--peak, Ak Boga,--said the Amir in a deep powerful voice.--avens have flown westward, but there has come no word.----e rode before the word, my lord,--answered the warrior.--he news is at our heels, traveling swift on the caravan roads. Soon the couriers, and after them the traders and the merchants, will bring to you the news that a great battle has been fought in the west; that Bayazid has broken the hosts of the Christians, and the wolves howl over the corpses of the kings of Frankistan.----nd who stands beside you?--asked Timour, resting his chin on his hand and fixing his deep somber eyes on the Scotsman.
-- chief of the Franks who escaped the slaughter,--answered Ak Boga.--ingle-handed he cut his way through the m--l--e, and in his flight paused to slay a Frankish lord who had put shame upon him aforetime. He has no fear and his thews are steel. By Allah, we passed through the land outracing the wind to bring thee news of the war, and this Frank is less weary than I, who learned to ride ere I learned to walk.----hy do you bring him to me?----t was my thought that he would make a mighty warrior for thee, my lord.----n all the world,--mused Timour,--here are scarce half a dozen men whose judgment I trust. Thou art one of those,--he added briefly, and Ak Boga, who had flushed darkly in embarrassment, grinned delightedly.
--an he understand me?--asked Timour.
--e speaks Turki, my lord.----ow are you named, oh Frank?--queried the Amir.--nd what is your rank?----am called Donald MacDeesa,--answered the Scotsman.--come from the country of Scotland, beyond Frankistan. I have no rank, either in my own land or in the army I followed. I live by my wits and the edge of my claymore.----hy do you ride to me?----k Boga told me it was the road to vengeance.----gainst whom?----ayazid the Sultan of the Turks, whom men name the Thunderer.-- Timour dropped his head on his mighty breast for a space and in the silence MacDeesa heard the silvery tinkle of a fountain in an outer court and the musical voice of a Persian poet singing to a lute.
Then the great Tatar lifted his lion't head.
--it ye with Ak Boga upon this divan close at my hand,--said he.--will instruct you how to trap a gray wolf.-- As Donald did so, he unconsciously lifted a hand to his face, as if he felt the sting of a blow eleven years old. Irrelevantly his mind reverted to another king and another, ruder court, and in the swift instant that elapsed as he took his seat close to the Amir, glanced fleetingly along the bitter trail of his life.
Young Lord Douglas, most powerful of all the Scottish barons, was headstrong and impetuous, and like most Norman lords, choleric when he fancied himself crossed. But he should not have struck the lean young Highlander who had come down into the border country seeking fame and plunder in the train of the lords of the marches. Douglas was accustomed to using both riding-whip and fists freely on his pages and esquires, and promptly forgetting both the blow and the cause; and they, being also Normans and accustomed to the tempers of their lords, likewise forgot. But Donald MacDeesa was no Norman; he was a Gael, and Gaelic ideas of honor and insult differ from Norman ideas as the wild uplands of the North differ from the fertile plains of the Lowlands. The chief of Donald-- clan could not have struck him with impunity, and for a Southron to so venture--hate entered the young Highlander-- blood like a black river and filled his dreams with crimson nightmares.
Douglas forgot the blow too quickly to regret it. But Donald-- was the vengeful heart of those wild folk who keep the fires of feud flaming for centuries and carry grudges to the grave. Donald was as fully Celtic as his savage Dalriadian ancestors who carved out the kingdom of Alba with their swords.
But he hid his hate and bided his time, and it came in a hurricane of border war. Robert Bruce lay in his tomb, and his heart, stilled forever, lay somewhere in Spain beneath the body of Black Douglas, who had failed in the pilgrimage which was to place the heart of his king before the Holy Sepulcher. The great king-- grandson, Robert II, had little love for storm and stress; he desired peace with England and he feared the great family of Douglas.
But despite his protests, war spread flaming wings along the border and the Scottish lords rode joyfully on the foray. But before the Douglas marched, a quiet and subtle man came to Donald MacDeesa-- tent and spoke briefly and to the point.
--nowing that the aforesaid lord hath put despite upon thee, I whispered thy name softly to him that sendeth me, and sooth, it is well known that this same bloody lord doth continually embroil the kingdoms and stir up wrath and wo between the sovereigns--he said in part, and he plainly spoke the word,--rotection.-- Donald made no answer and the quiet person smiled and left the young Highlander sitting with his chin on his fist, staring grimly at the floor of his tent.
Thereafter Lord Douglas marched right gleefully with his retainers into the border country and--urned the dales of Tyne, and part of Bambroughshire, and three good towers on Reidswire fells, he left them all on fire,--and spread wrath and wo generally among the border English, so that King Richard sent notes of bitter reproach to King Robert, who bit his nails with rage, but waited patiently for news he expected to hear.
Then after an indecisive skirmish at Newcastle, Douglas encamped in a place called Otterbourne, and there Lord Percy, hot with wrath, came suddenly upon him in the night, and in the confused m--l--e which ensued, called by the Scottish the Battle of Otterbourne and by the English Chevy Chase, Lord Douglas fell. The English swore he was slain by Lord Percy, who neither confirmed nor denied it, not knowing himself what men he had slain in the confusion and darkness.
But a wounded man babbled of a Highland plaid, before he died, and an ax wielded by no English hand. Men came to Donald and questioned him hardly, but he snarled at them like a wolf, and the king, after piously burning many candles for Douglas--soul in public, and thanking God for the baron't demise in the privacy of his chamber, announced that--e have heard of this persecution of a loyal subject and it being plain in our mind that this youth is innocent as ourselves in this matter we hereby warn all men against further hounding of him at pain of death.-- So the king-- protection saved Donald-- life, but men muttered in their teeth and ostracized him. Sullen and embittered, he withdrew to himself and brooded in a hut alone, till one night there came news of the king-- sudden abdication and retirement into a monastery. The stress of a monarch-- life in those stormy times was too much for the monkish sovereign. Close on the heels of the news came men with drawn daggers to Donald-- hut, but they found the cage empty. The hawk had flown, and though they followed his trail with reddened spurs, they found only a steed that had fallen dead at the seashore, and saw only a white sail dwindling in the growing dawn.
Donald went to the Continent because, with the Lowlands barred to him, there was nowhere else to go; in the Highlands he had too many blood-feuds; and across the border the English had already made a noose for him. That was in 1389. Seven years of fighting and intriguing in European wars and plots. And when Constantinople cried out before the irresistible onslaught of Bayazid, and men pawned their lands to launch a new Crusade, the Highland swordsman had joined the tide that swept eastward to its doom. Seven years--and a far cry from the border marches to the blue-domed palaces of fabulous Samarcand, reclining on a silken divan as he listened to the measured words which flowed in a tranquil monotone from the lips of the lord of Tatary.
III
If thou--t the lord of this castle,
Sae well it pleases me:
For, ere I cross the border fells,
The tane of us shall dee.
--Battle of Otterbourne
Time flowed on as it does whether men live or die. The bodies rotted on the plains of Nicopolis, and Bayazid, drunk with power, trampled the scepters of the world. The Greeks, the Serbs and the Hungarians he ground beneath his iron legions, and into his spreading empire he molded the captive races. He laved his limbs in wild debauchery, the frenzy of which astounded even his tough vassals. The women of the world flowed whimpering between his iron fingers and he hammered the golden crowns of kings to shoe his war-steed. Constantinople reeled beneath his strokes, and Europe licked her wounds like a crippled wolf, held at bay on the defensive. Somewhere in the misty mazes of the East moved his arch-foe Timour, and to him Bayazid sent missives of threat and mockery. No response was forthcoming, but word came along the caravans of a mighty marching and a great war in the south; of the plumed helmets of India scattered and flying before the Tatar spears. Little heed gave Bayazid; India was little more real to him than it was to the Pope of Rome. His eyes were turned westward toward the Caphar cities.--will harrow Frankistan with steel and flame,--he said.--heir sultans shall draw my chariots and the bats lair in the palaces of the infidels.-- Then in the early spring of 1402 there came to him, in an inner court of his pleasure-palace at Brusa, where he lolled guzzling the forbidden wine and watching the antics of naked dancing girls, certain of his emirs, bringing a tall Frank whose grim scarred visage was darkened by the suns of far deserts.