Untitled Fragment
(The Slave-Princess)
Outside the clamor mounted deafeningly. The rasp of steel on steel mingled with yells of blood-lust and yells of wild triumph. The young slave girl hesitated and looked about the chamber in which she stood. There was resigned helplessness in her gaze. The city had fallen; the blood-drunk Turkomans were riding through the streets, burning, looting, slaughtering. Any moment might see the victorious savages running red handed through the house of her owner.
From another part of the house a fat merchant came running. His eyes were distended with terror, his breath came in gasps. He bore gems and worthless gew-gaws in his hands – belongings snatched blindly and at random.
“Zuleika!” His voice was the screech of a trapped weasel, “Open the door quickly, then bar it from this side – I will escape through the rear. Allah il Allah! The Turkish fiends are slaying all in the streets – the gutters run red – ”
“What of me, master?” the girl asked humbly.
“What of you, hussy?” screamed the man, striking her heavily, “Open the door, open the door, I tell you – ahhhhhh!”
His voice snapped brittle as glass. Through an outer door came a wild and fearsome figure – a shaggy, ragged Turkoman whose eyes were the eyes of a mad dog. Zuleika in frozen terror saw the wide glaring eyes, the lanky hair, the short boar-spear gripped in a hand that dripped crimson.
The merchant’s voice rose in a frenzied squeaking. He made a desperate dash across the chamber but the tribesman leaped like a cat on a mouse and one lean hand gripped the merchant’s garments. Zuleika watched in dumb horror. She had reason to hate the man – reasons of outrage, punishment and indignity, but from the depths of her heart she pitied the howling wretch as he writhed and shrank from his fate. The boar-spear ripped upward; the screams broke in a fearful gurgle. The Turkoman stepped over the ghastly red thing on the floor and stalked toward the terrified girl. She shrank back, unspeaking. Long she had learned the cruelty of men and the uselessness of appeal. She did not beg for her life. The Turkoman gripped her by the breast of the single scanty garment she wore and she felt his wild beast eyes burn into her’s. He was too far gone in the slaughter-lust for her to rouse another desire in his wild soul. In that red moment she was only a living thing, pulsing and quivering with life, for him to still forever in blood and agony.
She sought to close her eyes but she could not. In a clear white light of semi-detachment she welcomed death, to end a road that had been hard and cruel. But her flesh shrank from the doom her spirit accepted and only her attacker’s grasp held her erect. Grinning like a wolf he brought the keen point of the spear against her breast and a thin trickle of blood started from the tender skin. The tribesman sucked in his breath in fierce ecstacy; he would drive the blade home slowly, gradually, twisting it excruciatingly, glutting his cruelty with the agonized writhings and screamings of his fair victim.
A heavy step sounded behind them and a rough voice swore in an unfamiliar tongue. The Turkoman wheeled, beard bristling in a ferocious snarl. The half fainting girl stumbled back against a divan, her hand to her breast. It was a mailed Frank who had entered the chamber and to the girl’s dizzy gaze he loomed like an iron clad giant. Over six feet in height he stood, and his shoulders and steel clad limbs were mighty. From his heels to his heavy vizorless helmet he was heavily armored and his sun-darkened, scarred features added to the sinister import of his appearance. There was no stain of blood on his mail and his sword hung sheathed at his girdle. The girl knew that he could be but one man – Cormac FitzGeoffrey, the Frankish outlaw who hunted at times with the Turkoman pack.
Now he strode ponderously toward them, growling a warning at the warrior, whose eyes burned with a feral light. The Turkoman spat a curse and leaped like a lean wolf, thrusting fiercely. A mail clad arm brushed the spear aside and almost with the same motion, Cormac caught the Turkoman’s throat with his left hand in a vice-like grip, and with his clenched right struck his victim a mallet-like blow on the temple. Beneath the mailed fist, the tribesman’s skull caved in like a gourd and Cormac let the twitching corpse fall carelessly at his feet. Zuleika stood silent, head bowed in submission, as resigned to this new master as to the other, but the Frank showed no signs of claiming his prey. He turned away, with a single casual glance at the girl, then stopped short as his brief gaze rested on her pale face. His eyes narrowed and he approached her. She stood before him, like a child before his overshadowing bulk.
He laid his mailed hand on her frail shoulder and her knees bent beneath the unconcious weight of it. She raised her head to look into his face. His blazing blue eyes seemed to her like those of a jungle beast.
“Girl, how are you named?” he rumbled in Arabic.
“Zuleika, master,” she answered in the same language.
He was silent, as if he pondered. His scarred face was inscrutable but she caught the new glint in his volcanic eyes. Without a word he picked her up in his left arm as a man might take up a baby. His captive voiced no protest as he carried her out into the street. Kismet. No woman knew what Fate held in store for her and Zuleika had learned submission in a bitter school.
Smoke was blown through the streets in fitful gusts; the Turkomans were burning the city. Still rose the wails of terror and agony and the yells of gloating rage. Cormac stepped over the body of a Jew that lay in a crimson pool. Zuleika noted with a shudder that his fingers had been cut away – even in death the Jew clung to his pitiful treasures. A wave of nausea surged over her and she pressed her face against her captor’s mailed shoulder, shutting out the sights of horror. A sudden fierce shout caused her to look up again.