Swords From the West by Harold Lamb Page B

times, then thrice slowly.
    Steps approached the door, a lock clicked faintly, and the passage was flooded with white light. Nial and Shedda entered the very heart of the treasure house. And the girl drew from her breast a bronze tablet smaller than the one Nial had discarded, bearing on it a falcon's head. At sight of it two tall Chinese guards bowed and stepped back.
    "Al!" Shedda cried. "The khan is not here."
    There were officers standing at embrasures, and boxes of messenger pigeons by the walls. Couriers came and went by other doors, and the place was tense with the suspense of battle dimly heard in the night. Sharp exclamations echoed under the immense dome that formed the walls and roof of this lofty post of command. The white light came from a ball of malachite or painted glass hung under the summit of the dome, and Nial saw that this summit was an opening to the sky. Perhaps astrologers used the dome, or messenger pigeons came in through the aperture, he conjectured; but Shedda was too occupied in listening to the rapid talk of the Tatars to explain. No one heeded him for the moment, and he went to an embrasure to look out.
    Far down the palace height, beyond the wall, a line of torches flared and shifted. Masses of Tatar cavalry moved downward against the light, and volleys of arrows flickered from them. They were outnumbered by the mobs below them, but they were gaining ground. Fighting was going on in the cemetery. The Moslems had been driven out of the House of Gold, out of the palace height.
    Nial watched, until the torches broke up into little groups in the alleys of Sarai below him, or died out, and the roar of conflict dwindled to a murmur.
    "Barka Khan did that." Shedda, at his elbow, had guessed his thoughts. "In the moment when Yashim and his friends were in the very treasure house, he came and took command and led an attack. Even the watchers of the Green Lion took up arms to follow him. Look!"
    She led Nial to the center of the floor and pointed down through a square aperture. Then she cried out, bending down to see more clearly what lay below. Nial peered over her shoulder.
    The white light above him penetrated through the aperture to the floor below. Directly under Nial stood a black marble shaped like an altar, and sprawled out before it lay the body of Paolo Tron the Genoese, the tufted end of a great arrow projecting from his chest. One hand clutched the base of the marble, and his teeth gleamed through the tangle of his red beard.
    "Thy companion! " The girl shivered and turned to speak to one of the Chinese archers. "He says that Tron ran into the chamber of the khan's jewels when the Moslems broke into the upper floor. An emerald called the Green Lion was kept upon that marble, twice guarded. If a thief approached it, by stepping upon the stone before it, he released a spring that let the emerald fall into a cavity below the marble stand. And these Cathayan bowmen keep watch over the khan's jewels. They are ordered to shoot down anyone unknown to them who enters that room. They say Tron searched about the marble as if mad-"
    One of the Chinese caught her arm and drew her back, while Nial stared down at the dead merchant. So Tron had come himself for the great emerald, and since he had come with the Moslems, he had known of the attack to be launched upon the House of Gold. But he had not warned Nial. He had feared that the Tatars would make off with the khan's jewels, or that the Moslem onset would fail, and he had sent Nial ahead to carry off the emerald.
    Nial's brain was weary, and his wounds in forearm and thigh ached. He saw that Shedda was staring at him strangely, while the Tatar officers were crowding around him. Some of them spoke to him, but the girl thrust her way to his side.
    "0 Ni-al," she cried, "these watchers of Cathay say that thou didst come earlier in the night and try to take the emerald. Others say thou didst show a shir-paizah at the gate. How-"
    One of the officers brushed