Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures (76 page)

“No tricks, Kral,” he cautioned, “or your head leaves your shoulders.”

The Armenian’s laugh rang savagely bitter in the gloom. “Would I betray Christians to the butchers of my people? You and your swaggerers might rot in hell for all of me. But through you I may have vengeance. Therefore trust me.”

Ivan made no reply, and Kral led the way through a narrow doorway and into a tunnel beyond. Here the vaulted roof was higher than a man could reach, and three horses might have been ridden abreast. The smooth rock floor slanted slightly downward, and from time to time they came to short flights of steps cut into the stone, giving onto lower levels. Ivan twisted his moustache reflectively and stared about him. The flickering torch-light shone on figures carved all along the walls in bas-relief. They were mostly shapes of men, short, thick-bodied, with round heads and broad noses. They made war on one another, hunted lions, brought gifts to a fantastic anthropomorphic figure that must have been a god, and in some of the carvings fought men of an unmistakably different race, taller and more symmetrically shaped men, with long beards and hook noses. Ivan detected a faint resemblance between these figures and Kral.

As they progressed, the Cossack seemed to hear a murmur of running water from time to time. He mentioned this.

“We have left the tunnel the old ones made,” answered Kral. “We are in an old water-course now. Once a stream ran through here, cutting through the solid rock. For some reason it changed its course, God only knows how many thousands of years ago. It is that you hear, flowing through the darkness not far away, but through another channel. Soon you will see it. It has its head far up among the mountains, but is mainly subterranean.”

Presently Ivan heard the unmistakable ripple of falling water, and ahead of him the tunnel ended abruptly in what appeared to be a solid rock wall. But it was too smooth and symmetrical to be the work of nature; it was a huge block of stone, shaped by the hand of man, and about the edges stole a thin grey light. Extinguishing the torch, Kral fumbled in the darkness, and Ivan heard him strain and grunt. Then the block, which was hung on a stone pivot, swung aside and a sheet of silver shimmered before the Cossack’s eyes.

They stood in the narrow mouth of the tunnel, which was masked by a sheet of water rushing over the cliff high above. At the foot of the falls a circular pool foamed and eddied, and from it a narrow stream raced away down the gorge. Kral pointed out a ledge that ran from the mouth of the cavern, skirting the edge of the pool, and Ivan followed him, first wrapping his powder-flask and pistol-locks carefully in his silken sash. At the edge, the falling water formed such a thin sheet that neither man was completely soaked in gaining the outer world. Ivan saw that he was in a narrow gorge that was like a knife-cut through the hills. Nowhere was it more than forty or fifty paces wide, and on either hand sheer cliffs towered for hundreds of feet, higher on the left than on the right. No vegetation grew anywhere, except for a fringe about the edge of the pool, and along the course of the narrow stream. This stream crossed the canyon floor meanderingly to plunge into a narrow crack in the opposite cliff – eventually to find its way into the river that traversed Ekrem, Kral said. Ivan glanced back the way they had come; the falling water completely masked the tunnel-mouth. Even with the door-block pulled aside, he could have sworn the falls rushed down a blank stone wall.

He followed Kral up the gorge which did not run straight, but turned and twisted like a tortured snake. Within three hundred paces they lost sight of the waterfall and only a confused murmur came to their ears. At this point also, the floor of the gorge began to slant upward at a steep pitch. A few more hundred paces and the Armenian, leading the way with renewed caution, drew back, clutching his companion’s arm. A stunted tree stood at a sharp angle of the rock wall, and behind this Kral crouched, pointing.

Looking over his shoulder, the Zaporogian grunted. Beyond the angle the gorge ran on for perhaps eighty paces, then ended in a blank impasse. But on his right hand the cliff seemed curiously altered, and he stared for an instant before he realized that he was looking at a man-made wall. They were almost behind a castle built in a notch of the cliffs. Its wall rose sheer from the edge of a deep crevice; no bridge spanned this chasm, and the only apparent entrance in the wall was a heavy iron-braced door.

“It was by this path that the girl Ayesha escaped,” said Kral. “This gorge runs almost parallel to Ekrem; it narrows to the west and finally comes into the valley beyond where the villages stood. The Kurds blocked the entrance there with stones so that it can not be discovered from the outer valley, unless one knows of it. They seldom use this road. And even they know nothing of the tunnel behind the waterfall, or the Caves of the Dead. But yonder door Ayesha will open to Osman Pasha.”

Ivan gnawed his moustache. He yearned to loot the castle himself, but he saw no way to come to it. The chasm was too wide for a man to leap, and anyway, there was no ledge to cling to on the other side.

“By Allah, Kral,” said he, “I’d like to look on this noted valley.”

The Armenian glanced at his bulk and shook his head.

“There is a way we call the Eagle’s Road, but it is not for such as you.”

“By God!” roared the giant Cossack, bristling instantly. “Is a skin-clad heathen a better man than a Zaporogian? I’ll go anywhere you dare!”

Kral shrugged his shoulders and led the way back down the gorge until they came within sight of the waterfall again. There he stopped at what looked at first glance like a shallow groove worn by corrosion in the higher cliff-wall. Looking closely Ivan saw a series of shallow hand-holds notched into the solid rock. He twisted his moustache, nonplussed.

“Dogs bite you, Kral,” he grumbled, “an ape could hardly scale these pock-marks.”

“I climbed this ladder before I had seen fifteen winters,” grinned Kral mirthlessly. “Unsling your girdle and I’ll help you as we climb.”

Ivan’s pride struggled with his curiosity plainly in his broad face for an instant; then with a shrug he kicked off his silver-heeled boots and unwound his girdle – a strong length of silk, yards long. One end he bound to his sword-belt, the other he made fast to the Armenian’s girdle. Thus equipped they began the dizzy journey. They climbed slowly but Ivan had an uncomfortable feeling that Kral could have run up the “ladder” like a cat, had he been climbing alone. The Cossack clung to the shallow pits with toes and finger-nails, and time and again the hairs of his scalp-lock bristled and his blood turned to ice as he slipped on the sheer of the cliff. Half a dozen times only Kral’s support saved him. But at last they gained the pinnacle, and Ivan sat down, his feet dangling over the edge, and tried to regain his breath. He glanced down at the narrow shaft up which they had come, and swore. The gorge twisted like a snake-track beneath him, and from his position he looked over the southern wall into the valley of Ekrem, with its river winding serpentine through it.

Smoke still floated lazily up from the blackened masses that had been villages. Down the valley, on the right bank of the river, were pitched a number of hide tents. Ivan made out men swarming about these tents, like milling ants in the distance. They seemed to be saddling horses. There were the Turkomans, Kral said, and pointed out the mouth of a narrow canyon up the valley, and on the southern side, up which, he said, the Algerians were encamped. It was the castle, however, that drew Ivan’s interest.

This castle was set solidly on a promontory of almost solid rock that jutted out from the cliffs and sloped down into the valley. The castle faced the valley, entirely surrounded by a massive wall twenty feet high, and furnished with towers for archers at regular intervals, though there were no towers on the side that backed against the cliff behind. A massive gate flanked on either hand by a tower pierced with slanting slits for arrows commanded the outer slope.

From this gate, the crag slanted to the valley floor, not too steeply to be climbed with ease. But the ascent offered no cover. Men charging up it would be naked to a raking fire from the towers. Ivan shrugged his gigantic shoulders.

“The devil himself couldn’t take that castle by storm, even with cannon. One couldn’t drag bombards up the slope with the dog-brothers on the wall shooting at him. If the cannon were in the gorge – but devil take it, we’ve no cannon. How are we to come at the Soldan’s brother in that pile of rock? Lead us to Osman Pasha. I want to take his head back to the
Sjetsch
.”

“Be wary if you wish to wear your own,
Kazak
,” answered Kral grimly. “Look down into the gorge. What do you see?”

“A vastness of bare stone and a fringe of green along the stream,” grunted Ivan, craning his thick neck.

Kral grinned like a wolf. “
Taib!
And do you notice the fringe is much denser on the right bank, which is likewise higher than the other? Listen! Hidden behind the waterfall we can watch until the Algerians come up the gorge. Then we will hide ourselves among the bushes along the stream and waylay them as they return with the prince. We’ll kill them all except Orkhan, whom we will take captive. Then we will go back along the tunnel through the Caves of the Dead, to the horses, and return to your land.”

“That’s easy,” responded Ivan, twisting his long moustache. “We’ll take a galley from the Turks; we’ll lie in wait along the shore until we see one anchor. Then we’ll swim out by night with our sabers in our teeth, and climb up the chains. Slash, stab, death to you, dog-souls! That’s the way it’ll be. We’ll cut off the heads of the
begs
and chain the rest to the oars to row us back across the sea. But what’s this?”

Kral stiffened as the Cossack pointed. Men were galloping out of the distant Turkoman camp, lashing their horses across the shallow river. The sunlight struck glints from lance-points. On the castle walls helmets began to sparkle.

“The attack!” cried Kral, glaring. “
Jannam!
They have changed their plans! They were not to attack until nigh sunset!
Chabuk
– quick! We must get down the gorge before the Algerians come up it and catch us like rats in a trap!”

He glared down the defile, vanishing to the west like a saber-cut among the cliffs, straining his eyes for glint of shield or helmet that would warn of approaching warriors. As far as he could see the gorge lay bare of life. He urged Ivan over the cliff, and the big warrior cautiously levered his bulk into the shallow groove, cursing bitterly as he bumped his elbows. Descending seemed even more perilous than ascending, but at last they stood in the gorge, and Kral hastened toward the waterfall, a furtive hurried figure, grotesque in his sheepskins. He sighed as they reached the pool, crossed the ledge and plunged through the fall. But even as they came into the ghostly twilight beyond, he halted, gripping Ivan’s iron-sheathed arm. Above the rush of the water, his keen ears had caught the clink of steel on rock. They looked out through the silver shimmering sheet that made all things look ghostly and unreal, and hid themselves effectually from the eyes of any outside. A shudder shook Kral. They had not gained their refuge an instant too soon.

A band of men was coming along the gorge – tall, strong men in mail hauberks and turban-bound helmets. At their head strode one taller than the rest, whose features, black-bearded and hawk-like as theirs, yet differed subtly from those of his followers. His straight grey eyes seemed to look full into the smoldering blue eyes of the giant Cossack, as the corsair glanced at the waterfall. A deep sigh rose from the depths of Ivan’s capacious belly, and his iron hand locked convulsively about his hilt. Impulsively he took a quick step forward, but Kral threw his knotted arms about him and hung on desperately.

“In God’s name,
Kazak
!” he cried in a frenzied whisper. “Don’t throw away our lives! We have them in a trap. If you rush out now, they’ll shoot you down like a rat – then who’ll take Osman’s head back to the
Sjetsch
?”

Kral knew the reckless spirit of the Cossacks, for he had wandered among them as a trader, like many of his race.

“I could send a ball through his skull from here,” muttered Ivan.

“Nay, it would betray our hiding-place, and even if you brought him down, you could not take his head. Patience, oh patience! I tell you, we will take them all! Not a dog of them shall escape. Hate? Look at that lean vulture in sheepskins and
kalpak
beside Osman. That is Arap Ali, the Turkoman chief, who slew my young sister and her husband. Do you hate Osman? By the God of my fathers, my very brain reels with madness to leap out upon Arap Ali and rend his throat with my teeth! But patience! Patience!”

The Algerians were crossing the narrow stream, their
khalats
girt high, holding their matchlocks above their heads to keep the charges dry. On the further bank they halted, in an attitude of listening. Presently, above the rush of the waters, the men in the cave-mouth heard a faint booming sound that came from up the gorge.