Two gun bob, p.226
Two-Gun Bob, page 226
One of the figures on the ground was still writhing; slowly it drew itself up on one elbow. It was the Armenian, life welling fast from a ghastly cut across the neck and shoulder. Gasping, fighting hard for life, he looked down with wildly glaring eyes on the other form. The Turkoman’s kalpak lay yards away, blown there by the close-range shot; most of his brains were in it. Ilbars Khan’s beard jutted upward, as if in ghastly comic surprize. The Armenian’s arm gave way and his face crashed into the dirt, filling his mouth with dust. He spat it out, dyed red. A ghastly laugh slobbered from his frothy lips. It rose to a shout that scared the wheeling vultures. He fell back threshing the sand with his hands, yelling with maniacal mirth. When the horrified Turkomans reached the spot, the Armenian was dead with a ghastly smile frozen on his lips. He had recognized his victim.
The Turkomans squatted about like evil-eyed vultures about a dead sheep, and conversed over the body of their khan. Their speech was evil as their countenances, and when they rose from that buzzards’ conclave, the doom had been sealed of every Armenian in the valley of Ekrem.
Granaries, ricks and stables, spared by Ilbars Khan, went up in flames. All the prisoners taken were slain – infants tossed living into the flames, young girls ripped up and flung into the blood-stained streets. Beside the khan’s corpse grew a heap of severed heads; the riders galloped up, swinging the ghastly relics by the hair, tossing them on the grim pyramid. Every place that might conceivably lend concealment to a shuddering wretch was ripped apart.
It was while engaged in this that one of the tribesmen, prodding into a stack of hay, discerned a movement in the straw. With a wolfish yell he pounced upon it, and dragged his victim to light, giving tongue in lustful exultation as he saw his prisoner. It was a girl, and no stodgy Armenian woman, either. Tearing off the cloak which she sought to huddle about her slender form, he feasted his vulture-eyes on her beauty, scantily covered by the garb of a Persian dancing-girl. Over her filmy yasmaq – her light veil – her dark eyes, shadowed by long kohl-tinted lashes, were eloquent with fear.
She said nothing, struggling fiercely, her lithe limbs writhing in his cruel grip. He dragged her toward his horse – then quick and deadly as a striking cobra, she snatched a curved dagger from his girdle and sank it to the hilt under his heart. With a groan he crumpled, his sheepskins dyed red, and she sprang like a she-panther to his horse, seeming to soar to the high-peaked saddle, so lithe were her motions. The tall steed neighed and reared, and she wrenched it about and raced up the valley. Behind her the pack gave tongue and streamed out in hot pursuit. Arrows whistled about her head and she flinched as they sang venomously by, but urged the steed to more frenzied efforts.
She reined him straight at the mountain wall on the south, where a narrow canyon opened into the valley. Here the going was perilous, and the Turkomans reined to a less headlong pace among the rolling stones and broken boulders. But the girl rode like a leaf blown before a storm, and so it was that she was leading them by several hundred yards when she came upon a cluster of tamarisk-grown boulders that rose island-like above the level of the canyon floor. There was a spring among those boulders, and men were there.
She saw them among the rocks, and they shouted at her to halt. At first she thought them Turkomans; then she saw her mistake. They were tall and strongly built, chain-mail glinting under their cloaks. Their white turban-cloths were wrapped about steel caps that rose to a spire-like peak. Their dark faces were strong and reckless. If the Turkomans were jackals, these were hawks. All this she saw in that moment, her quick perception abnormally whetted by desperation. She saw too the muzzles of matchlocks among the rocks, and caught the flicker of burning fuses. And she made up her mind instantly. Throwing herself from the steed, she ran up the rocks, falling on her knees.
“Aid, in the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate!”
A man emerged from a clump of bushes and looked down at her. And as she looked, she cried out again incredulously.
“Osman Pasha!” Then recollecting her urgent need, she clasped his knees, crying, “Yah khawand, protect me! Save me from these wolves who follow!”
“Why should I risk my life for you?” he asked indifferently.
“I knew you of old in the court of the Padishah!” she cried desperately, tearing off her veil. “I danced before you. I am Ayesha –”
“Many women have danced before me,” he answered. “I have no quarrel with these desert-dogs.”
“Then I will give you a talsmin,” said she in final desperation. “Listen!” And as she whispered a name in his ear, he started as if stung. Quickly he raised his head, staring at her as if to plumb the depths of her inmost mind. For an instant he stood motionless, his grey eyes turned inward, then clambering up a great boulder, he faced the oncoming riders with lifted hand.
“Go your way in peace, in the name of Allah!”
His answer was a whistle of arrows about his ears. He sprang down, waving his hand. Instantly matchlocks began to crash from among the rocks, the smoke billowing about the thicket-clad knoll. A dozen wild riders rolled from their saddles and lay twitching. The rest gave back, yelling in dismay. They wheeled about and cantered swiftly back up the gorge toward the main valley.
Osman Pasha turned to Ayesha, who had modestly resumed her veil. He was a tall man, with grey eyes like ice and steel. There was in his manner a certain ruthless directness rare in an Oriental. His cloak was of crimson silk, his corselet of close-meshed chain mail threaded with gold. His green turban was held in place by a jeweled brooch, and his spired helmet was chased in silver. Ivory butts of gold-mounted pistols jutted from his shagreen girdle, which was resplendent with a great golden buckle, and his boots were of finest Spanish leather. Salt water, powder smoke and blood had stained and tarnished his apparel; yet the richness of his garments and weapons was notable, even in that age of lavish accoutrements.
His men were gathered about him, forty Algerian pirates, as ruthless and courageous a race as ever trod a deck, bristling with firearms and scimitars. In a depression behind the knoll were horses of a rather inferior breed.
“My daughter,” said Osman Pasha in a benignant manner that was belied by his cruel eyes, “I have made enemies in this strange land, and fought a skirmish on your behalf, because of a name whispered in my ear. I believed you –”
“If I lied may my hide be stripped from me,” she swore.
“It will be,” he promised gently. “I will see to it personally. You spoke the name of Prince Orkhan. What do you know of him?”
“For three years I have shared his exile.”
“Where is he now?”
She pointed up toward the mountains that overhung the distant valley, where the turrets of the castle were just visible among the crags.
“Across the valley, in yonder castle of El Afdal Shirkuh, the Kurd.”
“It would be hard to take,” he mused.
“Send for the rest of your sea-hawks!” she cried. “I know a way to bring you to the very heart of that keep!”
He shook his head.
“These ye see are all my band.”
Then seeing her incredulous glance, he said, “I am not surprized that you wonder at my change of fortune. I will tell you –”
And with the disconcerting frankness of the man, which his fellow Moslems found so inexplicable, Osman Pasha briefly sketched his fall. He did not tell her of his triumphs; they were too well known to need repeating. Five years before he had appeared suddenly on the stage of the Mediterranean, as a reis of the famed corsair, Seyf ed-din Ghazi. He soon outstripped his master and gathered a fleet of his own, which owned allegiance to no ruler, not even the Barbary beys. At first an ally of the Grand Turk and a welcome guest at the Sublime Porte, he had later enraged the Sultan by his raids on Turkish shipping.
A deadly feud had arisen between them, and at last fate had declared in favor of Murad. Pillaging along the Dardanelles, the corsair had been trapped by an Ottoman fleet and all his ships destroyed except two. But the Sultan had spared his life, giving him a task that practically amounted to a death sentence. He was commanded to sail up the Black Sea to the Dnieper mouth and there destroy another foe of the Turk’s – Skol Ostap, the Koshevoi Ataman of the Zaporogian Cossacks, whose raids into Turkish dominions had driven the Sultan well-nigh to madness.
The Cossacks at intervals shifted their Sjetsch – their armed camp – from island to island, secretly, to avoid surprize attacks, but Osman’s luck had been with him to a certain extent. A Greek traitor had led him to the Dnieper island then occupied by the free warriors, and at a time when many of them were away on a raid against the Tatars across the river. The flying raid had failed in capturing Skol Ostap, lying helpless of an old wound, because of the ferocious resistance of the Cossacks with him. In the midst of the battle the riders had returned from pounding the Tatars, and Osman fled, leaving one of his ships in their hands. He knew the penalty for failure, and instead of fleeing toward the Turkish fleet which waited down along the coast, he struck straight out across the Black Sea, soon pursued by the Cossacks in his captured ship, using its crew for oarsmen. He did not understand the ferocity of their pursuit, not knowing that a bursting shell from his cannon had slain the wounded Skol Ostap and maddened his kunaks thereby.
When the eastern coast was in sight, the reckless Cossacks had drawn up within cannon-shot, and in the ensuing battle only the rising of the oarsmen on their craft had won the day for the corsair.
“So we ran the galley ashore in the creek. We might have repaired her, but whither go? The Sultan’s fleets hold the gateway out of the Black Sea, and he will have a bowstring ready for me when he knows I’ve failed. We found a village up along the creek – Moslems of a sort who toiled among vineyards and the fishing nets. There we procured horses and struck through the mountains, seeking we know not what – a way out of Ottoman dominions, or a new kingdom to rule. Who knows?”
They had pushed on through the mountains for days, preferring the wild desolation of uninhabited land to the risk of falling afoul of Turkish outposts. Osman Pasha had an idea that already swift couriers had carried the word throughout the empire that he was doomed. Whatever else the Turkish sultans were or were not, they were thorough in their vengeance. He had been wandering without a plan, trusting to his luck. The fatalism of the Turk was not his.
Ayesha listened, and without comment began her tale. As Osman well knew, it was the custom of the sultans, upon coming to the throne, to butcher their brothers and their brothers’ children. Bayazid I began that custom, and whatever its moral aspects, it can not be denied that it saved the empire from many disastrous civil wars – each Ottoman prince considering the throne his prerogative. Sometimes a prison took the place of the bowstring, as in the case of Prince Jem, brother of Bayazid II, who was the unwilling guest for many years, first of the Knights of St. John on Rhodes, to whom the Sultan paid 45,000 ducats a year as gaoler’s fee, and later of two successive Popes, the last of whom, Alexander Borgia, considerately poisoned the unhappy prince in return for a lump sum of gold from the Sultan.
This precedent was followed later, as with Prince Orkhan, son of Selim the Drunkard, and brother of Murad III. A curious parallel might be noted here. Just as in the case of Jem and Bayazid, when the weaker brother won over the stronger by force of circumstances, so in the later case. When Selim the Drunkard passed out of his besotted life, Orkhan was in Egypt. Murad was in Skutari. In the resultant race for the capital, the result is obvious. It had long been a custom among the Turks to grant the crown to whichever heir first reached Constantinople after the death of the Sultan. The viziers and beys, dreading civil war, generally supported the first comer, who in turn bought the janizaries with rich gifts, and with their aid set about eliminating his brothers. Even with this advantage the weak Murad could never have resisted his more aggressive brother, had it not been for his harim favorite, Safia, a Venetian woman of the Baffo family. She was the real ruler of Turkey, and by her wiles, whereby the Venetians were drawn in to aid the Sultan, Orkhan’s thrust for the throne was defeated and he went into exile.
At first he had sought refuge in the Persian court, and the Shah had promised him aid in gaining the crown. But a few brushes with the dread janizaries cooled the Persian ardor, and Orkhan discovered that the Shah was corresponding with Safia in regard to poisoning him. He made his escape, but in attempting to reach India, was taken captive by the nomadic Bashkirs, who recognized him and sold him into the hands of the Ottomans. Orkhan considered his fate sealed, but Murad dared not have him butchered, for he was still very popular with the masses, especially the subject but ever turbulent Memluks of Egypt, and the Sipahis, or independent land-holders of Anatolia. He was confined in a castle near Erzeroum, and furnished with all luxuries and forms of dissipation calculated to soften his fibre.
This was being gradually brought about, Ayesha said. She was one of the dancing girls sent to entertain him. She had fallen violently in love with the handsome prince, and instead of seeking to ruin him with her passion and amorous wiles, had labored to lift him back to manhood. She had succeeded so well – though without being suspected as the prime motive force – that the prince had been hurriedly and secretly taken from Erzeroum and carried up into the wild mountains above Ekrem, there to be put in charge of El Afdal Shirkuh, a fierce semi-bandit chief, whose family had reigned as feudal lords over the valley for a generation or so, preying on the inhabitants, though not protecting them.
“There we have been for more than a year,” concluded Ayesha. “Prince Orkhan has sunk into apathy. One would not recognize him for the young eagle who led his Egyptian horsemen into the teeth of the janizaries. Imprisonment and bhang and wine have drugged his senses. He sits on his cushions in kaif, rousing only when I sing or dance for him. But he has the blood of conquerors in him. His grandfather, Suleyman the Magnificent, is reborn in him. He is a lion who but sleeps –
“When the Turkomans rode into the valley, I slipped out of the castle and came looking for their chief, Ilbars Khan, for I had heard of his prowess and ambitions. I wished to find a man bold enough to free Orkhan. Let the young eagle’s wings feel the wind again, and he will rise and shake the dust from his brain. Again he will be Orkhan the Splendid. I sought Ilbars Khan, but I saw him slain before I could reach him, and then the Turkomans were like mad dogs. I was afraid and hid, but they dragged me out.
“Oh, my lord, aid us! What if you have no ship and only a handful at your back? Kingdoms have been built on less! When it is known that the prince is free – and thou art with him! – men will flock to us! The feudal lords, the Timariotes, they supported him before, and will not turn from him now. Nay, had they known the place of his confinement, they had torn yon keep stone from stone already! The Sultan is besotted. The people hate Safia and her mongrel son Muhammad.
“The nearest Turkish post is three days’ ride from this place. The valley of Ekrem is isolated – unknown to most except wandering Kurds and the wretched Armenians. Here an empire can be plotted unmolested. You, too, are an outlaw. Let us band together. We will free Orkhan – place him on his rightful throne! If Orkhan were Padishah, all wealth and power and honor were yours; Murad offers you naught but a bowstring!”
She was on her knees before him, her white fingers convulsively gripping his cloak, her veil torn aside again, her dark eyes blazing with the passion of her plea. Osman Pasha was silent, but cold lights glimmered in his steely eyes. He knew that what the girl said of Orkhan’s popularity was true; nor did he underrate his own power. King-maker! It was such a role as he had dreamed of. And this desperate adventure, with death or a throne for prize, was just such as to stir his wild soul to the utmost. Suddenly he laughed, and whatever crimes stained the man’s soul, his laugh was as ringing and zestful as a gust of sea-wind, rising strange from a Moslem’s lips.
“We’ll need the Turkomans in this venture,” he said, and the girl clapped her hands with a brief passionate cry of joy, knowing she had won her plea.
III
“Hold up, kunaks!” Ivan Sablianka pulled up his steed and glanced about, craning his thick neck forward. Behind him his comrades shifted in their saddles. They were in a narrow canyon, flanked on either hand by steep slopes, grown with bushes and stunted firs. Before them a small spring welled up in the midst of straggling trees, and trickled away down a narrow moss-green channel.
“Water here, at least,” grunted Ivan. “The nags are tired. Light.”
Without a word the Cossacks dismounted, drew off the saddles, and allowed the weary horses to drink their fill, before they satisfied their own thirst. For days they had followed the trail of the wandering Algerians. Since leaving the coast and the village along the creek, they had seen only one sign of life – a huddle of mud-huts perched up high among the crags, housing nondescript skin-clad creatures who fled howling into the ravines at their approach. They had been thoroughly looted by the Algerians, so that the Cossacks had been hard put to it to scrape together feed for the horses. For the men there was no food. But the Cossacks had been hungry before.
The provisions with which they had filled their saddle-bags before leaving the village on the creek were exhausted. The Algerians had taken heavy toll of its store-houses and granaries, and the Cossacks, coming after, had stripped them. There was little grass in those mountains for grazing. Now the Cossacks were without food, and they had lost the trail of the corsairs.
The previous nightfall had found them rapidly overhauling their prey, as shown by the freshness of the spoor, and they had recklessly pushed on, thinking to come upon the Algerian camp in the night. But with the setting of the young moon, they had lost the trail in a maze of gullies and crags, and had wandered blindly and at random. Now at dawn they had found water, but their horses were worn out, and they themselves completely lost. This would never have occurred had they been led by a real sotnik or essaul. But they had no word of blame for Ivan, whose thoughtless recklessness had gotten them into their present situation.
