The Walking Drum is a novel by the American author Louis L'Amour. Unlike most of his other novels, The Walking Drum is not set in the frontier era of the American West, but rather is an historical novel set in the Middle Ages—12th-century Europe and the Middle East.
Plot summary
Forced to flee his birthplace on the coast of Brittany to escape the Baron de Tournemine, who killed his mother, and to seek his lost father, Mathurin Kerbouchard looks for passage on a ship and, although forced to serve as a galley slave initially, travels the coast and attains the position of pilot, frees a captured Moorish girl, Aziza, and her companion, then frees his fellow slaves. With their help, he sells his captors into slavery and escapes to Cádiz in Moorish Spain, where he looks for news of his father.
Hearing that his father is dead, Mathurin goes inland and poses as a scholar in Córdoba, but his scholarship is interrupted when he becomes involved in political intrigue surrounding Aziza and is imprisoned by Prince Ahmed. Scheduled to be executed, Mathurin escapes to the hills outside the city. Before he leaves, soldiers burn the place where he is staying, leaving him for dead. Mathurin returns to Córdoba and, aided by a woman he chances upon named Safia, he takes a job as a translator. However, the intrigue in which she is involved threatens their lives, and they must flee the city. Safia, through connections of her own, gathers news of Mathurin's father, and learns that he may be alive but was sold as a slave in the east.
Leaving Spain, Safia and Mathurin take up with a merchant caravan and travel across Europe, stopping along the way at various places to trade or to fight off thieves. Reaching Brittany, the caravan tempts a raid from the Baron de Tournemine. However, they are ready for his attack and, routing his forces, press on, joined by another caravan, to sack the baron's castle. Mathurin kills his enemy, avenging his mother, and, leaving the caravan, takes Tournamine's body and throws it into a swamp rumored to be a gate to Purgatory.
Riding eastward, Mathurin befriends a group of oppressed peasants before rejoining the caravan as it approaches Paris. Safia has learned that Mathurin's father is at Alamut, the fortress of the Old Man of the Mountain; going there is dangerous. She leaves the caravan and remains in Paris, but Mathurin must go on and seek his father. Both caravans will travel eastward and cross the Russian steppes together.
In Paris, Mathurin talks with a group of students but offends a teacher and must flee again for his life. Chancing upon the fleeing Comtesse de Malcrais, Suzanne, whom he assists in escaping from Count Robert. They meet up with the caravans again at Provins and are joined by a company of acrobats (including Khatib) and additional caravans from Italy, Armenia, the Baltic, Venice, and the Netherlands. The caravans join together and travel to Kiev to trade woolen cloaks and other goods for furs. Denied passage down the Dnieper by boat, the caravans head southward from Kiev. Crossing the Southern Bug and approaching the Chicheklaya, they encounter hostile Pechenegs. Stalling for time as the caravan drives south toward the Black Sea, Kerbouchard exchanges pleasantries with the Khan, fights a duel with Prince Yury, and receives a drink. However, as he leaves the camp the Khan warns him that the Petchenegs will attack the caravan in the morning.
Kerbouchard returns to the caravan, which has nearly reached the Black Sea, and assists as they contrive rudimentary fortifications, hoping to hold their ground against the Petchenegs until boats arrive to take them to Constantinople. A battle ensues, by the end of which most of the caravan merchants are killed, but Suzanne may have escaped in a small boat, and Mathurin, wounded, hides in the brush and nurses himself back to health, barely surviving to reclaim his horse, and ride to Byzantium by land, clothed in rags.