by Harold Lamb
By the time the animal calls had ceased, some score of men, half of them mounted, had gathered about their ataman in a clearing by a ruined farm, and Demid knew that no more were alive to come.
He satisfied himself that Lali was living and not much hurt, before he handed over the girl to Michael, whom he had kept at his stirrup during the flight from the beach. Then he called the roll softly and discovered that two of the riders were Christian slaves from the galley—an Armenian and a Syrian who had found themselves horseflesh as promptly and skillfully as a Jew pouched ducats. These he ordered to give their mounts to Cossacks.
Without troubling to learn if his men still had their weapons—a Cossack of the Don is separated from the skin of his body as easily as from his saber—Demid asked a question quietly.
"Have we sword strokes for the-who took Togrukh's head?"
"Aye, father," spoke up the oldest of the Cossacks—he who wore two shirts and was called Broad Breeches. "We have sword strokes and we are ready. Once our mothers bore us," he added reflectively, and a trifle indistinctly, for his upper lip and some teeth had been shot away by an arrow.
The dark line of the forest was kindled by oncoming torches, and the main party of the Moslems who had followed the trail of the horses came into sight, loud-voiced and flushed with slaying. They had put to death the unfortunate galley slaves who had decided to await their coming, and were reinforced by the liberated janissaries.
The bowmen, eyes on the trail they were following, ran forward into the clearing, and halted at the sound of hoofs thudding toward them in the dark. They snatched up their bows and loosed arrows hastily, without seeing clearly what was coming upon them.
Rising in their stirrups and striking on each side, the Cossacks broke through the archers and wheeled about among the scattered groups. In the saddle and on open ground they were different men from the dogged crew that had been beaten from the galley, and so the Turks found them.
Wherever a knot of swordsmen still stood together, Ayub galloped, his broadsword whistling over his head, and the massive blade cut into flesh and bone as a scythe passes through the stalks of wheat. Half seen in the elusive torchlight, the tall riders assumed gigantic proportions in the eyes of the corsair's warriors who began to flee into the brush, leaving a score of bodies in the clearing.
More torches were coming up, as the bodyguard of the Moslems with their leaders deployed from the trees. Demid lifted his head and howled, and the Don men wheeled their horses and trotted back in a dozen different directions, so that the Turks could not be sure where they were headed.
Demid, the last to go, circled his horse within arrow shot of the torches, looking for Balaban. He saw the Levantine, but in the center of a mass of swordsmen. He saw, too, something that gave him food for thought.
The Levantine was armed with a silver-edged shield and a fine scimitar and he was directing the array of the Moslems, although officers of the corsair were at hand. It was more than strange that he should have been put in command, almost at once, of men who had not seen him until he was hauled out of the water like a fish.
"Wing me that hawk!" Balaban shouted to his archers, recognizing Demid.
A dozen shafts whistled in the air, and as the first one reached him the young Cossack was seen to cast up his arms and fall back from his saddle. His body slumped over the pony's rump, until it was held up only by his feet, caught in the stirrups and his knee crooked over the saddle.
His scalp lock and swordarm dragged on the ground, as the horse swept past the torches.
"Shoot, O dullards—O dolts fathered by fools! See you not the man has tricked you?" cried Balaban in wrath as the archers held their shafts to watch the Cossack drop to earth.
He gritted his teeth as Demid, out of range, twisted up his body and caught the saddlehorn.
"Allah grant thee to live until I come up with thee again."
A voice answered, out of the darkness, laughingly—"And thee, also."
The sharp about-face of the Cossacks slowed up pursuit that night, and when the next day the Turks moved forward from the farm they followed the trail of the horses to a small village. Here was found no living thing, for the inhabitants had fled to the hills and the Cossacks had made off with a dozen head of horse.
By now mounted men were arriving from the nearest castles of the Turks, and couriers were sent to the outlying begs and chieftains with word to gather swordsmen and take up the trail of the infidels.
Before nightfall the pursuit was on in earnest, and the pursuers were confident because on the skyline, ahead of the Cossacks, uprose the lofty snow slopes of Charkahna, the Mountains of the Wolves, known today as a spur of the Caucasus.
While the levies of the neighboring begs were coming up, separate riders—Turkomans, on picked horses-were sent ahead to gain touch with the fleeing Cossacks. These reported that the unbelievers were changing horses at each village, and were stocking up with provisions as well as grain and dried camel's flesh for the horses when they should reach the snow line.
Once they passed into the higher altitudes, the fertile hamlets of the fruit and vine growers and rug makers of the shore of the Black Sea were left behind, and the Cossacks headed in a direct line for the nearest break in the barren peaks that rose, like a bulwark of the giants, in their path.
So the outriders reported and there was satisfaction in the camp of the Turks when word came that the Cossacks had entered this gorge. Because, unwittingly, the fugitives had chosen a blind valley. Here the Mountains of the Wolves could be entered, but the gorge ended in an impasse.
Into this canyon the Turks pressed, sounding their nakars—cymbals and kettledrums—because some of the Turkoman tribesmen believed that the Mountains of the Wolves were inhabited by ghils. By ghils and by other spirits of waste places.
They remembered these things all the more because snow flurries smote them, and bitter winds buffeted them. They pounded the cymbals and smote the drums, until the wind died down and the flurries ceased and they came to the sheer walls of rock on two sides and a frozen waterfall at the end of the ravine. Whereat they yelled aloud in amazement.
The Cossacks were not in the gorge. Several lame ponies huddled together, but not a human being was in the trap. Upon the ground was only the white sheet of new-fallen snow.
The trap had been sprung and the victims had escaped.
It was vain to look for tracks, and the ponies were palpably left behind as useless. The Turks eyed the wall of rock on three sides with misgivings; no ponies could climb the cliff here, and yet the Cossacks were gone.
"Dil i yarana—be of stout hearts, comrades," they said, one to another. "The ghils have taken the infidels and without doubt we shall behold them of nights. Aye, fire will rush out of their nostrils, as they spur their ponies through the air while the spirits whip them on."
With this wonder to relate in the villages they hastened back rather more quickly than they came. Only Balaban smiled his wry smile—
"The time is not yet."
1
The Crimea, on modern maps.
VI
Ibnol Hammamgi
"As I live, kunak, you have brewed a fine gruel for our eating," Ayub throttled his bull's voice to a rumbling whisper, so that the Cossacks would not hear his complaint.
Some hours before the Turks, Demid and his men had reached the end of the gorge, and now sat their steaming ponies gazing blankly at the ice-coated waterfall, the black sides of the impasse, and the fringe of green firs on the heights above—which might have been the forest of Ardennes so little chance had they of scaling the sides of the gorge.
"Did I not warn you to sprinkle the witch with holy water and drop her into the sea?" Ayub went on, full of his grievance. "You did not, and what happened? First the storm happened and then the Turkish galley, and then Togrukh and his mates performed a deed. Nay, God deliver us from such deeds! Their Cossack heads were stuck on pikes. That is what they did."
Demid, hands clas
ped on his saddle-peak, surveyed his company. Fifteen of the Don Cossacks had come through, and now were waiting patiently for him to lead them out of this scrape as he had done out of many another in the past. Sir Michael of Rohan strolled along the nearest rock wall, stretching his legs stiffened by the long rides.
"There she sits, the witch!" rumbled Ayub. "Brewing-for our quaffing. For the last two days you followed the way pointed out by the Armenian youth, her countryman, who swore he knew the snow road through these mountains. Where are we now? Save that we are south of the shore of the Black Sea some forty versts, no one knows. We cannot go on, and we cannot go back. The Turks have already entered the foothills below, and that hairless jackal, our guide, slipped out of sight last night like a weasel out of a chicken roost. May the dogs bite him! He knew we were going to halter ourselves in this stall."
Demid pulled at his mustache reflectively. He had no reason to distrust the Armenian boy, who seemed anxious enough to lead them to safety, and whose life was as much at stake as theirs.
"Have you an idea?" he responded curtly, for the fresh misfortune was serious.
"Aye, so," answered Ayub promptly. "The witch can work a spell for us as well as against. She can find a way out of this if she will. When I deal with her she will bethink her of a way."
Taking Demid's silence for assent, the big Cossack swaggered off to Lali, who was cracking walnuts on the pommel of her saddle and chewing with relish. From somewhere she had conjured up another veil and Demid had seen to it that she had a long sable cloak to wrap around her light attire. Seated disconsolately by her horse were the two blacks who, impelled by a dread mightier than the fear of dismemberment and eternal damnation, had struggled along at the side of the woman given to them to guard.
Standing beside Lali, the head of the warrior was on a level with her own. He crossed himself by way of precaution, and swelled out his chest, letting out a roar of mingled lingua franca and bad Turkish.
"Daughter of unmentionable evil! Wash woman of the Styx! Wench of the Grand Turk, which is to say the foster-child of Beelzebub himself—you pulled wool over my brother's eyes, you took him in nicely, you did!"
The wide eyes of the girl met his squarely, and a tingle ran through the Cossack's veins.
"Demid struck me," she responded.
"Well, that is nothing. He will make saddles out of your skin and whips out your hair if you don't bestir yourself and find a way for us to escape from this spot."
The dark eyes dwelt on Ayub fixedly and he was aware of a prickling of his own skin that was not altogether uncomfortable.
"Send the captain to me," she offered at length.
"Impossible. The ataman is in the-of a fix and has no time for a
woman."
"Is he a great khan in your country?"
"Aye, he is first among the Cossacks, who are all nobles."
Lali glanced at the young chief, who had just set the men to work preparing food for the noon meal. His long, black coat was more than a little tattered and the white ermine kalpak was torn by thorns. But Demid sat erect in the saddle, his colonel's baton held on his hip. Lali sighed under her breath—"He has few followers."
"Not so, prattle tongue. He has as many as the pasha of Aleppo, whom we will hang on his own gatepost. But these are enough for our needs— Demid's and mine."
"I could tell you much of Sidi Ahmad, pasha of Aleppo."
"Ha!"
"You, who are a man of understanding, know the value of information to a leader. Is the little Frank also a khan, that Demid should talk to him always, and cherish him?"
"Ser Mikhail—aye, he is adrift from his people. I know not if he is truly a chief but he wields a sword—"
"I saw you hew down the Moslems in the fight by the farm. You tossed them about like chaff. Have you forgotten how I bound up your cuts that night?"
Ayub rubbed his chin and looked everywhere but into the dark eyes that warmed his heart like a nuggin of mead on a cold night.
"Child of evil," he responded sternly, "do not think to trick me. Is there a way out of this lobster-pot?"
Lali tossed away the last nutshell, humming lightly to herself. Her dark head bent nearer the Cossack, who no longer took his eyes from her.
"What is evil?" she asked. "And what are we but leaves, on the highway of fate? We know not the road before us. Ai-a, I have known sorrow."
She rocked in her saddle and her warm fingers touched Ayub's scarred fist. A shrewder man than the Cossack would have thought Lali's lament sincere. And it was.
"Father of battles, I would aid the hero, but he struck me. I know a way by which he can escape; will you help me to find it?"
"Oho!" Ayub twirled his mustache, bending his shaggy head closer. Now, he thought, we are getting the milk out of this cow. "How?" he asked.
"Build a fire, a great fire. Place upon it branches from yonder cedars, dampened with snow."
"Then what?"
"Do that first, then come to me. I am going to summon up my people for your aid."
Ayub stared and went away. With some pains, he kindled the blaze as Lali directed, and heaped on the branches. To the Cossacks who asked what he did, he explained that the witch had repented, when he—Ayub—had argued with her, and was about to work black magic for their release.
She wanted to speak to the ataman, but he—Ayub—had denied her that. The ataman had warm blood in his veins, and the girl was a very peacock for beauty; she would make eyes at him and melt the iron out of his heart. Perhaps she would make him kiss her and after that the young hero would be as wax in her hands.
So said Ayub, not knowing that Lali had beguiled and tricked him completely in a scant moment.
"But, kunak," observed the oldest of the Cossacks, scratching his shaven skull. "Our father Demid has steel in his heart. He whacked the fair young witch with his saber. That is the way to handle a sorceress."
From her pony Lali contemplated the shaggy men with amusement, guessing the subject of their talk.
"O headman," she called softly to Ayub, "I will bring your Demid to sue for speech with me before the fire sinks to embers."
"What says the witch?" asked the veteran mistrustfully.
Ayub explained, not altogether at ease. It seemed to him that Lali was too confident. Still, magic was needed if they were to escape from the gorge. Demid had no plan as yet; in fact the chieftain was staring up through the smoke at the narrow walls of their prison, as if contemplating birds in the air. His quiet heartened the Cossacks, who went on munching their barley cakes and dried meat.
"Were you not afraid to let the witch girl touch you?" they asked Ayub.
They believed implicitly in ghosts of unburied warriors and spirits of the waste places—vampires who sucked a man's blood, hob-gobs who turned horses into toads, and will-o'-the-wisps who could lead even the hardiest astray of a dark night. They were sure that Lali had laid a spell on Ayub.
"Oh, that is a small thing with me." Ayub swaggered a bit. "When I was born my mother put me in a snowdrift to season me, and though the dogs howled all night and the vampires were thick as locusts in harvest time, I came out without a chill. Once, when I was old enough to ride herd, a witch came into our village in the likeness of a panther to draw some blood from the horses. But I said a prayer and took her by the tail—"
"Only think!"
The Cossacks shook their heads in amazement at such daring.
"—and twisted it. Straightway, she turned herself into an eagle, and tried to fly off, but I had hold of her tail feathers—"
"Such a man as he was!"
The warriors lifted their hands helplessly.
"—so that she was fain to change herself to a maiden, like a flower for beauty. Ekh, I danced with her a day and she could do no more with me than this peacock—in the name of the Unhallowed One, what are these?"
The Cossacks glanced up in alarm, seeing Ayub's jaw drop.
"To your sabers!" shouted Demid angrily.
; Down the cliff wall on either hand were scrambling human beings who resembled limbs wrapped in coarse wool, long hair hanging about their eyes glared at the warriors. Some perched on narrow ledges, poising heavy stones; others leveled small bows. Out of the mist and the drifting smoke, shaggy heads came into view silently. Only goats, the warriors thought, could have made their way down the cliffs.
The Cossacks formed in a ring around Demid and the horses. As they did so, a score or more of the gnomes emerged from a cleft in the rock near the fire. They were squat and stoop-shouldered, and they glided forward moving softly in the loose snow. Among the rearmost Demid made out the brown face of the Armenian lad who had undertaken to be his guide, and who had set him on the path to this gorge.
It was Michael of Rohan, ever careless of events, who laughed. "Burn me, but here are the wolves of the mountains. And yet—they have come a little early to pick our bones."
"Ibnol Hammamgi, Ibnol Hammamgi!"
The girl, sitting apart from the ring of warriors, called clearly, and at once a shape disengaged itself from the other shapes. This was a bent figure wrapped in a shawl over which thrust out a head bald as a vulture's. A single glittering eye fixed upon the singing girl; the other eyeball had vanished from its socket. Ibnol Hammamgi shambled forward and, with disconcerting suddenness, twitched the veil from Lali's face.
"Eh-eh," he whined, "verily you are the child of Macari, the cral of our folk. It is eight Winters since Macari, your father, was burned alive by our Turkish overlords because the tithes of our clan were in arrears to them. Yet I knew your face."
"Ibnol Hammamgi, the day the Moslems raided our village, they took me with other slaves as payment of the tithes—"
"Aye, that also is known to me. Our folk numbered you among the dead, daughter of Macari. Until yesterday when the youth, your messenger, came to me at Sivas with his tale."