Adventure Magazine Cover — page 157: what you’re looking at

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

4 - 156 our gifts to the king, along with the camels of a khan of Karabak and the painted giant beasts with a tail where their nose should be—the beasts that are gifts from a lord of Khorassan. Now our turn has come and you must lie cleverly or be fed to the beasts, see your” “We can say we are an embassy from Venice.” “Nay, San Marco forbid. Firstly, the council, hearing that we who are. mere voyagers have tisurped ambassadorial réle, would slit our throats. Secondly, there would be no need o’ that, for Tamerlane would have us tied to the ground for his giant beasts to walk upon.” Bembo smiled at the consternation writ- ten in the Spaniard’s face. “Signor Gutchluk,” he explained, “con- fessed to me not an hour since that recently certain merchants of Venice penetrated so far as Damascus and endeavored to sell nostrums and false sovereign waters i’ the fashion o’ mountebanks, and to claim exemption from taxes and gifts as is their wont. The Tatars threw them into the river. So, my cousins, we can not be Venetians for the word rings so ill 7’ the ears of these barbarians as the Venetian nostrums i’ their bellies.” They were silent at that, looking blackly at the man whose tale had brought them— Soranzi, Rudolfo, and the injured Gian— hither. “T tell you,” swore Rudolfo, “that Bearn has betrayed us. Why else is he escaped here hence with a whole skin, leaving us to damnation?” Michael’s departure from the Gate of Shadows had puzzled the Tatar guards as well as Rudolfo. The warriors had searched for him briefly without result and had then pressed on to their army. What mattered it to them if one of the Franks chose to part company with them, so long as the chief ambassadors, as they considered Clavijo and Rudolfo, and the all-important gifts remained? “He will return to us this night or the morrow,” asserted Bembo stoutly. “He pledged it me the night he left us. Who are we that we should know his comings or that which he seeks in this land?” “°Twere wiser, methinks, to question who he is.” Rudolfo strode surlily back and forth in front of the clay platform by the fire on which Bembo squatted. Adventure So pliable is human nature that Clavijo and Soranzi had come to look upon the condotitere as a possible protector in their plight. At least they feared the Tatars— who seemed to them like animals—more than they feared Rudolfo, now that Michael had vanished. “Is he not leagued.with these pagan demons?” demanded the Italian. ‘What will his coming avail us? Nay, we must trust to our wits to cut a way out of this coil. I have heard the Sultan of the Turks, whose power is not far from this camp, is a rich monarch, different from these beasts. How if we could ‘ : He broke off as Bembo chuckled. “So this is Cathay!” grinned the jester. ‘We must be bewitched, for we saw naught of Clavijo’s golden city.” The Spaniard winced. “Your master swore we would be safe here,” he said uneasily. The coming ordeal of the audience with Tamerlane weighed on the three of them. Bembo alone was care- less. Having the gift of tongues, the jester had conversed in broken Greek with Gutchluk and his faith in Michael was strong. “My master is a true man,” he insisted. “He said he would join us at Tamerlane’s court at the first of the new moon. He will keep his word.” Here they looked up as Gutchluk entered with another powerful warrior in black armor; the man Bembo had termed a prince of Eblis. The ambassadors were summoned by Tamerlane, who waited them. They mounted and rode through the Tatar encampment, seeing on every hand nothing but horses, sleeping warriors, smiths who labored at smoking forges, herders who guided great masses of cattle hither and yon in the dust. Then a vista of round tents opened before them. Some of these. were on massive wagons; some bore standards of fluttering yaks’ tails. It was a veritable city of tents. Hard-faced men glanced at them casually; black slaves made haste to get out of their — way. Once a line of elephants passed, hauling sleds on which were wooden ma- chines of war, unknown to them. It seemed to the cringing Soranzi that they had invaded a city of beasts. He heard a lion roar from the cages where Tamerlane’s animals were kept. He saw giraffes, brought from Africa, penned in a Comicbooksico