Harold Lamb

“ It was high, the balcony. Wai-a! Twenty javelin lengths and impossible to climb.” Arslan appeared to meditate on other balconies and other women. “A guard shouted at us to go away. At night there are boats with lanterns.”
“You have done well.” The eyes of the crusader brightened. “Tomorrow you must go to the outwork of the palace and say that you wish to tell the young nobles about some new Circassian slaves. Give silver, but do not let the Greeks see gold. Ask no questions, but if you can get within the palace itself, look at everything and count the guards. ”

“ A girl, innocent still, too slender for perfect proportion—too wide in the lips and chin for perfect beauty—her dark tresses contrasting charmingly with her fair skin; too impulsive to hide her likes and dislikes, and inclined to weep when she was alone, though not before others. ”

“ Although there were skilled doctors among the Greeks in the palace, Lascaris trusted the disciple of Avicenna more than his countrymen. And the Arab hakim had told him that the fever had left him. The long illness that had kept him on his couch for nearly a year would soon be at an end.
“Ehu!” The emperor raised himself weakly on his arm. “Three hundred gilt candles I vow to Hagia Sophia. Eh, Rusudan?” ”

“ Upon this great mass of rock the palace of the Chersonese had been built, its walls of yellow marble rising sheer from the slope of the stone. Here and there towers peered above the many roofs of the miniature city. Rusudan had heard from the Greek slave-girls, who seemed to know everything, that the rock under them had been honeycombed by the waters of other ages, and passages descended into its depths—passages that led to store=houses and other chambers where the torturers of the emperor kept their instruments. ”

“ But it is no part of our duty to go out in a small boat under the eyes of a hundred Greeks for a word with a captive Georgian.”
“Harken and remember this,” Hugh said quietly. “If Subotai can seize the Chersonese he will have silks and ivory, red leather and precious stones, horses and gold and other things past counting. But I will find Rusudan and she will be mine.”
Arslan yawned and stretched his arms, and looked around for his blankets.
“It is all one to me. But it is useless to try to trick the Greeks. Even an Armenian could not to that.” ”

“ Because Lascaris must have forgotten her presence on the balcony, she kept very still and listened. The emperor was asking for news of the city, and the Lombard surely was an informer.
“No furs have come in from the northern trading posts, our agents say, may it please your august Majesty. There has been fighting on the Dnieper.”
“So near? The tribesmen?”
“May your clemency be enlightened! The savage Russians of the northern forests were slaughtered and scattered by the pagans from Cathay—the Horde, as it is called.”
“Ah.” Lascaris was silent a moment. ”