Robert Adams - The Seven Magic Jewels of Ireland

VIP免费

2024-11-29 2 0 405.6KB 115 页 5.9玖币

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/2%20-%20The%20Seven%20Magical%20Jewels%20of%20Ireland%20(v1.0)%20(txt).txt

Scanned by Highroller. Proofed more or less by Highroller.

PROLOGUE

Whyffler Hall, it had once been called, the stark, rectangular tower built of big blocks of gray

native stone, in centuries long past—motte, stronghold, residence of the generations who had held

this stretch of the blood-soaked Scottish Marches for king after king of England and Wales. But

when first Bass Foster saw that tower, it had become only a rear wing of the enlarged Whyffler

Hall, a rambling, gracious Renaissance residence, its wide windows glazed with diamond-shaped

panes set in lead, its inner bailey transformed into a formal garden.

From the first moment he set eyes upon it, Bass Foster had felt a strange compulsion to approach,

to enter that ancient tower, that brooding stone edifice, but it was not until some years later

that he was made privy to the knowledge that the very instrument which had drawn him and all the

other people and objects* from twentieth-century North America to England of the seventeenth

century (though an England of a much-altered history from his own world of that period) was

immured within the dank cellar of the tower.

*See Castaways in Time by Robert Adams (Signet Books, 1982).

It was a savage, primitive world of war and death and seemingly senseless brutalities into which

Bass and the nine other moderns were plunged, but he and most of the others were able to adapt. A

woman died, one man was killed, another went mad, and a third was maimed in battle, but the other

six men and women managed to carve new lives and careers for themselves out of this very strange

world into which they had been inextricably cast.

The arcane device spawned of far-future technology still squatted in the cellar of that ancient

tower, its greenish glow providing the only light that had penetrated the chamber for the two and

more generations since its single entry had been finally walled up and sealed by the authority of

the then-reigning king.

Only a bare handful of living men and a single woman knew the truth of what lay beyond those

mortared stones impressed with the royal seal of the House of Tudor . . . they, and uncountable

generations of scuttling vermin to which the cellar had been home.

Although they welcomed the dim light cast by the chunky, rectangular, silver-gray device in what

otherwise would have been utter, stygian darkness, the vermin otherwise tended to avoid it, for it

often emitted sounds which hurt their sensitive ears.

But of a day, a wild stoat came from out the park and over the wall surrounding the outer bailey

of Whyffler Hall. The slender, supple, gray-brown beast had no slightest trouble in moving unseen

by man up through the formal gardens to the environs of the Hall itself, for he was a hunter, an

ambusher, a born killer, and had ingested the arts of stealth with his mother's milk.

Near to the Hall, his keen nose detected the scent of rat, and he doggedly followed that scent a

roundabout course to a burrow entry dug hard against a mossy, cyclopean stone. In a fraction of an

eyeblink, the furry, snaky body had plunged into the earth in pursuit of his chosen prey.

After exploring numerous chambers—sail, alas, empty of rodents—and equally numerous intersecting

tunnels, the stoat found that the larger, older, most heavily traveled main burrow, which had

descended to some depth, began to incline upward once more, and was soon filled with the strong

scent of many rodents ahead and a wan, strange light.

The questing head the big hob stoat thrust out of the burrow hole in the packed-earth floor of the

tower cellar chanced to come nose to quivering nose with a rat that had been on the very point of

entering that hole. The rat leaped a full body length backward and shrilled a terrified scream.

That scream and the sudden stench of the stoat's musk initiated a few chaotic moments of rodent

pandemonium, with rats of all sizes and ages and of both sexes streaking in all directions and

shrieking a chorus of terror.

But fast as were the rats, the stoat hob was faster, and he had emerged into the midst of the

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-...%20Jewels%20of%20Ireland%20(v1.0)%20(txt).txt (1 of 115) [12/28/2004 4:20:07 PM]

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/2%20-%20The%20Seven%20Magical%20Jewels%20of%20Ireland%20(v1.0)%20(txt).txt

panic and slain several smaller ones before most of the rest had found and fled down other holes.

Now the only full-grown rats left in all the huge, open cellar were three which had taken

sanctuary atop the glowing device, crouching and panting amongst the dust-coated knobs and levers

and calibrated dial faces.

No stoat ever had really good eyesight, but their other keen senses more than compensated for this

lack, so this particular mustelid knew just where those rats were, how many they numbered, their

sizes, ages, sex, and degree of terror. He also knew, after a hurried circuit of the base of their

glowing aerie, that there was no way he could get to and at them whilst they remained up there.

Four feet straight up was simply beyond his somewhat limited jumping abilities, and the

unrelievedly smooth, hard surfaces would prevent him from climbing up to his prey.

Frustrated and furious, the stoat chattered briefly to himself, then futilely jumped the less than

a foot he could manage, vainly trying to get his stubby claws into the steel sides as he slid back

down to thump onto the silvery disk on which the device reposed.

Feeble as had been the attempt, nonetheless, it and the sounds of it had further terrified the

three rats, driving them into a frenzy which suddenly erupted into a three-way battle to the death

amongst them. The squealing, biting, clawing, furry ball rolled hither and yon amongst the control

switches and buttons and levers and knobs thickly scattered over the top of the device. Scaly

tails lashed as the three big rats fought on, heedless of what they struck or moved, heedless

now, too, of the facts that the ear-hurting noises were become suddenly constant and louder, that

the greenish glow was become much brighter.

Below, the hob stoat waited, hoping that in their fury the rats would roll off to fall down within

reach of his teeth.

Far and far to the south of Whyffler Hall, within the long-besieged City of London, one of those

three sleek rats would have brought a full onza of gold in almost any quarter in which it chanced

to be hawked, for the siegelines had been drawn tightly about that city and its starvling,

frantic, and embattled inhabitants. Nor did there appear to be any hope of succor now, for the

last remnants of last year's Crusading hosts were being relentlessly hunted down, while every

attempt by the Papal forces to resupply the beleaguered city had been foiled, all ending in

resupplying King Arthur's army instead.

In the most recent incursion of a Papal supply fleet up the Thames, young Admiral Bigod's English

fleet had lurked out of sight until the leased merchanters and their heavily armed escorts were

well up the river. Then, while his line-of-battle ships and armed merchant vessels trailed the

foreign ships just out of the range of the long guns, a dozen small, speedy galleys issued from

out certain creekmouths and immediately engaged two of the four-masted galleons that composed the

van of the fleet.

Each of these galleys was equipped with but a single cannon, but these cannon were all of the

superior sort manufactured at York by the redoubtable Master Fairley. The guns were breech-loaded

and fired pointed, cylindrical projectiles—both solid and explosive-shell.

The well-drilled crews handled the galleys with aplomb, scooting around the huge, high-sided,

cumbersome galleons like so many waterbugs, discharging their breechloaders again and again to

fearsome effect into their unmissable targets, while the return fire howled and hummed uselessly

high over their heads.

After watching his companion galleon shot almost to splinters, before either a lucky shell or one

of the several blazing fires reached her magazine and she first exploded, then sank like a stone,

Wai id Dahub Pasha saw his own galleon's rudder blown away by one of the devilish shells. At that

point, he ordered most of his men up from the gundecks, to be put to better use in fighting fires,

manning the pumps, and tending the many wounded; there was no way of which he knew to fight with a

ship you could not steer. He also had a sounding made, and, pale with the thought of less than a

full fathom of water beneath his keel, with the flowing tide pushing him farther and farther up

the unfamiliar river, he had the fore anchor dropped.

As the anchor chain rattled out into the river, Walid Dahub Pasha saw the dozen galleys back off

from his now helpless ship, hold a brief, shouted, council of war, then set off toward the knot of

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-...%20Jewels%20of%20Ireland%20(v1.0)%20(txt).txt (2 of 115) [12/28/2004 4:20:07 PM]

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/2%20-%20The%20Seven%20Magical%20Jewels%20of%20Ireland%20(v1.0)%20(txt).txt

merchanters and the remaining galleons. After that, he and those of his men still hale were all

too busy saving their ship and stores and comrades to pay any attention to aught that befell the

rest of the Papal fleet.

While he hacked at a tangle of rigging and splintered yards—for Walid prided himself on never

forgetting his antecedents nor asking his seamen to do aught that he would not himself do—he

reflected that only the worst possible string of ill luck had gotten him and his fine ship

involved in this Roman mess to begin. The Bishop of the East at Constantinople had nothing to do

with the Roman Crusade, though he had given leave for any of his as had the desire to join in it.

Walid certainly had never for a minute entertained any such desire, yet now he would in all

likelihood lose his ship if not his life through being caught up in the Roman stupidity. The

sultan in Anghara would be in no way pleased, either, when and if Walid returned to report the

loss of ship, guns and all. A chill coursed through Walid's powerful body despite the heat

engendered by his exertions, for he had seen strong men live for long hours after being

impaled—screaming, pleading, babbling, dying by bare inches, while the remorseless wooden stake

tore up through their bodies. He shuddered. That was no way for a decent Tripolitan seaman to die!

Much later, he was on the main gundeck, supervising the drawing of the charges from several of his

battery of bronze culverins, when Fahrooq al-Ahmar, a captain and the sole remaining officer of

Walid's contingent of fighting men, found him with a message.

Arrived on his quarterdeck, one look through his long-glass was enough to tell the tale. The

remainder of the Papal fleet was once more sailing upriver, but no longer under Papal ensigns;

each and every one of the ships and galleons now bore the personal banner of Arthur III Tudor,

King of England and Wales. The fleet was being shepherded by some English galleons and frigates,

while the squadron of galleys seemed to be beating in the general direction of Walid's crippled

galleon. The thought flitted through his mind that perhaps they meant to give him and his no

quarter, in which case he had unloaded those culverins too soon.

He turned to a quartermaster. Haul down that Roman rag and hoist Sultan Omar's banner in its

proper place." Then, "Fahrooq, send a man down to tell them to get those culverins reloaded

immediately, load the swivels, get yourself and your men armed for close combat, open the main

arms chests for the seamen, and send a man to my cabin to help me get into my armor. They may kill

us all in the end, but this particular batch of Franks will know they've come up against real men,

by the beard of the Prophet and the tail of Christ's holy ass!"

As the seamen and soldiers set to their tasks aboard the immobilized galleon, the row galleys

crept across the intervening water. Closer they came, ever closer. When they were just beyond the

effective range of a long eighteen-pounder culverin shot, they divided, half of them passing

across the galleon's stern quarter to form a line on her port side, the others similarly

positioned to menace her starboard side.

Watching the deadly vessels through his fine long-glass, Walid could discern the raised platforms

for the single gun that each galley mounted. Absently, he noted that they looked to be nine- or

maybe twelve-pounders.

With both his sides menaced properly, eleven of the galleys held their places, using their oars

only enough to keep them in those places, while a single galley began to stroke slowly toward the

galleon. No gunners stood on the platform; there was but a single man—helmetless, but wearing half-

armor, sword, dagger, and pistols and holding the haft of a bladeless boarding pike to which a

grayish-white square of cloth had been affixed.

"Looks to be a herald of some kind," remarked Walid, then he ordered, "No one's to fire on them

until and unless I say to do so. But keep your eyes on the other galleys, most especially on those

off the port bow. We can lose nothing by hearing what this Frank bastard has to say to us."

As the small galley neared, Walid thought to himself that some of the oarmen were easily the most

villainous-looking humans he had ever set eyes to in a lifetime spent at sea and in some of the

roughest ports in all the wide world. The herald, on the other hand, though his face was well

scarred and his nose was canted and a bit crooked and though he might have looked fearsome if

viewed alone, seemed to represent an uncommon degree of gentility when compared to the satanic-

looking crew whose efforts propelled the galley.

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-...%20Jewels%20of%20Ireland%20(v1.0)%20(txt).txt (3 of 115) [12/28/2004 4:20:07 PM]

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/2%20-%20The%20Seven%20Magical%20Jewels%20of%20Ireland%20(v1.0)%20(txt).txt

Then the rowcraft turned to starboard and came directly toward the galleon, and all that Walid

could see were the backs of the rowers, the supposed herald, the steersman, and another he assumed

to be the master on the minuscule steering deck at the stern.

And on that small steering deck, Squire John Stakeley felt far more exposed to imminent death or

maiming than ever he had even when spurring on at the very forefront of a cavalry charge. Though

he was no true seaman and made no such pretensions, he well knew just how frail was this galley

and her crew when one contemplated a hit by even a single ball from an eighteen-pounder culverin,

and they were now within perfect range if that Roman bastard elected to pull his broadside or any

part thereof.

Of course, if he did that—fired on a herald—the rest of the squadron would proceed to pound the

galleon to pieces, before boarding the hulk and butchering every man aboard

her. But that would be of no help to Squire John and the noble herald and the gallowglasses who

were rowing closer to the anchored warship with every stroke of the long, heavy sweeps.

Hailing from an inland county and being thus conversant with damn-all of ships in general, Squire

John failed to recognize the new, gaudy standard that had been run up to replace the even gaudier

Pap;.l one. But the herald saw it for what it was, and, as the galley came alongside the galleon,

with a brace of brawny Irishmen contriving to keep her there against the tug of the current with

boathooks and main strength, the herald shouted up at a swarthy, bearded man who stood by the rail

with a glowing length of matchcord in one tar-stained hand and the other grasping the aiming rod

of a swivel gun—a three-inch drake, mounted in the rail specifically to repel boarders.

In purest Arabic, he demanded and threatened and insulted so meticulously that Walid and every man

of his within the hearing immediately recognized a kindred ethnic spirit.

"Throw me down a ladder at once, you sorry by-blow outcome of a diseased sow and a spavined

camel's perversions, else I'll see you given that swivel gun and all within it as the hottest

clyster that your foul fundament ever has known!"

At Walid's curt nod of approval, the gunner laid aside his slow-match and, grinning his own

appreciation of the herald's admirably couched words, heaved down a rope ladder from the galleon's

waist rail to the bobbing galley below.

Leaving the white flag leaning against the gun carriage, the herald stepped onto the gunwale of

the galley and ascended the swaying, jerking ladder as nimbly as any barefoot seaman, despite his

heavy boots, armor, long-skirted buffcoat, and dangling weapons.

As Fahrooq ushered the newcomer up onto the quarterdeck, Walid noted that the herald moved with a

pantherish grace and so was most likely an exceeding deadly swordsman. Otherwise, he looked to be

much akin to Walid himself.

Both were of average height—some five and one-half feet from soles to pate—with black hair and

eyes, swart skin, and fine, prominent noses, heads, hands, and feet a bit on the small side,

fingers long and slender. Both men were possessed of slim waists and thick shoulders, but the

herald also showed the fiat thighs of a horseman and considerable facial scarring, more than Walid

had managed to collect in his own lifetime.

"Sahlahmoo aleikoom, Ohbtdhn. I am Sir Ali ibn Hussain." "Aleikoomah sahlahm." Walid intoned the

ritual greeting, but then demanded, "By the flames of Gehenna, now, how is it that an Arabian

knight is serving an excommunicated Prankish king who is making war—rather successful war, but

still war—upon the Holy Apostolic Church? Man, you risk your soul in the hereafter, not to

contemplate what will be done to your body if you find yourself taken and brought before an

ecclesiastical court."

"Oh, I serve not King Arthur," was the reply. "At least, not directly. No, I have the great honor

to be the herald of his grace, Sir Sebastian, Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Rutland, Markgraf von

Velegrad, Baron of Strathtyne, Knight of the Garter of the Kingdom of England and Wales, Noble

Fellow of the Order of the Red Eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, and Lord Commander of Horse in the

Armies of Arthur III Tudor, King of England and Wales."

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-...%20Jewels%20of%20Ireland%20(v1.0)%20(txt).txt (4 of 115) [12/28/2004 4:20:07 PM]

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/2%20-%20The%20Seven%20Magical%20Jewels%20of%20Ireland%20(v1.0)%20(txt).txt

Walid shook his head. "How do you manage to remember all of that Prankish gibberish in its proper

order. Sir Ali? Never mind, here's the kahvay—let's have a cup so we can at least trust each other

here, on board my ship."

When one seaman had set up the elaborately chased silver tray-table on its carven ebony legs, when

another had set it with a a trio of tiny gold-washed and bejeweled silver cups, then a brass

brazier full of glowing coals was passed up from the firebox in the waist and a hideously scarred

and pockmarked man of late middle years set about the preparation of the ceremonial food and

drink.

In the center of the table was set a smaller silver tray on which rested a few soaked and softened

ship's biscuits and a bowl of coarse, brownish salt. First Walid, then Fahrooq took up a bit of

biscuit between the fore and middle fingers of their right hands, dipped them in the salt, and

proffered them to Sir Ali. The herald, for his part, accepted and slowly ate the offerings, then

did the same to Walid and Fahrooq, in turn.

Meantime, the man at the brazier had dropped a generous handful of dried coffee beans into a

small, preheated iron skillet, wherein he had thoroughly roasted them, then dumped the almost

scorched beans into a marble mortar and rapidly reduced them to coarse powder. The powder he had

poured into a brass pot with a long wooden handle, adding some pint or so of water and a piece of

a sugarloaf. When he had nestled the pot into an iron trivet above the bed of coals, he began to

alternately blow upon the coals and carefully watch the contents of the pot.

As the coffee came to its initial boil, the man adroitly took it from the heat, added three

cardamom pods, then replaced it over the coals. As the mixture boiled up the second time, he again

took it up and this time spooned a generous measure of the rich brown froth into each of the three

waiting silver cups.

On the third boiling, the man removed the pot from the heat, dashed into it a large spoonful of

unheated water, then filled the three cups with the fragrantly steaming, thick, syrupy, stygian-

black brew.

"It is many years since I have savored dhwah in the Turkic style," the herald commented politely,

still speaking Arabic.

Walid shrugged. "Thank you for the compliment, Sir Ali, but I understand, believe me, \ more than

understand. You will have noticed that 1 did not dignify it by calling it dhwah. I shipped this

sorry Turk aboard in Izmir, after my own cook was killed in a dockside brawl. And dhwah or even a

simple kuskus simply baffles him.

"But now, I am a blunt seaman, Sir Ali, so let us get down to business, eh? For what purpose did

this Bey Sebastian send you to me? This galleon is his for the taking, already; even a landsman

could see that she cannot be steered. The bread of slavery is bitter at best, but forced to it, I

imagine that the most of my crew would prefer becoming slaves to becoming corpses, today. As for

me, after the loss of this vessel and the guns, I'd as lief remain as far as possible from Sultan

Omar's domains ... for reasons of bodily health, you understand." Sir All grinned briefly. "Yes,

I've heard that he's possessed of a foul temper, though exceeding generous to those who can please

him. But tell me this—how is it that one of Sultan Omar's fine war galleons is escorting ships

sent by the Pope of the West? Is all the Church allied against England, then?"

Walid snorted scornfully. **Not hardly, Sir Ali! Our Pope's last word on the matter was that

anyone simpleminded enough to go west and risk his fortune and/or neck to try to help put a

bastard-spawn usurper onto the throne of England at the behest of old Pope Abdul would probably

have been killed by his own stupidity sooner or later anyhow, wherever he chanced to be.

"No, bad luck and illegal coercion brought me and mine here to this sorry pass. Nor have that

Moorish dog who styles himself Pope of the West and his criminal Roman cohorts heard the end of

the coercion business, either, not if 1 ever get the ship back to Turkey, they haven't.

"The Turkish ambassador to the court of King Giovanni, in Napoli, having died—he and all his

family, of a summer pestilence—I had conveyed the new ambassador and his household to Napoli and

was asea enroute to the Port of Marsala to take aboard certain cargo consigned to Sultan Omar's

chamberlain when, of a late, dark night, a freak, unseasonal tempest all but swamped the galleon,

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-...%20Jewels%20of%20Ireland%20(v1.0)%20(txt).txt (5 of 115) [12/28/2004 4:20:07 PM]

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/2%20-%20The%20Seven%2Magical%20Jewels%20of%20Ireland%20(v1.0)%20(txt).txtScannedbyHighroller.ProofedmoreorlessbyHighroller.PROLOGUEWhyfflerHall,ithadoncebeencalled,thestark,rectangulartowerbuiltofbigblocksofgraynativestone,incenturieslongpast—mot...

展开>> 收起<<

Robert Adams - The Seven Magic Jewels of Ireland.pdf

共115页,预览5页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Robert Adams - The Seven Magic Jewels of Ireland

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: