by Harold Lamb
"Dog of the-" Demid growled. "Why do not the Franks make their
pistols talk to these usurers?"
Ibnol Hammamgi shrugged philosophically.
"Eh, the Franks are pilgrims, not warriors. A pilgrim pays money to keep his hide whole, a soldier is paid to have his cut up. Verily, Sidi Ahmad is the father of stratagems."
Suddenly the Cossack's white teeth flashed in a smile.
"A trafficker such as this pasha cannot be a man of battle."
"Then the handsome captain does not know the repute of Sidi Ahmad. It is said that he was whelped during a sea fight, on a galley. They call him a sword-slayer, another Rustam—"
"Good! Then he will be worth cutting down."
The old Armenians glanced at each other and threw up their arms, thinking that Demid had been drinking, which was not the case.
"The noble lord jests," remarked Ibnol Hammamgi sourly. "The pasha is the worst of all foes because he is ghazi—a conqueror of Christians, who has sworn on oath to keep his hand raised against them. Moreover, as I said, he is a very fox. Before he was appointed to the pashalik by his master the Grand Signior, he roamed the seas and the land like a tempest, bringing woe upon the enemies of the Moslems. But the minute he stepped inside the gates of Aleppo he shut himself up in his palace. The palace is shut up inside a wall, and the wall rests on a hill in the city. In the palace is a tower called the Wolf's Ear."
Demid nodded, listening attentively.
"Within the Wolf's Ear, Sidi Ahmad holds his divan—his judgment seat. There he receives his officers. About the tower is a garden, and there he takes his relaxation. He is gathering together a veritable thundercloud of men."
"And yet he sits in the tower."
"Always. It is said in the bazaars that in the Wolf's Ear is the treasury of the province. But, because he distrusts all men, the pasha allows few besides himself to dwell in the palace; moreover—" Ibnol Hammamgi lowered his voice from habitual caution—"some say that no one is allowed sight of the face of Sidi Ahmad."
Demid merely puffed at his pipe, assuming lack of interest, knowing that this was the quickest way to draw forth truth.
"Since he came to Aleppo, the pasha has given his judgments and tortured his prisoners at night, and the lights in the tower are kept away from him. Why is that? There is something hidden here. At times is heard the voice of another man behind the pasha and always this voice laughs."
It was the way of the Grand Signior to send officers to his governors who picked quarrels with the pashas or hired others to do so, and—when an official was dead, the sultan by virtue of the Moslem law became master of his possessions. In such fashion the treasure of the two predecessors of Sidi Ahmad had fallen to Constantinople. But the present pasha had guarded himself effectively until now, when his power was such that Mustapha did not dare do away with him. Moreover, Sidi Ahmad had been a favorite at court, and was ghazi.
This was late January and in some four months the passes of the Caucasus would be clear of snow. Then the forces of Aleppo would move to join Mustapha, and the united strength of the Turks and Tatars would go against Christian Europe. This meant the Cossacks would be the first to face invasion.
"It is strange," Demid said slowly. "A fanatic, a warrior—and now a miser in his own prison. Is Sidi Ahmad tall and powerful of build?"
Ibnol Hammamgi shook his head.
"Nay, slight as a bird, and quick as a fox. How will you attempt to raid such a place?"
"By a trick."
"Ah!" The Armenian was stirred to interest. "By what trick?"
"I will walk through the gates, and they will all open to me."
"Riddles! By what key will you open the gates?"
"There is the key."
Demid nodded toward the door of the hut and the elders started, beholding Lali leaning against the doorpost. No one except Demid had heard her enter.
"Ai-a!" Ibnol Hammamgi glared. "Daughter of Macari, will you ride to that place of all abomination with this Frank?"
"Aye, so."
A tumult of protest and reproof arose, heads wagged, and sleeves were rolled up that lean brown arms might gesture the better; foam started on the bearded lips of the headmen. They agreed that Lali had eaten shame by dwelling in the palaces of the Imperial City. By leaving her people for the seraglio of Sidi Ahmad, she would make that shame memorable, they cried.
"I have been incensed and blessed by the patriarch, O fathers," she cried at them. "I am ready for what is unseen and unguessed."
"But to go to the man who cut open your father, like a fish!"
The white face of the girl stood out, a cameo against the shadows of the hut, and seeing that their words were unheeded, the Armenians ceased their outcry. Lali, being the child of a chieftain, and her parents dead, was free to follow what path she would. She even smiled, for Demid glanced at her with frank approval.
The young warrior could deal with the shrewd brains of the Armenians, perhaps because his life had been spent until now in the wilderness where his friends and enemies were beasts, the man from the Don could see through the schemes of men; because of nights passed in riding herd and sitting by the lair of a stag, he had learned how to rely upon instincts that warned of danger.
But he could not judge what was in the soul of Lali nor did any instinct warn him against the danger that dwelt in the passion of the girl for him.
On the next day Michael of Rohan vanished from Sivas as if the caves in the hillside had swallowed him up. He left not a trace, and Ibnol Ham-mamgi was as astonished as the Cossacks.
But Lali had never been merrier than on that eve of her setting out for Aleppo.
VIII
Where his grave is dug there shall a man die, and not otherwise.
He who hath a small soul walks with a short step, searching with his eyes for that which may not be seen, but the warrior who is great of heart strides free, knowing that Providence is greater than he.
Arab proverb
In the guard rooms of the musketeers of Paris many times had Sir Michael of Rohan wagered what he had in the world at ecarte or dice. It was his habit to accept the quips of fortune smilingly. The world was full of quips and he asked no more than to have a hand in the jest that was going the rounds. He had one peculiarity in play; whenever the women of the court or the nobles' halls took seat at his table, Sir Michael was wont to rise and lay down his hand or pocket his stake, making the excuse with perfect good humor that the ladies dazzled his poor wits.
The truth of it was that the fairer sex had no little skill at cheating, and it was not the part of a cavalier to call attention to peccadilloes of this nature. Michael preferred to sit and watch, taking much amusement therefrom.
It was a fair bright morning, and the cavalier had been in good spirits as he watched the last of the sunrise from the edge of a cliff that formed an impregnable barrier between the tribe of Sivas and an invader. He had not heard Lali approach until she stood behind him, but upon perceiving the dark-haired girl, he had made a courteous bow, sweeping his plumed hat upon the very surface of the snow.
She stepped to the edge of the rock and looked down, the wind whipping her cloak about her limbs, and her long tresses unruly.
"From this rock, O Frank," she observed, "we cast down those who have offended. Many stout Turks who sought to climb to our nest have been tumbled back into purgatory from here."
"Ah!"
Michael offered his arm, and she took it, though sure of foot as a mountain goat. An imp of mischief danced in her dark eyes.
"Why does the young warrior always seek you?" she questioned gravely. "He never came for me but once and then he struck me."
From beneath lashes her eyes searched his face, and Michael did not answer because just then his ear caught the rasping of gravel displaced behind him. Lali's lips hardened.
"You are always with him, and your words have turned him against me," she accused hotly.
"I? Not so!" Michael glanced at her, p
uzzled, and, as he did so, the light was shut out. A heavy bearskin fell upon his head, thrown from behind.
A man standing with his toes over a sheer fall of some thousand feet does not move haphazard. Michael reached swiftly enough for his sword, but before his fingers touched the hilt he heard the steel blade slither out. Lali had drawn it from the leather sheath.
He threw himself back, groping at the thick folds of the skin, and stumbled over his scabbard. A fiery wave passed up and down his spine as his feet slipped in the loose stones. Then powerful hands caught his wrists and ankles, and a rope was passed around his neck, binding the bearskin upon his head.
The assailants lifted him, and bound his hands behind his back, passing the ends of the rope through his belt in front. Steel pricked his shoulder, and he heard Lali's contented laugh.
"Farewell, O my companion of the road. You go the way of an offender, but down the cliff path, so do not think to run away."
The rope attached to his belt tugged him to one side; another cord, tied to his bound wrists, swung him into the path—as his groping feet assured him. Muffled as he was, Michael did not think of shouting for aid, judging that if he did he would be thrust over the rock. Men's voices reached him and feet crunched before and behind. The bearskin, as the sun grew stronger, nearly smothered him, while he felt his way down the path.
It was noon by the sun when the skin was pulled from his head. Michael was standing in the valley under Sivas, looking up at the tiny spots that were the huts against the glitter of the snow. Around him were the bare stalks of a vineyard, and within it he saw three Armenians taking money from a pockmarked merchant who kept glancing at him, doling out a silver coin after each glance, more slowly, until he stopped and the four fell to railing, until the Armenians finally left the merchant.
As they passed Michael—one was the boy who had served as guide from the Black Sea—he called out—"The Cossacks will give more if you take me back."
But the boy turned his head away. Michael's lips stiffened.
"Where will they take me?"
One of the Sivas men looked over his shoulder.
"Bagdad—I don't know."
Michael opened his lips to call again, then squared his shoulders and turned to the two Turkomans who were leaning on their spears and looking at the line of laden mules standing near the vineyard—the caravan of the merchant who had bought Michael.
They untied his wrists, led him to a mule and when he was on the animal's back, bound his ankles together under its belly. A word of command was passed down the line of the caravan, saddles creaked, dogs barked, and voices rose in vituperation without which nothing is ever done in that bedlam of the world—Asia Minor.
Michael took off his hat and bowed to the distant height.
"I wish you well of the silver, Mistress Lali," he cried in English. "'Twas a slender price for such a man as I—who wished you well. If God sends we meet again I shall weigh you with more care."
He struck the mule with the flat of his leather scabbard and moved on with the caravan, the guards finding amusement in this antic of the Frank. It occurred to him that Demid had been wise to keep him with the Cossacks.
A week later they threaded through the last mud of the foothills and dropped down below the snowline, having passed under the ruins of Zeitoon, once the stronghold of the Armenians, now razed on its crags by order of Sidi Ahmad. Some of the merchants of the caravan drew off here, to take the highway to Damascus, but Michael's owner remained with various rug sellers and other slave traders, on the southern trail.
Being merchants who disliked hardships, they camped that night on the near shore of a swift, blue river that Michael fancied to be the Chan or Jihan, once crossed by Xenophon and the Greeks. Being swollen by the melting snows its crossing was no easy feat, and the next morning the Turkomans were forced to strip, to carry over the goods on their heads, while the slaves were set to work to build rafts.
Michael, setting about his share of the task philosophically, was the first to note a band of cloaked horsemen spurring up over the sands. The merchants shouted for the guards, but those who were in the river made haste to complete the crossing, and the few remaining, after a glance at the drawn scimitars of the Arab marauders, cast away their spears and sat down to watch events.
So did the slaves. Several of the owners of the caravan offered fight, probably hoping to make better terms by a show of resistance. The raiders made no bones about riding them down, and Michael noticed that they cut the throat of the merchant who had bought him.
In a few minutes the slaves who had been about to cross the Jihan were lined up and divided among the chiefs of the pillagers, together with the bales of cotton and furs. Camels were then brought up by grinning boys who signed for the prisoners to mount and accompany their new masters. A couple of the Turkomans were included by way of good measure, and Michael suspected that those who were left behind took advantage of the happening to plunder the remaining merchants.
So began a strange chapter in the long wanderings of the Irishman, who, in the eyes of his captors, the Arabs, was no longer a living spirit, but a thing of flesh and muscles, to be sold for the best price it would bring.
He noticed that the Arabs headed southwest along the river and crossed lower down that same day, moving out before dawn toward a rocky range of hills where only one pass was visible. After laboring through the mud of this ravine, they made camp in a ruined khan—a traveler's shelter in a plain green and pleasant with olive trees and pomegranates.
Here again, the company divided after lengthy discussion, and an old Arab who looked what he was—a monarch of horse thieves—signed for Michael to come with him and a stripling who bristled with weapons as he tried to strut like the warriors.
This was different from the mule caravan. On a swift-gaited camel Michael sped along a beaten track with the desert riders, who circled the villages and headed toward a nest of minarets on the skyline.
Studying their destination as it drew nearer, Michael made out the white sides of a castle rising on a height—the green of gardens showing over the walls and a lofty tower over the gardens. Perhaps because the ground outside had been cleared of all brush and huts, he had never beheld walls so massive as those which hemmed in the city of minarets and domes—a city gleaming white and yellow and purple under the utter blue of the sky.
One of the thieves let fall a word that roused his curiosity at once—
"Haleb."
Now Michael was almost sure that this was Aleppo, and the thought that he had come before the Cossacks to their destination made him smile.
Michael reasoned that the Cossacks would delay only a short while to search for him; learning nothing of his seizure, they would press on, playing as they were for a great stake. They might come into sight of the city about this time, and he cherished this flicker of hope.
But, passing through the heavily guarded gate—Bab el Nasr, Gate of Victory, it was called—on the north side of the town, and threading into the crowded passages between the sheer walls of mosques and the dwellings of the nobles, he mentally increased the odds against Demid.
Aleppo was full of Moslem soldiery.
Moreover it was full of mosques, which meant throngs of armed worshippers, who indeed fired at him volleys of abuse, with more than a little mud and stones. The old Arab, however, was equal to the task of caring for his stock-in-trade. Giving back insult for insult he took the center of the alleys with his camel while his son brought up the rear with display of teeth and steel, until they gained the shelter of the caravansary of the desert men near the slave market.
Here space was procured for the three camels in the crowded lower court, and Michael's captor bought oil and vegetables and coffee from the shops within the serai wall, enough for three men. Holding up the skirts of his long cloak, and using his tongue in lieu of elbows to clear a passage, he conducted his prisoner to the wide gallery that ran around the court, where in rows of cubicles, raised a foot or
so off the floor, motley groups of visitors sat about dung fires, cooking each one a different thing with a different smell. The Arab ousted a worried looking Jew from the cell he selected for himself, and built up the fire started by the Jew who really was in the wrong serai and knew it and was glad to get off with a whole skin.
As soon as they had eaten their fill they trussed Michael up, and the son went off to see that their camels were not stolen or to steal others himself, and the sire squatted comfortably to listen to the scraps of talk that floated up from the coffee house within the arcade of the serai.
Michael could make nothing out of the bedlam of tongues, until a dandified janissary strolled past the cell, noticed the waterpipe of the old Arab and asked for a whiff in the name of Allah the Compassionate.
The elegant one had a fierce beard and a stock of blades and hand-guns in his girdle that would have aroused the instant envy of the boy who had left; moreover the taint of forbidden wine was heavy upon him.
"Set it between thy hands."
The Arab extended the stem of the hubble-bubble across Michael's prostrate form, so that the warrior was forced to squat on the other side of the prisoner, thus precluding a knife thrust from either.
The Arab, being in from the hills, desired to hear gossip, and he drew information from the janissary in such masterly fashion that Michael gave keen attention.
He heard that he was to be sold on the morrow, since a zineh, or festival, began the next day, when all the shops were to be closed. This festival had been ordered by Sidi Ahmad, to celebrate the arrival of a courier from the sultan.
Sidi Ahmad, then, was in Aleppo.
Meanwhile the forces of the pasha were being ordered up from the Persian border and the Euphrates. A detachment of mamelukes had crossed over from Egypt and was waiting in Damascus for marching orders.