S THEY trotted out of the alley Robert signed to the messenger to come up with him, and sent the man to command Kutchluk Khan to saddle his ponies and hold his men ready to ride. He pressed forward alone, seeking the shortest way to the wall. Here the alleys, odorous with fish and wool and stagnant water, twisted and turned, and his horse was forced to pick a way among heaps of refuse. White walls loomed out of the darkness and voices flung hearty curses after him in many languages.
He turned aside into a quarter where the wooden barrier was let down, and lights gleamed from lattices and the scent of incense and aloes was in the air. In gateways under great lanterns the tinted faces of women peered at him, and from a roof nearly over his head came the high-pitched song of a Circassian girl with the monotonous accompaniment of a lute. In the labyrinth of the alleys the dwellers of Bokhara had come forth after the heat of the day, and Robert wondered whether in truth there could be fighting on the wall
A woman's form, veiled and sinuous, moved toward him in the swaying walk of the Bokharian slave. Her henna-tinted hands drew back the veil, and he looked down into a face thin yet beautiful, and saw in the half-light of the stars eyes, darkened with kohl, wise with the unhallowed wisdom of Egypt.
Anklets tinkled as other girls fled with ripples of laughter from his horse. In his path a handsome boy caressed a lute, singing with a full throat, his head thrown back to the stars.
“Time passes and no man may stay it. This hour alone is thine. Turn not from the rose and its fairness, for thorns lie thick on the pathway!”
Robert reined in his horse and gripped the singer's shoulder.
“Where lies the wall?”
“I am Hassan,” the boy responded with the gravity of the intoxicated. “Lo, the wall is not here, for this is the street of delightful hours.”
He laughed at the set face of the crusader, and Robert loosed him, setting spurs to the charger. The spring of the horse sent the boy rolling in the dust that eddied up from the plunging hoofs.
Hassan sat up, muttering, and a veiled woman ran to his side from the deep shadow of a wall.
“The moon hath come down from the sky,” cried the boy. “Ah”
A thin length of steel darted into his side and was withdrawn. The woman's hand felt for his purse, which had jingled when he fell, and slipped it from his girdle. Then she merged again into the shadow.
Rising to his knees, Hassan felt about in the dust as if for something he had lost. Suddenly he screamed, and the song of the Circassian on the roof above ceased for a moment.
OBERT rode over the bridge that spanned the river, and glanced to either side. Although the tumult on the wall was nearer, pleasure barges drifted along the banks, and Bokharian nobles made wagers as to the length of the fighting. Passing through the gardens at a gallop, he began to hear the ululation of the Kankalis and the clashing of weapons. Dismounting among the tents behind the wall, he climbed a stairway to a tower and found the beg he had left in charge.
“Yah khawand,” the man greeted him, “you are in good time. Watch.”
The causeway was crowded with packed masses of Mongols, and more were moving up on foot from the lines of the camp where the drums and nakars kept up their clamor. At the head of the earth-mound beams had been thrust across the gap by the besiegers and hastily covered with spears, planks and hides. Over this bridge warriors were rushing the rampart, climbing upon the bodies of the slain.
They were half-naked, and those who had shields hurled them at the Moslems. Then they ran forward, stooping and smiting with axes and heavy, curved swords. Most of them fell under the arrows of the Kankalis, who shot from the wall and the nearest towers. The survivors were hurled back by spears and maces in the hands of the mailed defenders.
“Twice have we hewn down their bridge!” exclaimed the captain. “See where our stone-casters thin the numbers in the rear! Allah send victory!'
“But do you send for reenforcements from the palace,” retorted Robert, watching two human tides beat against each other and a sprinkling of dark bodies, outflung from the press, drop into the beds of jasmine and roses underneath.
After a while he picked up his shield and ran down the stairs toward the wall. Greater weight of metal and steadiness of foot was needed here.