Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures (78 page)

The Algerians were driven back up the left bank where they made a brief, bloody stand; then they fell back, dazed and ferocious, toward where Prince Orkhan stared like one dazed, in the shadow of the cliff, with the small knot of warriors Osman had detailed to guard him. Ayesha knelt, gripping his knees. The prince’s eyes were stunned; thrice he moved as though to seize a sword and cast himself into the fray, but Ayesha’s arms were like slender steel bands about his knees. Osman Pasha, breaking away from the battle, hastened to him. The corsair’s scimitar was red to the hilt, his mail hacked, blood dripping from beneath his helmet. All about raged and eddied single combats and struggling groups, as the fighting scattered out over the gorge. The gorge was become a blood-splashed shambles. Not many were left on either side to fight, but there were more Cossacks on their feet than Muhammadans.

Through the wash of the melee Ivan Sablianka strode, brandishing his great sword in his sledge-like fist. Such as opposed him were beaten down with strokes that shattered leather-covered bucklers, caved in steel caps and clove alike through chain-mail, flesh and bone.

“Hey, you rascals!” he roared in his barbarous Turki. “I want your head, Osman, and the fellow beside you there – Urkhan. Don’t be afraid, prince – I won’t harm you. You’ll bring us Cossacks a pretty penny, may I eat pap if you won’t!”

Osman’s keen eyes flickered about, looking desperately for an avenue of escape. He saw the dim groove leading up the cliff, and his keen brain instantly divined its use.

“
Chabuk, yah khawand!
Quick, my lord!” he whispered. “Up the cliff! I’ll hold off this barbarian while you climb!”

“Aye!” Ayesha urged eagerly. “Oh, haste! I can climb like a cat! I will come behind you and aid you! It is desperate, but oh, my prince, it is a chance, and this is but to fall back into chains and captivity again!”

She was tense and quivering with eagerness to strive and fight like a wild thing for the man she loved. But the mask of fatalism had descended again on Prince Orkhan. He did not lack courage, even for such a climb. But the paralyzing philosophy of futility had him in its grip. He looked about where the victorious Cossacks were cutting down those who yet lived of his new-found allies. And he bowed his handsome head.

“Nay, this is
Kismet
. Allah does not will that I should press the throne of my fathers. Nay, what man can escape his fate?”

Ayesha blenched, her eyes flaring in a sort of horror, her hands catching at her locks. Osman, realizing the prince’s mood, whirled, sprang for the shaft himself and went up it as only a sailor could climb. With a roar Ivan charged after him, forgetting all about the prince. Cossacks were approaching, shaking red drops from their sabers. Orkhan spread his hands resignedly, and Ayesha watched him, her lips parted in dumb agony.

“Che arz kunam?”
he said simply, facing his new captors. “Take me if you will; I am Orkhan.”

Ayesha swayed, her hands clasped over her closed eyes, as if about to faint. Then springing like a flash of light, she thrust her dagger straight through Prince Orkhan’s heart and he died on his feet, so quickly that he scarcely felt the sting of the stroke. And as he fell, she turned the point and drove it home in her own breast, and sank down beside her lover. Moaning softly, she cradled his princely head in her weakening arms, while the rough Cossacks stood about, awed and not understanding.

A sound up the gorge made them lift their heads and stare at each other. There was but a handful, weary and dazed with battle, their garments soaked with water and blood, their sabers clotted and nicked. Ivan was gone, and they were at a loss as to what to do.

“Get back into the tunnel, brothers,” grunted Togrukh. “I hear men coming down the gorge. Get back through the tunnel to the place where we left the horses. Saddle and make ready to ride. I’m going after Ivan.”

They obeyed and he started up the cliff, swearing at the shallow hand-holds. They had scarcely vanished behind the silvery sheet, and he had not reached the crest of the cliff, when a number of men came into sight, marching hurriedly. The gorge was thronged with warlike figures. Togrukh, looking down with the curiosity of the Cossack, saw the turbans and
khalats
of the Kurds of the castle, and with them the peaked white caps of Turkish janizaries. One wore half a dozen bird-of-paradise plumes in his cap, and Togrukh gaped to recognize the Agha of the janizaries, the third man of power in the Ottoman empire. He and his followers were dusty, as if from long hard riding. Glancing toward the valley, the lean Cossack saw the Agha’s standard of three white horse-tails flying from the castle gate, and along the river the sheepskin-clad Turkomans were riding like mad for the hills, pursued by horsemen in glittering mail – the Turkish spahis. Togrukh shook his head in wonder. What brought the Agha of the janizaries in such array to the lonely valley of Ekrem?

Down in the gorge rose a chorus of horrified voices, as the newcomers halted dumfounded among the corpses. The Agha knelt beside the dead man and the dying girl.

“Allah! It is Prince Orkhan!”

“He is beyond your power,” murmured Ayesha. “You can not hurt him any more. I would have made him king. But you had robbed him of his manhood – so I killed him – better an honorable death, than – ”

“But I bring him the crown of Turkey!” cried the Agha desperately. “Murad is dead, and the people have risen against Safia’s half-caste son – ”

“Too late!” whispered Ayesha. “Too – too – late!” Her dark head sank on her white round arm like a child when it falls asleep.

V

As Ivan Sablianka went up the shaft-ladder, Kral was not there to aid him, because Kral lay dead beside dead Arap Ali under the blood-stained stream. But this time hate spurred him on, and he swarmed up the precarious path as recklessly as if he clambered a ship’s ratlines. Bits of crumbling stone gave way beneath his grasp and rattled down the cliff in tiny avalanches, but somehow he cheated death each time, and heaved relentlessly upward. He was not far behind Osman Pasha when the corsair came out on the cliff and set off through the stunted firs. Ivan came after him, his long legs carrying his giant frame across the ground at a surprizing rate, and presently Osman, turning and seeing he had but one foe to deal with, faced round with a curse.

A fierce grin bristled the corsair’s curly black beard. Here was a huge frame on which he could carve his savage disgust at the muddling of his plans. Only a few months before he had been the most feared sea-lord in the world, with the broad blue Mediterranean at his feet. Now he was shorn of all following and power, except that gripped in his strong right hand, and locked in his skull. He was too much of the true adventurer to waste time in bemoaning his fall, but the chance of hewing down this pestiferous Cossack gave him a grim satisfaction.

Easier thought than done. For all his slow wits and his bulk, Ivan was quick as a huge cat on his feet. Steel clanged on steel, the long straight blade of the Zaporogian beat down on the Algerian scimitar. The corsair was almost as tall as the Cossack, though not so heavily built. His scimitar was straighter and heavier than most Moslem blades, and he showed a remarkable aptitude for the point as well as the edge. Thrice only Ivan’s tattered mail saved him from the corsair’s vicious thrusts. These he alternated with whistling cuts which nicked bits of metal from Ivan’s harness and soon had him bleeding from half a dozen flesh wounds. It was Osman’s purpose to keep the giant on the defensive, where his superior strength would not aid him as it would in attack. His shaven, sun-burnt head bobbed before the corsair’s eyes, the tawny scalp-lock flowing in the wind, and Osman hacked and hewed at it until the sweat ran into his eyes and his breath came short. But somehow Ivan always managed to parry or avoid his most dangerous strokes. Osman’s scimitar slithered off the straight blade, or clashed on the flaring hand-guard.

There was no sound except the clangor of steel, the gasp of hard-driven breath, and the thud and shuffle of the fighters’ feet. The sheer power of the Cossack began to tell. From a whirlwind offensive, Osman found himself gradually forced back on the defense, using all his strength and skill to parry the Cossack’s terrible sweeping blows. With a gasping cry he staked all on a desperate onslaught and leaped like a tiger, scimitar glittering above his head. He was aware of an icy pang under his heart, and convulsively clutching with his naked hand the blade that had impaled him, he slashed with his last ounce of strength at his slayer’s head. Ivan caught the stroke on his upflung left arm; the keen edge bit through mail-links and flesh to the bone. The scimitar dropped from Osman’s nerveless hand, and he slid off the impaling blade to the blood-soaked earth. And from his pallid lips burst words in a strange tongue, “God ha’ mercy on me – I’ll see Devon no more!”

Ivan started violently, blenching, and then with a cry dropped to his knees beside him, forgetful of his own blood-spurting wound. Gripping his foe he shook him fiercely, crying in the same tongue, “What did ye say? What did ye say?”

The glazing eyes rolled up at him, and Ivan tore the helmet from the wounded man’s head. And he cried out as if Osman had stabbed him.

“God’s mercy!
Roger!
Black Roger Bellamy! Don’t ye know me, lad? ’Tis John Hawksby – old Jack Hawksby, that fought wi’ ye and for ye when we were lads together in Devon! Ah, God forgive us, that we should meet like this! And in a naked land, unknowing. How come ye in such pagan guise, Roger?”

“A long yarn and scant time to tell it,” muttered the renegade. “Nay, John,” as the big man began tearing strips from his garments to staunch the blood he had just let so willingly, “nay, I’m done for. Let me bide. I was with Drake when he struck for Lisbon and lost so many good ships and stout lads. I was one the Spaniards took. They bound me to a galley’s oar. Something broke in me as I toiled there beneath the lash. I forgot England, aye, and God too.

“A Barbary rover took the galley and the
kapudan-pasha
– Seyf-ed-din it was – offered the slaves their lives if they became Moslems. The galleys make a man forget much – even that he was a Christian. ’Tis maybe no great step from buccaneer to corsair. I only wanted to hammer Spain, at first. Then as I rose in power I forgot more and more the blood in me. I swept the seas o’ Christian and Muhammadan alike. Aye, now the tang o’ paynim fame and red glory is dust in my mouth. How come you in the manner of a Cossack?”

“Drink and the women, lad,” answered Ivan Sablianka, who had been John Hawksby of Devon. “I couldn’t bide in Devon because o’ feuds and fights wi’ divers people. I wandered eastward until I lost the memory and feeling o’ England. Sink my bones, I’ve been as great a heathen as you, Roger. But do ye mind the great old days when we pounded the Dons on the Main?”

“Remember?” the dying man’s eyes blazed and he lurched up on his elbow, blood gushing from his mouth. “God, to sail again with Drake and Grenville! To laugh with them as we laughed when we ripped Philip’s Armada to shreds! – Let go the weather braces! – that’s Sidonia’s flagship! – man the pumps, bullies, I’ll not strike while there’s a plank beneath my feet! – give ’em a broadside – the starboard guns – hangers and pistolets, there – ”

He sank back, the babble of delirium dying on his lips. Ivan, kneeling beside the dead man, was lost in memory until a clink of steel on stone brought him round instinctively, sword ready. Togrukh stood near him in the gathering twilight.

“I see you’ve run down the dog. The lads have gone back into the tunnel. There’s only nine of ’em left to run, besides ourselves. The gorge is full of Turks. We’ll have to make our way across the cliffs to where we left the horses. What are you about?”

Ivan had spread the corsair’s mantle over the dead pirate.

“I’m going to lay stones over him, so the vultures can’t pick his bones,” he answered stolidly.

“But his head!” expostulated the other. “His head to show the sir brothers!”

The giant faced about in the dusk so grimly that Togrukh involuntarily stepped back.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Aye, right enough.”

“And you’ll bear witness to the sir brothers that I killed him, won’t you?”

“Yes, but – ”

“Then let it rest there,” grunted Ivan, bending his powerful back as he began to lift the stones and heap them in place.

Miscellanea

Untitled Fragment

(The Track of Bohemund)

As the moon glided from behind a mass of fleecy clouds, etching the shadows of the woods in a silvery glow, the man sprang into a dark clump of bushes, like a hunted thing that fears the disclosing light. As a clink of shod hoofs came plainly to him, he drew further back into his covert, scarcely daring to breathe. In the silence a nightbird called sleepily, and he heard, in the distance, the lazy lap of waters against the shore. The moon slid again behind a drifting cloud, just as the horseman emerged from the trees on the other side of the small glade. The man, hugging his covert, cursed silently. He could make out only a vague moving mass; could hear only the clink stirrups and the creak of leather. Then the moon came out again, and with a deep gasp of relief, the hider sprang from among the bushes.

The horse reared and snorted, the rider yelped a startled oath, and a short spear gleamed in his lifted hand. The apparition which had so suddenly sprung to his horse’s head was not one calculated to reassure a lonely wayfarer. It was a tall, rangily powerful man, naked but for a loin cloth, his steely muscles rippling in the moonlight.

“Back, or I run you through!” snarled the horseman, in Turki. “Who are you, in Satan’s name?”

“Roger de Cogan,” answered the other in Norman-French. “Speak softly. We are scarce a mile from a Moslem rendezvous, and they may have scouts out. I marvel that you have not been taken. Up the shore, in a small bay screened with tall trees, there are three galleys hidden, and I saw the glitter of arms ashore. This night I escaped from the galley of the famed pirate, the Arab Yusef idbn Zalim, where I have toiled for months at the oars. He made the rendezvous, for what reason I know not, but fearing treachery of some sort from the Turks, anchored outside the bay. And now he lies at the bottom of the gulf, for I broke my chain, came quietly upon him as he drowsed in the bows, strangled him, and swam ashore.”