Swords From the West Read Free Page A

answered calmly, and Piculph was no wiser than before.
    The Lombard glanced at the bloodstained ax and shrugged a plump shoulder.
    "Well, you had an ill welcome. They will use their teeth, and a good sword is worth a hundred ducats in Tana tonight. Aye, many souls are fleeing the gates, and few are coming in. A bit of trouble always cheapens women and raises the price of horses. Yesterday a Greek virgin, skilled at dancing and the guitar, sold for thirty-five pieces of gold. I saw it-I, captain of Messer Andrea's men, and I swear by --"
    "Enough!" said the tall man. "Lead me to your master."
    "And may the foul fiend sit upon me, Your Grace, but I know not what he serves or seeks. He is no Frank or Lombard or man of Genoa like your illustrious lordship, and he keeps his tongue in his mouth. He wears the belt of a lord, but he came in alone from the Jerusalem road, and if he were a ghost and not a living Wight, I would name him a mad crusader. 'Twas a sweet slice he dealt that clapper-claw-Zut!-and the dog's paw was off. But he says he was sent to Your Illustrious Grace."
    Thus Piculph delivered himself to his master, Andrea the Genoese, sometimes called the Counter by reason of his great wealth in slaves and ships.
    They were talking in the open gallery of the citadel, overlooking the flat roofs of the town and the bare masts of the galleys beyond. The last of the sunset glow had left the sky, and above the sputtering torch in its socket behind Messer Andrea, the points of the Pleiades shimmered. Against the stars rose the dark bulk of the donjon and corner towers, upon which moved slowly the vague figures of watchers.
    Outside the glare of the torch Prince Theodore lay at ease upon a divan, a handsome young Greek, mindful of the dressing of his dark beard and the hang of the miniver cloak upon his shoulders, but at this moment sulky and out of patience.
    Erect, clad in severe black velvet, Messer Andrea sat at a narrow ebony table inlaid with ivory, a roll of parchment between his bony fingers. His sallow face was dry and aged, his eyes expressionless. Men in debt to the Counter feared that shrill voice more than the slither of drawn steel, and Prince Theodore-who tried to drown in his cups the memory that Tana had once been his and was now in the hands of the Counter-would say when he was very drunk that the Genoese knew the art of making silver out of copper and gold out of human souls.
    Messer Andrea glanced up fleetingly at the tall stranger, who had not understood what Piculph said.
    "A belted knight in Tana," he observed dryly. "Young sir, I do not know your name?"
    "Bruce," responded the swordsman, looking about him calmly.
    "Bruce-of Famagosta? Vassal of the Sieur de Rohan? Rohan is dead!"
    Three times the man called Bruce of Famagosta nodded assent, and Messer Andrea reflected. He knew of John of Rohan, a Count of Flanders, who had come to the East to wield his sword in the holy war against the Moslems. Adventurers served John of Rohan, among them this youth out of Scotland who was named Bruce and who had no property. Rohan and his men had been drawn into the crosscurrents of wars that swirled around Venice and Constantinople. Messer Andrea heard of them fighting at Smyrna, and in the long galleys of the Doge; they had besieged Famagosta and had in turn been besieged, and there John of Rohan had been slain not by a Moslem scimitar but by a Greek crossbow bolt-John of Rohan, who had been Messer Andrea's friend. Who had borrowed from him a large sum of money and had died still owing it.
    "Faith," remarked the Scot, "'Twas Rohan sent me hither."
    "And why?" Messer Andrea wondered how this man had found his way to Tana, through the danger that now beset the road.
    "For his daughter."
    On the divan in the shadows the Greek prince stirred and would have spoken had not Messer Andrea signed to him to be silent.
    "And where is she, Sir Bruce?"
    "Here."
    For a moment Messer Andrea was silent, his thin lips pinched. True, the