Swords From the West by Harold Lamb Page A

corner?"
    This time she answered swiftly-
    "Hush, thou!" And then, imploringly, "0 my lord, master of swordsmen, I did not steal. Nay, I was looking only at the strange boxes."
    "And their locks," said Nial, who had met other thieves upon other roads.
    He set his foot upon the dagger, but he wondered again what girl of the steppes could have hair like that, and how she came to be loose, unveiled.
    Most of the travelers in the serai were Moslems, and even Yashim, the slave dealer, carried his women in camel hampers.
    "Nothing is harmed, my lord," she whispered, "and it would shame me to be dragged before the guards."
    "What is thy name?"
    She glanced from right to left.
    "Shedda it is, and my lord hath hurt my arm."
    Bending down, Nial pushed the sleeve back from her slender wrist, finding upon it a heavy band of silver. There was writing upon the silver of a kind unknown to him. As he peered at it the girl Shedda suddenly wrenched her arm free. Before he could seize her again she had darted among the piled-up bales between the fires. He heard a low laugh in the shadows.
    Nial knew better than to try to follow; for a woman like Shedda would have men within call, and the men would have arms. And he had a mind to let her go. He picked up the dagger, and then remembered the jewel sack he had left in the corner.
    Hastily he went and felt in the sheepskin. The sack with its barley and precious stones was gone.
    Nial drew a long breath and silently cursed himself as he listened and heard only the steady snoring of the Greek. So the girl had tricked him, drawing him out of his covert while another, who must have known what to look for, had carried off the sack. But then, why had she struck at him with a knife? For he who drew steel in a serai must be ready for steel in return. Nial turned away and sought Tron among the blanketed traders.
    "I have lost the sack, your sack," he said bluntly.
    With a cry the Genoese sprang up and hastened back to their corner.
    "Now tell me-" he whispered. "Ah, what in Satan's name?"
    Upon the topmost pack of their baggage lay the leather sack, tied as usual. Tron snatched it up and thrust his hand within it. Then he shrugged his shoulders. The barley was there but every jewel had been taken out. He listened intently to Nial's account of the theft.
    "Shedda!" he muttered. "Who moves like a panther and hath fire-red hair?"
    "Red or gold."
    "Yashim's slave." Tron remembered the courtyard in Tana. "A Circassian wench who will serve one man faithfully and draw blood or gold from all others. Eh, she led you about like a sheep. And this is your skill, to be plucked by caravan thieves."
    "The fault is mine," Nial agreed quietly. "And if I can, I will make it good."
    "A lordly pledge from a beggar."
    "Yet," Nial added, "will I listen to no abuse."
    The Genoese snarled, but put a rein upon his tongue and sought his sleeping furs. Both of them knew it would be useless to complain to the Tatar guards of the serai without witnesses to back their tale. A dagger gave no proof, and Shedda had not carried off the sack. To go to Yashim would be worse than useless. Only Tron knew the amount of his loss.
    But within the week he discovered that the young swordsman, who had been tricked by a girl, could hold his own against men.
    They were passing over a bare hollow, where a stagnant salt lake was bordered by white crustations, and the wind and the sun had swept the sand clear of snow. Red sandstone buttes towered over the hollow.
    That day Tron's cavalcade was in company with the Armenians and the envoy from Persia. As all of them rode horses, they had drawn a little ahead of Yashim's kafila and the other laden camels, the horses making better going in the snow. A squad of ten Tatar warriors accompanied the envoy, who had besides a score of his own followers, nobles and servants. From the rock pinnacles on their flank a cloud of horsemen swept down upon them without warning of any kind.
    Yelling like demons of the wastes,