“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 nig
htfall 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.
“Get some sleep,” growled Ivan. “Togrukh, you and Stefan and Vladimir take the first watch. When the sun’s over that fir tree, wake three others to watch. I’m going to scout a bit up this gorge.”
He strode away up the canyon, soon lost among the straggling growth. Soon the way tilted upward, and the slopes on either hand changed to towering cliffs that rose sheer from the rock-littered floor. And with heart-stopping suddenness, from a tangle of bushes and broken boulders, a wild shaggy figure sprang up and confronted the Cossack. Ivan’s breath hissed through his teeth as his sword glittered high in the air; then he checked the stroke, seeing that the apparition was weaponless. It was a lean gnome-like man in sheepskins. His eyes, glaring wildly from a tangle of lank hair, took in every detail of the giant Cossack, from his scalp-lock to his silver-heeled boots. They took in the stained mail shirt tucked into his wide nankeen breeches, the pistol butts jutting from his broad silken girdle, the sword in his huge hand.
“God of my fathers!” said the vagabond in the speech of the Cossacks. “What does one of the free brotherhood in this Turk-haunted land?”
“Who are you?” grunted Ivan warily.
“A man who has just seen his people slaughtered,” answered the other with a wild laugh of mad despair. “I was the son of a kral of the Armenians – call me Kral. One name is good as another to an outcast. What do you here?”
“What lies beyond this canyon?” asked Ivan, instead of answering.
“Over yonder ridge which closes the lower end of this defile lies a tangle of gulches and crags. If you thread your way among them, you will come out overlooking the broad valley of Ekrem, which until yesterday was the home of my tribe, and which today holds their charred bones.”
“Is there food there?”
“Aye – and death. A horde of Turkomans hold the valley.”
As Ivan meditated this, a quick step brought him about, to see Togrukh approaching.
“Hai!” Ivan scowled. “You had an order to watch while the kunaks slept!”
“The kunaks are too cursed hungry to sleep,” retorted the saturnine Cossack, eyeing the Armenian suspiciously.
“Devil bite you, Togrukh,” growled the big warrior, “I can’t conjure them mutton out of the air. They must gnaw their thumbs until we find a village to loot – ”
“I can lead you to enough food to feed a regiment,” interrupted Kral.
“Don’t mock me, Ermenie,” scowled Ivan; “you just said the Turkomans – ”
“Nay,” cried Kral, “there is a place not far from here, unknown to the Moslems, where my people stored food secretly. Thither I was going when I saw you coming up the gorge and knew you for a Kazak.”
Togrukh looked at Ivan, who drew a pistol and cocked it.
“Then lead on, Kral,” said the Zaporogian, “but at the first false move – bang! goes a ball through your head.”
The Armenian laughed, a wild scornful laugh, and motioned for them to follow. He made straight toward the nearer cliff, and groping among a cluster of brittle bushes, disclosed what looked like a shallow crack in the wall. Beckoning them after him, he bent and crawled inside.
“Into that wolf’s den?” Togrukh glared suspiciously, but Ivan followed the Armenian, and the other came after him. They found themselves in, not a cave, but a narrow cleft of the cliff, in breathless twilight gloom. Ivan swore and grunted as he levered his huge bulk between the shouldering walls, but within a few paces it widened until the giant could walk with ease. Forty paces further they came out into a wide circular space, surrounded by towering walls that resembled monstrous honey-combs.
“These were the tombs of an ancient, unknown people who held this land before the coming of my ancestors,” said Kral. “Their bones have long turned to dust. The caves were empty, and there my people stored food against times of famine and pillage. Take your fill; there are no Armenians to need it.”
Ivan looked curiously about him. It was like being at the bottom of a giant well. The floor was solid rock, worn smooth and level, as if by the feet of ten thousand generations. The walls, honey-combed with regular tiers of tombs for fifty feet on all sides, rose stupendously, ending in a small circle of blue sky. A vulture hung in the blue disk like a tiny black dot.
“Your people should have dwelt here in these caves,” said Togrukh. “Then when the Turks came – cut, slash! One man could hold that outer cleft against a horde.”
The Armenian shrugged his shoulders. “Here there is no water. When the Turkomans swooped down there was not time to run and hide. My people were not warlike. They only wished to till the soil.”
Togrukh shook his head, unable to understand such natures. Kral was pulling food for man and beast out of the lower caves – leather bags of grain, rice, moldy cheese, and dried meat, skins of sour wine.
“Go get some of the lads to help carry the stuff, kunak,” directed Ivan, bending his massive back toward his heels to gaze up at the higher caves. “I’ll stay here with Kral.”
Togrukh swaggered off, his silver heels rapping on the stone, and Kral tugged at Ivan’s steel-clad arm.
“Now do you believe I am a true man, effendi?”
“Aye, by God,” Ivan answered, gnawing a handful of dried figs. “Any man that leads me to food is a friend of mine. But where were the villages of these ancients? They couldn’t raise grain in that rocky canyon outside.”
“They dwelt in the valley of Ekrem. Long, long ago my ancestors came out of the north and found them tilling the soil there. They slew them all and took their land.”
“Well,” grunted Ivan, “that’s the way it goes. Now the Turks are slaughtering you fellows. But don’t worry; some day we Cossacks will ride over the mountains and cut their throats. Slash, bang! that’s the way it’ll be. But if the old people dwelt in the valley, why didn’t they lay away their dead closer by? It must be a long steep road from here to Ekrem.”
Kral’s eyes gleamed like a hungry wolf’s. “That is the secret locked in the heart of these hills, known only to my people. But I will show you – and more, if you will trust me.”
“Well, Kral,” said Ivan, munching away with relish, “we Zaporogians have no need to lie and hide like a Jew. We’re following that black devil Osman Pasha the corsair, who’s somewhere in these mountains – ”
“Osman Pasha is no more than three hours’ ride from this spot.”
“Ha!” Ivan dashed down the food he was munching, and caught at his sword, his blue eyes ablaze.
“Kubadar – take care!” cried Kral. “There are forty corsairs, armed with matchlocks and entrenched among the boulders of Diva gorge. And they have been joined by Arap Ali and his hundred and fifty Turkomans. How many warriors have you, effendi?”
Ivan twisted his flowing moustache without reply, scowling heavily. He scratched his head, wondering what an ataman would have done under these circumstances. Deep thinking always made him drowsy and he detested the effort. His head swam and his heavy arms ached with the desire to draw his great sword and forget the weariness of meditation in the dealing of gigantic strokes. It was significant that though he was the foremost swordsman of the Sjetsch, he had never before been given the leadership of his comrades. He swore now at the necessity. He was wiser than his kunaks, but he frankly admitted that was no great evidence of wisdom. Like them, he was utterly reckless and improvident. Well led, they were invincible. Without wise leadership they would throw their lives away on
a whim. He had made a mistake pushing on after dark, last night, but that fact had probably not occurred to any of them. Kral watched him keenly, reading the big Cossack’s mental workings from the expressions of his broad bluff face.
“Osman Pasha is your enemy?”
“Enemy!” Ivan repeated aggrievedly. “I’ll line my saddle with his hide – ”
“Pekki! Then come with me, Kazak, and I will show you what no man save an Armenian has seen for a thousand years.”
“What’s that?” demanded Ivan suspiciously.
“A secret way – and a road of death for our enemies!”
Ivan took a step forward, then halted. “Wait. Here come the sir brothers. Listen to them swear, the dogs.”
“Send them back into the canyon with the food,” whispered Kral, as half a dozen scalp-locked warriors swaggered out of the cleft and gaped curiously around. Ivan faced them portentously, booted legs wide-straddled, belly thrust out, thumbs hooked into his girdle.
“Take up this stuff and lug it back to the spring, kunaks,” he said with a grand gesture. “I told you I’d find food for you and the nags.”
“And what of you?” queried Togrukh, who was bitten by the devil of curiosity, as he gnawed a strip of pasderma – sun-dried mutton.
“Don’t fret about me,” roared Ivan. “Am I not the essaul? I have words with Kral. Go back to camp and eat beans, devil bite you!”
After the clatter of their boot heels had faded down the cleft, Kral led the way to the opposite wall and showed Ivan a series of steps carved in the rock. Up these he went like a cat, while the Zaporogian followed more slowly, suspicious of the hand-holds. High above the last tier of tombs the dim ladder ended at the mouth of a cavern Ivan had not noticed from below. It was much larger than the others; in it Ivan could stand upright. He saw that, instead of being a mere notch in the cliff like the others, this cave ran back and disappeared in darkness.