Saracen blades held no fear for Godwin; but
now he faced Mufaddal's sorcery with the fate of
the beautiful Ramizail--and England--resting upon
The Enchanted Crusade
By Geoff St. Reynard
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
April 1953
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Just as daybreak burst over the rim of the desert, the dying man heard
the crunch of horses' hooves on sand. He lifted his head and croaked as
loudly as collapsing lungs would let him, saying thrice over, "In the
name of God, help!" Then he pitched on his nose again and lay still,
unable to move so much as an eyelash.
There was the grit of sand under the light tread of men, and a voice
said, "Name of all camels! What a collection of vulture-victuals this
one is!"
"I doubt it was he cried out," said another voice. "He must have
been dead for a decade." This voice then rendered a belch of classic
proportions. "Damn those figs," it said.
"If you will eat three pounds at a breakfast, Godwin love," said a
throaty feminine voice, all full of honey and laughter, "you must
expect some few repercussions."
The dying man collected his will and the scraps of strength that were
left in his tortured body, and shoving at the sand with one arm managed
to roll over on his back. The horizon-cleared sun lanced sickeningly
across his eyeballs, adding one more pain to the thousand which beset
him. Three vague dark shapes bent above him.
"By the very God, he lives! Give him a drink."
Water, cool and terrible and yet incredibly wondrous to lips and
blackened gums that had tasted nothing save blood for what must surely
be centuries, dribbled down across his cheeks, ran into his mouth,
reached through his rasped throat for his belly. He gurgled and thought
he was drowning, and it seemed a splendid death.
But he had something to say, something of such importance that it
had dragged him across this endless waste of hellish sand long after
a missionless man would have given up and died. He recollected the
message and blinked his nearly sightless eyes once or twice, and made
futile little motions toward a sitting position. A brawny arm at his
back tilted him upright. "Easy, man. You're all but dead. Don't strive
so. Die easily."
"Godwin, you're a born diplomat," said the woman's voice. "Why don't
you come right out and tell him he looks like two coppers' worth of
dogmeat?"
"Well, he does," Godwin said grimly. "No sense in lying to a chap who's
about to give up the spirit, Ramizail. No real man wants that."
"Listen," croaked the dying one. "Who are you?"
"Three adventurers," said the voice that had sworn by the very God.
It was an elderly voice but full of vigor. "Three homeless travelers
pledged to right wrongs and defeat hell's minions wherever they may be
found."
"Thanks to the Holy Sepulcher," groaned the dying one. "Perhaps all may
be well."
The man holding him up jerked with surprise. "Here," he said, with a
kind of tender roughness, "are you a Crusader, man? Are you a Frank?"
"English," said he. "Sir Malcolm du Findley." He made a hideous
rattling noise but from somewhere deep in his soul the power came to
make him go on. "El Iskandariya. Big ship. Full of rats."
"What's he burbling about?" asked the deep voice of Godwin. "Poor
devil's clean out of his head. Rats? Did rats do this to him?"
"Rats are full of plague," said Sir Malcolm faintly.
"Yes, yes," said the girl. "Ship full of rats, rats full of plague. Go
on."
"Can a rat have the plague?" asked Godwin.
"Well, can it?" asked the girl. "Mihrjan, answer me."
A fourth voice, one like muted thunder over distant dunes, said,
"Assuredly, O Mistress of My Life, though 'tis not known generally by
men in this time."
"He knows it, evidently," said the girl. "Do go on, Sir Malcolm. What
about these rats?"
"Ship at El Iskandariya. Going to England, spread plague, decimate
whole country. No more Crusades. Saracen plot."
"Now by God and by God, no Saracen stoops that low!" shouted the
elderly man.
"Yes. Whole crew of them. Leader--"
"Yes, man; the leader?" urged Godwin.
"Mufaddal al Mamun. Big black-faced swine. His gang can do--anything.
Say they can wipe out nine-tenths of England with plague rats, then
France, Germany. No more Crusades." He widened his bloody-veined eyes
and retching, said, "Tell Richard! Get word to Richard! Got to sink
that ship, slay Mufaddal al Mamun! Slay his sorcerers! Promise!"
"We promise," said Godwin. "Decimate England, eh? Plague-infested rats,
ha? My halidom! I think not!"
Sir Malcolm, with a grimace that might have been a grin, collapsed in
upon himself and died, as peacefully as a man can when he has come
seventy miles on foot, over baking sand beneath a searing sun of brass,
with a third of his skin flayed off.
CHAPTER II
Godwin stood up. "Where's El Iskandariya?" he asked.
El Sareuk rubbed his beard with one slim brown hand. "You call it
Alexandria. About twenty-five leagues west it lies, my great-thewed
friend, on the banks of the Mediterranean."
The Lord Mohammed El Sareuk was a man of sixty, slightly built,
fanatic-faced, whose body always seemed on the point of disintegrating
from sheer concentration of energy. His boots were of red Cordovan
leather worked with gold thread; his clothing was blue silk and rose
samite, topped by the green turban of a Hadji; under the soft robes he
wore gold-washed Turkish light armor, and over the whole outfit a black
Bedouin burnous. He was weaponed well: from his girdle hung a Damascus
steel scimitar, and a beautiful gold-etched steel knife with a silver
hilt and a ruby in the pommel. Once this man had led a great harka in
the forces of Saladin; but love of Godwin had turned him to a rover, an
adventurer who called no tent his own and no man his peer save the tall
young Englishman he now addressed.
"What is it, Godwin? Twenty-five leagues to Alexandria, or eighty-odd
to Richard the Lion Heart in Jaffa?"
The girl spoke before Godwin could answer. "Oh, heavens, uncle 'tis the
twenty-five to the plague ship, without a doubt, because what would
Godwin want with a thousand Crusaders at his back when he can wade in
single-handed against an unknown number of enemies and grab the glory
all for himself? An Englishman won't fight if he can't fight against
odds, after all. Need you ask such a silly question?"
The girl, now: as tall and lovely a piece as ever came from the union
of a crusading British knight and a Saracen lass who traced descent
from Solomon. Her eyes were violet, pure clear liquid violet such as
is seen once in a thousand years; her lips were sensuous, full and
red; her hair was a rainbow-flashing mass of ink-black curls. Of her
complexion nothing derogatory could be said, and of her full-breasted
figure even less. She wore copper and cream-colored robes of as fine
and yet tough silk as you might find anywhere in the world of 1191,
with a black turban to which she managed to give a jaunty and most
un-Moslem-like air. Once this girl had been a sorceress, and controlled
the entire tribe of djinn by virtue of a golden sigil and ring
bequeathed her by her mother; her home and heritage and much of her
power she had given up, to be a nomad and traipse about the world, all
for love of Godwin.
This Godwin said now, "Ye gods! How can there be any question of
Alexandria or Jaffa?" He held up a big hard hand and ticked off points
on his fingers. "One: Dick, or Richard the Lion Nose, or whatever the
hell they call him, thinks I'm a madman. If I took him a tale of rats
with plague being shipped to England, he'd have me locked up for an
idiot, and I can hardly blame him. Two: it's a good eighty-five leagues
to Jaffa, and then more than a hundred from there back to Alexandria,
eating up God knows how many days, the way the Franks travel. We
three can do it from here in two days' time. There are decent people
in Alexandria who'll fight with us against any such hellish scheme,
surely. El Sareuk is a Hadji and has a certain reputation. Can't you
command help from the Arabs, old wolf?"
"I can. He has the right of it, my dear."
"Well, at least we can have Mihrjan's djinn transport us there
in comfort, and aid us in the squelching of this silly plot of
Mufaddal's," said the girl, wiping sweat off her patrician nose.
* * * * *
Godwin frowned. He tugged at his beard. "My dear, you know my
sentiments about the djinn. It's not knightly to use their supernatural
powers when all one's fighting is a pack of mortals. Besides, it takes
the fun out of adventuring. If a man can cry up a legion of ten-foot
bogies to do his bidding, how can he call himself a gentleman rover?
No, we'll not employ Mihrjan. Not that I have anything against you,
Mihrjan," he added hastily.
A voice from the air beside them said, like an enormous drum finding
speech in its depths, "O Lord of Ten Thousand, I esteem thy principles
without flaw. Truly thou art a man among men, and would be a djinni
amongst djinn!"
"Oh, pooh," said the girl, Ramizail. "If I hadn't given you the ring in
a rash moment of affection, Godwin, I'd lock it to the sigil and wish
you home in England this minute, you hulking wonderful stupid baby."
Invisible Mihrjan chuckled, but made no other comment. Godwin said,
"Let's mount and ride. The horses are fresh and even over this
abominable sand we ought to make a good distance before sundown."
"What of Sir Malcolm?" asked Ramizail.
"What of him?" said Godwin. "I've laid him out properly. A Crusader
doesn't expect to be buried when there's work afoot. Come on, to
horse!" He went racing to his great Spanish charger and vaulted into
the saddle from behind, a trick left over from his Crusading days, when
he could do it in full weight of battle armor.
And this Godwin, what of him? A man of thirty-one hard winters and
thirty-one baking summers that had leathered his skin and steeled
his sinews, while leaving his spirit boyish and irrepressible. A
tiger-muscled, blue-fire-eyed, yellow-bearded man, quick to rage, quick
to forgiveness, quick to gorge food and drink and quick to go hungry
when needs must. A man educated to horse and hound and every weapon,
bred to the saddle and the brawl, reckless and headstrong, generous and
full of brag and bounce. A man of six feet and four inches, weighing
sixteen stone, with scarce a thought in his handsome head but of war
and hunting and being a gentleman according to his lights, of loving
Ramizail and trotting happily over the world righting wrongs and
murdering villains and being Godwin, Godwin of England.
And there was more to the man than all this, too, for had he not been
till this early winter of 1191 the King of England?
It mattered little now, for Godwin was Godwin and no more. Not that
that was not quite enough! thought Ramizail, resignedly mounting her
bay palfrey. Sometimes it was a vast deal too much. She cast a glance
of affection at her affianced. She shook her lovely head. What a man!