Swords of the Steppes
Page 61
Charnomar tossed the scimitar in the air toward him, and took a single step past him. For that instant the eyes of all the Turks were upon the steel blade, and in the next second Charnomar had set his hands against the shoulders of the two guards standing at the open gate and thrust. He put all the power of his shoulders into the thrust, and the two were taken off balance. They plunged through the gate and fell headlong. Whereupon Charnomar slammed shut the gate and turned the key.
There had not been a sound other than that. The scimitar had not fallen to the stones, and the onlookers had not yet bethought them of shouting. A single glance showed Charnomar that the old Cossack had caught the scimitar by the hilt as it fell, as a swordsman could be trusted to do by instinct.
The red beard had put down the lantern and drawn his own weapon, his eyes bewildered. He cut hastily at Kirdyaga, but Charnomar parried the cut and knocked up the Turk's blade. The long scimitar of the young Cossack slashed the burly leader under the ribs, and blood darkened the man's girdle and breeches.
"Ha, Muslimin!" the red beard groaned and fell forward.
Charnomar turned to look for the other Turk and found him cocking his pistol, feeling with hasty fingers at the priming. He fired as the young Cossack leaped toward him, but the ball went wide, tearing through the sleeve of Charnomar's coat.
Then the Turk lifted the pistol to throw it, reaching at the same instant for a curved knife behind his hip. Suddenly he screamed, standing rigid, still clutching the smoking pistol. Charnomar had thrust the point of the scimitar under the man's heart and twisted it upward. The soldier's knees bent and his head and arms fell forward.
"A good blow!" Kirdyaga spoke for the first time—a quivering growl, as if the sound of his own voice was strange to him.
"Health to you, Sir Colonel!" Charnomar grinned at him. "The brothers of the siech sent me to greet you."
"Alone?"
"Aye."
Charnomar had stepped to the cage to see what had happened to the other two guards. And for a moment the Cossacks stared silently.
Where the Turks had fallen were two piles of writhing, gasping figures. The Turks were not visible. They had fallen among the captives, and all the inmates of the cage, even one too ill to do more than crawl, had scrambled upon them, gripping and tearing and clutching at their weapons.
A man's leg rose out of the tangle, kicking. A deep groan resounded to the vaulted roof. Some of the captives began to get to their feet. One held a sword, its channels dark with blood. He was the wearer of the silk khalat. For the other weapon they were still struggling, until a bearded negro came erect with it and lashed about him, half maddened with the lust of fighting, trampling on the torn body of the soldier who had been alive and careless of harm five minutes before.
"In the name of Allah the Compassionate," cried the first noble, "open the cage!"
They pressed against the bars, peering through the smoke at Charno-mar.
"O thou brother of misfortune, open swiftly!"
In the confusion of the struggle it did not occur to them that Charno-mar might be anything but a Moslem like themselves. If they thought at all, or cared, they must have reasoned that he quarreled with the guards. Life is strong even in condemned men, and only one thing was in their minds, to escape from the cage. They were all doomed to torment in various ways.
"O ye dead men!" Charnomar cried back at them. "Will ye come forth to your graves?"
They shouted in unison, half crazed with dread that the Turks would come and bind them. And Charnomar turned the key in the gate. Kirdy-aga picked up the lantern and stepped aside.
But the men of the cage did not wait for light. All of them knew that weapons were to be had in the church above them, and they rushed up the stairs, the giant negro in the lead, the sick man staggering behind. In a moment the Cossacks heard a frightened yell, and Charnomar wondered what had happened to the keeper who had lingered by the brazier. Shouts echoed down the stairway faintly, and in the distance sounded the clashing of steel.
"Come," Charnomar said.
But Kirdyaga shook his gray, scarred head. He drew closer to Charno-mar and bent to look in his face.
"Nay, for me the road is closed. Eh, you are brave. You may get out. Give me your pipe and some tobacco. I have a sword and Satan will have new servants before they make an end of me."
Charnomar shook his head.
"It is night. I have horses waiting. Once in the saddle, who knows? Come!"
The gaunt colonel's mustache twitched in a grim smile.
"How far could I ride with this?" He pointed to the sear of the cross on his chest. "You are young. Maybe girls are waiting for you somewhere or other."
"If you stay, I stay."
"A thousand devils take you!" Kirdyaga turned toward the stair unsteadily. "Where are the horses?"
He mustered his strength as he climbed the steps, breathing heavily. At the top Charnomar ran out into the chancel to see what was happening at the main entrance.
"Hide of the devil," he whispered, "the sipahis have come up."
Horses were plunging outside the portico. He heard rather than saw them. Smoking torches swung wildly through the outer garden. The tall negro, the tunic torn from his shoulders, stood in the portico, a sword in one hand, an ax in the other. Many of the captives had been soldiers, and they had had their pick of many weapons. With nothing to hope for except a swift death, they had cut their way through the guards who had come into the church to investigate the pistol shot, and had fallen upon the surprised sipahis like maddened wolves. Their outcry—Allah-ilal-lahu—mingled with the rallying shout of the soldiers. Charnomar was well content.
He ran back, took the lantern from Kirdyaga and searched along the corridor for the small door he had noticed when he had examined the garden. It was closed and barred, but in another moment he had blown out the lantern and opened the door.
Taking Kirdyaga by the arm, he walked to the elms where the horses were tethered. The janissaries at the outer gate of the garden were hurrying toward the church, and sipahis were running up from their barrack. Turbaned heads appeared under the lights of distant balconies, but no one saw the two Cossacks moving under the trees. The garden was a bedlam of struggling figures and galloping horses.
Charnomar found the two ponies where he had left them, and he helped the old Cossack to mount.
"Keep behind me and keep your mouth shut."
Grunting with satisfaction, Kirdyaga thrust his feet into the stirrups and trotted after Charnomar, who kneed his horse to a gallop as soon as they reached the road.
"Ahai!" he shouted, and the throng of merrymakers who had pushed into the open gate gave way hastily.
In Stamboul only Turks might ride and a rider with a drawn sword would not be tolerant of delay. No guards were there, but no guards were needed to open a way.
As Kirdyaga passed through, the crowd yelled with fear and astonishment.
Even Shamoval looked up, who was scurrying about like a long-eared rabbit, trying to get his belongings packed and away.
Charnomar looked over the tossing heads, to where Ilga had taken her stand to watch. And he reined in so suddenly that his pony reared.
The puppet showman had kindled oil lamps behind his curtain and the light from these lamps fell upon the Circassian girl. She was straining desperately to free herself from a Moslem who had gripped the tangle of her long hair.
And this man, who sat easily in the saddle of a restless black stallion, whose cloth of gold cloak gleamed in the strong light, over silvered mail, was Kara Mustafa. He had found Ilga and caught her. Another Turkish nobleman was maneuvering his horse behind the girl, trying to grip her arms and lift her to Mustafa's saddle.
Perhaps the leader of the sipahis had come to take charge of Kirdyaga's execution; perhaps he had come when he heard the fighting. But once he had seen the girl he paid no heed to events within the serai. His broad chin was outthrust, his thick lips grimaced, and his eyes were no more than slits
.
Before Charnomar could move he heard a hoarse shout behind him—
"Khosh aha-ar!"
Kirdyaga, striking his pony with the flat of his blade, had wheeled into the throng and headed for Kara Mustafa, ten paces distant.
Excitement had gripped the old Cossack when he mounted to the saddle. Sight of the Turkish commander in his shining dress had stirred the embers of old hatreds. His one eye was fastened upon the grinning face of Kara Mustafa.
Quickly Charnomar wheeled his pony. But Kirdyaga was ahead of him, almost upon the lord of the sipahis.
Mustafa had seen him at once, had released Ilga and gripped the hilt of his scimitar. Clad in mail from throat to knee, a skilled swordsman, he seemed as eager for the meeting as the gaunt Cossack.
"'Tis a sick dog," he cried to the other Turk. "Nay, I will give him his death."
He started to draw his sword and shouted in sudden fury. Ilga wrapped her arms about his forearm. She was on his sword side and she flung all her weight upon him so that he could not shake her off at once.
He lifted his left hand to strike her, but changed his mind, to jerk at the reins, to wheel his horse away from the Cossack. But Kirdyaga crashed into him, and the long scimitar slashed under his chin.
"Hai!" the old Cossack shouted.
All his strength had gone into the blow, enough to drive the curving steel through to the Turk's spine. Kara Mustafa gripped convulsively with his knees and Kirdyaga could not free the blade. At the same instant Mustafa's companion struck Kirdyaga's unguarded head. The steel split the skull and when the Turk wrenched it free, Kirdyaga fell voiceless to the ground.
Charnomar came in with a rush, and the Moslem nobleman turned to meet him agilely. The curved blades clashed and parted and clashed again. The Turk's horse reared. Charnomar closed in—he had need to make an end at once—and caught the Moslem's downward cut on the back of his own scimitar.
Leaning forward before the other could pull away, he drove his hilt into his adversary's throat and when the Turk swayed back in the saddle he pushed the point of his blade deep into the rider's side.
The Turk's horse became frantic and reared, throwing the dying man to the ground. But Charnomar caught the rein and swung the horse to his other side.
"Mount," he called to Ilga.
While the girl was climbing into the saddle, he looked down at Kirdy-aga. The old Cossack was dead, a grim smile on his gaunt, scarred face. Beside him the glittering body of Kara Mustafa still moved convulsively, the dark face knotted in agony, the sword still locked deep under the chin.
Charnomar felt in his own girdle for the written order that had been given him by the Turks. He tossed it down beside Kara Mustafa, for the men of the serai to find and wonder at. Ilga uttered an exclamation. He looked up quickly.
The throng by the puppet show had fled at the first flash of the swords; but now the men had stopped to look. The showman, a miniature wooden warrior on each fist, was cursing and praying at the same time; the Jew Shamoval was tearing at his earlocks in an agony of suspense. A janissary thrust his way forward, raising his rallying cry.
"Hai Muslimin!"
As soon as the Cossack and the Circassian girl turned and whipped their rearing horses into the darkness of the alley, din broke out behind them. Presently Charnomar heard the familiar thudding of racing horses.
"The sipahis,'' he said, listening to the shouts of the riders.
"Aye," she nodded, "and the gates are closed."
She rode as if at home in the saddle—what Circassian was not?—her tawny hair streaming behind her, the dolman flapping on her slender shoulders and her arms straining at the reins; for the black horse was not used to women. But there was no fear in her voice and she seemed more than happy.
"Go toward the Kislar Dar," the Cossack urged her. "Knowest thou the way?"
"Aye," she cried, wrestling with the charger until she had turned him aside into what seemed a pit of obscurity.
The alley was too narrow for them to keep together and Charnomar took the rear. Again Ilga turned off, this time into a nearly deserted street, where shadows flitted away from the galloping horses.
Listening, Charnomar thought that the sipahis had divided at the turnings, not knowing which way the fugitives had gone. Obscurity deepened to darkness, and the walls brushed his knees. Ilga reined in her charger and seemed to be searching for something.
Presently she stopped and he heard her spring down.
"Here are stairs," she whispered. "Be quick. Let the horses go."
Charnomar dismounted and struck his pony with the flat of his blade. The two beasts made off into the darkness. Ilga's choice was wise, because they climbed the steps and passed unheeded through narrow alleys to the end of the Kislar Dar and the arch that led down to the harbor. Here Charnomar stopped again to listen, and was aware of bands of horsemen moving through the streets about him. In the direction of the serai smoke rose against the stars. But down by the docks all was quiet under a haze of mist.
"The way is clear to thy house," he said at length.
She laughed under her breath. "I held Kara Mustafa's swordarm as he was cut down. And he was a favorite of the sultan. I dare go to no house."
1
The Old City: the Turks never called it Constantinople.
2
**"The Place of the Girls."
3
A reckless fighter, a daring rider and swordsman, who need not be too clever otherwise.
The Cossack bent his head and took her chin in his hand, to look full into her eyes.
"Eh, little Ilga, this afternoon there was fear in thee, without cause. Now they hunt thee, and thou art minded to laugh."
At this she clasped warm fingers about his hard wrist.
"Before sunset I was not afraid. I was angry, because thy thoughts were all of the other Cossack. So I told the Armenian to say to thee, in reading the letter that thy brother in arms was dead. But he would not. He read truly from the letter. Verily, the old warrior was brave, and thou art a swordsman . . . " Her eyes closed and she sighed a little, being weary. "It was written, and who may alter what is written? We have come to this place, but the gates are closed."
Charnomar laughed. "One road is always open."
The moon of Shawwul had grown full and passed. The Koshevoi Ataman, the chief of all the Cossacks, was walking outside the lines of the camp, through the shops. There were many shops, and all were thronged with warriors buying vodka or brandy or rare Turkish pistols or costly green and red silk shirts. For the Cossacks had returned from a raid on Azov, and they were drinking up the plunder that had weighted their saddle bags.
The koshevoi himself wore over his wide shoulders a kaftan of ermine and red velvet, and he carried his pipe and tobacco in a girdle bag of cloth of gold. He did not walk too steadily, perhaps because he had been so long in the saddle. As he passed an open stall he heard his name called in a strange fashion.
"Lord Colonel! Lord Colonel!"
Checking his stride, he stopped, then took another step to regain his balance, and poised himself with his booted feet wide apart. Before him a thin head in a gray felt cap bobbed up and down. It was Shamoval in his ragged shuba, his dark eyes bright with excitement.
"Doesn't the noble colonel remember me?"
"What's that?" growled the koshevoi. "Stand still—don't jerk."
Shamoval ceased bowing and shouted. Fiddles were whining near them, and muskets were barking where the Cossacks were burning powder, and he thought the colonel had grown a little deaf.
"I've been to Constantinople again."
"Ta nitchdgo," grumbled the leader, "what is it to me if you've been to Satan and pared his hoofs?"
"Will the Colonel only listen? I saw the Cossack captain, Charno-mar."
"He isn't a sotnik, he's the luckiest son of a dog alive."
Shamoval wagged his head so vigorously that the felt cap flopped around again.
"Only, he's not alive any more."
"Tortured?" Shamoval flung up his hands. "May I never live another moment if he didn't torture the Moslems. This is how it was. When I set up my stand at the serai gate, I saw him ride up, with two swords in his girdle, and two horses—and a girl on the other horse—"
"A woman? You lie, you—"
"May God smite me, if I lie! Why should I lie to the lord Colonel? The young Cossack went into the palace grounds, and after a little while the great lord, the commander of the Turks' cavalry came up—"
"Kara Mustafa?"
"That's how it was. He came with twenty sipahis but when he saw the girl waiting—what a beauty she was, with hair like gold!—he started to take her on his saddle because she was beautiful."
"To the devil with Kara Mustafa and the girl! What happened?"
"Calamity happened. Ai, a battle began in the palace grounds. Such a battle, as if regiments were charging! All over the place the Turks were running. Then Charnomar came out of the gate with an old Cossack."
The koshevoi bent his head to listen intently while Shamoval told how Kara Mustafa had been cut down, and Kirdyaga had died, and how Char-nomar had killed the Turk who was an officer, and had gone off with his horse.
"Holy saints, what a heedless youth the Cossack was!" The trader lifted his eyes and shoulders at the same time. "The horse was worth fifty sequins of Venetian weight, but the sipahis found it abandoned in the alleys. Then there was more calamity because the great sultan—may dogs litter on his grave—was very angry, and the master of the stirrup was hung out of a window by the neck, because of a paper he had written, and because the Cossack had been seen talking to his treasurer. The sultan was very angry because of the death of Kara Mustafa. Then the Cossack took a ship."
"How, a ship?" demanded the koshevoi, pulling at his mustache with satisfaction.
"A felucca with one sail had just come over from Galats or Scudari to bring some Turks to the festival. The Cossack and the girl hailed the felucca and promised the master gold if he would take them over across the port. They paid the gold, but as soon as the sail was up the Cossack threw the master of the ship into the water. The Turk swam ashore, and said that the soldier was afflicted of God or bewitched by the girl. He heard the girl singing in the mist. Then the Turks sent the oared galleys from Sarai Point to bring him back. And that is why the noble Cossack is no longer living. Because the Turks did not find him in the port or the strait, or anywhere. They did not find the ship or the girl." Shamoval wagged his head sadly. "And the lord Cossack was in debt to me, a hundred and twenty-three gold sequins."