Novel 1984 - The Walking Drum (v5.0) Read online

  Later, following the stream, I found another cave, larger, roomier, still better hidden, so I moved us there.

  Treating Safia was the first test of my medical knowledge and a severe test for a more experienced man than I. However, Safia began, slowly, to recover. First, hers was a struggle for life, then for health, and mine was a struggle for our very existence. The food kept with the horses was soon gone, but the sheep seemed glad to have me about. If they noticed the inroads upon their number, it was no more than they expected.

  Some of Akim’s crops had seeded themselves, and I found a little barley, some fruit the birds had not eaten, and once I killed a wild boar.

  Several parties of riders appeared, and one rode to the ruins of Akim’s place, but I had erased all evidence, and they found nothing.

  When Safia could sit up and fend for herself, it became easier, for I could go further afield to forage for food and the herbs needed to treat her.

  Trouble came without warning. Three mercenary soldiers rode up to the cave just as I was mounted to ride away. I saw them the instant before they saw me and drew my sword, keeping the left side of my horse toward them, my sword resting on my knee, point forward.

  No doubt they thought me some peasant, easily frightened, for when they rode up one said, “Get off that horse, or you will have a split skull.”

  The third man who held back somewhat said, “Rig, see what’s in the cave. I think we’ve found ourselves a woman.”

  Unmoving, I sat my horse, and the first speaker started for me just as Rig started to swing down. Touching a spur to my Arab, I leaped the horse at him, knocking him to the ground. At the same time my sword came from behind the barrel of my horse.

  My sudden lunge at the dismounting soldier had brought me up on the left of the first man. He threw up his arm, and he had no shield, and the edge of my blade cut deep into his arm and shoulder.

  Our horses were pressed together, and commanding my horse with my knees, I thrust my sword into his side.

  The third man was fleeing, but sheathing my sword, I leaped my Arab after him, bringing up my bow with an arrow ready. His heavier, slower horse was no match for mine, and I overtook him swiftly, unleashing an arrow that shot him through. Catching up his horse, I despoiled him of armor and weapons and returned to the cave.

  The man whom I had knocked down was no longer in sight, but I had no doubt where he was. Dismounting, sword in hand, I entered the cave.

  Safia was against the wall, her dagger in her hand.

  “You are a fool,” she was saying. “He will kill you!”

  “Maybe, but I shall have you first.”

  He leaped at her, but instead of using the dagger as he expected, she struck him across the face with a brand from the fire. His attention had been concentrated on the knife, and he had not seen the glowing stick she held down beside her. The swing through the air ignited flame, and he sprang back. It was not my fault that he fell against the point of my sword, although maybe I did push, just a little. If a man is determined to die, who am I to fly in the face of destiny?

  “We were lucky,” I said.

  “Yes,” she admitted, “but you have skill, also.”

  Our venture of the morning had been rewarding. We now had three more horses, three helmets, two coats of mail and a breastplate, daggers, swords, and some other gear. There were only four dinars between them, but we had money of our own. Yet it was time to move.

  During the long days in the cave Safia had taught me more Persian than the little I had learned, and also some Hindi. Born in Basra, daughter of an emir by a slave girl, she had been given a fine education and betrothed to a Bengali prince. His death left her alone, but in Baghdad she married one of the old Abbasid dynasty and engaged in intrigue to seize the caliphate of Córdoba for him. Failing in that, she had become a spy, selling information to all who could pay.

  It was now four months since our flight from Córdoba, and although her body was wasted from the long illness, she was now fit to ride. The soles of her feet remained so tender she could walk only a few steps.

  Often when bathing in the pool or prowling the ruins of Akim’s farm I wondered how Sharasa fared. Had she done well? Where was she now?

  Resuming the battered armor of a mercenary, but armed better than before, I led back to the road, but this time we traveled away from Córdoba.

  “There is a man in Constantinople,” Safia said, “who might know of your father. It is he you must find.”

  We sold our captured horses as well as the armor and weapons. The four horses Safia had acquired originally we kept. We were not apt to find their equal.

  Safia had given me her jewels to store safely back in Córdoba, and I had remembered to bring them, but we hoped not to touch them. Riding in the fresh, clean air was raising color in her cheeks, and the dead, lackluster expression of her eyes was gone. Outside Toledo we met a group of travelers and joined our force to theirs. Now that we would be traveling beyond the areas controlled by the Moslems, we would be in even greater danger. Banditry existed in Moslem territories now, too, since the breakup into many small taifas.

  It was in Zaragoza that we met Rupert von Gilderstern, a mountain of a man, at least two inches taller than I and many pounds heavier. His huge face both long and wide, possessed a beak of a nose and two chins. Although he looked fat, he gave no impression of softness, and despite his massive size he moved with ease and grace. He spoke with the voice of an oracle and the commanding presence of a god.

  Arriving at a wayside inn, we found the courtyard filled with packhorses and mules. Standing wide-legged at one side of the court was a man the like of whom I had never seen. “We will have the packs off. Check your beasts for scratches, wounds, or abrasions. We will have no animals unfit to bear burdens here.”

  He ignored our arrival and looked at no one. He spoke strongly and clearly. “Look to their hocks, check their hooves for stones. Brush down the hair upon their backs, a lump of twisted hair can cause chafing. No man will see to himself until his beasts are cared for.”

  Obviously, we had encountered a merchant caravan, and this huge man was the Hansgraf or captain of the train. Such caravans took merchandise up and down and across Europe, traveling by age-old trade routes dating from ancient times, long before the Romans. Some followed the old Amber road that led from the Baltic to the Mediterranean over which amber had been taken to the pharaohs of Egypt, to Solomon himself, and to Hiram of Tyre.

  These parties of merchants, bound together by an oath of fidelity, were well-armed, prepared to resist attack by brigands, or Raubritter. There were barons who charged down from their castles hoping to plunder a caravan. Many a castle was lookout for such as these.

  The Hansgraf’s caravan of the White Company of traders was a rich one, and immediately I realized this could be our salvation. Our route led eastward through mountain passes where danger lurked, yet with such a caravan we might travel safely.

  Choosing an empty corner of the yard, I unsaddled and tended my horses, and no horse in the yard could compare to ours.

  Several times I saw the eyes of the Hansgraf upon me, or glancing from me to Safia, who stood nearby. When my animals were cared for, I gathered my weapons and went inside.

  A dozen men were seated about the table, eating and drinking, several of them already drunk. They stared at Safia as she entered, and one spoke aloud in the Frankish tongue, an insulting phrase that Safia did not understand.

  Reaching across the table, I took him by the beard, the worst of insults in a Moslem country, and dragged him across the table. Jerking down on his beard, I shoved a handful of grease and suet into his opened mouth.

  “Keep your filthy mouth shut,” I said, “or next time I’ll force a sheep down your throat.”

  Wiping the grease from my hand on his shirtfront, I released him and shoved hard, toppling him back over the bench choking and gagging.

  Two of the others, flushed with drink, half started to rise. “The lady,” I
told them, “will be treated as such. If you wish to take issue with me, I shall split your skulls like melons.”

  We chose a table at the far side of the room, and I saw the loud-mouthed one stagger to the door, gagging. It would be a while before he wagged his tongue over another woman.

  Glancing up, I saw the Hansgraf looking across the room at me.

  We ordered up a bottle of wine and a chunk of roast beef and settled down to eat. Safia had recovered except for her too tender feet, and the cool air had given her a fine appetite.

  A shadow loomed beside our table. It was the Hansgraf. “Nobly done! That swine was well served. Do you travel far?”

  Gesturing to the bottle, I said, “A noble wine, Hansgraf, will you join us?”

  “A moment, at least.”

  He seated himself, and again I was amazed at the size of him. He must have weighed half again my own weight. He was clad in black: black hose and black tall boots, a black cloak over all.

  “You are a soldier?”

  “Of fortune,” I said, “a fighting man, if necessary, but something of a scholar as well. I travel eastward,” I added, “and the lady Safia travels to her home in Shiraz.”

  “It is a far place.” He measured me again with appraising eyes. “Do you have capital to invest? Ours is a merchant company, our goods bought and sold in common, profits shared. If you would like to join us, we can use strong men.”

  “Would I share with the company?”

  “You would be one of us. Your sword must be ours, also. We will have need of swords, I believe.”

  “And your route?”

  “By way of Pamplona to Pau and Avignon. We go eastward but by way of the fairs.”

  So it was that I, who had been a scholar, a geographer, and perhaps a physician, became a merchant.

  A merchant with a sword.

  Chapter 25

  *

  THE TAWNY HILLS lay like sleeping lions along the narrow track. Far ahead, leading the convoy, was the schildrake, or standard-bearer. Behind him rode six armed men, selected for their skill with weapons, and then the Hansgraf himself.

  The caravan was made up of nearly five hundred pack animals, mostly horses and mules but cattle also. These last would be eaten when their packs were sold or shifted to mules. They walked in pairs because the track was narrow, with armed guards along the flanks of the column.

  Four women accompanied them, and there were sixty-two men, hardened by constant travel and intermittent warfare. All were shareholders in the venture, and in von Gilderstern they had a very superior commander who maintained sharp discipline. If any failed to live up to standard, he was dropped at once. His goods were purchased, and he was left wherever they happened to be.

  That morning Gilderstern had stood with his feet planted upon the earth and stared at me, hands on hips. The stance was typical, I was to learn. “You are a Celt?”

  “From Armorica, in Brittany, near the sands of Brignogan.”

  “I know the place. And the woman? She is not your wife?”

  “She is a lady to whom I am indebted. And she is a lady.”

  “I assumed as much. Tell me, and no offense intended. Is she well-behaved?”

  “As man to man, yes. We are friends. Good friends, but no more than friends. Also,” I added, “she may be of much value. She is a lady who deals in information. She was at the center of things in Córdoba until enemies caught up with her. I helped her escape as she had once helped me.”

  The Hansgraf nodded. “We go north to Montauban, then to the fairs of Flanders, back to those of the Champagne. It could be a year before we reach the sea.” He glanced at me sharply. “You were ready to fight. Are you a quarrelsome man?”

  “I am not.”

  “For your information, we are like a family here, in loyalty, in cooperation. All quarrels or disagreements are settled by me. At any time you are not satisfied or prove less than you need to be, we will buy you out, and you go your way.

  “The company protects all its members, and all trading companies stand ready to aid each other.”

  Under gray skies we moved forward. The great fairs of Flanders and the Champagne attracted merchants from all the countries of Europe. The honor of being the oldest fair was believed to belong to St. Denis, but there were fairs at Ypres, Lille, and Bruges almost as old as St. Denis. The greatest of the Flanders fairs was at Ghent.

  By the earliest years of the twelfth century the fairs at Bar and Troyes as well as those at Lagny and Provins were long established, and those in Champagne had become the money marts of Europe, clearinghouses for debts contracted in all Christian and many Moslem lands.

  Fairs lasted from three to six weeks, and it was customary for merchant caravans to travel from one fair to the next. Large fairs operated at Cambrai, Château-â Thierry, and Châlons-sur-Marne.

  The laws of the lands had given many unique privileges to the fairs and the merchants who attended them, all with a view toward attracting trade. Merchants doing business at the fairs operated under a special conduit, under protection of the ruler of the land through which they traveled. A special group of armed men, the “guards of the fairs,” maintained order, and a letter bearing their seal assured safety to all who bore them.

  No merchant traveling to or from a fair could be held for any debt contracted outside the fair, and all were free from fear of arrest for any crime dating from an earlier period.

  The right to play cards or roll dice on saints’ days was also permitted to the people of the caravans.

  The greatest route was that which we were about to follow, from Provence to the coast of Flanders, to Champagne, to Cologne, Frankfort, Leipzig and Lubeck in Germany, and then perhaps on to Kiev or Novgorod, ending our trade in Constantinople.

  The company, the word taken from companis, meaning bread-sharer, had come into being to share perils of travel at a time when the roads were beset with brigands, robber barons, and armies of warlike monks who left their monasteries to attack and pillage caravans.

  The first merchants had apparently been landless men, the drifters and adventurers that arise from any population in ferment. Often they were younger sons, outcasts who acquired money through local trade or were financed by officials of the church with secret loans. Some began as peddlers or hawkers in the towns, and acquiring a stock of goods, they took to the highways with others of their kind.

  One of the merchants who rode ahead of me dropped back to talk. He was a thin, hawk-faced man from Lombardy named Lucca. “You have done well,” he said. “Von Gilderstern is the best Hansgraf on the road. In Swabia last year he began his own fair at a river crossing, for he can smell a market as other men smell a flagon of mead. Our wealth is rarely idle, or our hands, either.”

  Lucca glanced at me. “The word is that you are a scholar? What manner of scholar?”

  A fair question. What kind of scholar was I? Or was I a scholar at all? My ignorance was enormous. Beside it my knowledge was nothing. My hunger for learning, not so much to improve my lot as to understand my world, had led me to study and to thought. Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.

  “A good question,” I replied, “but I am merely a seeker after knowledge, taking the world for my province, for it seems all knowledge is interrelated, and each science is dependent to some extent on the others. We study the stars that we may know more about our earth, and herbs that we may know medicine better.”

  “You are a physician?”

  “A little of one. So far I have had more experience in the giving of wounds than the healing of them.”

  “If it is experience you wish, you will have your fill of both. We often deal with robbers who barter with a sword.”

  “Then we will give them fair trade.” A thought came to me. “Is there not a fair in Brittany, then?”

  “A small one, perhaps. Sometimes we go to St. Malo, but there is a robber baron there who ranges far afield.
”

  “Tournemine? Would that be the name, by chance?”

  “By chance it is. You know the man?”

  “Does he carry a scar upon his face? So?”

  “He does, and I wish it were his throat.”

  Placing my hand upon my dagger, I said, “This point put it there. He killed my mother, all our people. If we go that way, I may pay him a visit.”

  “Alone?”

  “How else? These past years I have remembered him.”

  “We must talk to the Hansgraf of this.”

  A spatter of rain began to fall as I rode back along the column. We topped the rise and looked upon a fair valley, masked now with rain, at the far end the gray tower of a castle. It was a lonely and forbidding sight, with the Pyrenees beyond, their crests lost in clouds.

  A slashing rain began to fall, but we pushed on as there was an inn ahead with a large stable where many of us could sleep.

  Safia was hunched in her saddle but looked up when I came alongside. “I like the rain,” she said. “It is good to feel it on my face.”

  “Enjoy it then, for we shall soon be inside.”

  We were tired and looked forward to the inn with pleasure. A pot of mulled wine, a loaf, and a bit of cheese—I was learning how easily one could be content. Yet I sorely missed my books, for there had been no time to turn a page since leaving Zaragoza. Ahead was the mountain pass of Roncevalles famous for the Song of Roland.

  “The castle yonder?” Safia said. “Do you know whose it is?”

  “It is an ugly place. I like it not.”

  “It belongs to Prince Ahmed. You are in his lands now.”

  What was it he had said at the party of Valaba? These are your domains, but I understand that Kerbouchard likes to travel.

  My eyes strayed to the castle. I was a fool to put myself in my enemy’s hands. “He must not learn that I am here,” I said, “I must tell the Hansgraf.”

  Leaving Safia, I galloped swiftly to the head of the train and explained the situation.

  Von Gilderstern sat his horse like a monument, looking down the valley toward the inn. “You have done well to tell me of this at once. What have you in mind?”