Adventure Magazine Cover — page 156: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

’ » 4 ‘ ne =! The Grand Cham Gutchluk had been following the Venetians and Michael had surprized him and over- come him iairly. This would raise rather than lower him in the other’s esteem. But Michael was aware that emissaries to a Central Asian monarch were always de- tained for a long space before given an audi- ence. The more important the ambassa- dors, the longer the delay. It would be weeks before Clavijo and his companions could hold speech with Tamerlane. Meanwhile Gutchluk had said that the sultan and the khan were at the point of war. Michael, if he was to have a hand in events, could not afford to be kept idle in the Tatar camp. Moreover the foolish resistance of Rudolfo’s men had lowered the status of the Venetians. Ii Tamerlane was the man Michael thought him, it would take more than trade-goods wrung from the captives to gain his ear. So Michael must bring to Tamerlane more than that. Gutchluk had said that Bayezid and all his power was at Angora. Was not this a good omen? Michael smiled, reflecting that he had sworn to the sultan that he would return to his court. Now as he rode he kept swinging his right arm stiffly at his side. The blood was beginning to run through thinned veins and before long he would be able to use his crippled arm. x THE TOPAZ RING [Z WAS as if Clavijo and his party had b een snatched up by a hurricane. They were swept down from. the gorge called the Gate of Shadows, swept out to the south upon the high, rolling steppe of Iran where the receding hills of Mazandaran showed purple against the sky to the north. Beyond these same hills, farther to the north, stretched the Sea of Sarai—the Cas- pian—about which Clavijo had permitted his tongue to wag and which he had never seen, although Michael Bearn had bitter knowledge of it. The Tatars halted for nothing, except a snatch of sleep at the hamlets of sheep- herders or the bare walls of a Moslem khan by a caravan track. They, so Gutchluk explained by signs, were anxious to leave the borderland of the Turk behind. Not on their own account, for the men of 155 the sultan were dogs, but to safeguard the precious persons of the ambassadors. So they passed over the dry grass of Iran, away from the clay valleys and the groves of the land that was called Kuhistan, in Persia, and many interminable lines of clumsy camels they saw passing over the steppe at night, and many ant-like bodies of Tatar warriors mounted on shaggy ponies inimitably swift of foot. And Clavijo and his people marveled. The Tatars had swung to the right and were journeying now toward the setting sun. But they saw naught of the city with brazen walls or the gold trees or the foun- tains of wine of the earthly paradise that Clavijo had called Cathay. “Hic ignotus sum quia passuum,” quoth Bembo the jester blithely three weeks later. “Here we are the barbarians, and the bar- barians are the great lords and signors. Lord Gutchluk quarters us i’ this pent- house and furnishes us a live ox, that we, poor Frankish outlanders, may eat in our cage like the hunting-leopards I saw dragged past i’ their leash this day at time o’ mass.” They were, in fact, at-a seraz where a huge fire glowed over which the Tatars roasted the pieces of animals whole. The serai was almost the only building in what seemed to the travelers to be the encampment of a limitless army. For two weeks they had been kept waiting, in the midst of this army. Bembo was like a man born anew. Gutchluk and the other Tatars had treated him respectfully, for he bore himself boldly and had clad his person in new finery from the stores. “The mummery is on, i’ faith,” grinned the jester. “Aye, each buffoon of us has his part to play. Behold Signor Dominus, the consul-general Clavijo—the great lord- treasurer, provveditore, Soranzi—likewise Rudolfo, the lord-general and master of armies. And most of all, behold Bembo, the wise councilor, the privy coz, the whis- perer of kings. Without him, my hearties, the rooks would be emptying your eye- sockets back in yonder Inn o’ the Skull.” Clavijo frowned. “Tamerlane will see us this noon,” he said. “We have been kept waiting long.” “Aye, verily. The delay measures our importance i’ the eyes o’ these gentlefolk. Two days agone Lord Gutchluk and a baron who looks like a prince of Eblis took (COPNICE OOKSse€O)