining the general dispositions he and Kagig had made for the defense of Zeitoon.

"According to my view of it," he said, "this bridge we've just crossed is the weakest point—or was. I think we can hold that clay ramp you came up yesterday against all comers. But there's a way round the back of this mountain that leads to the dismantled fort you see on this side of the river. That is the fort built by the Turkish soldiers whom Kagig told us the women of Zeitoon threw one by one over the bridge."

He stopped (we had climbed about two hundred feet of a fairly steep track leading up the flank of Beirut Dagh) and let the others gather around us.

"You see, if the enemy can once establish a footing on this hill, they'll then command the whole of Zeitoon opposite with rifle fire, even if they don't succeed in bringing artillery round the mountain."

Between us and Zeitoon there now lay a deep, sheer-sided gash, down at the bottom of which the Jihun brawled and boiled. I did not envy any army faced with the task of crossing it, even supposing the bridge should not be destroyed. But they would not need to cross in order to make the town untenable.

"The Zeitoonli are, you might say, superstitious about that bridge," Monty went on. "They refuse as much as to consider making arrangements to blow it up in case of need. Another remarkable thing is that the women claim the bridge defense as their privilege. That doesn't matter. They look like a crowd of last-ditch fighters, and we're awfully short of men. But we're almost equally short of ammunition; and if it ever gets to the point where we're driven in so that we have to hold that bridge, we shall be doling out cartridges one by one to the best shots! I have tried to persuade the women to leave the bridge until there's need of defending it, and to lend us a hand elsewhere meanwhile; but they've always held the bridge, and they propose to do the same again. Even Kagig can't shift them, although the women have been his chief supporters all along."

Fred interrupted, pointing toward a few acres of level land to our left, below Zeitoon village but still considerably above the river level.

"Is that Rustum Khan?"

"He it is," said Kagig. "A devil of a man—a wonder of a devil—no friend of mine, yet I shook hands with him and I salute him! A genius! A cavalryman born. Our people are not cavalrymen. No place for horses, this. Yet, as you have seen, there are some of us who can ride, and that Rustum Khan found many others—refugees from this and that place. See how he drills them yonder—see! It was the gift of God that so many horses fell into our hands. Some of the refugees brought horses along for food. Instead, Rustum Khan took men's corn away, to feed the hungry horses!"

"We could never have held the place without Rustum Khan," said Monty. "As it is we've a chance. The last thing the Turks will expect from us is mounted tactics. Allowing for plenty of spare horses, we shall have two full squadrons—one under Rustum Khan, and one I'll lead myself. From all accounts they're bringing an awful number of men against us, and we expect them to try to force the clay ramp. In that case—but come and see."

He led on up-hill, and after a few minutes the well-worn track disappeared, giving place to a newly cleared one. Trees had been cut down roughly, leaving stumps in such irregular profusion that, though horses could pass between them easily, no wheeled traffic could have gone that way. The undergrowth and the tree-trunks had been piled along either side, so that the new path was fenced in. It was steep and crooked, every section of it commanded by some other section higher up, with plenty of crags and boulders that afforded even better cover than the trees.

"Discovered this the first day I got here," said Monty. "Asked about bears, and a man offered to show me where a dozen of them lived. I was curious to see where a 'dozen bears could live in amity together—didn't believe a word of it. We