Adventure Magazine, April 10, 1924 — page 52: what you’re looking at

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

50 Adventure besieger now in Christendom would set about the work in seemly wise. Aye, he would first fashion him out of beams from his baggage-train a fair array of battering- engines—mangonels and trebuchets. Aye, stone-casters and rams—chats and foxes and eke towers of assault. Then in an- other week he would cut and fit together storming-ladders, and we would harry him with a-many cloth-yard shafts and cast back his ladders on his pol z “The Mongols lack siege-engines to my thinking, Master Will.” “‘Then do they lack sense, Master Robert. Rede me this riddle: How may men ride horses up a wall? Or tear down the wal! with theirhands? ’Tis a thing impossible.” He rubbed his long chin and scowled. “This paynim wizarder hath the right 0’ the matter. My lord, as he says, we should sally out and fall upon the foe, pikes and bills—sa ha!” Osman had suggested a sortie of the gar- rison, arguing that the Bokharians out- numbered the Mongols. But Robert would not give assent to the plan. The Horde puzzled him, and he wished to see what they were about before trusting the Moslem soldiery against them on open ground. Meanwhile the besiegers established mounted patrols that cut off all communica- tion with the world outside, and this pleased the knight. The Shah had given him authority within Bokhara, and now no message could reach the city gainsaying this authority, and he meant to hold the com- mand until the Mongols were beaten off. Beyond that he had made no plans. By noon of the second day he noticed work in progress within the Mongol lines. Ox-sleds dragged up loads of earth, which was dumped along a front of a hundred yards, facing a portion of the wall where no towers stood. ‘The captives labored at this spot, thousands of them, and the earth mound grew in height as it neared the wall. “A causeway,” he explained to Will. “And a great one. They will push it nearer until it reaches the rampart of our wall.” * Whereupon he set to work to place on platforms built behind the menaced point, machines for casting sheaves of arrows and stones. | | Throughout the night the Mongols kept at their labor, and the creaking of the carts sounded nearer. The defenders kindled cressets on the rampart and contented themselves with shouted insults and laugh- ter, while Robert slept in a tent under the wall and the archer dozed at the tent en- trance. An hour before dawn the knight roused and went to the battlement. The causeway had crept forward and mounted higher. Now it reared against the stars about a hundred feet back from the edge of the ditch. Robert sent a warrior for Jahan Khan, the leader of the Kankalis, and the atabeg came, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and cursing under his breath. He was a slender man, glittering from knee to throat in gilded mail. Pearls were sewn into his turban, and a heron’s plume marked him apart from hismen. ‘The right sleeve of his khalat was turned back on a supple shoulder and held by a diamond chain—this marking him for a notable swordsman—yet his eyes were heavy with the after-sleep of opium as he made his salaam. “Take twice a hundred of your bowmen to the rampart,” ordered Robert without salutation, “and scatter the workers upon the mole.” ““Mashallah!”’ The atabeg smiled. | “Am I a captain of bowmen? Bid me sally forth from the gates, and I will bring you the head of the Mongol chief on a spear.” “You are a bahator, chief of thirty thou- sand. Can you check the advance of the causeway?” Robert permitted the torchlight to flash on the signet ring he wore, and after a moment it was clear to the Kankali that the Nazarene meant to be obeyed. Robert dismissed him and ordered food to be brought to the tent. He broke his fast with keen relish, after instructing Will to mount to the wall and mark the progress made by the defenders. The archer came back indignant. The Mongols had brought up.to the head of the mound wooden frames upon which raw hides had been stretched. ‘These frames were triangular in shape at the front and while they covered the besiegers, permitted earth and stones to be dumped down into the angle and the causeway moved forward as steadily as before.. The Moslem archers with their short weapons were doing no damage at all. | “Bid the khan,” Robert ordered one of his followers,’’ set the engines to work.” COMmMiCLOOOkKS. CGO S|