UGH followed the man toward Tphilis. The torch made deeper the night mist, and his guide was silent as the chapel of the ikons wherein lay the body of the late king. They halted at a wall of gray stone until a postern door opened and bearded spearmen peered at them curiously; then they plunged into alleys where lights bobbed forth and disappeared, and the smells were of mastic and charcoal and steaming rice. Below them somewhere a river swirled and roared and ice crackled.
The night was full of sound and half-seen shapes—a queer little priest with a full beard and rosy cheeks and a veil that fell from his sugar-loaf hat to his plump shoulders; a bold-eyed Jew clutching his shuba about him with one hand and dragging a laden donkey with the other.
All the men who thronged the narrow streets bore weapons, and all ceased talking to stare after the crusader with his heavy sword. Then they crowded past the stalls of merchants—Armenians selling embroidery beside hawk-nosed Moslems of Daghestan who sat among curved kindhjals and gleaming yataghans, and leather, tasseled shields.
And the snatches of talk that reached his ears seemed the very gossip of Babel, harsh Arabic mingling with plaintive Persian, and an oath compounded of all the saints in the Greek calendar. His guide turned aside from the alleys and plunged up into deeper mist. The tumult of the river and restless men subsided, and Hugh could hear distant church bells chiming slowly.
He saw that the road they ascended was hewn out of sheer rock, and full of turnings. He guessed it was the ramp of a castle, before they reached a stone gate and passed under the jaws of the lifted portcullis. In the half darkness of an outer courtyard the guide laid hand on the charger's rein.
Hugh listened to the steady tramp of men-at-arms along the parapet over his head and he drew a long breath of satisfaction. After twelve years of wandering he stood at last within the walls of Christian folk.
A young Georgian emerged from a door with a serving knave bearing a lanthorn, and the crusader was led through the halls of the donjon to a chamber where a fire glowed on the hearth and the Georgian esquire-at-arms brought him food and wine and a silver basin of water.
“The mighty lord,” he said in barbaric Greek, “awaits you. Eat, therefore, and robe yourself.”
Hugh satisfied a huge hunger, but change his apparel he could not, lacking other garments than the ones he stood in, and the eyes of the Georgian widened when he rose in his worn steel hauberk and stained leather gambeson and wet leg-wrappings. Even the steel of the light helm he carried on his arm was dark with oil and weathering, and had more than one dent in it.
“Lead, youth,” quoth Hugh, picking up the sword Durandal in its stained leather scabbard with his free hand, “to this mighty lord.”
N THE hall of the donjon a hundred pairs of eyes paid tribute to the fairness of Rusudan, child of the race of Karthlos, Keeper of the Gate.
Armenian elders, Georgian thawads and aznaurs, Circassian and Avar chieftains from the higher ranges, and the many vassals of Ivan, whose family ruled the domain about Tphilis—all these were standing in the rushes of the lower hall. The upper end of the hall was raised, and covered with rich carpets. Oil-lamps flared and smoked in their niches in the wall that was adorned to the rafters with weapons and heads of boar and stag.
The long table had been cleared of food, and the three men who sat in converse, glancing from time to time at the entrance, were sipping wine from silver goblets. The central figure was Ivan, or John the Constable, Protector of Georgia, who alone of the three wore mail.
Small of stature, he sat erect, seldom moving hand or head. A cloak of good gray homespun was cast over his chair, and the weapon-bearer behind him held a short, black ax, heavy and whetted to a keen edge. Like the ax, the face of the constable was broad and heavy and unchanging—a curling jaw, a beak of a nose and grizzled hair close-clipped. A daring man and obstinate.
“The envoy of the Khan!”
So cried the young squire, stepping into the hall. The uproar of talk died away to a murmur. At one end of the table an aged Katholicos in black robe and glittering cope set down his goblet of wine and stroked his beard.