Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures M

by Robert E. Howard

  “It is time,” she breathed, turning from the casement. “The sun hangs at the zenith. The Turkomans ride up the slope, lashing their steeds and loosing their arrows in vain against the walls. The Kurds shoot down on them – hark to the roar of the firelocks! The bodies of the tribesmen strew the slopes and the survivors give back – now they come on again, like madmen. They are dying for thee, yah khawand! I must hasten – thou shalt yet sit on the throne on the Golden Horn, my lover!”

  Casting her lithe form prostrate before him, she kissed his slippered feet in a very ecstasy of passion, then rising, hurried out of the chamber, through another where ten giant black mutes kept guard night and day, and traversing a corridor, found herself in the outer court that lay between the castle and the postern wall. No one had tried to halt her. She was free to come and go within the walls as much as she liked, though Orkhan was forever guarded by the mutes, and not allowed outside his chamber unless accompanied by Shirkuh himself. Few questions had been asked her when she returned to the castle, feigning great fear of the Turkomans. She had carefully hidden her infatuation for the prince from the eagle eyes of the Kurdish chief, who thought her no more than the tool of Safia.

  She crossed the court and approached the door that let into the gorge. One warrior leaned there, disgruntled because he could not take part in the fighting that was going on. Shirkuh was a cautious man. The rear of his castle seemed invulnerable, but he never took unnecessary chances. It was not his fault that he was unaware of a traitress in his midst. Wiser men than El Afdal Shirkuh have been gulled and duped by women like Ayesha.

  The man on guard was an Uzbek, one of those wandering turbulent warriors who served all the rulers of Asia as mercenaries. He was of broader build than the Kurds, his kinship to the Mongols evidenced by his broad face, slightly slanting eyes and darkly reddish hair. His small turban was knotted over his left ear, his wide girdle loaded with knives and pistols. He leaned on a matchlock, scowling, as Ayesha approached him, her dark eyes eloquent above the filmy veil.

  He spat and glowered. “What do you here, woman?” She drew her light mantle closer about her slender shoulders, trembling.

  “I am afraid. The cries and shots frighten me, bahadur. The prince is drugged with opium, and there is none to soothe my fears.”

  She would have fired the frozen heart of a dead man as she stood there, in her attitude of trembling fear and supplication. The Uzbek plucked his beard.

  “Fear not, little gazelle,” he said finally. “I’ll soothe thee, by Allah!” He laid a black-nailed hand on her shoulder and drew her close to him. “None shall lay a finger on a lock of thy hair,” he muttered, “neither Turkoman, Kurd nor – ahhh!”

  Snuggling in his arms, she had slipped a dagger from her sash and thrust it through his bull-throat. His hand lurched from her shoulder to claw at the hilts in his girdle, while the other clutched at his beard, blood spurting between the fingers. He reeled and fell heavily. Ayesha snatched a bunch of keys from his girdle and without a second glance at her victim ran to the door. Her heart was in her mouth as she swung it open; then she gave a low cry of joy. On the opposite edge of the chasm stood Osman Pasha with his pirates.

  A heavy plank, used for a bridge, lay inside the gate, but it was far too heavy for her to handle. Chance had enabled her to use it for her previous escape, when rare carelessness had left it in place across the chasm and unguarded for a few minutes. Osman tossed her the end of a rope, and this she made fast to the hinges of the door. The other end was gripped fast by half a dozen strong men, and three Algerians crossed the crevice, swinging hand over hand as agilely as apes. Then they lifted the plank and spanned the chasm for the rest to cross. There was no sight of a defender. The firing from the front of the castle continued without a break.

  “Twenty men stay here and guard the bridge,” snapped Osman. “The rest follow me.”

  Leaving their matchlocks, twenty desperate sea-wolves drew their steel and followed their chief. Osman grinned in pure joy as he led them swiftly after the light-footed girl. Such a desperate, touch-and-go venture, in the heart of the lion’s lair, stirred his wild blood like wine. As they entered the castle, a servitor sprang up and gaped at them, frozen. Before he could cry out Arap Ali’s razor-edged yataghan sliced through his throat, and the band rushed recklessly on, into the chamber where the ten mutes sprang up, gripping their scimitars. There was a flurry of fierce, silent battling, noiseless except for the hiss and rasp of steel and the croaking gasp of the wounded. Three Algerians died, and over the mangled bodies of the black defenders, Osman Pasha strode into the inner chamber.

  Orkhan rose up and his quiet eyes gleamed with an old fire as Osman, with an instinct for dramatics, knelt before him and lifted the hilt of his blood-stained scimitar.

  “These are the warriors who shall set you on your throne!” cried Ayesha, clenching her white hands in passionate joy. “Yah Allah! Oh, my lord, what an hour this is!”

  “But let us go quickly, before these Kurdish dogs are aware of us,” said Osman, motioning the warriors to draw up about Orkhan in a solid clump of steel. Swiftly they traversed the chambers, crossed the court and approached the gate. But the clang of steel had been heard. Even as the raiders were crossing the bridge, a medley of savage yells rose behind them. Across the courtyard rushed a tall figure in silk and steel, followed by fifty helmeted swordsmen.

  “Shirkuh!” screamed Ayesha, paling. “La Allah – ”

  “Cast down the plank!” roared Osman, springing to the bridge-head.

  On each side of the chasm matchlocks flashed and roared. Half a dozen Kurds crumpled, but the four Algerians who had stooped to lift the plank and thrust it off the precipice went down in a writhing heap before a raking volley, and across the bridge rushed Shirkuh, his hawk-face convulsed, his scimitar flashing about his steel-clad head. Osman Pasha met him breast to breast, and in a glittering whirl of steel, the corsair’s scimitar grated around Shirkuh’s blade, and the keen edge cut through the chain mail and the thick muscles at the base of the Kurd’s neck. Shirkuh staggered and with a wild cry pitched back and over, headlong down the chasm.

  In an instant the Algerians had cast the bridge after him, and the Kurds halted, yelling with baffled fury, on the far side of the crevice. What had been their strength now became their weakness. They could not reach their foes. But sheltered by the wall they opened up a vengeful fire, and three more Algerians were struck before the band could get out of range around the angle of the cliff. Osman cursed. Ten men was more than he had expected to lose on that flying raid.

  “All but six of you go forward and see that the way is clear,” he ordered. “I will follow more slowly with the prince. Mirza, I could not bring a horse up the defile, but I will have my dogs carry you in a litter of cloaks slung between spears – ”

  “Allah forbid that I should ride on the shoulders of my deliverers!” cried the young Turk in a ringing voice. “I will not forget this day! Again I am a man! I am Orkhan, son of Selim! I will not forget that, either, Inshallah!”

  “Mashallah – God be praised!” whispered the Persian girl. “Oh, my lord, I am blind and dizzy with joy to hear you speak thus! In good truth, you are a man again, and shall be Padishah of all the Osmanli!”

  They were within sight of the waterfall. The first detachment had almost reached the stream, when suddenly and unexpectedly as the stroke of a hidden cobra, a pistol cracked in the bushes on the other side, and a warrior fell, his brains oozing from a hole in his skull. Instantly, as if the shot were a signal, there crashed a volley from the bushes. The foremost corsairs went down like ripe corn, and the rest gave back, shouting in rage and terror. They could see no sign of their attackers, save the smoke billowing across the stream, and the dead men at their feet.

  “Dog!” roared Osman Pasha, ripping out his scimitar and turning on Arap Ali. “This is your work!”

  “Have I matchlocks?” squalled the Turkoman, his dark face ashen. “Ya Ali, alahu! It is the work
of devils – ”

  Osman ran down the gorge toward his demoralized men, cursing madly. He knew that the Kurds would rig up some sort of a bridge across the chasm and pursue him, when he would be caught between two fires. Who his assailants were he had no idea. Up the gorge toward the castle he still heard the cracking of matchlocks, and suddenly a great burst of firing seemed to come from the outer valley, but pent in that narrow gorge which muffled and distorted all sounds, he could not be sure.

  The smoke had cleared away from the stream, but the Moslems could see nothing except a sinister stirring of the bushes on the opposite bank. They fell back, looking for shelter; there was none, except back up the gorge, into the fangs of the maddened Kurds. They were trapped. They began to loose their matchlocks blindly into the bushes, evoking only mocking laughter from the hidden assailants. Osman started violently as he heard that laughter, and beat down the muzzles of the firelocks.

  “Fools! Will you waste powder firing at shadows? Draw your steel and follow me!”

  And with the fury of desperation, the Algerians charged headlong at the ambush, their cloaks streaming, their eyes blazing, naked steel glittering in their hands. A raking volley thinned their ranks, but they plunged on, leaped recklessly into the water and began to wade across. And now from among the thick bushes on the further bank rose wild figures, mail-clad or half-naked, curved swords in their hands. “Up and at ’em, sir brothers!” bellowed a great voice. “Cut, slash, ho – Cossacks fight!”

  A yell of incredulous amazement rose from the Moslems at the sight of the lean eager figures, from whose head-pieces and sabers the sun struck fire. Then with a deep-throated thunderous roar of savagery they closed, and the rasp and clangor of steel rose and re-echoed from the cliffs. The first Algerians to spring up the higher bank fell back into the stream, their heads split, and then the Cossacks, mad with fighting fury, leaped down the bank and met their foes hand-to-hand, thigh-deep in water that swiftly swirled crimson. There was no quarter asked or given; Cossack and Algerian, they slashed and slew in blind frenzy, froth whitening their moustaches, sweat running into their eyes.

  Arap Ali ran into the thick of the melee, mad with fear and rage, his eyes glaring like a rabid dog’s. His curved blade split a Cossack’s shaven head to the teeth; then Kral faced him, bare-handed and screaming.

  The Turkoman halted an instant, daunted by the wild beast ferocity in the Armenian’s writhing features; then with an awful cry Kral sprang and his fingers locked like steel in the chief’s throat. Heedless of the dagger Arap drove again and again into his side, Kral hung on, blood starting from under his finger-nails to mingle with the crimson that gushed from the Turkoman’s torn throat, until, losing their footing, both pitched into the stream. Still tearing and rending they were washed down the current; now one snarling face showed above the crimsoned surface, now another, until at last both vanished forever.

  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 hi
m 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.