Flame Winds Read online

  Norvell W. Page

  Flame Winds

  Originally published in Unknown, June 1939

  Author’s Note:

  There has ever been one name that could always set my romantic fancy straying into a thousand bypaths of history and forgotten lore, a name whose very elusiveness made it the more fascinating. I refer to the name and the fame of—Prester John.

  Look it up in the dictionary: Prester John, a legendary Christian priest and king whose dominions were assigned first, about the Twelfth Century, to the Far East and later to Ethiopia or Abyssinia. Marvelous tales were told of his wealth, power and conquests.

  And they derive the word Prester from “priest,” or “presbyter.” That’s because they’re misled by the Christian touch in the history of this great soldier of fortune, and because, too, rumors of him first reached the Western world at the time the Frankish tongue was separating from the Latin—and it is in French that “Prester” means “priest.”

  But when did a priest ever carve an empire out of a hostile land? That was one thing that set me thinking, and I found something that the over-religious Middle Ages overlooked. They forgot the real origin of the word “prester.”

  “Prester” is a Latin word, straight out of the Greek, and it was derived in turn from the Greek word which means to kindle or to burn—pimpranai, in anglicized spelling. And prester in this old meaning is the name of the hurricane, the whirlwind that sometimes sweeps the Mediterranean, bringing swirling black clouds and the shaken, steely spears of lightning! The Greeks applied the name, Prester, also to a certain kind of venomous serpent, or to a certain vein in the throat when it was swollen with anger! You see where all this is pointing, don’t you? If Prester John was a priest, it was only in his latter days!

  You do not name a priest for a hurricane, for the whirlwind, with its black crown glittering with lightnings; nor for a venomous snake; nor yet for an anger-swollen throat.

  A slim clue, you will say, and yet I followed it. Dusty pages, a hundred casual references, but I found—

  In the early part of the First Century there was a gladiator in Alexandria who bore the proud name of Prester John. They used to pit him against three lions at a time, or loose him against four gladiators with his favorite weapon—a sharply curved sword. And it was because of the mad fighting rages that took him, because of the speed and the fury with which he struck, and because of his sword that glittered in the death strokes like very lightning that the slaughter-loving Alexandrian crowds christened him Prester—the hurricane.

  Only such a champion as this, such a veritable paladin, could have carved out a fabulous kingdom, wrested it from men, not only of another faith, but of alien and older blood. And that is what Prester John did. For I followed the fable—

  You will already have noticed the discrepancy: the fame of “Prester John” spread abroad in the Twelfth Century, when the returning Crusaders trumpeted his name around the world. But “Hurricane John” fought in Alexandria in the First Century.

  I will answer you very simply, and in a few words. Julius Caius Caesar fought and died before Christ was born, yet until the year 1918 his fame was trumpeted abroad as a living man and king. He was a mighty emperor, of many conquests and of wide power. He ruled not one, but two imperial thrones! Yes, Caesar, or spell it any way you like—Kaiser, Tsar, Czar. It is the same word.

  And that is a difference of, not twelve, but twenty centuries.

  The Crusaders, bragging of this Eastern Christian paladin, assumed that he was coeval with them, but they forgot the centuries it would take such a legend to grow after the decades that Prester John himself must have labored in those far, fabulous lands of the East. And it was his Herculean task that brought his name down the ages. Prester John—Caesar John.

  It is a fact that, even in this remote time, that title still is sacred in the far reaches of the Gobi. An explorer friend of mine found it there when he was knocking at the back door of Tibet, flying the treacherous Gobi. It is true they no longer call it Prester John. They have long ago forgotten its origin. But the present-day mongols worship the tengri, the fierce spirits of the upper air, the hurricane.

  And the name they put upon the ruler of one of their ancient cities in their own tongue is Wan Tengri—our old friend, Prester John.

  This, then, is the story of Prester John, of Wan Tengri as, in the First Century, he put the Western World behind him—for the sake of his health as they would say now—and began that incredible task of his that was to echo through the centuries. Prester John, Christian priest and king, of whose wealth and power and conquests marvelous tales were told.

  —Norvell W. Page.

  I

  WHEN the red rim of the sun touched the Suntai hills and gilded the high, graceful towers of Turgohl, a single sweet, piercing note swam through the darkening twilight. Men turned uneasy eyes toward the centermost, the highest tower of all, capped in a wrought spiral of gold like a flame and gleaming with wondrous mosaics of mauve and rose marble. They knotted their fists tightly at their sides and crooked their thumbs in the protective sign of the thunder god, Balass.

  “Now the tengri and the high fire of heaven protect us,” whispered the men in the bazaars and hurriedly began to batten the open fronts of their shops. The litters of the wealthy made haste to seek the safety of their own brazen gates and high, spiked walls. On the rich blue waters of Baikul, the knout whips of the overseers cracked across the arching backs of the slaves, urging the pointed prows of the fish galleys toward the water gate. In the fields, other naked slaves swung to their shoulders the crude tools of the soil and trotted sullenly under the guards’ whips.

  When once more that thin wailing note that might come from the heart of the air, or might indeed sound within the bowels of man himself, the Flame Wind would begin to blow in from the Kara-korum, the desert of the Black Sands. It was a thing past the understanding of man, and it had come with the wizards of Kasimer—and against it only the walls of Turgohl or the men of Kasimer might prevail.

  From the east-stretching shadows of the firs that clothed the Suntai hills, a cart pulled by a yoke of oxen heaved into sullen motion and rumbled down the black road toward the South Gate. A man in the conical white cap of the Mongol tribes stabbed at the rumps of the cattle with a sharpened stake, goading them into a lumbering trot.

  He seemed alone and yet he whispered between motionless lips. “It will be close, O Wan Tengri.”

  From the heaped-up wool behind him, a man’s deep voice rumbled out an oath. “By Ahriman, it cannot come too soon. Not all the fires of Ormazd, or this devil’s wind you prate about can be as hot as this wool of thine.”

  “Silence!” warned the driver, fearfully. “Near Turgohl, the very wind has ears!”

  A red, perspiring face thrust up through the heaped-up wool, and the sinking sun itself was no more fiery than the stiff thicket of his hair, or the crisp beard that curled about his mouth.

  “Now, if these same winds would only use those ears to fan me!” He dragged a sleeve across his brow, spat out shreds of wool. “Phagh! I never liked sheep less!”

  “Hide, fool!” the Mongol rasped. “Have I not warned—”

  From the thickening air over their very heads, a voice spoke. It was sibilant and thin, that voice, and once more no man could say, least of all the red giant called Wan Tengri, whether that voice came from the air or from within himself.

  “Hasten, slaves,” whispered the voice, “else feel the breath of the Flame Wind!”

  A trembling seized the Mongol. He snatched off his conical hat, baring his wild black hair in respect while he stabbed frantically at the rumps of the oxen.

  “Master, we hear and obey!”

  Wan Tengri gripped the slim steel of a dagger
in his fist while his shrewd gray eyes swept the high air with a cold challenge. “Now, by the beard of Ahriman,” he said softly, “if I could but find the throat that called me slave—”

  “Nay.” The Mongol was breathing hard through his mouth. “The wizards speak where they will. They hear and see where they will. We are doomed, Wan Tengri! Outside the walls, the Flame Wind. And inside… inside, the Wizards of Kasimer!”

  “I hide,” Wan Tengri said grimly, “but only out of respect for thee, O Kassar, my friend. As for the seeing of these wizards, did you not tell me that the soldiers will probe your load of wool with their spear points? If the wizards see so well, where is the need of that?”

  The Mongol made no answer, and Wan Tengri, with a final challenging glance aloft, burrowed down again into the load of wool. The dung stench of it was suffocating in his nostrils and the prickling tendrils rasped his sweat-drenched flesh, but there was a grim smile on the solid lips. It was late for a man who had been harried by the warriors of the pharaohs, who had flouted the power of the Golden Throne of Khitai, to become frightened over a mere voice that whispered from the air. Some sorcerer’s trickery, that was all. Superstition. A man who wore about his throat a bit of the True Cross and hence came under the powerful protection of this new God called “Christos,” need not fear these barbarians.

  About him now was the sound of hurrying feet, the braying of asses and the complaining roar of a fast-driven camel. He heard, above the rumble of the sand-softened cart wheels, the whistle and thud of a slave whip and a man’s strangled gasp of pain. These wizards ruled things with a high hand; it was a land where a strong man could take the wealth he wanted, riches and one of these swift galleys. Then he would be off for home again. Even the steel grasp of Rome could be turned aside with gold. A villa on the purple hills of Lebanon where the wind was never harsh, where there were spices and silks and the soft-eyed girls of Caucasus with their ivory skin. He stretched out his iron-muscled legs—and the oxcart lurched to a halt.

  Wan Tengri recognized the arrogant tones that would be the guard at the South Gate. He strained his ears. Yes, they spoke the language of the Mongols which he had learned in this last hard winter with the tribes of the Kara-korum. He could hear Kassar answering, dauntless and bold. Kassar feared no man living, but only those voices that whispered from the high air. And Wan Tengri feared not even those!

  A thud against the bottom of the cart told Wan Tengri that spears were making the search of the wool. Three thuds—Then three spears were groping for human flesh! He pulled a leather shield over his belly and swore under his breath. By Ahriman, if one of those brazen points found him, there would be such a fight in this gate as might make these wizards tear their snaky hair in grief! He clenched his dagger in his great left fist and fingered the hilt of his curved Damascus scimitar. Wan Tengri was called, in the tongue of the Mongols, John Wind-Devil. In the gladiatorial arenas at Alexandria, they had another name for him. They had seen his fierce fighting rages and the assault before which nothing could stand, and the poetical Greeks had christened him for the terror of those narrow seas, the hurricane that shredded their ships to toothpicks, whose fierce lightnings struck like swords of flame, Prester, the hurricane—and he was Prester John. Let them find him, and they would learn what a prester could do in far-off Kara-korum!

  An oath sprang to Wan Tengri’s bearded lips, and he smothered it. One of the spears had found his thigh. He lay without a quiver, waiting, every muscle taut. If the spear probed again—

  “In with you, Mongol,” came the guard’s arrogant voice. “Forget not the guard when you go out tomorrow!”

  The cart lurched forward and, in the hot darkness, Wan Tengri grinned wolfishly. He would not forget the guard at the South Gate! He spat a curse and ground a wisp of wool into the spear cut on his thigh. The sweet, piercing note sounded again and there was the distant clang of the closing brazen gates and a man’s scream. Some poor devil caught between the metal teeth of those great portals. Well, Wan Tengri at least was inside. He plucked cautiously at the wool over his head, and the cool night air sifted through to his greedy nostrils, bringing the scents of this marble-walled city of Turgohl. Churned, dung-heavy mud underfoot but clearer, sharper than that, the tang of stored spices and the thick sweetness of jasmine. Wan Tengri felt his blood quicken. He thrust aside the wool. Here in the narrow, pigsty streets, the blue dusk was thick.

  “I leave you here, Kassar,” he rumbled. “The protection of the One True God upon you.”

  Kassar’s yellow teeth gleamed in a grin. “Thou art the father of all good fortune, Wan Tengri, I thought their spears had found thee.”

  Wan Tengri grunted and, with a lithe motion, sprang to the earth. He towered higher than the side of the great-wheeled oxcart, higher still when he clapped a Mongol hat upon his fiery locks, a great solid-limbed man with gray eyes thrusting out fearlessly above the tangle of his beard. He cast into the cart a small bag that chinked softly.

  “A gift to speed thee, brother!”

  Kassar’s grin faded. He scooped up the bag. “Nay, it is wizard’s loot. I dare not.”

  Wan Tengri shrugged. “Did he enchant me, then? Nay, his wizard’s head will ring for many a day from the clout I gave him! Take this, then.” He slipped the keen, long blade of his dagger from its sheath and dug its point inches deep into the wooden flank of the cart. It quivered there with a note like a silvery bell. “Fare you well, brother.”

  Wan Tengri strode off into the darkness of this strange city of the wizards, along the streets with the shuttered windows, with the high white walls and their brass-spiked tops. His shrewd eyes swept up to the soaring towers, fixed curiously on the one tipped in flambage gold where a last finger of the setting sun still lingered redly. His teeth gleamed for a brief moment amid the thicket of his beard. For a man of his stature, he moved softly, towering in his white felt cone of a hat, bulking huge in the white felt cloak that swathed him, royal gifts from the khan of Kassar’s tribe. These wild men of the barren Kara-korum had tested him in battle and not found him wanting! Afterward, they had shed blood and broken the arrow of friendship.

  The stout warriors of the Emperor of Chin had tasted his steel, and before that fighting men all the way from Egypt to Ceylon and ever eastward through the Sea of Chin where men of his race had never come before. Which was why he must push ever northward in the hope of crossing the blue sea of Baikul and trending back home. There was no going back the way he had come. There were too many powerful enemies. And should such a man as Prester John tremble now before a few sorcerers and their slave guards? Wan Tengri tipped back his big head and boomed out a great laugh that echoed strangely along the empty street.

  Abruptly, a pale red light bloomed in the air over his head, and he shrank back against a wall of gleaming marble. His sword whined from its sheath and made a thread of blue, glittering steel in the dusk, caught the red gleam from overhead like new-spilled blood. And the sibilant, mocking voice spoke to him from the air:

  “Remain where you stand, slave, until the guard comes!”

  The light faded and Wan Tengri’s teeth gleamed in silent laughter. Let fools who were terrified wait for the guard. Wan Tengri had business elsewhere—yet it might be well to test his steel upon the guards of Turgohl!

  “To Ahriman with these wizards of Kasimer,” he muttered and touched the bit of the True Cross which hung about his throat. Its pressure against his flesh reassured him. Behind him, he heard a sound he knew too well, a sound that echoed from edge to edge of the civilized world—the ordered tramp of marching soldiers, the clank of their arms. For an instant, Wan Tengri’s teeth bared in a wolfish snarl, and he gripped his scimitar—then he shook his head. He might slaughter them all, but it would only set all the soldiers of Turgohl upon his heels. Better to slip away from them now.

  The tramp of marching men was closer, just around the turn of this crooked, muddy rut of a street. There was no hole into which he could duck until they passed, no ne
w turn in the street. But there was a wall crested with brazen spikes! In an instant, Wan Tengri had the sword between his teeth. His mighty arms reached upward to grasp the spikes. A heave pulled his deerskin boots clear of the sucking liquid mud, a quick swing and he rolled against the spikes, lay there motionless on top of the wall. His right hand lifted to the sword hilt. Around the corner swung the helmeted men of the watch.

  There were ten men tramping behind their captain. Light spears were slung across their shoulders, with quiver and bow, and at their sides clanked the long, curved sword of the plainsman. Wan Tengri estimated them narrowly. From his elevation, he could slash down a half of them before they knew what struck. As for the rest? His lips tautened away from his teeth. It was as good a way to go as any, good steel in your fist and a hard fight, and Wan Tengri knew a rising anger—the fury of rage that had won him the name of Prester John. There were lights like pale lightnings in his eyes and the cords of his throat were tightening. The sword hovered aloft—

  “By Belass!” the leader of the ten whispered. “By Ormazd and the winds of Tengri, he has broken the enchantment!”

  The captain of the ten pointed with a trembling hand toward the spot where Wan Tengri’s tracks came to an abrupt end. The men looked fearfully about them in the darkness, but the brims of their helmets kept their eyes down. They did not think to look up where avenging death hovered in uplifted steel.

  “Some greater wizard,” the captain said. “Some great wizard has broken the spell of the All-High! He—” The man peered over his shoulder into the shadows. “He has gone now. We can gain nothing by staying. This way, men. This way—” Before he had taken three strides, the captain was running, and pell-mell, their sheathed swords clanging wildly, the watch raced up the dark street!

  Laughter welled up into Wan Tengri’s throat, but he choked it down, glanced challengingly into the night air where before that pale-red light had bloomed. He touched again the bit of the True Cross.