USUDAN was restless, and this morning her maids exasperated her until she dismissed them all and snatched up an ermine coat, a green silk kerchief and a pair of shapely morocco boots. The kerchief she bound around her head, knotting it loosely over one ear, and the boots she slipped on with the ease of long practise, first kicking off a pair of slippers embroidered with seed pearls. Though there was a mirror of polished bronze near the door of her chamber, she did not pause to glance into it.
Not many women could have worn so many colors and so different materials to advantage. But Rusudan looked bewitching, and this was because she was excited. Her eyes grew deeper and wider and a half-smile of anticipation touched her lips. The silver heels of her boots clinked merrily on the flagstones of the outer hall.
Rupen of Kag, who had come to Tphilis that morning, was waiting to greet her, and with him she talked earnestly for half the turning of the sand glass in the antechamber.
“Send Messer Antonio to me,” she demanded. “Nay, go and seek him and bid him come to me upon the wall.”
Having rid herself of the Prince of Kag, she went more slowly to the balcony overlooking the great hall, and thence by a dark flight of steps to a certain stretch of the parapet between the two gate towers of the donjon. Here, from the courtyard below, she had often seen the Frank standing.
The door of his chamber opened out upon this part of the wall. And Rusudan, seeing no one here, glanced beyond the wall, down the valley.
It was a clear morning, and every detail stood out against the snow—the gray dome of the great Malaki church beside the castle, the deep gorge to the left where the ice-bound Kur wrestled and tore itself free over the rapids by the lower town. And the twisted streets of Tphilis, sprinkled with red roofs, with ancient stone walls and the bell towers of chapels—all far beneath the castle wall.
Tphilis was in truth the Gate of the Khaukesh, and the castle was the key of the gate. To the right rose a cliff of brown limestone, and across the gorge of the Kur its very twin, a thousand-foot ridge that was dwarfed by the more distant forested slopes rising into the clouds. And above the clouds Rusudan could see the summits of the loftier ranges.
Here, at the castle, the valley narrowed to a gut. Below, it widened steadily, until the Kur appeared to be no more than an inanimate gray serpent stretched in the snow.
To Rusudan the sight was as familiar and as beloved as the icy wind blasts that flushed her cheeks and tore at the mass of her dark hair under the 'kerchief. Before the door of the Frank's chamber she hesitated a moment, and mocked ceremony by knocking upon it vigorously.
The door opened, revealing the crusader, his sheathed sword in his left hand.
“Ai,” cried Rusudan, “do you always bear a weapon?” And then she made shift to speak in the lingua franca that she had picked up from the Greeks. “Sir Hugh, I greet you well. It is time for you to go upon the snow road.”
“Is the constable ready to reply?”
“Yesterday he sent his answer.” Anxiety darkened the blue eyes of the girl, and she motioned the knight to come closer. “It is over—finished. Now you are free to go on to the sea, and the ports of Frankistan. You must go—now!”
Hugh shook his head gravely.
“Nay, Princess Rusudan, I shall bear the answer of your lords to the Mongols.”
“But the—answer is sent, down the valley.” She stamped upon the hard-packed snow impatiently. “O, you are very stupid, Sir Hugh of Taranto. Messer Antonio told me your name. He is ready to depart for Trebizond with a caravan of linen cloth and ivory. He promised he would take you.”
She turned to greet the merchant, who had drawn near and stood waiting to be summoned.
“What message did John the Constable send?” Hugh asked bluntly, and the Georgian lifted her head proudly and not a little defiantly.
“War—without truce or any mercy!”
The crusader nodded.
“My horse has been brought into the castle. Now I must ask your leave to depart, to the Horde.”
Rusudan's expressive eyes looked a volume of questions.
“But why? The caravan would take you, Sir Frank, to your folk. You have been seeking a way out of the pagan land. Why would you ride back?”
And Messer Antonio, whose lean brown face betrayed nothing at all, glanced at the crusader sharply.
“Because, my lady, it was the order of Subotai Bahadur that I should return to the Horde.”
“And do you, a knight of the Cross, obey the commands of a pagan lord?”
“He released me from the Horde, bidding me come back. That shall I do, taking with me the Mongols who await me in the lower valley.”