The Witch of Aleppo

I

IN BARRACKS

When the storm comes, the snow pigeon lakes refuge in the earth, but the wild goose flies south.

When the sun is warm, the snow pigeon soars into the air, but the wild goose wings its way to the gray north.

SNOW was falling that evening in December, when the year 1613 of Our Lord was drawing to its close. A sighing wind from the open steppe swept the drifted snow from the roofs of the barracks and sent it swirling along the parade ground of the Siech, the war encampment of the Cossacks.

White, whirling devils leaped and vanished in front of the yellow squares that were the horn windows of the kurens, the long, log barracks.

Few windows showed a light in the Siech because only a skeleton army was encamped there. A few hundred Cossacks held the border post where thousands should have been, on the island upon the icy breast of Father Dnieper—the river which, in that war-ridden generation, marked the boundary between Christian Europe and the growing empires of the Moslems.

And these Cossacks were angry as the dark and bitter storm that, rising in the limitless wastes of the steppe, held them in its grip. For one thing it was Christmas Eve, and not a full jar of tobacco or a keg of spirits was within the palisade of the camp to lighten the hours before dawn.

“Eh—eh!” The sotnik who had brought in the men shook his head. “Such a night. The forest yonder is snapping its fingers, like the bones of the dead. It is good that we are not in the open.”

“Aye, so,” muttered another, setting his back to the wind, “because there are certainly devils abroad in the air. I could smell witches’ oil, where I stood. And a dwarf came up from behind a log and pulled my coat, crying, just like a child in pain——”

“Evil times,” assented a warrior who lacked a coat and leaned his spear against his shoulder to hold his fists the closer to the blaze. “Tomorrow——”

“Tomorrow,” broke in the captain curtly, “is a holy day, and the vampires and hobgobs will all bivouack under the earth.”

“I heard a maiden’s voice singing in the tree tops, and her dark hair flew over my head like this smoke. If we had a priest in the camp such things would not be, but we have no priest.”

“Ai-a,” assented the man without a coat, “our fathers, the elders, hold council in the church. Eh, they can not sprinkle us with holy water. Our batko, the priest, went down the river to shrive a sick wench. A Turkish patrol found him and sent him back——”

“With the soles of his feet cut off,” nodded the officer grimly. “Aye, they fitted him out with a pair of red slippers. That is how they sent him back to us.”

They glanced with one accord toward the low structure of logs and mud where the body of the priest now lay awaiting burial. Only the sotnik looked thoughtfully at a near-by hut without a light. This was the quarters of the koshevoi—the chief of the Cossack war bands. And it was empty because the Siech lacked a leader as well as a priest.

Rurik, called the “Fair,” a one-eyed veteran of many wars, had been the chief of the Cossacks. During the hard campaign of last Summer when the frontier had been over-run by the Turks from Constantinople, Rurik had been taken prisoner. After being paraded in chains before the Sultan he had been set to work with the other Christian slaves and a demand for ransom sent to the Siech. And the demand was for more than a king’s ransom—ten thousand gold sequins.

So the temper of the Cossacks who had remained at the Siech was savage, because in all the wide steppe of the Ukraina there was not such a sum in gold. The Jews, with a shrewd eye to the hazard, refused to lend it, though promised half the spoil taken by the Zaporoghians im their raids for the next few years.

To the men of the patrols who tried to forget the gnawing of hunger in the glow of the fire, the death of the priest was a worse misfortune than the loss of their leader. But the captain knew that without a strong hand to lift the baton of a chief, the unruly clans of the steppe would never hold their own against the Moslems.

So long as Rurik lived, no new koshevoi could be elected. Besides, it was unthinkable for Cossacks to forget the ties of brotherhood and leave Zaporoghians to be flayed alive by the Turks. Rather, they would consent to have the Syrian and Jewish merchants spit upon their mustaches.

Nothing remained for them but to find the ten thousand pieces of gold. Constantinople was too strong to attack, and as for ventures upon the seas—the Turks and the Barbary beys were masters there.

“We can not ransom the koshevoi," the captain mused, “yet if we do not keep faith with our father, all the warriors of the world will point at us and say there is no faith in the brotherhood of the Cossacks. And how is that to be endured?”

“Easier if we had vodka and gruel,” said mournfully the man who lacked a coat.

“Or if the batko were here to start a carol. Eh, he had such a fine throat—like a brass funnel it was, for the wine that went down and the songs that came up.”

They threw more wood on the fire and pressed closer moodily, leaning on their spears, for no one wished to be the first to break away to a dark shed to try to sleep upon an empty stomach this Christmas Eve.

“If we had an ataman—a colonel like Khlit of the Curved Saber,” muttered the sotnik, “who could open up a road for us to follow! By Saint Nicholas, we would find a ransom and weigh it out in blood.”

“It was otherwise in those days,” nodded a veteran who had traveled long roads with Khlit and Rurik. “Now the brothers do nothing but chew sunflower seeds, and when they hear that noble Cossacks are burned alive by the Turks——”

“To the —— with you!” growled the captain.

“—they spit out the sunflower seeds.”

Anger, like the dull wrack of the clouds overhead, settled upon the men by the fire, and the last thing to come into their thoughts was that they should actually have a feast that Christmas Eve, or that songs would be heard in the camp.

THE door of the church opened and a Cossack emerged, wrapping the collar of his svitza about his ears. As he passed by the fire the men who had come in from patrol glanced up, with a vague hope, but saw that it was only the Scribe’s orderly.

“Some one back yonder,” he jerked a thumb toward the church where the council of elders sat, “is mad as a werewolf. Such a night, and a war party is ordered out!”

“What kuren?” demanded the captain.

“And they must send me to rout out those —— of Don Cossacks.”

The messenger shook his head sourly, and passed on, the lanthorn in his hand flickering as it swung beside his bowed legs. The men from the Don country were said to take after their leader, Demid, who was a sword slayer, and a falcon.

“Eh, they wall be at home upon the snow road this night,” he thought, “because what is not Gipsy or Tatar or brimstone in their blood is akin to the witches.”

Unnoticed by the Scribe’s orderly and the others, a figure came out of the open door of the church and moved after him. This was a man so tall he had to stoop to pass under the lintel, and he walked with the swaying gait of one who had spent the better part of a lifetime in the saddle.

Their course took them by the high palisade, open to the weather, where prisoners were penned. Hearing a muttered curse hurled after the orderly’s light the giant paused in his stride. But what mattered the storm to condemned men who would know the feel of a rope around their necks or the icy embrace of Father Dnieper before another day dawned?

They passed the empty stalls, once occupied by dram-shop keepers. Too well the camp followers had probed the leanness of the purses in the Siech. True, the wide Cossack steppe was fertile, but the villages had been reduced to burnt posts sticking up in the snow, the harvests had been garnered by the Turks, the horse herds thinned by Tatar thieves, and the cattle were dying off from lack of fodder.

Gaining the lee of the last barrack shed, apart from the others, the messenger kicked open the door.

“An order, good sirs—” he began, with misgivings.

Abusive shouts interrupted him at once—

“May the dogs bite you!”

“Close the door, you son of a jackal!”

“You have been swilling the sacred wine, now that the priest is dead. As God lives, you think you are our colonel, to give us an order!”

“No, he is looking for his own quarters, the gallows-pen—what evil business are you about, ‘Bandy Legs’?”

Sitting in groups about smoking fires some three-score warriors were casting dice on scraped hides or matching each other at odd and even. Overhead, hung to the rafters, black sheepskin coats were steaming, and the reed-strewn clay that served as a floor was littered with bear and wolf skins.

In the corners lay men nursing wounds, the evil aroma of short clay pipes filled with Turkish tobacco mingling with the smoke of damp wood and half-dried horse-dung. They were bearded and dark-skinned. Several bore the purple scars of recent sword-cuts on cheek and forearm—big-boned fellows, taller than the usual run of Cossacks. The orderly noticed that no gold or silver lay on the gaming boards, and that only the wounded were smoking. Tobacco was in scant supply here, as elsewhere in the Cossacks’ camp.

“Sabers and saddles, my turtle doves!” he chuckled. “With saddles and sabers for relish, if the fare likes you not. You take the snow road this night.”

“You lie, dog-face!” snarled one of the nearest.

Plucking a half-burned barrel-stave from the fire, he advanced threateningly on the soldier.

“Satan would not stir out of hell this night. I’ll singe your beard, you hyena——”

The essaul, the sergeant, loomed up, stripped to the waist. Under his white skin his heavy biceps swelled, and the unlucky orderly paled visibly.

“Nay, ’tis an order, good Togrukh.”

“Whose order? Our sotniks are dead, and our ataman, our colonel, is up the river. Who gives an order to the Don regiment?”

Togrukh reached out and gripped the orderly’s beard, swinging the smouldering board with his free hand to keep the flames going. His white teeth gleamed through the tangle of a black mustache.

“So, good sir,” he growled, “the noble elders would like to give an order to the men from the Don, eh? They sent you, shrinking rose-vine, and you came, lovely little flower!”

“The rose-bud came, the lovely little flower,” chanted the warriors gleefully.

Togrukh was about to apply his brand when the giant figure in a wolf skin svitza entered behind the orderly, stooping as he did so to clear the lintel.

“Are your saddles oiled?”

He glanced up at the pegs on which a hundred saddles perched, each one different from the rest, but each ornamented in some way, worked with silver, or gold coins, covered with flowered silk. All were in good order.

“Your sabers cleaned? Have you boots, a pair to each man? Are they whole?”

To every question the moody Togrukh nodded, puffing at an empty pipe, his handling of the messenger suspended for the moment.

“All is as it should be, Colonel Ayub,” he muttered. “The forehead to you, colonel. We did not know you were here.”

“That is evident,” grinned Ayub.

He had a good-natured, muscular face. His black eyes, set far apart, scanned the assembly without anger. The warriors surveyed him with equal interest, dwelling upon the mighty barrel of his chest, and the two-foot handle of the broadsword strapped to his back. This weapon was unique in the Siech, for Ayub had taken it from a German man-at-arms and had used no other weapon since. He alone of the free Cossacks could cut a cross in the air with the fifty-pound blade held in one hand.

Moreover the ataman Ayub was a kunak, a good fellow. They called him colonel although he had never commanded a regiment; instead he had been in more scrapes than an eel out of water. Togrukh and his mates knew that Ayub’s ribs had been burned black over the brazier of a Turkish torturer, and a pound or so of his three hundred-weight consisted of grape-shot in the chest and thighs from a Polish culverin. Because of his reputation for nosing out trouble as a hound scents a hare, he never lacked for followers among the Cossacks.

“Ayub,” said the stolid Togrukh, “we know that you are the comrade of the falcon, our colonel. As God lives, you are a very brother to him, and that is good. But what is this about an order? We have no officers in the camp. If you had not come we would have pricked this swollen bladder—” he spat at the orderly—“for bidding us to our sabers this night. Doubtless the Scribe wants the life let out of the prisoners in the pen, and it is always the Don regiment that is summoned when a dog’s work is to be done.”

“If the falcon, your colonel, gave an order would the Donskoi obey?”

An angry mutter went up from the listeners, who plainly considered themselves affronted by this remark.

“Aye,” responded Togrukh, who was the only surviving non-com, “if we obeyed not—there would be terror.”

“Then,” Ayub assured him, “there will be terror if you do not obey now. Demid, your chief, is here in the camp. He rode in at vespers and is at talk with the gray-heads in the church. He gave the order.”

“Allah!” Togrukh shot one threatening glance at the orderly who had failed to mention this all-important fact, and reached up to jerk down his fur-lined great-coat. “On your feet, dog-brothers!” he barked over his shoulder at his mates who were scrambling into coats, boots and belts.

“Thirty of you, only!” commanded Ayub. “Two tens with lances, one ten to go to the supply shed, to be issued fire-locks with powder-horns, matches and bullet sacks. The rest to the stables, to rub down the horses with hay. Two horses to a man, and double saddle bags.”

A raw-boned oldster, donning a second shirt, looked up with interest.

“The forehead to you, ataman! That means a long ride: do we go far?”

“Far, ‘Broad Breeches.’” The Don warrior wore, tucked into his boots, a pair of leather pantaloons, wider than any other in the camp, as Ayub noticed admiringly.

“With Father Demid, good sir?”

“With young Demid, and me, dog-brother.”

“That means sword strokes.” The veteran seemed satisfied. “It may be we shall frolic with the Moslem patrols, eh, sir brother?’

“It may be.” Ayub, usually talkative enough, was strangely reticent. “Take what you must have for a journey of some moons, but sparingly. Do not saddle the beasts now. There will be drinking before we mount. Togrukh, when your men are equipped report to the ataman, Demid, at the church.

With that he went out of the barracks. Almost as he closed the door, the thirty warriors stood clothed and armed for the road. Taking the first saddle-bags that came to hand they began to ransack the various belongings of the barracks, without thought for the question of ownership. One youth tucked a short balalaika, a guitar, into his sack, along with flint and steel and a costly ikon—a holy picture set in a jeweled frame.

Broad Breeches—he of the two shirts—took a plentiful stock of tallow, long needles, a hunting-knife and the best of the woolen leg-wrappings lying about. Togrukh surveyed this stock with approval and gathered together a similar one for himself. Tongues were loosened, and the wounded who were to be left behind speculated upon the possible destination of the war party. The orderly could not enlighten them, but added that they were to get from the wagon-master a sledge load of tar and a dozen axes.

“Boats!” growled the oldest Cossack. “Hide of a hundred devils! May I roast in a brazen bull if we are not going to build long skiffs.”

“But, Broad Breeches,” objected the youngest of the party, “the Dnieper is frozen deep.”

“I can’t help it, ‘Girl Face,’ if Father Dnieper is solid.”

The veteran knotted up the mouth of his sack and selected a lance to his liking.

“It must be that we are going upon an ocean,” he added thoughtfully.

“How, an ocean? Where is there an ocean near the Siech?”

A roar of laughter from the Don men greeted this evidence of ignorance. The veteran, his tall black hat stuck upon one side of his shaven skull, grinned under his mustache.

“Eh—eh! His mother’s milk is still wet on his lips, the little swaddled one!”

“The little swaddled one!” echoed Togrukh with relish.

“Why,” added one of the disabled, offering his pipe to Togrukh, “all the oceans of the north must be frozen, or some such thing. So as God lives, sir brothers, you are going to the Black Sea, to the south.”

“Or the White^[1] or the Red,” put in the veteran, moving about nimbly.

“Black, White or Red,” muttered the orderly sullenly, “you will roast in that brazen ox, and the Turks will put your ashes in their gardens, Broad Breeches, before you come back to the Siech. The ataman, Demid, brought down the river from Kudak on two sledges kegs of brandy and vodka. Where there is a great revel before the march,” he concluded sagely, “few warriors come back from the trail.”

Togrukh, more and more pleased with events, glanced around to assure himself that the thirty were ready. Confronting the orderly he put his hands on his hips and swelled out his chest.

“By the shadow of the cross, our ataman is a falcon, a golden eagle. He soars high—he sees far! Brandy and vodka! What a night this will be! And you, you goose, said naught of what was important in your orders. Hei, brothers—pluck the goose, pluck the goose!”

In spite of the resistance of the scribe’s orderly, he tore the coat from the man, and swung him around to the oldest Cossack, who, waiting alertly, tripped up the messenger and jerked off his boots as he struggled to rise. Then, jumping about like a gamecock, the experienced Broad Breeches planted his booted foot on the victims buttock’s and sent him reeling toward the young warrior who ripped off his bag trousers.

“Singe the goose, singe the goose!” several began to cry.

Clad only in his shirt, the unfortunate orderly was whirled about until he was dizzy; then he was knocked down into the embers of the largest fire. Shouts of laughter greeted his efforts to scramble out of the hot coals, and an odor of burning skin was perceptible. His shirt-tails blazing, and his beard smoking, the messenger howled and tried to run toward the door, but his dizziness drove him against the walls instead, until Togrukh thrust him through the open portal into the snow.

Then, followed by the loud good wishes of the sick and disabled, the Don warriors tramped out, some to go for arquebuses, some to stack lances in the stables and rub down the shaggy ponies, but all with an eye to where, in the center of the muster ground, the dark figures of the patrols off duty were gathered around certain great kegs standing in the snow close to the red glow of the bonfire.

IN THE log chapel where lighted candles stood under the painted pictures of Christ and Mary, the deliberations of the council had come to an end. The score of gray-haired warriors had laid aside their tall kalpacks, the black Cossack hats with red tops, and stood, in stained ermine coats, and costly sable cloaks about an open grave, dug in front of the altar.

They looked at one another questioning, the steam of their breathing rising in the cold air. In a rough coffin on which rested his square cap and gold-embroidered stole, lay the body of the batko, the priest of the Cossack camp, and they were wondering in what manner they should bury the holy man who had so often performed the ceremony for their brethren but now was past doing it for himself.

“It is well,” spoke up one ataman,” that the good father should be planted here. This, sir brothers, was his camp and from it he sallied forth whenever the drums rolled for battle.”

With that, several, led by the judge and the scribe of the camp, laid hold of the box and lowered it into the grave. Then they drew back and others came forward with shovels to fill in the grave to the level of the earthen floor.

“A thousand fiends fly away with you!” remonstrated Ayub. “Would you plant the batko without prayer or bell?”

“Do you manage the prayer. You were ever glib with your tongue.”

Ayub glanced around uneasily, and was greeted with a murmur of assent. His broad face grew red with the unaccustomed effort of thought, and, mechanically, he unsheathed the broadsword, to lean on its hand-guard. The other Cossacks waited hopefully with bowed heads. All at once the big warrior cleared his throat and raised his eyes.

“O Father and Son in Heaven,” he began in his deep voice, “this batko of ours was a good comrade. He never took another man’s bread or silver and what he had of his he gave with an open hand so that now, when he has turned up his toes, we had to bury him in a winding-sheet made of a Turkish turban cloth, so little had he in the world.”

The judge nodded, his eyes closed, as if he himself could not have expressed the matter better.

“This batko of ours,” went on Ayub, “had a hardy soul. May I never taste corn-brandy again if it didn’t stick to his body all the time he was walking back to his comrades, after the Turks had sliced his feet. And now, sir brothers, it has taken wings, this soul of our comrade and it has gone to sing before the seat of the Mother of God, and we will never hear him shout—U-ha again. No, he will never ride forth with us again.”

He paused to lift his hand.

“If he could talk to us now, sir brothers, what would he say? Not a word of himself. But he would point to the holy images that have not a garment to their backs, or a candle to burn before them. That is what he would do. And what is our answer?”

The elders who were not quick-witted, looked up expectantly.

“Why, we will go down the path of the batko, that bloody path. And for each drop of blood upon it we will cut down a Moslem; we will carry the sword across the Black Sea, and bring back silver and gold for this altar. May the fiend take me, if we don’t.”

“Glory be to the Father and Son!” cried one of the warriors.

“For the ages of ages!”

While earth was being thrown on the coffin some one remembered the bell and from the church tower the chimes of Christmas rang forth. Ayub, rendered thirsty by the long oration, sallied out with the councillors to the wine kegs that had made their appearance on the muster field.

1. ↑ The Sea of Mamora.

II

THE GALLOWS BIRDS

WHEN the bells of the church ceased ringing the snow no longer fell, and it was seen that the center square of the Siech was filling rapidly with warriors from the barracks. Although the muster-drum had not been beaten, the orderly of the camp scribe had had a thrashing at the hands of the Don men, and his tongue was loosened.

The cooks were kicked up, grunting, and kindled fires under still warm caldrons wherein were quarters of sheep and sides of beef; as if they had been summoned by the drum, the older warriors appeared and headed for the casks, wiping their mustaches. In their hands they bore beakers and nuggins and broken dippers, and soon the gurgle of corn-brandy was heard as clearly as the crackle of the flames, where fresh fires were sending sparks whirling up toward a cold and star-lit sky.

The more inexperienced who came late were fain to gather the liquor in caps or cupped fists; and the youngest of them were sent to pull down the stalls of the Jews to throw on the flames. Soon a dense throng of warriors gathered around the balalaika players and the six-foot youngsters who were beginning to dance the Cosachka on the hard-packed snow.

They leaped and crouched by the red flames, casting off their long coats, their scalp-locks flying in the wild swing of the dance of the Ukraina, and the watchers put hands on hips and moved booted feet restlessly as the rhythm of it got into their veins.

They asked the sotnik who had been first on the scene how the vodka and brandy had come hither.

“On the ataman’s—Demid’s—sledges. He drove down the river in the storm, from Kodak where he had been to bend the forehead to Ileana, granddaughter of Rurik. Eh, he must be hot with wine, for he promised the maid he would find ransom for Rurik.”

Beating in the head of a fresh cask with a smith’s hammer, the officer added reflectively:

“He has called a squadron of the Don men to horse, and he will not take more than that. Because he says we others are ox-tails, fit to beat at flies, and he is going south, beyond the frontier.”

“Where, then?”

“To the —— most likely, because he is young and mad. He will not say how, since there are spies in the Siech.”

“Spies? Not to be thought of!”

“Well, the Sultan has eyes and ears north of the frontier, by which he knows our strength and our plans. How else did they cut us up last Summer and truss up Rurik like a sheep.”

There was no answer to this, and the warriors began to sample the new keg. Always when a war party went out, they had a carouse, arid the setting out of the Donskoi was apt to be memorable. The wailing of the fiddles rose against the note of the wind, and the thudding feet of the dancers. Word came presently from the church that the priest had been buried and they hastened to drink off a cup to the sturdy brother who had left them.

“Colonel Ayub had sworn he will bring back new garments for the images and jewels for the ikons. What days! Our church is like a jackal’s hole——”

“Aye, and the Turkish mosques shine like harlots——”

“That is not the worst of it, sir brothers. These mosques, what are they? May the fiends spit on me if they are not Christian churches taken by the Moslems, who rubbed out the holy pictures on the walls. So it is with Saint Sophia, in the Imperial City,^[1] so it is with the Holy Sepulcher.”

They muttered angry assent, hanging their heads, for the Cossacks were seldom free from brooding; their moods were born of the great steppe, grim in the long Winter, palpitating and mirthful in the brief Summer.

“What days!” assented the sotnik, glaring about him. “Even in the Siech a war party must set out at night, or spies would bear word to the Sultan. And now that Demid is setting forth, who is there to smoke out the spies?”

“Let us make Demid our koshevoil,” shouted one of the dancers. “Even a wolf can not hunt without a head. Give us the sword-slayer for a leader!”

“Aye, he is a sword-slayer,” admitted the sotnik, “the finest to be found in the frontier. But he was only weaned a few Winters ago; along the Dnieper he kept his feet, true enough, and his enemies were laid to rest on their backs. But where are his gray hairs, where his Cossack cunning?”

“May the dogs bite you!” Broad Breeches pushed through the throng. “You are brave enough when words are in the air; but as God is my witness no man can find you when swords are out. You drink the falcon’s vodka, and that gives you a little courage——”

“Death to you!”

“The lie to you, ox-tail! Did not Rurik betroth his granddaughter, Heana of Kudak, to our falcon? He found no better man than Demid, and who says otherwise will cover himself with his legs.”

The officer stood his ground sturdily, although the snarling face of the Don warrior was thrust close to his eyes.

“What I say,” he maintained, “is known to all the brethren. Your chieftain is a hero, but he is a wild one, a mad-cap. At Kudak a white-armed maid awaits him, like a dove. But he takes the snow road, beyond the frontier, and leaves the castle of Kudak without a master.”

Broad Breeches laughed tauntingly.

“Is that otherwise than a Cossack would do? I say Demid will bring back a mighty treasure, enough to ransom all the captives!”

The eyes of the other brightened for an instant; then he shook his head.

“It can not be. At this season the storms are on the Black Sea, and our boats would founder; the large treasure-ships of the Turks stick to the southern shore, as fleas stick where a dog can’t scratch.”

“Then he will seek the southern shore!”

“How, seek it, when no one of you knows a rudder from a centerboard, or a compass from a Nurenburg watch?”

The sotnik took his hand from his sword hilt and turned to the listeners:

“It is true that Demid is mad. If he could lead a horde without falling into the pagan’s traps—if he could take a walled city, or outwit one of those accursed pashas of the janizaries—if he were a wolf like Khlit who could catch a Tatar khan asleep, or Rurik who could take a ship through the Dardanelles——”

“He can, you toad!”

“Then let him show how he can! If he does, he will be our koshevoi, and we will not say that he is young and mad.”

Some murmurs of assent greeted this, and the Don warrior had no answer to the argument.

“Too much talk, too much talk altogether,” he muttered angrily. “Out of the way, old women: stand aside dish-cloths, that a man may drink!”

Elbowing aside the other Cossacks who did not resent his hard words, as the warrior was going on the road, the man from the Don gained the side of the nearest keg, refusing all proffers of beakers and dippers.

“Hail to the fair young mistress,” he roared, throwing back his head, “the round-armed, the soft-eyed maiden! Hail to her whose embrace is the warmest, whose kiss awaits a Cossack——”

“To Lady Death!” echoed the sotnik.

At this Broad Breeches plunged his head in the cask, and sprang up, panting, shaking the liquor from his long scalp-lock, not quite oblivious to the admiring glances of the younger brethren.

The pent-up passions of the throng sought an outlet and one offered in the prison pen. Two criminals had been confined there, awaiting execution: one for striking the priest some time since—the other for the lesser matter of knifing a Cossack. The men of the Siech were accustomed to fighting, but they used their fists. To draw a knife was held to be a shameful act, natural enough for a Greek or Syrian, but contrary to the ethics of Cossackdom.

Warriors were already beating down the gate when the party from the brandy-cask came up. Axes appeared at once, and made short work of the beams of the door, so that a black gap showed in the high palisade. Torches flickered above the heads of the crowd and voices shouted for the gallows birds to come out.

Before a second summons could be uttered, a tall man walked through the gate. So singular was his appearance that for a moment it distracted the attention of the throng. His head, wrapped in a crimson scarf, did not come to the level of the long Cossacks, but he carried himself erect, and walked slowly forward, eyeing his captors. One eye, in fact was half-closed by a scar that ran down to his lip, lifting it in a kind of perpetual sneer. Instead of the usual Cossack coat he wore a flowing khalat, with a velvet vest, heavily sewn with silver ornaments. His yellow boots were high and good—the heels painted red.

“What bird is this?” demanded the sotnik.

“’Tis Balaban, Captain Balaban, the Levantine,” a voice made response.

Whether Levantine, or man from Barbary, no one knew or cared; it was known that he had once been aboard the Barbary corsairs, and had gone into the service of the Turks for a while, until he had fled the galleys, and, professing Christianity, had been received into the asylum of the Siech. He it was who had knifed a Cossack, and he had done it expertly.

“Aye,” his voice rang out shrilly for such a powerful man, “’tis Captain Balaban, at your service, my kunaks. Do you wish entertainment—then I will give it!”

“As the fiend sired you, that you will, 'Wry Mouth,!’”

Hands seized him and voices cried out for the other prisoner, who had struck the priest.

This was a man as broad as Balaban was tall, a man of swarthy face, who rolled for ward as if treading the moving deck of a ship. His tiny black eyes flickered around, seeking in vain some avenue of escape, but his roaring voice showed that he had a steady nerve.

“Aye, sir brothers! Ostrog is present—Ostrog who burned the pagan galley off the Chersonese. What is your will, with Ostrog?”

“That you bum, Ostrog—that you burn!” Laughter greeted this sally. “You will make a rare candle—-after you are tarred. To the tar barrels!”

So cried those at the outer fringe of the throng. The Barbary captain had been walking slowly about the ring, staring into the bronzed faces, apparently utterly in different to what was in store for him. Of a sudden his right arm shot out and he ripped from its scabbard the yataghan of a young warrior.

With the slender, curved weapon in his hand, he leaped back, to stand against the palisade, his eyes fairly blazing with malignant fury. From under his twisted lip flowed such a stream of sheer blasphemy that the nearest Cossacks stood transfixed. Whatever oaths their lips might utter, they were religious at heart. The Levantine knew well how to arouse them to use steel on him and to forget the torture.

Ostrog, slower of wit, took advantage of the pause to catch up one of the fragments of the door beams and take his stand beside Balaban.

“Cut, slash!” roared the sotnik finding his tongue.

Sabers slithered out of sheaths and the throng surged forward. Balaban fell silent, his blade poised, dangerous as a coiled snake. But between him and the nearest warriors stepped a youth who had pushed through the crowd unheeded. He was bare-headed, and in his shirt-sleeves, and the sotnik, seeing him, spread out both arms and thrust back against the men behind.

“The ataman, Demid, is here, brothers.”

THE chief of the Don men waited until a space had been cleared behind him—waited patiently, his gray eyes studying Balaban.

“Back you dogs,” muttered the non-coms within sight of the colonel. “Do not tread on his heels—see how his head steams! The sword-slayer has been licking up vodka, with the wounded in the Don barracks. See, he is going to play with Captain Balaban. Stand back, you sow’s ears!”

“Father,” Broad Breeches addressed his chief, “shall we drop lassos over their sconces, and truss them up? I have a rope.”

Demid paid no attention to the man. His brows, curving down over deep-set eyes, his sharp aquiline nose, his skull shaven, except for the scalp-lock—in the glow of the torches these features did somewhat resemble a falcon. Although he had been drinking heavily he did not sway on his feet as he confronted the Levantine.

Then Ostrog hurled his timber, at the young Cossack. Demid sank on one knee, bending his head as the heavy club whirled over him, but his eyes did not leave Captain Balaban. His simitar flashed out as the tall man cut down at him with the yataghan.

The two blades clashed and Demid parried, rising to his feet as he did so. To the onlookers it seemed as if the weapons merged into a flowing stream of light, so swiftly did Balaban, who had determined to sell his life as dearly as possible, press the attack, crouching, his teeth gnashing together. He could use a cutlas well and, under the flowing khalat, his supple muscles were like steel.

Demid’s right arm moved only from the elbow, and—without indulging in the whirlwind sword-play of the Cossacks—he rested his weight on his left leg.

“Raise your weapon, Balaban,” he said suddenly, shifting his weight to his forward foot and engaging the other’s blade at close quarters.

The Levantine’s answer was a snarl that changed to a grunt as he found the hand- guard of the yataghan caught against Demid’s hilt and the two blades wedged together. In spite of his efforts to free his sword, he felt his weapon raised high over his head as the Cossack put forth his strength.

“Now lower it,” ordered Demid, and this time his Ups curved in a smile.

The two swords swept down in a wide arc, to the snow, and before Balaban could draw the yataghan clear the Cossack had planted his foot on it. Placing the hilt of his simitar against his chest, he moved forward until the point pricked the skin under the Levantine’s lower ribs, over the vitals.

Perforce Captain Balaban released the hilt of his weapon and stepped back against the log pen. With nearly an inch of steel in him he stood quietly, without making a plea for his life.

“Have you heart, Balaban,” asked the chief of the Don warriors in a low voice, “to go on a venture with me, over the black water? Will you go against the galleys of the Turks? Have you lust for the feel of gold and the light of jewels? We seek a treasure.”

“Why not?” Balaban was surprized. “If I said nay, you would skewer me, so—why not, say I?”

“Your life will be short; I will see to that,” Demid promised. “You know ships and their ways and the paths of the sea. I do not. If you go with me you will aid me to the utmost; but you will not be a slave. Some months of life you will earn for yourself, and Ostrog. Otherwise, seconds.”

Balaban spat to one side, half closing his good eye. If the Cossacks were venturing on a raid of the Strait and Constantinople, he might fare badly. On the other hand, Demid had spoken of months in which to live. Balaban had been through enough tight places to be a fatalist. Much could happen in several months, particularly if he managed to get these Don Cossacks, who did not know one end of a galley from the other, into a sailing craft.

If luck favored him and he could lead the ataman into the hands of the Moslems, why then his reward would be great. No longer could he remain in the Siech, and here was a way out. A moment ago he was doomed to tar and fire, while now——

“Take your steel out of my guts,” he growled. “I’m your man. Do you want me to swear an oath?”

“The ——,” observed Ayub who had come up in time to hear the last remarks, “would leap up and laugh if you took an oath! Nay, Demid, evil will come of this gallant. I can face any man on a horse, but the sea is an unruly beast, look you—when it rears up there is no putting the whip to it.”

“We need the pair of them, Ayub. Put them under Togrukh’s wing; tell him he will walk to the Black Sea tied to the cart-tail if they escape. No blows for them, but death if a weapon is seen in their hands.”

The Levantine shrugged. Under his breath he muttered a Turkish phrase—

“Time will have another story to tell.”

Demid caught the words and understood, being familiar with the Turkish and Tatar dialects; but he held his peace. Withdrawing his sword point he wiped it on the Levantine’s girdle. The Cossacks, suspecting that their prisoners were about to be taken out of their hands, swept forward with a mutter of anger.

“Back, dog-brothers,” cried Demid. “These men are mine.”

“Back, pot-lickers,” repeated Balaban with a malevolent grin. “Back to your stoves, I say. We mean to wet our gullets, Ostrog and I.”

Heedless of the uproar, he elbowed his way toward the wine casks, followed by the squat seaman, convinced of the truth that the warriors would not go against the word of Demid.

“He keeps his head up,” remarked the young ataman, following the progress of the renegade with his eyes. “Noble blood is in him somewhere. Hai—the Pleiades are low, and dawn is near. We must be across the open ice of the river before light comes. It is time—time!”

“Time!” One of the Don men caught the word.

Balaban, standing at one of the open casks, emptied a beaker of vodka down his throat and laughed, stretching his arms.

“Oh—time! Now for one bravo, now for another! A toast, Broad Breeches, to the fair courtesan, Luck! When we are gone, no one will drink.”

With a stifled chuckle he picked a burning stick out of the fire and dropped it into the keg of liquor. Blue flame rushed up from the vodka and the Levantine laughed again.

From across the camp a deep voice began one of the Cossack chants—

“Glorious fame will come
To the Cossacks,
To the heroes,
For many a year,
Till the end of time.”

1. ↑ Constantinople.

III

THE STRAIGHT SWORD

WHERE the gray ice of the Dnieper began to shred away into cakes that drifted down the white fringes of the shore, a faint snow trail led north. A long this trail a sledge was making its way up-river.

Three steaming horses drew it onward at a round pace; a fur-clad Tatar, astride the off pony wielded his whip in response to an occasional word from the one occupant of the rude vehicle—a human being so wrapped in wolf-skins that only his eyes and sable cap could be seen. Behind, perched on the runners of the sledge was a shivering servant.

The bells on the shaggy ponies tinkled lustily, the postilion’s whip cracked, the leather-bound runners wheezed as they flew forward. It might, indeed, have been the invisible thread of Destiny that drew forward the three men, so that, in rounding a corner of the trail, they came upon a detachment of Zaporoghian Cossacks who had been halted by the sound of the bells in the act of crossing the ice of the river at the point where it was still strong enough to bear horses.

They had halted in the trail, and they were the party that had been led south by Demid four days ago.

Seeing them, the Tatar muttered something of mingled astonishment and disgust, and reined his horses to one side, leaving the trail clear for the riders.

“By the Rood! Would ye step me aside, to give yon sons of perdition the road!”

Although spoken in a slow, musical voice, the words were barbed. Moreover they were good, round English words.

“Excellence,” remarked the dragoman, a Circassian, by name Giorgos, as it proved, “the Tatar does well. These folk will not stand aside for us, and it is best not to stir them up.”

“And Michael of Rohan will not yield the road to the Grand Monarch himself, at all. A pox on ye, George—gibber in their tongue and ask the question of them and we will make shift to answer.”

Admonished in this fashion the dragoman seemed to hesitate, his smooth olive face puckered, and when he spoke it was in Turki. He addressed Ayub, removing his cap and bowing low; but it was Demid who made response, curtly. The Cossack chief noticed that the occupant of the sledge listened as if trying to follow the talk, although he was staring at Ayub curiously.

“George, clod,” the traveler observed idly, “here is a giant, and—faith—they must be of the race of Gog and Magog. Mark ye, they sit their cattle well, with straight backs and Louis himself would not be ashamed of such dragoons—but what are they? Have we come to the edge of the habitated world, George—to the dwellers of Cimmerian darkness?”

The dragoman, occupied with his own fears, looked up reluctantly.

“Nay, excellence, these are Cossacks who are masterless men and bloody minded. Being here they are out of their bounds and so must be bent on evil.”

“Blister me, George,” objected the man in the sledge, “if they are not Christians, by token of those silver crosses they parade. Being Christians their officer will not draw the line at a friendly bout o’ the blades.”

Giorgos shivered.

“Sir Michael, the great ambassador of the Franks at Constantinople would whip me if harm comes to you. Be pleased to turn back——”

“I despair,” observed Sir Michael reprovingly. “Mark me—I am skeptical of your sporting instinct, George. Ye are sly, —— sly, and—did hear me request, nay urge, George, that ye translate to yonder officer my wish to cross swords for a moment, the winner to take the road?”

The Cossacks grinned broadly at the dragoman’s interpretation of his master’s desire, then they stared and reined closer when the traveler swept aside his robes and sprang from the sledge. They beheld not a Muscovite or Turk but a slender figure, diminutive beside their towering bodies, in scarlet boots, buck-skin breeches and trim greatcoat. Out of a lean, mobile face blue eyes scanned them coldly, yet with a hidden glint of mirth.

But what stirred their ridicule were the black ringlets that fell from the plumed hat to the lace collar of Sir Michael of Rohan.

“Their weapons would snap your blade, excellence,” muttered Giorgos.

“I warrant me,” responded the traveler dryly, “ye have not seen a rapier at work.”

Whereat he whipped from its scabbard of Spanish leather—a trifle worn, in truth—a straight, tapering length of steel that gleamed blue in the sunlight—a three-edged shaft of Toledo forging that he bent nearly double in his powerful fingers and released with a thin hum. It was not too long, the blade, and at its base it tapered to an inch in width where the hand-guard joined. And Sir Michael of Rohan laughed, for the blood was warm in his veins that morning, and it was his way to stand his ground when opposition offered.

Sir Michael, bending his blade between his fingers, studied Demid from under level brows noticing the lithe figure, half a head taller than himself, the long reach of the Cossack, the jeweled hilt of the curved simitar, and the silver cross at the warrior’s throat.

“George, lad, say to the handsome bucko that I have no wish to draw blood; nay, at the third pass I will pluck out his neckcloth.”

More than once he had matched weapons with the Moslems and he knew the infallibility of the straight blade in a hand such as his. Years of campaigning in Flanders and Italy had schooled him in his work. The salle d’armes in Paris had added finish to his skill; he had mastered the tricks of the Italian school, and men who had been so unlucky as to face him in duels had died. He was a maitre d’escrime, and so sure was he of the result of the coming encounter, he would have waged the sum of his possessions—if he had any—upon the third thrust. But his greatcoat was neatly mended in more than one place and his vest—Sir Michael sighed—his waistcoat was shabby, indeed.

Demid, on his part, smiled and, touching the green silk cloth around his throat, shook his head.

“Garde-toi, mon sauvage!” cried the traveler, bending his knees and sweeping the rapier overhead, releasing the tip as he did so.

The Cossacks urged their ponies around the pair eagerly, pleased at an unexpected entertainment. Demid saluted briefly with his simitar, and engaged at once, making a careless cut. It was warded.

Again the light blade of the simitar caressed the thin line of the rapier—then swept it aside and cut swiftly at the traveler’s head. His blade passed through air; Sir Michael had drawn back, from his knees, and for two seconds Demid lost touch with him. In that time the Cossack felt a tug at his throat, a tiny burning of his skin as if a pin had passed across it.

Drawing back he beheld Sir Michael smiling, the green silk neckcloth resting on the tip of the rapier. The brows of the young Cossack drew together and the dark blood rushed into his face. To be tricked, like a buffoon—to be played with, like a puppy!

BEHOLDING the mask of anger that transformed the face of the chief, Sir Michael let the silk fall instantly and stood on guard, his left hand raised in the air behind his head, the point of his blade describing tiny circles.

Demid rushed as a Cossack attacks, with unrestrained, reckless fury. His simitar flashed around and over the rapier; steel slithered against steel; but always the thin blade was between the simitar and the body of the smaller man. It was Sir Michael now who was careful to keep touch with his enemy, content to rest on the defensive until Demid’s fury had spent itself.

For a while he stood his ground; but Demid’s strength did not exhaust itself. Instead, Sir Michael gave ground a little under the whirlwind slashes. He was breathing quickly, perspiration under his eyes, the corners of his lips smiling a trifle. His rear foot, exploring the uneven trail cautiously, felt deep snow, and his knees stiffened.

“No help for it,” he muttered.

And with that he took the offensive. Demid, who had been startled out of his usual composure by the first thrust, yet felt the change in the touch of the rapier, and, turning the point of his saber down, parried a lightning lunge at his side. Once more he was aware of the tiny pin point of fire, scraping his skin through the cloth.

Instead of making him wilder, this touch steadied the Cossack. His iron wrist served him well now, and in a dozen tries, the rapier failed to get home upon him. Sir Michael tried intricate feints—complicated passes that got the other’s blade well to one side—but ever as he thrust, the light simitar warded in time. It was, to him, an exhibition of incredible quickness of hand and eye, for the Cossack was not familiar with such tricks of the sword, such rogueries of the blade.

“’Swounds!” cried Sir Michael, whole-heartedly.

Barely in time, with numbed wrist, he had freed his blade from a twist of the simitar that would otherwise have sent it flying through the air. If the rapier had been a saber it would have been lost to him.

“Good lad,” he panted, with a smile of acknowledgment.

Now the Cossack did not understand the words, but Sir Michael’s smile was eloquent, and the glare passed from the eyes of the tall warrior, who sheathed his saber and sprang forward to pull his adversary to his chest and kiss him on both cheeks. The Cossacks, pleased with the sword-play, rose in their stirrups and shouted and the bout was at an end.

Yet the result was still a matter of uncertainty. Balaban muttered that the blade of the Frank was bewitched, and Demid, who was no believer in black magic, shook his head.

“Nay, the play was fair. Yonder Frank is my match. Twice he touched me and I marked him not. What man can he be?”

“No true man,” put in Ayub, frowning. “He has curls like a Polish wench, and he is not big enough to amount to anything. Ho, dragoman, what has your master to say for himself?”

The Circassian pondered, his black eyes roving. Drawing closer to the Cossacks he said in a low voice:

“The lord, my master, is high in favor at the Imperial City. He has called you dogs, and bade me order you to stand aside and beat to him with the forehead^[1] as he passes along the road.”

Demid stopped in his tracks, surprized. Ayub, enraged, began to snort and clutch at the hilt of his broadsword. An expression of sullen triumph crossed the olive face of the Circassian, as Ayub controlled himself enough to demand a sight of their papers.

He took the strip of folded parchment that Giorgos drew from his girdle, glanced at the seal and the Turkish writing, and sniffed.

“As I live, though this scroll is a riddle to Christian eyes, the Sultan Mustapha has set his mark at the bottom. At least his seal is here.”

Protesting volubly that the letter was a seguro—a safe conduct—Giorgos managed to whisper to Sir Michael, who was puzzled by the change in the temper of the Cossacks, that it was well the dogs could not read. Demid, who had been studying the open face of the traveler, took the parchment from Ayub and glanced at it, then scanned it a second time, thoughtfully.

“A safe conduct to Satan,” growled the big Cossack. “This bird has strange plumage, and why is he here unless to do evil to Christians, if he bears a letter from the Turk?”

Demid folded up the missive again, his face inscrutable. Even Giorgos could not be sure if he had read the safe conduct or not.

“Time to break our fast,” he observed, glancing at the sky. “Down from your ponies, kunaks. Start a fire and boil millet and mutton—chop a hole in the ice, Ayub. The detachment is in your hand until I come back.”

Taking Sir Michael by the arm, and motioning for Giorgos to remain at the camp, Demid led the traveler aside to some rocks where he sat down and proceeded deliberately to light his clay pipe. Placing the black Turkish tobacco in the bowl, he laid a pinch of tinder on it and struck steel against flint until he ignited the tinder.

“This paper,” he said abruptly in Turkish, “is sealed with wax, yet its true seal is blood. It is your death warrant.”

Demid had full mastery of that tongue, and had seen enough to suspect Sir Michael knew more than a little of it, which proved to be the case.

“Marash! That is strange; what does the paper say? I can not read it.”

“First,” said Demid gravely, “tell me who you are, and your business here.”

IN BROKEN Turki, garnished with many a phrase from the slave-galleys, Sir Michael told his tale. A one-man Odyssey it was, of wandering, of warfare under different standards; yet most of all it was the tale of a restless spirit.

Chief of an Irish clan, Michael of Rohan was—schooled by a monk, one of the wisest of men, and taught by his father to handle weapons well. When James the First sent his deputies into Ireland, and the king’s writ ran in the land, Michael went overseas to the French court. Here he sought his fortune in the wars, and won, instead, knighthood.

Embarking in a French corvette for Sicily, he fell foul of the Barbary corsairs, whose appetite for the plunder of Christian shipping had begun to sharpen. The corvette made a running fight of it and gained the harbor of Syracuse, into which the polaccas of Tunis followed. The pirates beat down the resistance of the mariners and made off with prisoners and spoil unmolested by the forts. Sir Michael was one of the last to fall into their hands, and it was long before he recovered from his wounds.

When he did, it was to be chained to a rower’s bench with the other slaves of a Barbary galley. And he said little of the years that followed, or the shame of them.

Luck sent his galley with a shipment of Christian slaves to Constantinople. While anchored in the roads, off the Asian shore, Sir Michael won free of his chains, aided by a giant negro who told him where the foreign legations were located near the imperial seraglio, and the two decided to risk an attempt to escape. A long swim at night, across the Hellespont, ended the blackamoor; but Sir Michael evaded the patrols of janizaries and reached the gardens of the British embassy. He was not altogether a welcome guest, he admitted, because the discovery of an escaped slave of the Moslems in the house of the consul would have meant a fine of several thousand pounds, and perhaps imprisonment for the ambassador who lived, as it were, on the edge of a volcano.

Luck had not deserted him, for Sir Michael won at cards and dice the clothing that he now wore and the fair rapier. A mandate went out from the palace that all the legations were to be searched and any weapons found were to be taken from the foreigners. Even the duelling-pistols and the sword with which the English ambassador had been knighted were seized by the Turks, but the rapier of Sir Michael they did not gain.

Discovered and identified by his scars as an escaped galley-slave, the former cavalier of France presented the tip instead of the hilt of his weapon and won free to the harbor. After dark he had himself taken out to a Venetian bark that cleared for the Black Sea, having a favorable wind, at dawn, thus escaping search.

Running into a storm almost as it passed the twin rocks of the Bosporus, the bark was driven north for two days, eventually striking on a strange coast. At least it was so to Sir Michael, who, cast again upon the water, swam ashore with his servant, Giorgos. The two made their way to a small trading town at the mouth of a great river, and Sir Michael, learning that the frontier of Christian Europe was not many days’ travel north, hired a sledge hoping to reach in time, the large towns of Muscovy—in spite of the objections of the Circassian who favored waiting for Spring and a ship back to Constantinople.

“HAI—it is clear that you are not a snow-pigeon,” observed Demid. “You are a wild goose, flying to the north.”

Most of the tale was meaningless to him, dealing as it did with kings and wars unknown to the Cossacks. But he was weighing in his mind not the story so much as the man who told it. There was truth in Sir Michael’s eyes, and in the scars upon his hands. Demid knew well the marks of the slave-bench. Many Cossacks had felt the chains of slavery; many were now under the lash of the Turk slave master.

“How,” he asked, “did the letter of safe conduct come into your hand?”

At the British embassy, Sir Michael explained, the Circassian who was hanging about the place had approached him and offered to obtain a general passport—for a small sum in silver. Giorgos had been absent on this business when the Irishman had his fight with the Turkish guards, but the dragoman, who had not been paid, found him aboard the bark.

Giorgos had carried the seguro, saying that he knew best when it should be shown.

Until his pipe was out, Demid thought this over. Then—

“I will read you the paper, Ser Mikhail:

“'I, that am lord of lords, conqueror of Christiandom, King in Babylon and Istambul, governor of the holy cities of Damascus and Mecca—I give command to all pashas, governors and captains in my domain to slay the wandering dog who bears this letter and send his head to my court. The unbeliever is an escaped slave who hath lifted his voice against a true follower of the prophet. My favor to him who carries out my wish. The Circassian servant is to be trusted. Peace to him who directs his steps aright.—Mustapha.'”

To Demid’s surprize Michael burst out in hearty laughter.

“The —— of a' safe conduct!” he muttered to himself, and wondered whether he was to believe the Cossack; but there was no doubting the candor of the young chief.

“Your head—” Demid followed out his own train of thought—“Giorgos would have had it to bear back with him, if my sword had slain you. The jackal did not think that a Cossack could read, so he gave the paper and spurred it on with an insult. Who was this true follower of the Prophet?”

It was Sir Michael’s turn to reflect. His countrymen, he explained, carried on a trade between Baghdad and Damascus by caravan, and recently they had been forced to give a third of their goods to a certain pasha—the Governor of Aleppo—to gain passage for the caravans.

The English ambassador at court knew of this, and Sir Michael had urged him to demand justice from the Sultan for the robbery. But the ambassador was afraid to act, aware that Sidi Ahmad, the pasha in question, was the favorite of Mustapha and the most powerful noble among the Moslems.

“There are eyes and ears hidden about the Imperial City,” grunted Demid, “and they reach even to here. Have you been in Aleppo?”

Sir Michael shook his head.

“No Christian can pass the gates.”

“Hearken, Frank: Have you a master? Whom do you serve?”

“Myself.”

The adventurer shook his head slightly. English, French and Turkish monarchs, he had served them with his youth and he bore the scars of this service; yet faith in princes he had none.

“Good! We Zaporoghians are masterless men. Do you believe in God and Christ?”

“Aye, so.”

“Then make the Sign of the Cross.”

When the Irishman had done so, Demid nodded approvingly.

“We are on the trail of a treasure and a mighty one. It is a hard trail and a steep one, and not often will we breathe our horses. Join us, and you can claim a sotnik’s share in gold and silver, if we find what we seek. If we fail, you will not have a knightly death. Nay, you will taste fire or the stake.”

For a full moment Sir Michael of Rohan studied the impassive countenance of the young chief, wondering a little at its dark beauty which was more than a woman’s, being without fear or consciousness of self.

“No rafik, no road companion will I be, unless you make known to me the end of the road.”

It was not Demid’s liking to speak of his plans, and he was silent a while. Then, with the tip of his scabbard he drew a rough triangle in the snow and dotted the three corners, explaining that the one to the southeast was Baghdad, the one to the north, Trebisond, on the Black Sea, and the third Aleppo.

During this season in Midwinter, the caravan trade from India, Persia and Arabia came partly overland to the Euphrates, but mainly up that river, through Baghdad. Then—the passes of the Caucasus being under deep snow—it was born over the desert from Baghdad to Aleppo, thence to the ports in the Levant.

This flow of silks—even from China—ivory, woven carpets and worked leather, amber, jewels and cotton, spices and gold gave to the Sultan of the Turks his great wealth. Heretofore the Cossacks had some times raided the trading-galleys on the Black Sea, but they had never gone into the coast of Asia Minor, the stronghold of Islam.

Demid sought the value of ten thousand pieces of gold. Few cargoes were coming out of the port of Trebisond, from the northern corner of the triangle. He meant to make himself master of a seaworthy craft when they reached the sea-coast, and sail to Asia Minor.

Sir Michael shook his head.

“To win through to the caravans you would need to cross the upper passes of the Caucasus in Winter. Then, on the trade Routes you would meet the wolf packs, the Kurdish and Arab robbers, out of the hills and desert. So the merchants of the English say. The caravans are strongly guarded. You might cut one up, but then you would be hunted down——”

“We do not look for pickings from the traders.”

“What, then? ’Tis folly for thirty and five to draw sword against the pasha of Asia.”

“True, if we were an army. But we are five and thirty, and we will fight with the heels of our horses.”

“You can not carry off gold pieces that way.”

“Aye, if we put them first in our saddle-bags.”

Demid rose, the ghost of a smile touching his lips.

“It would be folly to sit in one place where the eyes of the Moslems are upon us.”

He put his finger on the hilt of the Irish man’s rapier. “You can use that. How would you thrust against a shrewder swordsman? Openly, at his throat?”

“Not so.” Sir Michael smiled. “I would use my blade clumsily at first—as you did—and pass it under his guard when he struck.”

Springing to his feet, he let his glance rove over the white sea of the snow-bound prairie, the glittering ribbon of the river, and the gray murk that hid the horizon on every hand, as if a shroud had been drawn around that particular spot on the earth. The loneliness of the vast spaces penetrated the spirit of the Irishman like a cold wind that could not be evaded, turn where he would.

To tell the truth, Sir Michael had no joy of this steppe that dwarfed the moors of his homeland, and he yearned for the fellowship of men.

Demid, towering over him, with arms knotted on a placid chest that hardly seemed to breathe, was at home here. The dark eyes of the young Cossack saw not the desolation of the prairie over which a raven circled on slow wings. His mind’s eye saw the tall grass of the steppe under the warm sun, the smoke rising from wicker cottages by the beds of streams—a horse plunging, into a covert whither a stag had started up, and the rider of the horse shouting in exultation of the hunt.

He saw children playing by sleeping cattle, their ears attuned to the ceaseless murmur of the wind upon the prairie-

“I will go with you,” said Sir Michael abruptly. “But I serve myself.”

Demid nodded, pleased. He had added to his small company a rare swordsman.

“We bid you to our bread and salt,” he accepted, gravely, the companionship of the other, and returned to Sir Michael his passport, remarking that it were better burned.

But the cavalier, being anxious to have a reckoning with his erstwhile dragoman, forgot about it. He found, on returning to the camp, that Giorgos was gone. When he asked Ayub how this had happened, the giant pointed to the hole that had been cut in the ice, adding that there was one spy the less in the world.

1. ↑ To make the salaam, in oriental fashion.

IV

AYUB CASTS A NET

“MAD is he, the Falcon—aye, and yonder his mate is mad.”

So said Captain Balaban, whispering under his twisted lip as he watched Michael Rohan casting dice, one hand against the other. Michael shaded his eyes to look down upon the strip of beach and the dark line of the Black Sea.

The Cossack detachment had arrived at the shore and quartered itself upon a Tatar fishing village on the sheltered side of a long headland that stretched like a giant’s finger out into the waters. The score of natives who lived on the neck of land had been rounded up and placed in the care of Togrukh, the essaul, who counted them promptly and let them understand that if one were found missing from the village the rest would be wrapped up in the great fishing-nets of twisted hemp weighted with stones, and dropped into the sea.

“I can read the signs in the sky,” went on Balaban, who had discovered that Michael understood much Turki and could speak some. “When we rode at the heels of the Cossacks through the snow wilderness, spirits howled in our wake.”

He glanced sidewise at Demid who sat near them, apparently asleep, his back against a side of a hut, his sword across his knees. The Cossack chief understood Balaban perfectly, and knew that the howling had been from bands of Tatars who had hit upon their trail at times and pursued, with out coming up with the swift-moving warriors. The first stage of the journey had been made safely.

“Aye,” resumed Balaban, “on horses the brethren do well enough. If they could swim their beasts across to the Asia shore—” he laughed and continued—

“You have more wit than these Cossacks, and it is time you and I took thought for what the morrow would bring us, of evil or good.”

Michael cast his dice and picked them up in the other hand. Never in his twenty- five years of life had he taken thought for the morrow. If he had!

Before his mind’s eye appeared his home in the fens, the stone house with the thatched roof, the bare-footed, long-tressed maids who served him and his, the fold of the countryside listening to the prayers of the old priest—the mist of the sea, and within the house a glowing fire, a nuggin of spirits—talk of other days, over the clay pipes—a comfortable pension from the British king, who would have made him deputy over his clan. Peace and fulness of the body, yet sickness in the spirit.

A deputy, to administer the king’s writ, upon his own people! Better the fortune of the road than that! Michael cast down the dice, his eyes somber.

Then his lips twitched and he laughed. For the first time he saw what the Cossacks on the beach were about. Ayub and some others were heating tar and plastering the sides of the half-dozen fishing skiffs with it. They had been gathering reeds from the salt marshes of the shore, and these they stuck into the warm tar, making a thick fringe upon the sides of the skiffs. Others were rolling up the heavy fishing-nets and laying them beside the boats.

The Levantine looked askance at the Irishman. A Moslem at heart, he considered himself the superior of Christians, who were savages and dolts—although the women of the Franks were fair and spirited. Balaban knew to a dirhem the price they fetched in the slave markets of the Turks, who sought them at some pains—so much for the dark-browed Greek women, so much for the pallid French. A high price for the Venetian maidens, who were better skilled at the guitar and the needle. Once he had sold a French duchess to the captain-pasha of the Turkish galleys in the Mediterranean. A good price, that.

So, a shrewd man, Balaban failed to weigh Michael well. He could not understand a spirit that laughed at the tarred reed skiffs and yet would set foot in the leaky and unseaworthy craft. Still, he felt his way with care, for he wanted some thing that Michael had—the safe conduct of the Sultan.

“Aye, they are mad,” he said again. “I know them. Half a moon have we been here, resting on our heels, and their chief sits and looks at the sea. He has not a plan in his head.”

Thinking that Demid was asleep, Balaban spat on the ground and shook his head.

“Why will not the Falcon tell his plan, if he has one? Did he hope to gain passage in a ship, so that he could raid into Asia? He has posted a look-out, yet the galleys, the caiques and the barkentines that have passed along this cursed strip are under command of the Turks.”

“Taib,” said Michael, in his broken Turkish. “True. What is that craft yonder?”

Against the gray of the sea and the blue of the late afternoon sky a two-masted galley was drawing up to the headland. Balaban had observed it long ago, but had seen fit to keep his knowledge to himself.

“A fast galley out of Constantinople, under oars,” he said, squinting against the glare on the water.

“Why,” asked Michael, “do these craft keep along shore?”

“The Equinox is long past, and the run across, from north to south, is against the prevailing winds—dangerous in this season. The Sultan’s vessels are coasting.”

Michael nodded; with his eyes shut he could vision what was happening as the black ship turned slowly into the half-moon of the protecting headland. It was customary when coasting to anchor at night in such a spot, and perhaps to go ashore for fresh water. But no boat put off from the galley, which now swung idly as the oars ceased moving and were lashed to the rowers’ benches for the night.

The anchor splashed down, and the thick rope to which it was attached ran out through the tunnel-hole at the prow. On the high poop of the galley figures gathered under the canopy to gaze at the shore, and the setting sun picked out the red and green of caftans, the steel of helmet and spear-head.

Along the strip of bridge that ran the length of the vessel a turbaned figure walked, and Michael knew that one of the overseers of the slaves was tossing to the rowers their evening meal—biscuits soaked in oil and vinegar. Plainly the galley was anchored for the night, half a mile from shore.

Demid had been studying it leisurely.

“How many fighters does that craft carry?” he asked Balaban.

“’Tis a one-bank galley, a courier ship, without cannon. Forty slaves at the oars, a score in the crew, wardens, helmsmen and officers—perchance thirty in yonder company on the poop.”

“Come,” said the Cossack, “here is metal for our welding.”

He turned toward the fires over which the pots of gruel were heating, but the Levantine plucked Michael by the sleeve.

“A wager, O Frank. My sapphire girdle against the scroll you carry in your wallet—'tis worthless to you, now.”

“Can you read the writing?”

Balaban shrugged.

“I have a mind to it. One cast of the dice——”

“For the bearer, the seguro is a death warrant.”

Now the mind of the Levantine read into this response that Michael valued the paper and would not hazard it. So his desire for it grew the more. Time pressed and he spoke under his lip. “Hearken, O Aga—leader of warriors— You and I have our feet in the same path. If the Cossacks are cut up we must look to ourselves. I can serve you, and you me.”

“How?”

“What will be, will be. A pity if this Falcon falls under the sword, for he would be worth a thousand gold pieces alive—and a prisoner.”

“On which side are you, in this war?”

Balaban raised his eye to the evening sky and lifted both hands.

“Am I not with the Christians, O my Aga?” Adding under his breath—

“May Allah the All-Knowing cast me down, but I give them cause to remember me!”

Michael studied him a moment and suppressed a grin.

“Be it so. My safe conduct against your girdle upon one cast of the dice.”

Gathering up the dice carelessly, he tossed them down on the earth.

“Bi’llah!” Balaban muttered, for the adventurer had made a good throw.

His eye dwelt watchfully on Michael, who, grave of face, turned to glance at the galley. And in that second the Levantine cupped the dice in his hand, rolling them off his fingers as if awkwardly as Michael looked down upon them.

“A main!” cried the Irishman. “The paper is yours.”

Satisfying himself that no one was aware of the transfer, Balaban thrust it into his girdle and strode off, well-pleased with himself and utterly unthinking that the Christian had permitted himself to be cheated. Michael considered him philosophically.

“What will be, will be, quoth’a. Yon swashbuckler hath rarely the air of a Grand Turk.”

From the beach the Cossacks were running up to where Demid stood in the center of the village street. The hamlet itself was half hidden from the galley and already mist veiled the outline of the beach.

“My children,” said Demid, when the last man stood within hearing, “we have come far, and now our path lies upon the sea. Before now, I have not said what was in my mind. We are going against yonder galley with our sabers. What do you say?’

“Good, father,” muttered Togrukh. “We will pound mightily with our blades.”

“That is not all. It is not my plan to frolic on the black waters. What will it avail us to take the chaff that floats on the waters? Word came to me in Kudak that, over the Black Sea, is a treasure city of the Turks, where the caravans from Arabia and Persia unload. In command of this city is a pasha, to whose fingers stick the red gold and the gleaming jewels that pass through Aleppo. This pasha is Sidi Ahmad.”

“True, ataman,” observed Balaban readily. “My silver girdle against your scabbard that you do not come upon Sidi Ahmad unaware.”

Demid looked at his men thoughtfully.

“It is far to Aleppo. We do not know what we will find on the way. For some of us there will be a grave dug; others will taste of the torture stake. God only knows who will see the Siech again, or when.”

The warriors nodded, stroking their mustaches, and eyeing Demid expectantly. Not quite understanding his plan, they were assured that the young chief would lead them to the place where they might set hands on treasure.

Balaban’s eye glittered mockingly. He knew more of Aleppo and the road thither than his companions.

“If any one of you,” Demid glanced at Michael and Balaban, “has no heart for the stake, let him take his horse out of the line and fill his saddle-bags with fodder. No blame to him.”

Togrukh ran his eye over his detachment menacingly, but the warriors did not draw back.

“Then,” went on Demid, “from here, we are on the march. If one of you is found drunk—a pistol-ball in the forehead. If a brother turns aside to gather up silks or trinkets or silver, his saber will be broken.”

“Father, we hear! Shall we go against the ship before dinner or after?”

“After.”

Demid took Michael aside.

“It will not be like snaring birds—tackling the galley. You are not one of us and you need not go in the boats. Two men must guard the horses——”

“Not I, ataman.”

The adventurer smote his hip with relish of a sudden thought.

“With your leave—I will snare some birds. Aye, the nets are ready.”

While the chief listened, he explained carefully what was in his mind. Demid considered a while, with deepening interest.

“But who would cast the nets?” he asked at length.

Near them, outlined against the sunset, the giant form of Ayub stood. The Cossack, with his companions, was praying before the evening meal, his arms raised, facing in turn to each quarter of the horizon.

“There is one who could do it.” Michael pointed him out.

WHEN the Great Bear, glittering overhead, indicated midnight, the Cossacks embarked. All the clumsy arquebuses were left with the horse guard, and Demid gave command that no pistol was to be fired until they gained the galley’s deck; he himself took one of the caiques, the long skiffs, that were to approach the stern—Togrukh the other. Ayub, with ten warriors guided the third skiff toward the bow of the Turkish ship and with him went Michael.

In the waist of the skiff the Tatar fishermen, brought for that purpose by the Cossacks, moved the oars slowly through the water; the warriors, with drawn sabers, knelt in the bow, their heads concealed by the fringe of rushes fastened to the skiff’s side. Michael made himself comfortable on the great fishing-net at Ayub’s knees.

The night was bright—too bright for concealment—yet, obscure against the loom of the shore, the skiffs covered two-thirds of the distance to the galley without being observed.

Michael made out the tall mast, with the clewed-up lateen sail, the hanging pennons and burgees; he could hear the low voices of men in the lookout over the beak of the galley, mingled with the tinkle of a guitar from the poop where colored lanterns gleamed. A figure passed slowly back and forth along the bridge above the slaves, snoring on their benches.

A faint breath of wind, and he caught the odor of the rowing-benches which is not easily forgotten—the stench of sweated rags, of foul water and human flesh. The skin on his back prickled over the healed scars that had been given him by a warden’s whip. Another scent came to him, the incense and rose-perfume of the poop that served to keep the stink of the rowing-benches from the masters of the galley.

By its rig and the cut of the beak he was now satisfied that the galley was from Barbary—an Algerine, most likely, on business of the Sultan—a swift craft, adapted for fighting. This meant that a good watch would be kept, and that the two fight cannon in the forepart would be shotted.

This fact he could not make known to Ayub. Besides, it was then too late to withdraw. A voice hailed them sharply—

“What is there?”

Ayub muttered under his breath, and a Tatar made answer as instructed.

“We have fish for the noble lords.”

The sounds from the poop ceased, and a man in gilt mail and a green turban stood up by the lanterns.

“Kubardar—have care! We will make fishes of you, filth eaters. Be off!”

But the skiff rowed nearer, more swiftly now, and there was a moment’s silence while the watchers on the galley puzzled over the screen of rushes. A lanthorn was thrust over the forward rail, hardly eight feet above the surface of the black water. By its gleam Michael made out the muzzles of two perriers peering over the beak, and Ayub thrust the tiller to one side, turning the skiff to avoid the ram.

A shout from the look-out, a pattering of feet, and the clash of cymbals, as the Cossacks crouching in the skiff were seen. Pitch torches began to sizzle over their heads.

“Mud-fish!” bellowed Ayub, dropping the tiller and catching up one end of the long net. “Wriggle out of this if you can. U-ha!”

“U-ha!” roared the warriors, springing up. The giant Cossack was swinging a length of net over his head. Weighted as it was with stones in the corners, it gained momentum slowly, but soon whistled through the air like one of the lassos of the Cossacks. Michael stepped clear of the other end as Ayub grunted and released the net just when the skiff drifted abreast the low forecastle of the galley, a spear’s stretch away.

The twisted hempen mesh spread out in the air and the stones thumped on the deck as arrows began to flash toward the skiff. Pulling on his end of the net, Ayub drew the boat against the galley’s quarter.

Entangled in the mesh, several Moslems struggled to win clear of it. Taken completely by surprize, their efforts only served to draw the strands tighter. As many more—sailors roused from sleep—drew simitars and sprang to the rail barely in time to oppose the Cossacks who climbed up aided by the strands of the net, by the beak, and the muzzle of the cannon that gaped at them silently.

One pitched into the net on the deck, an arrow through his jaw, but the rest cut down the Moslems before they could flee to the runway leading aft. The sailors caught under the net were despatched at once.

Meanwhile torches flared up, and bedlam burst forth in the waist of the ship. The slaves, awakened by the fight, were howling, cursing and praying in a dozen tongues. Lacking time to chain their arms, the Moslem wardens who had sprung to the bridge were hewing down the bolder spirits who had stood up. Plying long blades, the guards thrust and cut down into the shadows until Ayub sighted them and leaped upon the runway his broadsword gripped in both hands.

“Death to the sheep-slayers!” he roared, striding forward.

The runway, serving as a platform for the! overseers, was wide enough for only one man to wield a weapon, and the first Moslem who faced Ayub set his back to the mast around which the bridge ran. The big Cossack swept aside the warden’s steel and hewed back. Biting into the man’s ribs, the heavy blade turned down, ground through the spine and sank to the hip bone on the other side.

Michael, at Ayub’s shoulder, saw the doomed Moslem actually fall apart, his body dropping over upon the slave’s bench, his legs twisting on the runway. At once the rowers were on their feet, their hairy faces gleaming, their hands straining at the chains that bound their ankles to the deck.

Three of the guards now formed abreast on the runway; the two, in the rear thrust their long spears past the center man, who glared at Ayub from behind his round shield.

The prospect of having to deal with three weapons instead of one did not halt Ayub, whose blood was up. Luckily for him the Cossacks on the foredeck used their pistols and the leading Moslem stumbled forward to his knees. Then the broadsword flashed and Michael saw the two remaining guards knocked over the rail of the runway as if the mast had fallen upon them.

They fell into the upstretched hands of the slaves, and Michael was glad to look away, toward the poop where a hot fight was in progress.

Demid, in his shirt-sleeves, had climbed over the rail of the afterdeck followed by a dozen warriors. Long pistols flashed from behind him, and cleared a space for the Cossacks to set their feet. A score of white turbaned janizaries faced them, plying simitar and dagger, while nearly as many under the reis of the galley defended the other rail against Togrukh and his men.

As more of the Moslem swordsmen came up from the cabins, where they had been asleep, the captain of the galley drove back Togrukh, casting him bodily into the water.

“Yah Allah!” they cried, triumphantly.

“U-ha! Christ!” echoed Ayub’s men, pushing forward along the bridge.

This shout drew the attention of the reis, who, experienced in hand-to-hand fighting aboard ship, determined to clear the run way. He feared the slaves who were striving desperately to win free of their bonds and take their share in the fray now that the slave guards had been slain.

For the moment the Moslems had the upper hand. Good swordsmen all, they were fired with the ardor of their race, and to Michael it seemed as if they were a picked lot, and the galley no ordinary merchant craft.

When a dozen of them swarmed down the steps to the runway after the reis, Ayub stepped forward to meet them. But he felt an elbow in his ribs, and looked down to see Michael slip past him. The cavalier took his stance in the center of the narrow bridge, and the light from the spluttering torches glittered on the slender rapier. Perforce the big Cossack hung back, for to press against Michael would be to throw him off balance, and already a youthful warrior was rushing upon the rapier point.

Gliding rather than running, the Turk struck down at the slender weapon of the cavalier. Then, leaping bodily through the air as a panther springs, he brought down his left arm that held a curved dagger.

Quickly as the Turk attacked, the wrist of the swordsman forestalled him. Michael’s rapier flickered around the simitar and passed through the heart of the Turk, who fell heavily to the planks.

Drawing his blade clear at once, Michael faced the bearded captain who came on crouching, shield advanced before his throat, mail encasing his body.

Thus, he presented no opening for a thrust. His black eyes over the round, leather shield glittered. Twice he cut powerfully at Michael’s head, and twice the curved blade slithered off the rapier that moved only in tiny circles before his eyes.

“Reload your hand-guns, dog brothers,” snarled Ayub over his shoulder to his men who pressed close behind him.

Michael studied the eyes of his foeman, and when the reis lunged three inches of steel passed into his knotted forearm, and withdrew, all in the same instant. Pain maddened the Moslem who began to slash fiercely, yet as he did so, felt the burning dart of the rapier point into his biceps.

Foam flew out on his beard, and he lunged with all his remaining strength. In so doing he let the shield drop just a little, and, swifter than the eyes of the intent spectators could follow, the rapier flashed into the beard of the Moslem and its point came out at the nape of his neck.

He coughed once convulsively and straightened to the toes. Then Ayub thrust the cavalier aside and rushed with his mates upon the captain’s followers. Long pistols barked in the Cossacks’ hands, and smoke swirled around the twisting figures.

A shout of dismay went up from the poop at the fall of the reis, and Michael, satisfied with what he had accomplished, saw that more Cossacks had come up under Togrukh who dripped blood and water alike as he moved. All hope of victory now left the janizaries who fought stubbornly in knots and were cut down by the heavier weapons of the Cossacks.

To the astonishment of the Moslems, when a score of them were still on their feet, Demid held up his arm and offered quarter.

“Mashallah!” cried one, his lips snarling. “Are we to be thrown to the rowers?”

“On my head,” Demid made answer in their tongue, “it shall not be.”

First a few and then many, the simitars clattered to the deck and Togrukh gathered them up. Above decks, resistance on the galley was at an end.

TAKING with him one of the unwounded janizaries Demid made his way down the steps into the after-castle, the long, narrow cabin that perched on the upward slope of the galley’s stern. Several Cossacks hastened after him, to ransack the castle.

A great lanthorn, gleaming with many colors, revealed a confusion of carpets and mattresses, tabourets that still bore little bowls of coffee, garments and the chests of the Moslem warriors. Incense was burning and its pungent scent mingled with the acrid odor of powder.

The cabin seemed deserted, and the Cossacks, listening, heard only the splash of bodies thrown over the galley’s rail and the thumping of booted feet overhead.

What held their attention at once was the pair of glistening black forms erect against a heavy teak lattice at the upper end of the cabin. Two Ethiopians stood here, upon a kind of dais. They were naked to the waist and they held drawn simitars; only the sweat that shone on their skin and their rolling eyes marked them as living beings, so still did they stand.

“What men are these?” Demid asked the captive.

“Eunuchs of the mighty, the merciful Protector of the Faith. They are a guard set over the treasure.”

“Bid them throw down their weapons.”

“O my lord, a higher command has been laid upon them by one greater than I.” The soldier lifted his hands indifferently. “Also, they are deaf mutes.”

Impatiently Demid ordered his men to disarm the mutes without slaying them, and the Cossacks sprang forward obediently. The slaves struck out wildly, and defended themselves with fingers and teeth after they were thrown to the deck. It was more difficult to break down the wooden bars that had been built into place without any door as far as Demid could see. He tore down a damask hanging within the lattice, and stared in silence at the treasure of the galley.

At the end of the cabin and raised above it by several steps was a large recess made comfortable with silk rugs, draperies of cloth sewn with gold, and pillowed couches.

“Women!” Balaban’s voice was exultant.

Straight as a spear, a young girl stood beside an older woman who crouched, wailing and tearing at her hair. One glance the serving maid cast at the Cossacks, and straightway ripped off her jade armlets, her rings and even the long earrings. These trinkets she pushed toward them, on the floor, and fell to beating her forehead against the rug.

The Cossacks glanced inquiringly at Demid who shook his head without speaking.

Balaban stepped forward and thrust his knee against the attendant, rolling her over on the floor; then, turning up her face with his foot, he pulled off her veil and stared at her, scowling.

“Wrinkled as a quince,” he observed in disgust, “and boney as a camel, by the Unshriven One. A scavenger of —— would flee from her if she smiled.”

And he stooped to pick up the ornaments, muttering at their poor quality as he put them into his pocket. His eyes gleamed as he contemplated the young girl.

“A veritable moon of delight,” he leered. “Surely the angel Riwah hath opened the gates of paradise and let out this houri.”

And he made a motion to pull aside the yasmaq, the veil which all Moslem women must wear before the eyes of men.

“It is death to touch me,” the girl cried, in a clear, high voice.

Balaban, a little disconcerted, glanced at her robe of flowered silk, her tiny slippers, embroidered with diamonds, and the long sleeves that concealed her hands.

“On her girdle—the writing on her girdle!”

He pointed at several Turkish words sewn upon the length of green silk that wrapped the body of the girl under the breast.

“‘The treasure of the lord of lords.’ Ohai, my Falcon, that means the Sultan and this is one of his women.”

Even Balaban hesitated to set a rude hand on one who had been taken into the household of Mustapha, knowing that to do so would be to place upon his own head a price so great that life would be sought of him in the uttermost corners of the earth.

“What is your name?” Demid asked the girl.

“Lali el Niksar—Lali, the Armenian.”

“Are you a sultana?”

She shook her head, the dark eyes watchful and defiant.

“A slave?”

“Taib—true.”

Hereupon the maid saw fit to voice the importance of her mistress, hoping to impress it upon the Cossacks. “Yah khawand—my lord, she is a pearl of the palace, a favorite singing girl. How many times has she been given a robe of honor! How often have noblemen offered a thousand dinars for her! She knows the rarest Persian verses, aye, the blandishments of the Greeks, and the dances of the Cairenes. The child can wag her tongue with priests, even as she can confound the wits of the young warriors——”

“Peace, or your tongue will wag no more. Is she a captive?”

The old woman hesitated for a bare instant.

“O captain of a host, it is not so with her. They call her the Armenian, but she was raised from childhood in the imperial seraglio. May I burn, but that is truth. Now she is sent as a gift to Sidi Ahmad, Pasha of Aleppo, as a token of the favor of the Sultan to that great lord.”

“Was a writing sent with the girl?” asked Balaban, frowning.

“Beyond a doubt, the aga of the janizaries had it upon him. He was our leader.”

Demid gave command to his followers to search for the body of the officer and retrieve all papers before it was thrown into the sea; also to ransack the quarters of the reis. The serving woman grew bolder because no harm had been done to her mistress, and plucked Demid’s sleeve.

“O thou captain of men, take thought for the profit thou canst garner. Turn the ship back to Constantinople; ask what ransom thou wilt of the Grand Signior, and it will be granted if the hand of an unbeliever is not laid upon the singing girl. Aye, even to two thousand pieces of gold, it will be granted.”

The lidless eyes of Balaban blinked shrewdly, as he tried to gain a glimpse of the letter that one of the men brought to Demid presently. Two thousand pieces of gold would tempt most men.

“The price is not sufficient,” responded the Cossack chief, who was scanning the parchment.

It was not, as he had hoped, a pass for the janizaries, nor did it contain directions as to the route to be taken to Aleppo. But it gave Demid food for thought, in that it contained a veiled reproach from Mustapha because Sidi Ahmad had not sent the revenues from the captured provinces of Armenians or the tax from the caravans for the last year.

Mustapha said that a general campaign was to be undertaken against the war-scarred nations of Christian Europe in the Spring—that he, Mustapha, had broken the power of the Cossacks, and concluded a secret treaty with the nobles of Poland by which the Poles were excused from paying tribute to Constantinople, so that the way into the cities and monasteries of Hungary and Russia was opened.

“Gold,” muttered Demid angrily to himself. “When will gold buy peace? Nay, the point of the sword is surer.”

The letter concluded with an order for Sidi Ahmad to set out from Aleppo over the mountain passes to the Black Sea, as soon as the snow melted, with horses and men and the revenues of the Sultan. As surety of the favor of Mustapha to the first of the pashas, the singing girl was sent.

“The Sidi must be a strong prince,” Demid reflected, “for the Grand Signior uses soft words with him. Aye, and Aleppo is far from Constantinople. That is well, for us.”

THE kohl-darkened eyes of the singing girl did not appear to look at Demid, but under the long lashes they studied covertly the face of the young chief. In it she wished to read her fate. And it piqued her that she could read little.

Demid had dismissed every one else from the women’s cabin; he had stationed the two blacks on guard again at the broken lattice, and now stood looking out of the oval port, apparently listening to the sounds on the upper deck where the captives were being chained to the rowers’ benches.

The girl, too, heard the uproar of the slaves who were being freed from their chains. Her eyes, over the silk veil, were stoic, although the flowered robe quivered where her heart beat thuddingly.

Suddenly the muscles of her slender arms tensed, and her eyes snapped angrily. Demid had reached out swiftly and grasped both her wrists under the wide sleeves. A moment she strained, gasping, and then, feeling the power of the man, ceased struggling. From the limp fingers of one hand he took a dagger that had been hidden by the sleeve.

“Yah shatir—captain of thieves! Prince of hyenas, father of treachery!” she cried. “Can a dog change his hide? Eh, wah! He can not. Nor can a son of ill-born robbers stay his fingers!”

Between those same muscular fingers Demid snapped off the blade of the poniard and tossed the steel out of the port, returning to Lali the hilt, set with sapphires and gold bands.

“Keep all your jewels, singing girl,”, he observed, “for the time will come when you will need them.”

“And how, my ruffian?”

“To make you beautiful.”

“Boar of the steppe, what know ye of beauty? I have heard of your people; they spend their days digging in the ground for roots, or feeling hens for eggs. Aye, Kazaks, vagabonds, eaters of filth—ye ride two on a horse, ye suck the juice of one weed and swallow the smoke of another!”

Her tongue was barbed with the caustic wit of the seraglio women, and yet Lali was not a woman in years. Robbed of her dagger, she resorted to her readiest weapon, but even this failed her for very rage when Demid ran his hand over her girdle and dress to satisfy himself that she had not a second weapon concealed about her.

“You have put your hand upon me, O caphar—O, unbeliever! For that they will draw you on the stake with horses. I have seen it.”

“And what are you?”

The gray eyes of the Cossack gleamed from his dark face, and Lali caught her breath to study the splendid head of the warrior. He towered over her, unmoving, and unwearied. She had felt the strength of his hands, and now she answered the challenge of the gaze that searched her thoughts.

“I am the daughter of a cral—a chief.”

“Then you were not born in the seraglio, as your woman said.”

Lali considered for a second or two, which was long for her.

“Nay, I was born in the mountains, among my father’s people, the Armenians. He was killed in a raid, and the Turks carried me off with the other children. But what is that? I say to you that you are a fool, if you spare me, for you will be tortured when the soldiers take you.”

A flash of memory, and she saw how to make the Cossack flinch.

“Ohai, my captain of rogues, I have seen your warriors in chains in the city of the Sultan, aye, and dying on the rowers’ benches. Your chief I saw, when Mustapha paraded the captives before the palace. He was like the grandfather of the eagles and his hair was white.”

“Rurik!” cried Demid.

“So they named the Kazak. They hold him and his comrades for ransom of which the Grand Signior has need—otherwise their Kazak heads would have been salted and set up outside the gates. The shoulders of Rurik were bent by shame and he walked slowly like an ailing ox.”

So said Lali, fiercely, delighting in the shadow that passed over the brow of the young warrior.

“If you would not share his fate, free me and go back to your fishing-boats. There is time.”

“Time,” mused Demid. “Aye, but little for what is to be done.”

“Yet enough, O youth,” she added softly, “to serve the king of kings, whose memory is long—-who can reward you with a province. A thousand amirs ride in his suite, and the Frankish kings bend low their heads to him. Only your cral stands apart from the court,” she added, “chained.”

Lali laughed under her breath, seeing Demid turn to a couch and sit down, holding his head in his hands. She was quite surprized when he remarked presently that she should fetch food and set it before him. Even her forehead flushed at the command.

“I, to serve a boar of the steppe! I, who go to the pasha of a kingdom? What words are these words?”

“A command, Lali.”

Togrukh or Balaban could have told the girl that the Cossack had a habit of never repeating an order; nor, once given, did he change the order. Experience had taught them the value of obeying Demid at once, and discussing the wherefore later. But Lali had come from a narrow world where her sisters were mistresses of numberless slaves. Slaves themselves, they often ruled the Moslem men through beguilement and flattery.

In the world of this child, the person of Mustapha and all that belonged to him was sacred. She had her share of the instinctive wisdom of her race and sex where men were concerned, and had decided against flattering Demid. Moreover, she had the pride of her birth.

“I will not. You will be torn in pieces.”

“First, Lali, bring that tabouret and set out whatsoever you have.”

The girl grew quiet, staring round-eyed at the motionless Cossack.

“If I do not?”

Demid looked up.

“I will bind you, little song-bird, and put you through yonder port. Once the sea embraces you, there will be no more song.”

He meant what he said, Lali decided at once. In her unfledged spirit there was no great fear of death. What was ordained would come to pass, and not even a favorite of the palace could outwit the Severer of Society, the Ender of Days. Even before she had been taught by the instructors of the seraglio to walk with the swaying step of a gazelle, or to sing, low-voiced, she had seen women led away to be strangled, and once a sultana had been poisoned at her side during a feast. But the sea!

Lali shivered, and glanced at the curtain behind which she knew the negroes were standing. Little use to call them, now, when the Cossack had his sword. She thrust forward the tabouret with a slippered foot.

She wondered if she was finding favor in the eyes of the chief. It was possible. So Lali changed visibly. She rolled up sleeves, disclosing slender arms bearing the finest of bracelets, and went briskly to work fetching sugared fruits and rice and saffron and bowls of preserves from the cabinet that served as a larder.

Demid eyed the array of dishes with disgust, and she made a sign ordering one of the negroes to go for wine.

“Bid the other,” suggested the warrior, “draw back the curtain. Let him summon hither some of my men and also the galley slaves.”

“Fool,” she whispered, “would you have them set eyes on me?”

As Demid made no further remark she concluded reluctantly that he meant what he said.

In a moment there came trooping to the lattice bearded Cossacks, weapon in hand, and gaunt, shambling figures reeking of sweat and wine. They thrust aside the blacks and pressed close to the openings. As a swift current draws flotsam upon a stream, the singing girl drew their eyes.

“This captive,” said Demid, putting his hand on the girl’s arm, “is mine. If any of you venture to the lattice again, a ball in the forehead. Have you heard?”

“We hear, father!” cried the Cossacks, who stood erect, arms at their side.

As they were trooping away Ayub came swaggering up, his duties on the upper deck at an end. He sniffed at the negroes; then his glance wandered through the lattice and his jaw dropped when he beheld Demid at ease on the couch, emptying the goblet of wine.

“Oho!” he roared, thrusting his great head through the aperture, “Sultan Demid, it is! May the —— fly away with me, but I thought your sconce had been cracked by a simitar, so long were you below. Aye, that would have been better than this, for your writs would not be covered up by a petticoat.”

A smile curved Demid’s thin lips. Ayub had a deep conviction that all women were witches—the more beautiful, the more dangerous.

“You wall be safe from my men who have seen that you serve me,” he said gravely to the flushed girl. “Meanwhile, consider this, Lali. Our road leads to Aleppo, and thither we will take you. You have a mind to stratagems, so beat your wings against the cage, if you wish, but do not forget that you must please Sidi Ahmad, or the Sultan’s gift would be vain.”

Lali bowed, deeply puzzled.

“When will my lord visit his slave again?”

“When the slave summons the boar of the steppe.”

The curtain fell behind him and though Lali ran to it and listened she could not make out what the Cossacks said to each other. She contemplated the untouched dainties, frowning. Then tripped to an ivory chest and drew out from a pile of garments a mirror of burnished bronze.

Glancing around to be sure that she was unobserved, she snatched the veil from her cheeks and stared at the image in the mirror—at the delicately moulded cheeks, the fair, white throat and the lips that had been termed rose-petals by her women. She pushed back the strands of dark hair, to see the better.

Lali had believed in her soul and her women had assured her that the first man to look upon her unveiled would become her slave. And the Cossack had not so much as touched the veil.

“HAVE you eaten opium? Has a vampire settled upon you and sucked your brain dry?”

Ayub walked around his comrade and contemplated him from all sides with the greatest amazement.

“Did I hear you say you would take that peacock to—Aleppo?”

“You heard.”

Ayub’s head had room within for only one idea at a time. Now he scratched his skull with stubby fingers, caked with dried blood.

“With the Don Cossacks? With me?”

“You will have her under your care, for she is valuable to me.”

The big Cossack crossed himself and breathed heavily.

‘T would rather shepherd yonder turtle-doves of the rovers’ benches. Nay, kunak, in what way have I crossed you? Has the young witch begun to make play with you already—like a fish on a line? Hearken, Demid, I was with Rurik when he stormed a galleon of Constantinople in other days, and when he found a nest of these Turkish girls in the hold, he weighted them down with shot and dropped them over the side. That is the best way.”

“Nay, kunak, she is our passport to Aleppo.”

That night Ayub in common with the other Cossacks drank heavily, for Demid had given leave. But, though he sought enlightenment in wine, he did not grasp what Demid had in mind. How could a woman serve as a safe-conduct? His experience had been otherwise.

“It can not be,” he remarked after long brooding to Togrukh. “If she had been a horse, that would be well, because a horse can be managed even at sea, and, besides, is worth more than a woman. Even our ataman can not make any good come out of a woman on a journey.”

The sergeant sighed and moistened his mustache in a nuggin of mead. He was a melancholy man, and he had troubles enough, at present.

“If the Father says she will be a passport, she will be.”

“A passport to purgatory!” Ayub snorted. “Your horse has more intelligence than you, Togrukh, because he shies at a petticoat. I say the girl is a witch! If you say otherwise I will pound you.”

Togrukh sighed again.

“Then, ataman, let us drink to the witch.”

“Well, this is rare good mead: there is sense in you, sergeant, if a man digs enough to get at it. Let us drink to the witch.”

V

The ways of the sea are blind ways; whosoever follows them knoweth not the end of the road.

The caravanserai of the sea is a place of sleep; whosoever sleepeth within it is not seen again of his fellows.Arab Proverb.

THE Cossacks had learned by long experience on the road to make the most of whatever came to hand. Being skilled carpenters, they were able to remove the central bridge and build horse-pens around the main mast, sufficient for two dozen ponies. This done, they set up larger water-butts at the break of the poop.

Embarking the horses was a problem. Ayub built with the timbers taken from the galley, a narrow jetty at the deepest point of the shore and the vessel was brought up to this during a calm.

The rowers’ benches were rearranged—half a dozen before the horses, as many behind. Three men were put to an oar instead of two, the captured janizaries near the poop on which the Don Cossacks quartered themselves.

Balaban shook his head.

“If we run into a storm, the horses will break loose and bring terror among the rowers. The galley will steer badly, and how is the sail to be lowered?”

“That is your affair,” pointed out Ayub. “What would we do without horses when we set foot in Asia?”

“They will die of thirst before then, because the water will suffice only for a week. Your chief has ordered me to strike out across the main sea instead of coasting. It is a hundred leagues to the southern shore—eight days sailing if the wind holds fair. But what if we have a bonanza, a dead calm? Take thought of this: the oars will not drive the galley against a head wind, nay, nor a cross wind.”

Fortunately the galley was well stocked with foodstuffs, and in the sleeping compartment of the dead reis they found an astrolabe, and an old Venetian compass. No charts, however, were discovered and when they shipped the anchor and set out from the half-moon bay, they were forced to rely on Ayub’s knowledge of the coast line, and Balaban’s reckoning.

The surviving Christian captives—Greeks, Genoese, Spaniards, with a smattering of French and Dutch—pulled willingly, for Demid had promised that once the Asian shore was reached, the galley and all in it would belong to them. They preferred to take their chances in some trading port of the southern shore, rather than land on the bleak Tatar steppe off which the fight had taken place. Moreover their toil was lightened because now they rowed in shifts, and as they labored, their eyes dwelt gleefully on the naked backs of the janizaries once their masters, now chained to the benches.

In such fashion did El Riman, the swift galley, set out to sea.

“Faith,” grinned Michael, casting his eye down the deck, “’tis Jason and his Argonauts, come to life again.”

Leaning his weight on one of the long steering-oars—he and Ostrog shared this duty with Ayub who alone of the Cossacks had voyaged on a galley—he bethought him of the saga of Jason and his men, the first of the adventurers of the sea.

Surely, the Argonauts had been the first to come into this sea, and they, too, had steered for Asia and the court of an unknown king.

“If we had a Medea aboard, now,” Michael meditated, following his whim, “the company would be complete. Aye, we have no sorceress.”

Now it happened then, the day being fair, and the sun warm, Lali in her cabin below was minded to song. The thin note of her guitar seemed to come from the water itself, and the voice of the girl rose clearly to the listening men.

It was a love song of Persia, wild and plaintive. Hearing it, the man who had been sounding the drum to time the stroke of the oars, ceased his efforts, and the Cossacks who had been washing out their wounds with salt water, lifted their heads.

The rush of water and the creaking of the oars did not drown the voice of Lali. The song deepened, sounding the ring of weapons, the thudding of horses’ hoofs, and mellowed to a note of grief, dwindling so that long after she had ceased the warriors strained their ears to catch her voice.

The eyes of the ataman, Demid, sweeping the stretch of gray water, were moody. He was thinking of the steppe, the homeland of the Cossacks, and of another voice. So Ileana, the granddaughter of Rurik had sung to him when he was weary.

Michael, who alone of the ship’s company had known nothing of Lali, gripped his oar hard.

“Medea! Child of Ætes, and mistress of the black arts! By the blessed saints, what other woman aboard this vessel would have a song in her heart?”

The whim seized him again. Here were the Argonauts and he was one of them. They were in search of the Golden Fleece. He wondered what they would find.

“In the name of the Horned One!” The harsh voice of Balaban bellowed at him. “Would you drive us upon the rocks?”

Glancing over the rail, Michael thrust on the sweep, straightening the galley on its course. The drum resumed its beat, but the older Cossacks shook their heads sagely. This singing girl to them was an omen of evil fortune.

During the next week their uneasiness grew. While Balaban was clearly heading south by southeast—between the signs of Sirocco and Levant on the ancient compass—they raised land continually on the port bow. When they should have been, to the best of their knowledge, out in the open sea, they encountered numerous sails passing along the bare headlands of this strange coast.

The aspect of it was not familiar to Ayub, but Balaban, after questioning some of the Genoese, announced that they were passing along the peninsular of the Krim Tatars.^[1] Several of the passing vessels were flying the Turkish colors, but Demid kept his distance from them, and no effort was made to speak the galley. He made several attempts to find water along the coast, and was at last successful.

This replenished the water-butts, and Balaban assured them that only some seventy leagues remained to be covered, across the main sea. Ostrog pointed to the sunset that evening—a red glow, centered in drifting cloud banks.

“A wind on the morrow,” he said to Balaban.

“Aye, wind.”

“Surely we must put in to shore and drop anchor.”

“Nay, the Falcon will not.” Balaban shrugged.

“A falcon is at home on the land; he is not a gull. Bah!”

Oaths flowed from the thick lips of the seaman.

“Aye, pray if you will. It is the hour of the namaz gar, the evening prayer.”

Balaban pointed to the rows of Moslem warriors who were kneeling, facing the East, and going through the motions of washing.

“The wench brings us ill fortune.”

“What will be, will be. My luck still holds.”

The Levantine gave the order to pull away from the lee shore. Two men were sent up the mast to the spar, and the great triangular sail loosed its folds for the first time. But Balaban did not yet make fast the lower corner, to which the sheet was attached.

CLOUDS rose higher against the stars. The glow of a lanthorn fell on the bronze disc of the compass, over which, in the shadows, Demid stood. The surface of the waters was dull and oily, and the galley rolled, so that the Cossacks could not sleep.

Still the oars creaked, as exhausted men pulled in time to the monotone of the drum. It was hard work, for the swells were running strong, but the slaves knew the danger of a lee shore. From time to time a cold breath of air came from the northwest.

“The sea is restless” muttered the Cossacks.

“Soon it will begin to prance and then you will know sorrow,” spoke up Ayub from the darkness.

Suddenly the sail snapped, as if a giant had cracked invisible fingers. The stays hummed, and the galley leaned to port, ceasing its rolling. Balaban had made the sheet fast.

“Lash the oars with the blades aft!” he shouted.

The slaves, expecting this command, hastened to obey, and shouted with relief when the two banks of oars were secured and their labor at an end.

The bonanza had ceased and the wind had come. The galley, deep of keel and slender of beam, rushed ahead through the darkness like a fish-hawk, skimming the surface of the waters, ready to rise into the air.

By the next evening the wind had risen to a gale. Balaban, glancing to the north with the last of the light, ordered the oars inboard and lashed to the rail. White gleamed on the crest of the swells, and a roaring was in the air. Foam flecked the faces of the men and spray, dashed up by the prow, drenched the chilled bodies of the rowers, stretched on their benches.

“It is a maestro wind,” explained Ostrog wisely. “For two days it will lash us. Slay the horses while there is time.”

But the Cossacks would not do that. The ponies staggered against the dip of the vessel and jerked at their halters. One screamed, and another, plunging, broke its halter. The men nearest the frantic animals began to barricade themselves behind piled-up benches.

Balaban and Ayub took one of the steering sweeps, Ostrog and Michael held to the other. A dull creaking began in the depth of the galley, and before the third watch the sail ripped loose from its sheet. Snapping and lurching, it whipped forward from the slanting spar. But the braces held.

The mishap to the sail brought about what the seamen on El Riman had been dreading—the stampede of the ponies. Rearing on each other, and crashing against the rail, half of them were loose in a moment. Demid, running to the break in the poop saw what had happened and went down with Togrukh and a half-dozen Cossacks. They climbed over the barricade of benches, and worked in among the horses, half swept from their feet when a roller came over the windward rail.

Several of the beasts were lost in this wave, borne over the side. Cursing and straining every muscle, the Cossacks worked to get the rest in hand. To add to the confusion on the galley many of the long oars had broken from their lashings. These had to be secured, and the heads of the ponies bound in sacks. With their heads muffled the beasts quieted somewhat, but the gray light of morning revealed the Cossacks still among them, silent and blue with cold.

They were driving ahead in high seas, the tatters of the sail on the spar serving to keep the prow of the galley steady. Rain, in gusts, lashed them, and the whine of the wind sank to a moan.

From the depth of the galley came again the song of Lali, barely to be heard, fitful as the cry of a ghil of the waste. The Cossacks crossed themselves. One of their mates had been washed from the waist and another lay crippled among the horses.

LATE the next afternoon they sighted a Moslem war-galley. Only a mild swell was running, and for some time they had been drawing in to a new shore.

An irregular coast, with jutting head lands and dense forests first appeared and, later, the white walls of houses and the cupolas and minarets of mosques. They had not observed the town until they rounded a long point and found themselves almost in the mouth of a narrow harbor where a score of carracks and galleys had assembled to ride out the storm.

Balaban perhaps, could have told them what they would come upon, but he kept his own counsel, and Demid, after a glance into the bay, gave order to row on, without haste. He made out the ramparts of a fort, and noticed that one of the galleys had its anchor up.

They had no choice but to try to steal past, trusting that no one would think it worth while to send after them.

Sight of a half-dismantled Algerine galley passing the port without putting in proved to be too much for the curiosity of the commander of the war-vessel, and the Cossacks saw its prow appear around the headland before they were two miles distant. Presently smoke puffed from a port in the foredeck of the pursuer, and Ayub swore under his breath.

“Yonder serpent of the seas carries half a dozen barkers, and four-score warriors. Demid, kunak, we must put spurs to El Riman, and outstrip the dogs, or they will pound us with iron balls and sprinkle us with arrows.”

“Aye,” assented Balaban, “nor can you close with them, for the war-galley is handier and by the way the oars dip, the rowers are fresh.”

Demid nodded, observing everything with care, as was his jyay when matters went ill. His own rowers were tired after the two days’ battle with the storm; water had seeped into the hull of El Riman and the galley moved sluggishly. The Moslem craft was covering two spans to their one, and in an hour they would be overtaken. Never before now had he been called upon to defend a galley and his mind misgave him, as to what should be done.

“What is our best course?” he asked Balaban, who stood with Ostrog at the steering oars.

“Row on, lash the slaves and gain what time we may. The sun is near to setting, and when darkness falls we may run the galley ashore and shift, each for himself, in the forest.”

“Better,” growled Ayub, who liked this counsel little, “to turn in our tracks and fall on them with our sabers.”

“They are no lack-wits, to be taken so,” the Levantine pointed out. “Rather, they will comb us over with cannon and bows, and your men will die like sheep.”

There was truth in this, and Ayub glanced helplessly at Demid, muttering that their plight was the work of the witch. Had she not summoned up the storm with her song, and had not the tempest made El Riman like a foundered horse, fit only to drop into a ditch and be plucked by kites?

Demid’s keen eyes studied the polished poop of the pursuer, outlined clearly in the setting sun, and the steady beat of the long oars. Now he could hear the measured throbbing of the drum on the Moslem ship—could make out the lateen sail clewed up skilfully. Every warrior except the helms man and the reis was stretched prone on the deck, to offer less resistance to the air.

“Aye,” Balaban noticed his gaze, “’tis a corsair from Barbary, on cruise in the Black Sea to collect wealth for the Sultan, doubtless. Those —— know the art of racing a galley. Better for you, if it had been a Turk.”

The commander of the corsair was still in doubt as to El Riman, which flew a Moslem pennant; but the fact that she avoided him made him suspicious; in a few moments he would be able to see the Cossacks, and then all doubt would vanish. The distance between the two galleys had been cut in half.

“Lash the slaves!” Balaban whispered to Demid, who gave the order to Togrukh.

The sergeant had picked up a nagaika, a Cossack whip, and was running to the break in the poop when a shout from Ayub arrested him.

Simultaneously, Balaban and Ostrog had let fall the steering-sweeps, and had sprung to the rail at the stern. Leaping far out, they disappeared into the foaming wake, while the galley, without a hand at the helm, lurched in its course.

“Akh!”

The sergeant, in. whose care the prisoners had been, ran to the rail, plucking out the long pistols from his belt and staring down at the swirling water. When the heads of the swimmers came to view, they were a cable’s length away.

Togrukh steadied his hand and fired at the broad skull of Ostrog, the seaman. No splash in the water followed the report, but Ostrog flinched and sank from sight quietly. Togrukh took the second pistol in his right hand and sighted with care.

The weapon flashed, and this time the bullet struck spray a foot from Balaban’s ear. Togrukh, peering through the smoke, muttered to himself, and came to attention before Demid. The renegades had been in his charge, and, except during the storm, he had not left them unguarded a moment. True, he had an excellent excuse, but among the Cossacks excuses were not in favor.

Demid saw Balaban raise an arm and wave it, in taunt, and then strike out toward the onrushing corsair. The Levantine had taken a desperate chance, that the Moslems would pause to pick him up, for the shore was beyond reach at this point. He was able, however to make some signal that caught the attention of the reis, for the oars were lifted, the galley slowed as its momentum ceased, and a rope was cast to the swimmer who hauled himself to the rail.

Turning, Demid was aware of the sergeant, standing at attention, and realized that Togrukh considering himself at fault, expected a blow from his saber or denunciation before the warriors which to a man of Togrukh’s long service was as bad.

“You had an order, essaul. Go forward with the whip.”

“Then there is no blame, father?”

“No blame to you.”

Togrukh’s eyes brightened and he cracked his whip, glancing around to make certain that the Cossacks had heard. Meanwhile the galley gained speed again, for Ayub and Michael had caught up the steering-sweeps. There was now no seaman on El Riman, and a distant shout from the corsair announced that Balaban had lost no time in making known the identity of the fleeing galley.

He had chosen well the moment to make his hazard, for he would be honored for boldness in escaping from the Nazarenes, as well as for the news he brought. Ayub glared back resentfully.

“That fellow has turned his coat so often, —— alone knows which is the lining and which the color. May he burn!”

“We have not done with him,” responded Demid. “A barb is in him that will goad him against us.”

“See the Turk reins in, and slows from a gallop to a trot. He seeks to tire out our men at the oars, knowing that we can not hide our trail from him.”

So said Ayub, and in fact the pursuer settled down to a long stroke that kept him about a mile distant. Aware by now of the exact strength of the men he was following and their lack of seamanship, he could afford to choose his own time to attack. El Riman had drawn closer inshore, but the coast was rocky and bare of cover. They searched it with their eyes, rounding a cliff-like headland, but saw no place for a landing.

It was Michael who first noticed that around the headland the shore fell away and the mouth of a river showed. With a cry he swung hard upon his sweep, motioning for Ayub to do the same, and the prow of El Riman entered the shadows between the hills.

The river was not wide, but it was deep and tortuous, between shelving clay banks. No landing place offered, and Demid gave order to cast over anything that would lighten the galley—water-butts, anchor, and such of the stores as were on deck. Some of the warriors walked among the benches thrusting biscuits soaked in wine into the mouths of the rowers, while others saddled the ponies—to the amazement of the slaves—and filled the saddle-bags hastily.

“The saints grant us a place to land,” muttered Ayub, ‘‘before the Turk comes up.”

But by the time they had passed through the range of hills on the coast and were approaching open country darkness had fallen, and the pursuers were within gun-shot. El Riman limped along while Ayub and Michael strained their sight ahead, making out the channel by the break in the trees that lined each bank.

So the race had been lost, and they were forced to listen to the mocking shouts of the pursuers who were clearly to be seen under lighted flares and torches, set in place on the corsair’s rail.

“They are taking their daggers in their teeth, father,” Togrukh pointed out. “They are ready to attack.”

Demid’s indecision vanished at the prospect of action. Making sure that his leaders understood what they were to do, he explained that El Riman must be run to shore —beached, so that one side should be toward the river. Meanwhile Ayub was to issue to the Chrisitan captives the weapons taken from the janizaries, and the starboard rail was to be cut away in one place, to allow the ponies to jump from the deck and make their way ashore. The defense of the poop he entrusted to Togrukh with a dozen of the Cossacks who had arquebuses and pistols.

“Can you beach the galley?” he asked the cavalier quietly.

“I think so, if you will take the other sweep and do as I do.”

Michael leaned forward to peer into the dark lane of the river. Behind them, the corsair was coming up quickly, her beak cutting into the wake of their galley—so swiftly that already the glare of the torches shone on the water. This light enabled Michael to make out a short sand-bar and the glint of rushes along the shore to the right. Where rushes grew he knew the bank must be muddy and low.

“Weigh starboard oars!” he barked, and thrust his back against the steering oar. Demid followed his example.

“Pull, all!” he commanded, moving his sweep over sharply.

El Riman glided in, diagonally, toward the rushes, and Michael, glancing over his shoulder, saw the corsair duplicate the maneuver.

“Weigh, all!”

Once more he leaned his weight on the steering-oar, bringing the drifting galley parallel to the shore, and braced himself for the shock. The beak of El Riman plowed into the mud and sand of the bar, at the same time that the keel grated over rocks and came to rest in the ooze. Slowly the deck inclined a few degrees toward the land, so that the starboard waist was nearly level with the water.

Red flashes rent the darkness and thudding reports deafened the Cossacks who were scrambling to their feet. The corsair had raked the stranded galley with its cannon, and now checked its course. Its ram ripped slanting along the ribs of the galley, splintering the long oars, and bringing the forecastle abreast the poop of the galley.

“Yah Allah!” howled a hundred throats.

The Cossacks answered with a discharge from their firearms, and Demid sprang to the rail as lithe figures swarmed upon it. Togrukh and his men stood shoulder to shoulder with him and sabers rang against simitars.

“Slash, slash!” roared the Cossacks.

Arrows whizzed down from the higher after-castle of the corsair, and Ayub, running aft, saw several of his comrades fall. The big warrior was in a seething rage because the Christian slaves would not touch the weapons he offered them. Aware that the Cossacks were bound to lose in the fight, they sat passively on the rowing benches, choosing for the most part to go back to their lot as slaves rather than be cut down by the Moslems. Some jumped into the water and waded ashore with the ponies who stampeded as soon as the firing began.

Barely half a dozen followed Ayub to the poop. He was met by Demid who had cleared a space on the after deck for the moment, aided by the cavalier. The eyes of the young ataman were dark with excitement, and his lips snarled. The hot blood raced in his veins, and he longed to cast himself back into the thick of his foes and strike with the sword that served him so well, until he could strike no more.

Upon him, however, rested the fate of his men, and a quick glance fore and aft told him the fight was lost, on the galley. The janizaries were shouting and breaking from their bonds in the waist, and behind them scores of bowmen were wading through the rushes from the corsair, to cut them off from the shore.

“To the bank with the horses!” he ordered Ayub. “Hold the shore.”

With that he sprang down into the after cabin and darted to the lattice, sweeping aside the quivering negroes. Here was gloom, relieved only by a flickering lamp—gloom where smoke swirled around the form of Lali, erect beside the couch, and the wailing maid. Since the capture of the galley these two had not met, and now the fine eyes of the girl stared at him tauntingly.

“Come out!” Demid cried.

“Nay, O captain of thieves, shall I flee when dogs are whipped? Said I not the hand of the Sultan would cast you down?”

Demid stepped through the opening in the lattice and grasped at her waist. Lali evaded him deftly, and laughed as he stumbled over the rug. Then his fingers caught her shoulder and she squirmed, beating at his throat and trying to set her teeth in his forearm.

Her veil was torn away and for the first time the young chief looked into the flushed face. The scent of musk was in his nostrils and the breath of the girl warmed his lips. Tears of sheer rage made her dark eyes brilliant as they flew to his, questioningly.

With the flat of his simitar Demid struck Lali in the side, driving the breath from her lungs. An instant she quivered, and her eyes widened, then half closed as he caught her behind the knees with his left arm, throwing her over his shoulder. He could feel the throbbing of her heart against his throat.

Turning back through the lattice, he raced for the steps, expecting to have to hew his way through the throng of Turks upon the poop. But here Togrukh still stood with one of the warriors, back to back. And Michael, who had seen Demid go down into the cabin, was poised over the stair-head, his rapier making play against three simitars, his lean face expressionless as a mask.

Signing to him to follow, Demid made his way down to the waist of the galley, struck the hilt of his sword into the eyes of a foe who was climbing over the wale, and leaped bodily down into the darkness and rushes. He went into water up to his waist, but kept his footing with an effort. Michael splashed beside him.

Arrows whistled overhead, and once Michael went headlong into the shallows, just as the giant form of Ayub loomed up before them.

“This way. We have the horses.”

He pulled the slender Michael bodily after him, and covered Demid with his long broadsword. On firm ground, under a net work of trees a group of Cossacks were rounding up a dozen ponies.

Demid mounted the first that was offered him, and placed Lali before him.

“To saddles!” he commanded, and as he spoke, beheld Togrukh and the old Cossack in the center of a ring of Moslem swords men on the slanting deck of the galley.

The sergeant caught the voice of his leader over the uproar, and lifted his left hand.

“Farewell, father. Tell—of Togrukh——”

Demid started in his saddle and tightened his rein. Then, realising that he could not leave his men, who were now about him to go to the sergeant’s aid, he whirled his horse and trotted back into the shadows. Once he glanced back, at a shout from the Moslems and saw Togrukh’s head, the eyes still quivering, stuck upon a spear.

“He had an order to hold the after-deck!”

The thought tortured him, and he drove his spurs into the beast under him in silent fury. The Cossacks, accustomed to finding their way about in darkness seemed to cluster about him by instinct. One spurred forward to seek out an opening in the trees. The rest muttered satisfaction. They were ashore, at a heavy cost, but upon the earth again, with horses under them.

NINE times in ten, a company of soldiers thoroughly thrashed and dispersed in strange country would have scattered helplessly through the forest. The cry, “Each man for himself,” would have meant death for all at the hands of the Moslems.

In fact the warriors from the corsair had kindled torches and were searching the wood in bands, expecting to hunt down the fugitives.

On every hand, however, as the Turks advanced, the cries of beasts arose in the brush. The yelp of a jackal answered the whining snarl of a panther, and, more distant than the rest, the howling of a wolf rose steadily. Here and there the thickets ahead of the searchers were shaken by the rush of a four-footed animal.

But no forest animals were there. The men from the Don were at home in timber, and this was their fashion of calling to each other. Single warriors joined together, evaded the torches and made their way to the howling of the wolf, where Demid had assembled the nucleus of their band.

By the time the animal calls had ceased, some score of men, half of them mounted, had gathered about their ataman in a clearing by a ruined farm, and Demid knew that no more were alive, to come.

He satisfied himself that Lali was living and not much hurt, before he handed over the girl to Michael, whom he had kept at his stirrup during the flight from the beach. Then he called the roll softly and discovered that two of the riders were Christian slaves from the galley—an Armenian and a Syrian who had found themselves horseflesh as promptly and skilfully as a Jew pouched ducats. These he ordered to give their mounts to Cossacks.

Without troubling to learn if his men still had their weapons—a Cossack of the Don is separated from the skin of his body as easily as from his saber—Demid asked a question quietly.

“Have we sword strokes for the —— who took Togrukh’s head?”

“Aye, father,” spoke up the oldest of the Cossacks—he who wore two shirts and was called Broad Breeches. “We have sword strokes and we are ready. Once our mothers bore us,” he added reflectively, and a trifle indistinctly, for his upper lip and some teeth had been shot away by an arrow.

The dark line of the forest was kindled by oncoming torches, and the main party of the Moslems who had followed the trail of the horses came into sight, loud-voiced and flushed with slaying. They had put to death the unfortunate galley slaves who had decided to await their coming, and were reinforced by the liberated janizaries.

The bowmen, eyes on the trail they were following, ran forward into the clearing, and halted at the sound of hoofs thudding toward them in the dark. They snatched up their bows and loosed arrows hastily, without seeing clearly what was coming upon them.

Rising in their stirrups and striking on each side, the Cossacks broke through the archers and wheeled about among the scattered groups. In the saddle and on open ground they were different men from the dogged crew that had been beaten from the galley, and so the Turks found them.

Wherever a knot of swordsmen still stood together, Ayub galloped, his broadsword whistling over his head, and the massive blade cut into flesh and bone as a sycthe passes through the stalks of wheat. Half seen in the elusive torchlight, the tall riders assumed gigantic proportions in the eyes of the corsair’s warriors who began to flee into the brush, leaving a score of bodies in the clearing.

More torches were coming up, as the bodyguard of the Moslems with their leaders, deployed from the trees. Demid lifted his head and howled, and the Don men wheeled their horses and trotted back in a dozen different directions, so that the Turks could not be sure where they were headed.

Demid, the last to go, circled his horse within arrow shot of the torches, looking for Balaban. He saw the Levantine, but in the center of a mass of swordsmen. He saw, too, something that gave him food for thought.

The Levantine was armed with a silver-edged shield, and a fine simitar and he was directing the array of the Moslems, although officers of the corsair were at hand. It was more than strange that he should have been put in command, almost at once, of men who had not seen him until he was hauled out of the water like a fish.

“Wing me that hawk!” Balaban shouted to his archers, recognizing Demid.

A dozen shafts whistled in the air, and as the first one reached him the young Cossack was seen to cast up his arms and fall back from his saddle. His body slumped over the pony’s rump, until it was held up only by his feet, caught in the stirrups and his knee crooked over the saddle.

His scalp-lock and sword-arm dragged on the ground, as the horse swept past the torches.

“Shoot, O dullards—O dolts fathered by fools! See you not the man has tricked you?” cried Balaban in wrath as the archers held their shafts to watch the Cossack drop to earth.

He gritted his teeth as Demid, out of range, twisted up his body and caught the saddle-horn.

“Allah grant thee to live until I come up with thee again.

A voice answered, out of the darkness, laughingly—

“And thee, also.”

The sharp about-face of the Cossacks slowed up pursuit that night, and when the next day the Turks moved forward from the farm they followed the trail of the horses to a small village. Here was found no living thing, for the inhabitants had fled to the hills and the Cossacks had made off with a dozen head of horse.

By now mounted men were arriving from the nearest castles of the Turks, and couriers were sent to the outlying begs and chieftains with word to gather swordsmen and take up the trail of the infidels.

Before nightfall the pursuit was on in earnest, and the pursuers were confident because on the sky-line, ahead of the Cossacks, uprose the lofty snow slopes of Charkahna, the Mountains of the Wolves, known today as a spur of the Caucasus.

While the levies of the neighboring begs were coming up, separate riders—Turkomans, on picked horses—were sent ahead to gain touch with the fleeing Cossacks. These reported that the unbelievers were changing horses at each village, and were stocking up with provisions as well as grain and dried camel’s flesh for the horses when they should reach the snow line.

Once they passed into the higher altitudes, the fertile hamlets of the fruit and vine growers and rug makers of the shore of the Black Sea were left behind, and the Cossacks headed in a direct line for the nearest break in the barren peaks that rose, like a bulwark of the giants, in their path.

So the outriders reported and there was satisfaction in the camp of the Turks when word came that the Cossacks had entered this gorge. Because, unwittingly, the fugitives had chosen a blind valley. Here the Mountains of the Wolves could be entered, but the gorge ended in an impasse.

Into this cañon the Turks pressed, sounding their nakars—cymbals—and kettledrums—because some of the Turkoman tribesmen believed that the Mountains of the Wolves were inhabited by ghils. By ghils and by other spirits of waste places.

They remembered these things all the more because snow flurries smote them, and bitter winds buffeted them. They pounded the cymbals and smote the drums, until the wind died down and the flurries ceased and they came to the sheer walls of rock on two sides and a frozen waterfall at the end of the ravine. Whereat they yelled aloud in amazement.

The Cossacks were not in the gorge. Several lame ponies huddled together, but not a human being was in the trap. Upon the ground was only the white sheet of new-fallen snow.

The trap had been sprung and the victims had escaped.

It was vain to look for tracks, and the ponies were palpably left behind as useless. The Turks eyed the wall of rock on three sides with misgivings; no ponies could climb the cliff here, and yet the Cossacks were gone.

“Dil i yarana—be of stout hearts, comrades,” they said, one to another. “The ghils have taken the infidels and without doubt we shall behold them of nights. Aye, fire will rush out of their nostrils, as they spur their ponies through the air while the spirits whip them on.”

With this wonder to relate in the villages they hastened back rather more quickly than they came. Only Balaban smiled his wry smile—

“The time is not yet.”

1. ↑ The Crimea, on modern maps.

VI

IBNOL HAMMAMGI

“AS I LIVE, kunak, you have brewed a fine gruel for our eating,” Ayub throttled his bull’s voice to a rumbling whisper, so that the Cossacks would not hear his complaint.

Some hours before the Turks, Demid and his men had reached the end of the gorge, and now sat their steaming ponies gazing blankly at the ice-coated waterfall, the black sides of the impasse, and the fringe of green firs on the heights above—which might have been the forest of Ardennes so little chance had they of scaling the sides of the gorge.

“Did I not warn you to sprinkle the witch with holy water and drop her into the sea?” Ayub went on, full of his grievance. “You did not, and what happened? First the storm happened and then the Turkish galley, and then Togrukh and his mates performed a deed. Nay, God deliver us from such deeds! Their Cossack heads were stuck on pikes. That is what they did.”

Demid, hands clasped on his saddle-peak, surveyed his company. Fifteen of the Don Cossacks had come through, and now were waiting patiently for him to lead them out of this scrape as he had done out of many another in the past. Sir Michael of Rohan strolled along the nearest rock wall, stretching his legs stiffened by the long rides.

“There she sits, the witch!” rumbled Ayub. “Brewing—for our quaffing. For the last two days you followed the way pointed out by the Armenian youth, her countryman, who swore he knew the snow road through these mountains. Where are we now? Save that we are south of the shore of the Black Sea some forty versts, no one knows. We can not go on, and we can not go back. The Turks have already entered the foothills below, and that hairless jackal, our guide, slipped out of sight last night like a weasel out of a chicken-roost. May the dogs bite him! He knew we were going to halter ourselves in this stall.”

Demid pulled at his mustache reflectively. He had no reason to distrust the Armenian boy, who seemed anxious enough to lead them to safety, and whose life was as much at stake as theirs.

“Have you an idea?” he responded curtly, for the fresh misfortune was serious.

“Aye, so,” answered Ayub promptly. “The witch can work a spell for us as well as against. She can find a way out of this if she will. When I deal with her she will bethink her of a way.”

Taking Demid’s silence for assent, the big Cossack swaggered off to Lali who was cracking walnuts on the pommel of her saddle and chewing with relish. From somewhere she had conjured up another veil, and Demid had seen to it that she had a long sable cloak to wrap around her light attire. Seated disconsolately by her horse were the two blacks who, impelled by a dread mightier than the fear of dismemberment and eternal damnation, had struggled along at the side of the woman given to them to guard.

Standing beside Lali, the head of the warrior was on a level with her own. He crossed himself by way of precaution, and swelled out his chest, letting out a roar of mingled lingua franca and bad Turkish.

“Daughter of unmentionable evil! Wash-woman of the Styx! Wench of the Grand Turk, which is to say the foster-child of Beelzebub himself—you pulled wool over my brother’s eyes, you took him in nicely, you did!”

The wide eyes of the girl met his squarely, and a tingle ran through the Cossack’s veins.

“Demid struck me,” she responded.

“Well, that is nothing. He will make saddles out of your skin and whips out of your hair if you don’t bestir yourself and find a way for us to escape from this spot.”

The dark eyes dwelt on Ayub fixedly and he was aware of a prickling of his own skin that was not altogether uncomfortable.

“Send the captain to me,” she offered at length.

“Impossible. The ataman is in the —— of a fix and has no time for a woman.”

“Is he a great khan in your country?”

“Aye, he is first among the Cossacks, who are all nobles.”

Lali glanced at the young chief, who had just set the men to work preparing food for the noon meal. His long, black coat was more than a little tattered and the white ermine kalpack was torn by thorns. But Demid sat erect in the saddle, his colonel’s baton held on his hip. Lali sighed under her breath—

“He has few followers.”

“Not so, prattle tongue. He has as many as the pasha of Aleppo, whom we will hang on his own gate-post. But these are enough for our needs—Demid’s and mine.”

“I could tell you much of Sidi Ahmad, pasha of Aleppo.”

“Ha!”

“You, who are a man of understanding, know the value of information to a leader. Is the little Frank also a khan, that Demid should talk to him always, and cherish him?”

“Ser Mikhail—aye, he is adrift from his people. I know not if he is truly a chief but he wields a sword——”

“I saw you hew down the Moslems in the fight by the farm. You tossed them about like chaff. Have you forgotten how I bound up your cuts that night?”

Ayub rubbed his chin and looked everywhere but into the dark eyes that warmed his heart like a nuggin of mead on a cold night.

“Child of evil,” he responded sternly, “do not think to trick me. Is there a way out of this lobster-pot?”

Lali tossed away the last nutshell, humming lightly to herself. Her dark head bent nearer the Cossack, who no longer took his eyes from her.

“What is evil?” she asked. “And what are we but leaves, on the highway of fate? We know not the road before us. Ai-a, I have known sorrow.”

She rocked in her saddle and her warm fingers touched Ayub’s scarred fist. A shrewder man than the Cossack would have thought Lali’s lament sincere. And it was.

“Father of battles, I would aid the young hero, but he struck me. I know a way by which he can escape; will you help me to find it?”

“Oho!”

Ayub twirled his mustache, bending his shaggy head closer.

“Now,” he thought, “we are getting the milk out of this cow.”

“How?” he asked.

“Build a fire, a great fire. Place upon it branches from yonder cedars, dampened with snow.”

“Then what?”

“Do that first, then come to me. I am going to summon up my people for your aid.”

Ayub stared and went away. With some pains, he kindled the blaze as Lali directed, and heaped on the branches. To the Cossacks who asked what he did, he explained that the witch had repented, when he—Ayub—had argued with her, and was about to work black magic for their release.

She wanted to speak to the ataman, but he—Ayub—had denied her that. The ataman had warm blood in his veins, and the girl was a very peacock for beauty; she would make eyes at him and melt the iron out of his heart. Perhaps she would make him kiss her and after that the young hero would be as wax in her hands.

So said Ayub, not knowing that Lali had beguiled and tricked him completely in a scant moment.

“But, kunak,” observed the oldest of the Cossacks, scratching his shaven skull. “Our father Demid has steel in his heart. He whacked the fair young witch with his saber. That is the way to handle a sorceress.”

From her pony Lali contemplated the shaggy men with amusement, guessing the subject of their talk.

“O headman,” she called softly to Ayub, “I will bring your Demid to sue for speech with me before the fire sinks to embers.”

“What says the witch?” asked the veteran mistrustfully.

Ayub explained, not altogether at ease. It seemed to him that Lali was too confident. Still, magic was needed if they were to escape from the gorge. Demid had no plan as yet; in fact the chieftain was staring up through the smoke at the narrow walls of their prison, as if contemplating birds in the air. His quiet heartened the Cossacks, who went on munching their barley cakes and dried meat.

“Were you not afraid to let the witch girl touch you?” they asked Ayub.

They believed implicitly in ghosts of unburied warriors and spirits of the waste places—vampires who sucked a man’s blood, hob-gobs who turned horses into toads, and will-o’-the-wisps who could lead even the hardiest astray of a dark night. They were sure that Lali had laid a spell on Ayub.

“Oh, that is a small thing with me,” Ayub swaggered a bit. “When I was born my mother put me in a snowdrift to season me, and though the dogs howled all night and the vampires were thick as locusts in harvest time, I came out without a chill. Once, when I was old enough to ride herd, a witch came into our village in the likeness of a panther to draw some blood from the horses. But I said a prayer and took her by the tail——”

“Only think!”

The Cossacks shook their heads in amazement at such daring.

“—and twisted it. Straightway, she turned herself into an eagle, and tried to fly off, but I had hold of her tail-feathers——”

“Such a man as he was!”

The warriors lifted their hands helplessly.

“—so that she was fain to change herself to a maiden, like a flower for beauty. Ekh, I danced with her a day and she could do no more with me than this peacock—in the name of the Unhallowed One, what are these?”

The Cossacks glanced up in alarm, seeing Ayub’s jaw drop.

“To your sabers!” shouted Demid angrily.

Down the cliff wall on either hand were scrambling human beings who resembled limbs wrapped in coarse wool, long hair hanging about their eyes they glared at the warriors. Some perched on narrow ledges, poising heavy stones; others leveled small bows. Out of the mist and the drifting smoke, shaggy heads came into view silently. Only goats, the warriors thought, could have made their way down the cliffs.

The Cossacks formed in a ring around Demid and the horses. As they did so, a score or more of the gnomes emerged front a cleft in the rock near the fire. They were squat and stoop-shouldered, and they glided forward moving softly in the loose snow. Among the rearmost, Demid made out the brown face of the Armenian lad who had undertaken to be his guide, and who had set him on the path to this gorge.

It was Michael of Rohan, ever careless of events, who laughed.

“Burn me, but here are the wolves of the mountains. And yet—they have come a little early to pick our bones.”

“IBNOL HAMMAMGI, Ibnol Hammamgi!”

The girl, sitting apart from the ring of warriors, called clearly, and at once a shape disengaged itself from the other shapes. This was a bent figure wrapped in a shawl over which thrust out a head bald as a vulture’s. A single glittering eye fixed upon the singing girl;-the other eyeball had vanished from its socket. Ibnol Hammamgi shambled forward and, with disconcerting suddenness, twitched the veil from Lali’s face.

“Eh—eh,” he whined, “verily you are the child of Macari, the cral of our folk. It is eight Winters since Macari, your father, was burned alive by our Turkish overlords because the tithes of our clan were in arrears to them. Yet I know your face.”

“Ibnol Hammamgi, the day the Moslems raided our village, they took me with other slaves as payment of the tithes——”

“Aye, that also is known to me. Our folk numbered you among the dead, daughter of Macari. Until yesterday when the youth, your messenger, came to me at Sivas with his tale.”

“You saw my smoke?”

“I am not blind. We hastened. A goatherd ran up to us with word that many Turks have entered the lower defiles.”

Being headman of the clan, Ibnol Hammamgi would not condescend to question a young woman, but his eye turned appraisingly on the Cossacks.

“They are Franks from across the sea. Their sword edges are sharper than their wits, or they would not be upon the road to Aleppo. I want you to lead them from this place, to our folk. Can you save the horses?”

Ibnol Hammamgi hunched himself closer in his shawl and shook his great head gently from side to side.

“The horses, aye. The men are another matter——”

“You will profit much.”

“How?”

The two spoke together, low-voiced, and in the end the Armenian gave his assent, surlily enough. A bridle chain clinked behind them, and they beheld Demid within arms’ reach. Lali did not draw back.

“Ohai," she greeted him,” the slave has summoned the boar of the steppe, and, lo, he comes.”

“Are these your people?”

“Aye, so. Are you ready to bend the head and sheath the sword, to win safety for your—” Lali, glancing at the young warrior, altered her word—“your men?”

“My men do not bend the head, nor do I.”

Slender hands uprose to her brow in a mock salaam.

“Great mighty captain of beggars and king of nowhere—have you wit enough to understand this. The low-born lad who led you here did so at my behest. This is a trap, sometimes used by my folk, but a trap for pursuers, not pursued. There is a way out, unknown to the Turks, who will think that demons have made off with you, if you come with us——”

“Enough,” whined the cral, who had been sniffing the air like a dog. “Snow is coming down from the crests, and we must be upon the paths.”

He glanced at the gold and silver trappings of the Cossack’s saddle, and at the packs hf the warriors, who had managed to carry off more than a little spoil from the Moslem towns.

“These Franks have chosen good ponies from below. That is well. Will they keep truce with us?”

Lali shrugged and turned to Demid.

“Will you share our bread and salt, and sit down with the maid you struck?”

Demid considered, for he did not pledge his word lightly, and the girl puzzled him.

“Lead us out of this gorge and we will share bread and salt with you.”

She tossed her head, disappointed perhaps because he showed no anxiety to go with her. Ibnol Hammamgi lifted his voice in a shout and his followers began to scramble down from their vantage points. Signing to Demid to accompany him, he trotted away toward the cliff. Passing along it for some distance, he turned in among a nest of boulders. Here the path bent sharply and led into what seemed to be the black mouth of a cave.

Entering, the Cossacks dismounted. Torches were kindled and they pressed forward on foot, drawing the horses after them. The tunnel ended in a narrow cleft in the mountain where the gray light hardly penetrated. Evidently, the Cossacks noticed, the mountaineers were following the course of a stream, now dry, that had once forced its way into the gorge they had left.

Gradually the chasm widened into a wooded ravine, up which they climbed to come out on the ice-coated slopes of the mountains above the timber-fine. The Armenians pushed on with a shambling trot that made the heavier Cossacks pant to keep up. A word of warning was passed down the line as they threaded along a narrow ridge where stags’ antlers, stuck into the stones at intervals, marked the trail. In single file they felt their way where snow drifts on either hand made the road impassable for any who did not know the marks. And, as they mounted again, on firmer ground, snow began to fall.

They had left the Black Sea and its guardians behind.

VII

LALI HAKES A PROMISE

AN IDEA once planted in Ayub’s mind stuck as a burr sticks to lamb’s wool. He was sure that the young witch had suffered a change of heart since her talk with him. Had not the Cossacks been well received by the mountain folk, and given shelter in a large hut that was more than half a cave—so steep was the side of the valley on which the hamlet perched?

Had not these goat-like people brought to them a goodly pot of mutton and rice, and bottles of really excellent red wine? And straw to sleep on? True, the Cossacks had taken much of this to rub down the ponies, and bed the tired beasts beside the fire within the earth hut. They had done this before eating themselves, and refused to give over the horses to the care of the village folk, for Demid had promised a vivid unpleasantness to the warrior who lost a horse.

Demid himself had gone off at sundown to the cabin of Ibnol Hammamgi, leaving the detachment in the hands of Ayub and Michael. They had slept all through the day, having come in the night before on the heels of the storm, and, being rested and fed, Ayub was moved to give tongue to the idea that possessed him.

“It would be a great miracle, Mikhail, lad, if the singing girl mends her ways and uses her arts to aid true men. Aye, a mighty miracle. Yet she touched me—all the kunaks saw her touch me—and here I am with a whole hide and a full belly.”

Now, being quick of wit and having the gift of tongue, Michael of Rohan understood a little of the simple speech of the Cossacks, especially the military commands.

“When you sleep at an inn, keep one eye open for the innkeeper,” he responded, in his own language.

“Eh?”

Ayub bent his head down, for the cavalier’s hat came only to his shoulder. He had grown attached to the youngster, who always listened to his remarks at times when Demid, who used few words, was uncommunicative.

“Why here she comes, the dove!”

Lali in fact was passing the wide mouth of that hut where they leaned at ease, but it was a changed Lali. Her veil and cloth-of-silver had disappeared and her face was pallid under a high lace head-dress. A tight-fitting bodice sewn with silver coins and a voluminous over-skirt of black velvet failed to hide the girl’s natural grace. She saw the two men and made a quick sign for them to follow her.

Ayub coughed and glanced covertly at Michael, who was fastening his collar and adjusting his sword-sling at a more becoming angle.

“It is said among my people,” the Cossack ruminated, “that a Syrian can cheat two Jews, and an Armenian can lift the shirt from a Syrian—but still she looks like a dove.”

The two followed Lali through a dog infested alley, past a donkey-pen and up winding steps where the hovels of the tribesmen could be touched by the hand on either side. Up more steps where children ran out to stare at the girl and to run from the warriors. Sivas was a nest of refuge for the harassed Armenians, hidden in the higher gorges near the caravan tracks. Michael wondered how human beings could exist there in such squalor, not knowing that the clay and the earth of the huts and the grime and the grease of the children all served to insure them gainst the visits of Turkish collectors and janizaries.

Above and beyond Sivas towered the mighty crests of the Caucasus, bathed in the purple and scarlet of sunset—as for bidding and awe-inspiring that day as when the priests of Armenia had walked openly in the footsteps of the Christian saints, who for a brief generation had been the monarchs of men and the counselors of kings.

“Now what is this?” Ayub clutched his arm.

Lali had slowed her steps and turned into a shallow ravine up which ran a broad flight of marble flags, broken and chipped by age and frost. Once she cast back at them a glance mocking and searching, then she fell to working at something in her hand, and when she pressed forward again into the shadows she carried a lighted candle.

They were aware of muffled voices close at hand and a glow from some hidden source. Lali rounded another comer in the rocks, and they halted in their tracks.

Before them uprose the portico of a chapel, but such a one as Michael had never seen before. Columns of blue marble supported it, and within a hundred candles glimmered upon glazed tiles, and images wrought in gold. Lali bowed her head and stepped into the throng of people that stood facing the altar. Every one held a taper, except the watchers in the portico who stared out into the shadows to give word of the coming of intruders.

Ayub, however, thrust past the guards and fixed his eyes on the black figure at the altar—an aged man with a white beard falling down the wide collar that covered his shoulders, who leaned upon the arms of two acolytes as if wearied by the weight of the white stole and black robe.

The patriarch was intoning a chant, in a high, clear voice, while the people sang responses. Ayub listened with open mouth.

“Eh—eh,” he whispered, “here is a batko, a holy father, like ours who was cut up by the Moslems. I will rouse up our lads; they will want to set eyes on the batko.”

With that he hastened off, leaving Michael in the shadow of a pillar. Unobserved, the cavalier watched Lali. When the prayers were ended the girl pressed forward, and there was a stir among the Armenians, when she knelt before the, patriarch. The aged man asked a brief question, and cast the smoke of incense upon her. Out of the white wraiths of vapor the delicate face of the girl appeared, and Michael saw her lips quiver as the priest touched her forehead and shoulder.

With a sudden motion she pressed to her cheek the edge of his robe and then drew back to her place. The heads of the Armenians nodded over their tapers understandingly.

When the singing began again, it was reinforced by the deep voices of the Cossacks, who crowded in eagerly from the portico. Michael now caught the words, which were indeed old and familiar—

“Kyrie elieson.”

It seemed to him that Lali was taking the sacrament, and that in some way she was bidding farewell to the people of Sivas.

He was puzzled by this, for Lali’s nature appeared many sided, and he managed to ask Ayub about it as they made their way back through the snow. A cold wind swept the heights about them, and overhead the stars gleamed like jewels in imperial purple.

“Why,” the big Cossack explained, “the girl was incensed and took a blessing from the patriarch, because she is going to her fate. That is, to Aleppo. Aleppo, they say, is —— and there the friend has his court. It was well we met with such a fine batko—he is the patriarch of Armenia come up from Antioch, in the Holy Land.”

The Cossacks were indeed in vast good humor and the visit to the church seemed to remove all suspicion of them from the minds of the folk. Michael, too, felt at ease and ready for the next turn of affairs. The splendid edifice struck him as something of a marvel, and he did not know that he had been within a chapel built by a Roman emperor, Theodosius, in bygone days.

But he felt a stirring of the pulse, an intimacy with ancient and mighty things. He stood on the threshold of an older world and perhaps within his memory was awakened the pageant of ancestors of his line who had stood upon this ground when the hosts of the crusaders moved about the Holy Land.

Even Ayub was somewhat reflective.

“Well, I did not know that the maiden had changed so much, from a few words of mine. Still, I argued with her amain, and she listened.”

At the entrance to the hut, one of the younger warriors took Michael’s hand with a smile—

“Eh, will you frolic with us this night, Frank?”

“Why this night?”

The Cossack stared, and laughed artlessly as a child:

“Eh, the day after, the ataman, Demid, leads us forth to a long road. It is our custom to frolic before the road.”

So Michael went about with them, and heard the note of fiddles and harps, drank of the red wine, and gazed at the whirling throngs of the young girls who danced before the warriors, encouraged by the shouts of the Cossacks—he shared the bread dipped in wine, and studied the lined faces from which care had fallen away for a few hours.

But most of all he watched the girl Lali, hearing for the first time her voice freed from all restraint, hearkening to the song that had come from her lips on the galley, beholding the grace of her light figure in the dance. And as he watched he frowned a little, repeating under his breath Ayub’s words—

“She goes with us to Aleppo.”

WHEN Demid entered the dwelling of Ibnol Hammamgi he bore with him two heavy sacks that clanked as he set them down near the tiled stove. A dozen pairs of eyes flew instantly to the sacks and lingered desirefully. They were hard, bleared eyes, those of the headmen of the tribe of Sivas—aye, sharp and penetrating withal. They pierced inside the heavy leather sacks and a dozen minds, shrewd as foxes, probed at the value of the things that clanked.

Beards wagged upon the breasts of ancient kaftans, shiny with grease, and the eyes, by a common impulse, travelled to the face of the young Cossack.

It was an open, weather-beaten face, that of Demid. The corded muscles of the bare throat and the slow-moving hands were evidence of lean strength not at first noticeable in that slender figure.

The headmen were satisfied. With half a glance they could pick out a man whose thoughts did not dwell on money values. It was well, they thought, that the stranger was such, because they meant to have some gain out of the windfall. Ibnol Hammamgi, their cral, had saved the thick necks of the Cossacks, and something was owing to the tribe for that—if not gifts, then some horses stolen, a few weapons pilfered by boys—a purse slit here and there by the young women——

Methodically Demid emptied out the contents of the sacks. Gold armlets, a silver head-band] for a horse studded with sapphires, bits of ambergris, poniards from India with ivory hilts, odds and ends of coral. He had gathered together the pickings of the warriors on their ride up from the coast—some hasty plundering, done at his command.

Now, to give the headmen time to weigh the value that was scattered on the rug by their knees, he paused to light his pipe. This served, too, to stifle the smells of the hut, for overhead on the rafters were drying woolen pantaloons, and salted fish, and the stove hinted at goose feathers and bones in the fire—distasteful to the Don Cossack, who had no liking for the odors of a house, especially a dirty one.

But long before he had replaced the booty in the bags, a dozen agile brains had guessed the value of his takings to a copper drachma in the markets of Trebizond or Sinope.

“I leave these sacks in your keeping,” he said to Ibnol Hammamgi, in the Turkish that the Armenians understood, “until we ride back from our raid. If we are successful all this shall be yours. If we fail we will take them again, having need of them.”

“Whither will the noble lord raid?”

“To the castle of Sidi Ahmad, in Aleppo.”

“Impossible!”

The headmen drew back into their fur-lined caftans like birds ruffling their plumage at a sudden alarm.

“That is madness!”

“How, madness?” Demid pushed the sacks away from him. “Is not Rurik, our cral, captive at the Imperial City, with many Cossack knights? Does not the sultan demand ten thousand ducats for his ransom alone? Well then, we must lay our hands on a treasure and surely there is a treasure at Aleppo.”

The elders all began to talk at once, lifting their hands, and raising their voices, one above the other until Ibnol Hammamgi shrieked louder than the rest and shrieked for silence.

“What do you want of us?” he demanded, and now the headmen were quiet, seeking to weigh Demid as they had his booty. But this they found more difficult.

“A guide—horses—information.”

“How many horses?”

“Two tens. But they must be good ones, Kabarda breed, or Kabulis.”

“Not to be thought of! The horses would be lost to us, because you will never come back.”

“Some of us will come back, Ibnol Hammamgi, and you will do well to aid us because one of your blood rides with us.”

“To Aleppo?”

The bald head of the chief shook with a dry chuckle.

“We do not visit the stronghold of Sidi Ahmad, the Turk. Once I visited Aleppo, and they took a toll from me—thus.”

He shut his good eye and opened the red socket of his blind side.

“Lali, daughter of Macari, goes with us.”

“Ekh! Does a clipped hawk fly back to the hunter? The daughter of Macari is not one in heart with the Moslems; in her veins is the blood of her people. Does the noble lord think that now, when she is restored to us, she will be off at once to that demon’s place, Aleppo?”

The noble lord looked at Ibnol Hammamgi thoughtfully. To tell the truth he had not reflected much upon Lali. The singing girl, that evening, had assured him that she would journey with the Cossacks to the castle of Sidi Ahmad, and Demid had found it a fruitless task to try to reason out why a woman—Lali especially—did things.

“Perhaps the distinguished captain,” went on Ibnol Hammamgi, “does not know that Lali el Niksar is the child of a line of kings. Like a wild goose she is not to be tamed; her forefather was Kagig the First, who was monarch of a thousand spears when Greater Armenia was free, when the Frankish crusaders passed under our mountains and our chivalry fought at their side, and the ravines ran blood in rivers. Christos vokros! That was a day of days.”

A gleam came into his sunken eye and his fingers clawed restlessly at his wisp of a beard.

“Blood will flow again before our horses turn their heads, O cral. Bid the girl stand before you, and you shall hear the promise she made.”

Ibnol Hammamgi muttered over his shoulder and a tousled lad upheaved from a nest of sheep-skins, to run out of the hut in quest of Lali.

Meanwhile the fire had departed the pallid face of the chief and the habitual mask of caution descended upon it. It would not do at all, he reflected, for the Cossacks to make trouble for the tribe of Sivas.

“It is quite clear to me,” he said, “that the noble sir does not know Sidi Ahmad at all. Except only the Sultan Mustapha, himself—may the dogs litter on his grave—the pasha of Aleppo is the greatest of Moslems. He has a heavy hand and a quick wit, and his treasury is full as a squirrel’s nest in autumn.”

Here Ibnol Hammamgi sighed, thinking of the vast wealth of the pasha.

“He has bled our people white, and he has taken a third from all the caravans that must cross his province; he took prisoner some of the finest amirs of Persia and no one can count the ransom he had of them. Besides that, he is overlord of Jerusalem, and has raised the admission fee to the Holy Sepulcher to four zecchins a pilgrim, not to speak of the entrance toll to the city for a Christian, of another six, and the certificate of visitation. Besides that, he has farmed out to the Arab chiefs the privilege of plundering the Frank pilgrims, at three thousand sultanons a year——”

“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 can not 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 wo 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 Hammamgi 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 he 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 peccadillos 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, puzzled, and, as he did so, the light was shut out. A heavy bear-skin 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 bear skin 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 bear-skin, 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 pock-marked 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.

AWEEK later they threaded through the last mud of the foot hills and dropped down below the snow line, 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, 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 simitars 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 be tween 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 caravanserai 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 with in the arcade of the serai.

Michael could make nothing out of the bedlam of tongues, until a dandified janizary strolled past the cell, noticed the water-pipe 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 janizary 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.

“The Sidi will strike a great blow when he goes against the Franks,” boasted the warrior.

“True. The slaying of infidels is pleasing in the sight of Allah. And yet—and yet, the master of Aleppo has grown too great for Aleppo. It may be that he will also strike a blow for himself at Constantinople, and thou and I may yet serve Sultan Ahmad instead of Sultan Mustapha.”

The janizary muttered and handed back the pipe stem after wiping it with his sleeve. Glancing around cautiously, he leaned over Michael to whisper:

“Then our backs would be strengthened—we would have a wiser head to lead the faithful. No man is as crafty as—the Wolf’s Ear.”

“Perhaps it is written.”

“Aye, he is ghazi.”

“In the hills there was talk of this and that. Some said Sidi Ahmad had been seen in Egypt, others that he had gone upon the sea for some purpose. He hides his thoughts.”

“Allah, those were lies.” The janizary opened his beard in a soundless laugh. “Sidi Ahmad has kept to the Wolf’s Ear, like a squirrel to its nest. For months he has not mounted his horse. I have seen it.”

The old Arab puffed at his pipe thoughtfully.

“When you look at a stone do you see a mountain? When you watch a horse can you answer for its master? Sidi Ahmad is one among ten thousand; you say he is here, and I must have dreamed by hasheesh when I beheld him riding like the devil of the air when the moon was last full.”

“You must have dreamed, waggle-beard.”

Michael was pleased that no one had word of the Cossacks as yet—if indeed they were nearing Aleppo. The two fell to talking of the riches of Sidi Ahmad, the Arab with an eye to thievery probing shrewdly at where the treasure was kept in the castle. But the soldier was cautious here.

“Where, if not under the hand of the wazir, the treasurer?”

“You are doubtless a captain of many. Only yesterday it is said that the wazir collected a new tax from the suk, the market-place. Allah alone knows how heavy are the money bags of Sidi Ahmad. The wazir must be tormented with doubt if the treasure is guarded by men—surely he has hidden it, while Sidi Ahmad was absent.”

“Fool! The pasha has not left the Wolf’s Ear. Gold dinars and costly jewels are to be his sinews. With them he can buy swords and swordarms.”

“True. And yet I have not counted more than a score of guards about the tower that is called the Wolf’s Ear.”

“Few can be trusted. And now—the Peace!”

The janizary rose a little unsteadily and swaggered off. When Michael turned over to ease his cramped limbs he beheld the son of the thief squatting in the shadows, inspecting the most valuable of the daggers that the warrior had worn in his belt. The old man nodded approvingly and returned to the gentle sputtering of his pipe.

BUYERS in the suk were few, because every householder was busied in laying out the best of his rugs and hangings, in stall and balcony to prepare for the festival.

Some felt of Michael’s muscles, as he stood, naked to the waist in the glaring sun above the two Arabs who knelt at ease. But they passed on after learning the price of the Frankish slave. Others stared curiously at his strange hat and long boots, and walked on to where women were offered. Michael saw dark-haired Armenians, and statuesque Georgians, with many Persian maids standing near him; these waited patiently until a trade was made, then followed their masters off the square with the passivity of animals. Michael preferred to watch the riders that trotted by along the street leading to the castle gate.

His attention was drawn back presently by the crying of some Spanish girls, taken—he heard related—by a raid of corsairs on the coast of that country. Their mother had just been sold to a stout Turk, who was berating the slave merchant for the uproar caused by the children. Michael saw the trader strike the girls with his staff, and, instinctively he took a step toward them. Then, recollecting his plight, at a snarl from the Arab he turned back.

But not before the eye of a tall sheik, wrapped to the cheek-bones in the folds of his white robe, had fallen upon him. The newcomer strode over to Michael and studied him for a full moment.

“At what price is this one offered?”

The Arab called a thousand greetings upon the stranger and said that it was no more than two hundred dinars, that Michael had an excellent disposition, was strong as a horse, and——

“He has been a galley slave.”

The stranger pointed to the thick wrists and gnarled arms of the cavalier.

“A hundred is enough, the tax to be paid by you——”

“O blind and small-of-wit——”

A powerful hand freed itself from the folds of the other’s dress and the Arab’s face changed visibly as he saw a seal ring on the thumb before his eyes.

“O father of blessings——”

“Deliver him to my men.”

The stranger moved on, leisurely, with his long stride and was lost in the throng. Meanwhile a group of armed servants closed around the cavalier after paying the Arab his price, which he took dourly enough now that the man of the seal ring was gone.

But Michael did not move. Down the street came a clash of cymbals and a shouting of guards, pushing the crowd back. Those around him rose to peer at the commotion, and a joyful shout from the street was echoed in the market place. A body of janizaries moved into view, escorting a splendid white camel on which a canopy of carpets half-concealed the slender form of a woman.

“Way for the messenger of the mighty, the merciful Mustapha, Protector of Islam, Sword of Muhammad! Way for the distinguished aga and the gift he brings!”

So cried the soldiery, and the rabble roared in glee when the handsome noble on a blue-veined Arab barb—he who rode directly before the camel—began to cast handfuls of silver coin over the uplifted heads. Michael noticed that the aga sat his high-peaked saddle like a rider born, that his turban was sewn with pearls, and the fringe of his caftan glittered with gold thread.

“Allah’s blessing upon the giver! Ten thousand welcomes to the aga, the victorious, the youthful lord, El Kadhr.”

So cried the multitude, and Michael’s eyes sparkled. The man who came as the Sultan’s messenger was Demid.

His beard had been clipped short and parted in the middle, after the northern fashion, but no other disguise—save the garments, plundered perhaps from some caravan on the way—was needed, for the face of the Cossack chief was lean, the dark eyes slanting—a heritage from some Tatar ancestor. His attire was that of a Turkoman chief and his manner, composed and slightly contemptuous, bore out the part.

Michael turned his attention to the rider on the camel. Lali had been furnished new garments, but the poise of her head was unmistakable although she was heavily veiled. Before her walked the two blacks, once more at ease despite their scars. Well for Demid, thought Michael, they were mutes. They had a tale for the telling!

Yet now they stalked proudly, aware of their importance—two eunuchs of the imperial court, unmistakable as such.

Alone, in that great throng, the cavalier did not call out. He could have made Demid hear, for the cortege passed within stone’s throw. But to signal to the Cossack before those hundreds of vigilant eyes would be to place the chieftain in jeopardy at once. Michael remained silent, smiling a little as he understood the trick by which Demid had entered Aleppo. He had merely taken the place of the aga, who had been slain on the galley—the officer who had had Lali in his charge. But Ayub and the other Cossacks were not visible, and Michael wondered what part they were to play.

“The Sidi will have a warm welcome for this bringer of gifts,” spoke up some one near him. “It is said that El Kadhr had a wolf’s fight with a band of unbelievers in the hills and overthrew them, after all but these few of his men were slain.”

A savage shout gave token of the joy of the Moslems at this feat of the aga, and Michael, listening, grew thoughtful. In this way Demid had explained his lack of escort; the janizaries he must have picked up near the city. But, successful in passing the gates of Aleppo, where no other Christians were suffered to enter except as slaves, he was now in the center of a fanatical mob that would tear his limbs apart at a slip of the tongue or a false move.

All at once Michael was aware that Demid had seen him. The gaze of the aga had passed over the slaves and lingered a second on the cavalier. Tossing some silver toward the clamoring Arab younglings he rode on without a sign of recognition.

Another moment and he checked his horse, where the multitude at the road leading up to the castle held up the cavalcade. Stooping he spoke swiftly to one of the officers of the guards, handing the man at the same time a purse from his girdle.

The janizary made a sign of obedience, looked around at Michael and made his way back to the suk. Swaggering as one who had just been noticed by the messenger of the sultan, he approached the Arab.

“How high is the bidding for this Frank?” he asked curtly.

The desert man fingered his beard thoughtfully, and seeing no loss in talk, drew the soldier a little aside from the Turkomans who were still staring after the envoy.

“Three hundred gold pieces, to you, my friend, and the tax on you. You have seen how docile he is——”

“I have here two hundred and twenty dinars. It is yours for the slave. The lord from the imperial city has given me command to buy this dog. The Frank crossed his glance with the aga, and perhaps made a spell upon him. So the lord from the imperial city has selected me to buy him, in order that he may be slain and the spell rendered of no account. The aga, El Kadhr, is a hater of the Nazarenes, as a man should be.”

At this Michael’s pulse quickened, for covetousness darkened the Arab’s eyes, and he schemed palpably to avail himself of the new offer. The guards observed that Michael was standing by them, but took no notice of the merchant.

“Surely you have more than that in the purse,” objected the desert man. “I saw the aga hand it to you. Is it not all for this Frank? The envoy is open of hand.”

“By my beard, it is not so. And the tax is on you——”

“B’illah! What do you say?”

Inwardly cursing their quarreling, Michael listened to their rising voices in a feverish suspense.

“Allah! What words are these words. The door of bidding is closed!”

The leader of the Turkomans swung around and grasped Michael’s shoulder.

“Dog of an Arab! Saw you not the wazir’s ring?”

The desert man flung up his arms with a groan.

“Aye,” he muttered to the puzzled janizary. “A dweller in the Wolfs Ear saw fit to claim this slave for a fourth of his value. I have eaten wrong-dealing——”

“Which you will spew out again, father of thieving!” growled the Turkoman, and made a sign for his companions to close around Michael.

As they moved ofi Michael saw the janizary stop to curse the desert man, and then—well aware of the danger of crossing an official of the castle—stride away toward Demid. He had not gone far before a lithe, tattered figure stole after him, and stumbled over his heels. The blade of a knife flashed, and the purse which the soldier had tied to his girdle, dropped into the hand of the son of the Arab.

Michael, despite his disappointment, could laugh merrily at this. The butt of the Turkoman’s spear smote his cheek, splitting the skin.

“O caphar, unbeliever, you can work your spells in the darkness under the Wolf’s Ear. Hasten, for you will have an audience with your master.”

So it happened on the day of the festival in Aleppo that the man with the signet ring passed into the gate of the palace wall, and after him Demid and his charge, and upon their heels, in a sad strait indeed but no whit disheartened, Sir Michael of Rohan.

IX

THE VOICE IN THE DARKNESS

ANIGHT and a day Michael waited for the interview with his new master. The chamber in which he had been confined without food was bare except for two hemp ropes suspended from the beams of the ceiling and ending in slip-nooses about a yard from the floor. Under the ropes lay two lengths of bamboo, tough and pliable. Under the bamboos was a thick veneer of dried blood—the mark of the bastinado, in which a prisoner was strung up by the ankles and beaten with the bamboos upon the soles of his bare feet until exhausted nerves gave way and he confessed, or lied to save himself.

At the end of the time a door opened and two armed negroes entered with cresset torches, signing for Michael to advance to the black square of the open portal. But on the threshold they stayed him, and he made out a figure in the shadows beyond.

This was a thin, stooped form draped in striped silk. A form with a beak of a face and a pinched mouth, seeming to droop under the weight of a massive green turban set with emeralds.

“The Sidi ibn Ahmad,” grunted one of the slaves, “would have speech with thee.”

Michael bowed and stood at ease, sniffing the odor of musk and opium, while two large eyes considered him.

“O Frank,” said the Moslem sharply, “where are the kazaks?”

It startled Michael more than a little that this man should be aware he spoke Turki, and had knowledge of the raid of the Cossacks.

“Who knows,” he replied musingly, “if not Allah?”

“You do.”

“That is not true.”

“Bah! Offspring of swine, the Sidi has eyes that can pierce beyond the hills. A band of kazaks rode toward Aleppo. Where did you leave them?”

“If you can see through the hills, then you can see them. I know nothing, O pasha.”

“Dog of an unbeliever! You were in their company. What plans had they formed when you were taken from them?”

If, Michael thought, the pasha of Aleppo could not see beyond the Caucasus, he must have ears in every bazaar in Asia Minor. And this was close to the truth, for the man in the doorway was well served by spies.

“The chief of the kazaks," went on he of the turban, “is like a falcon, striking far from home. But where are his men?”

Michael, wondering if Demid’s disguise had been pierced, only shook his head. Demid had been careful to say nothing of his plans to any one.

The man in the door snapped his teeth angrily and motioned to the guards to string Michael up. As they moved to do this, a high voice whispered something from the darkness behind the dignitary, who hesitated and drew back.

“We will not wheedle you like a woman. You have until the mid-morning prayer of the morrow to make up your mind to confess. When that time comes if you do not speak you will be drawn on the stake—”he paused, the pinched lips curving with relish—“by horses.”

“Nay, not that!” cried Michael, starting.

“Aye, unbeliever. Prepare to taste maut ahmar, the bloody death.”

The slaves drew back and the door closed, leaving him to the shadows of the torture chamber and the contemplation of the bastinado ropes that now seemed luxurious compared to the fate in store for him. He wondered who the unseen speaker had been—for who would countermand an order of Sidi Ahmad, within the palace?

“Perhaps a woman,” he reasoned.

To be drawn on a stake by horses, before a throng of watching Turks! Michael gritted his teeth. Hanging was better, and yet—and yet, he would not play the part of a coward. If he could make up a false tale—but instinct warned him that the pasha was not to be hoodwinked.

“Ah, if they would put a blade in my hand, it would be a blessed thing.”

He thought longingly of Demid, and the chance of having a weapon smuggled in through the grating of the window. Demid had tried to get him free, and speak with him—had taken a daring chance—but the Cossack could not know where he was confined.

“What a lad he is! God save him!” thought Michael admiringly, and wondered what plan the Cossack meant to follow.

Demid had done as he promised Ibnol Hammamgi—had passed openly through the gate of Aleppo and the wall of the castle, into the Wolf’s Ear.

Perhaps Lali, who seemed to know all things, had an inkling of where the pasha kept his treasure; perhaps the singing girl could find out. Michael had reasoned that the treasure would lie in the tower or under it. He was quick of wit and he had noticed that the janizaries who brought him had turned over their prisoner to the personal slaves of Sidi Ahmad at the tower door.

He had used his eyes and had a fair idea of the plan of the palace, which was much like that of a medieval castle in England. At the rear a sheer cliff some twenty feet high rose from the slope of the hill. Above this were the terraced gardens of the palace itself, protected on the other three sides by a wall of solid marble blocks, too high to climb, too massive to beat in.

The road that led up to this wall from the alleys of Aleppo passed through the single gate, of iron-bound teak. Seen from the suk this gate seemed to be the eye of a wolf, the palace its skull, and the tower its ear.

The palace itself was small, forming three sides of a courtyard. The embrasures of the dungeon, set with iron bars, looked out upon the cedars and olive trees and the pleasant fountain of the courtyard. Michael could see no more than the tops of the trees and the spray of the fountain, for the opening was a spear’s length over his head.

It seemed to him that the torture chamber was the base of the tower, as the walls were of massive black basalt and the columns supporting the ceiling were thick as buttresses, instead of the slender pillars of Arabic design. In fact the grim, black tower with its rounded cupola was like nothing else in Aleppo. Perhaps it had been built centuries ago for an astrologer—certainly it served to guard Sidi Ahmad from assassins.

All at once Michael stiffened where he sat in a corner of the torture chamber. A slight sound had reached him, the muffled gritting of iron against stone. Often before when the chamber was in darkness he had heard this sound, but now he was aware of a breath of stale air that passed across his cheek.

As quietly as possible he rose to his feet, with an effort, for long fasting had sapped his strength. Too clearly to be mistaken he now heard the tinkle of a guitar, and a swelling voice, high and plaintive.

“From afar I watch for thy coming,
“O my lord!”

These were the first words of Lali’s song and (the sound of it came through the embrasure overhead. Michael felt for the heavy ropes that hung near at hand, put his foot in one of the loops and drew himself up by his arms until he could see out into the court.

Sidi Ahmad was giving a feast near the pool. Cresset torches held by motionless slaves revealed a company of Turkish officers, in colored silks and velvets, kneeling on carpets, listening to the song of the girl. Beside the host was Demid, the stem of a hubble-bubble in his hand.

Lali sat a little apart from the other slave girls, behind a screen of palms, and Michael noticed that, even while she sang for the pasha, her glance went to the Cossack. At the end of her song, while the guests were smiling and praising her to the slender Turk, Michael ventured to call to her softly:

“Daughter of Macari, a boon I crave of him who shared bread and salt with me—a sword from him, passed through this grating. Give him that word.”

Lali, rising, half turned her head toward the embrasure. Then, without response, she walked slowly to the feasters, adjusting her veil as she did so. The master of the palace gave command for a silver-sewn robe of honor to be brought her, and, receiving it, she bowed her dark head to the carpet. The officers of the janizaries and the dignitaries of the city lifted their hands and voiced courteous praise, for the grace of the girl could not be veiled.

“Hair blacker than the storm wind!”

“Eyes like a gazelle, softer than pearls——”

“Nay, she walks like the wind of dawn among the flowers!”

The host, sitting back in shadow himself, motioned Lali toward his slaves and leaned forward to present a costly gift to Demid, a simitar of blue steel, chased with gold. Michael groaned under his breath, for Lali had not ventured near Demid and he remembered that now the singing girl had been given to Sidi Ahmad, and it would be mortal offence for Demid to exchange a word with her.

Then a voice from near at hand spoke laughingly—

“O watcher of the feast, is there no ease for thy hunger?”

Michael looked down into the gloom of the torture chamber and slid to the floor. The speaker seemed to be within the wall.

“Tell Sidi Ahmad what he seeks of you, and go unharmed from Aleppo on the morrow.”

“Who are you?”

“A prisoner like yourself, until my time comes. Aye, I have fled from daggers that would pierce these walls.”

Now was Michael aware of the truth that an elusive memory had been whispering to him. He knew the man who spoke from the wall.

“You are Captain Balaban, the Levantine!” he cried.

A pause, broken by a low, amused laugh—

“Nay, unbeliever, I am Sidi ibn Ahmad.”

GRIM was the palace of the Wolf’s Ear, and dark the passageways beneath. Michael, hearkening to the lisp of lutes in the garden overhead, strained his eyes to make out the man who spoke to him, yet beheld only a black square where a secret door had opened away from the torture chamber. In this opening stood Captain Balaban, erstwhile captive of the Cossacks, and the gloom of the dungeon was not more forbidding than the whispering glee of his high-pitched voice.

Michael bethought him of several things: the talk of the Moslems in the caravanserai—that Sidi Ahmad had been on a journey from the Wolf’s Ear. And the warning of Ibnol Hammamgi that the pasha kept his face hidden when he was in Aleppo. Also, he remembered the high honor accorded the Levantine when the man escaped to the Moslems of the corsair.

How better could Sidi Ahmad protect himself from assassins than by taking another name, and allowing one of his officers to pose as pasha during his absence?

“O dog of an unbeliever,” went on the amused voiced “do you doubt my word? Would you see the signet ring of a pasha that I kept on a cord about my neck when I ventured among the Cossacks who guard the Christian frontier, to learn their strength? Or shall I summon my wazir who sits now on the carpet of honor in my stead—he who questioned you at my bidding?”

He clapped his hands and somewhere behind him a door opened, letting in a glow of candles. Michael saw that a section of the stone wall had been swung back upon its sockets, revealing a stair leading down past the dungeon. On a landing of this stair stood Balaban, robed in an Arab’s cloak.

“Aye,” the Moslem said, “I bought you of the thief in the suk and cheated him out of his profit—for you may be worth more than the price I paid. Verily, my word, a while ago, sentenced you to the stake—if you are fool enough to turn from my service.”

He lifted a hand significantly.

“My word can save you from the stake. Consider this, O Nazarene: my star is rising in Asia, and men flock to me. Soon the green standard will be carried from Bagdad to Moscow, and I shall ride before the standard bearer. Eyes serve me in hidden places and lips whisper in the Wolf’s Ear; but my eyes have shown me the weakness of your peoples, who flee from the sea before the corsairs.”

“Can your eyes find Demid and the hand of Cossacks?”

“Yes, by Allah! Demid sits at the feast over our heads. Alone, on the frontier his spirit is daring. Age the Cossack a bit and he would work harm, but now he is a fledgling flying before his time. I shall cut him down after you are staked.”

Michael’s heart sank, and his weariness grew upon him, for, indeed this man seemed to know all things.

“Consider again,” the Levantine went on, fingering the scar upon his cheek, “that the Cossack drinks his fill without thought for you.”

“A lie, that! Demid would strike a blow for me if he knew my plight.”

A calculating light came into the Moslem’s narrowed eyes.

“Inshallah, that we shall see. I shall bid the young hero to watch your torture on the morrow, and you will see that he stirs not—not so much as a hair of his beard. But I can put a sword in your hand, and give you a golden name. Aye, you may not lack a pashalik if you will acknowledge Mohammed, and turn to the true faith. One thing I ask, that you make clear where the bull Cossack and his dozen are hidden, for until now they have escaped my search.”

“I shared bread and salt with them.”

“Bah—what is faith? A word that dies on the lips. Lali, the young witch, sold you—I know not why. What faith do you owe her lover?”

“The word of Michael of Rohan!”

With that the cavalier stiffened his muscles and leaped at the man who mocked him. His body shot into the open door, but his cramped limbs were sluggish and Balaban, stepping back, brought down the flat of his blade upon Michael’s skull. Searing flames shot through the vision of the little man, and then—darkness.

X

THE ZINEH OF ALEPPO

WHEN the middle of the morning came, and a captain of janizaries flung open the door of the prison, Michael walked forth steadily. He kept his head back, and by an effort of will stiffened his knees against trembling. Hunger, that had been an agony, left him and he did not feel weak; but, coming out into the glare of sunlight on the uppermost terrace, just under the castle wall, he was conscious of sweat starting out all over his limbs.

In the center of the terrace the blunt end of a ten-foot stake had been sunk into the earth at an angle, leaving the sharpened end projecting along the surface of the grass. Near at hand, slaves held the bridles of two Arab ponies, while others attached ropes to the breast-strap.

About this cleared space the guests of the night before sat on carpets in the shade of olive and lemon-trees; officers of the guard strolled around, swaggering, some with hawks on their wrists, for the latticed windows of the palace hid the women of Sidi Ahmad—soft-limbed girls of many races whose lustrous eyes would brighten at the spectacle of the torture.

Here and there negroes placed trays of sherbet and sweetmeats before the watchers, and Michael heard voices crying wagers—how long would he endure before crying out. Beyond the low line of foliage, he beheld again the white minarets, the gold and purple domes of the Moslem city, and, like an echo upon the breeze came the faint cry of the caller-to-prayer:

“Allah is the only god; and Mohammed is his prophet … prayer is good … the hour of prayer is at hand …”

A drone, as of multitudinous bees, arose from the streets below, where hundreds of worshippers were facing toward Mecca.

The spectators on the terrace arose and salaamed. The bird-like man—who acted the part of Sidi Ahmad—had appeared in the shadows under the trees, and with him Demid. The Cossack left his host and strolled over to inspect the stake and the horses. Michael’s gaze flew to him and lingered, while, absently, he noticed that Demid wore two swords, his own and the simitar of honor bestowed by the master of the feast the evening before.

This struck Michael as strangely ridiculous.

“Two swords—and one man—one sword too many, i’faith!”

He wagged his head, and a chuckle arose in his throat. The guards looked at him askance, and a mameluke, in a fur-tipped khalat strolled over to stare his fill at the victim of the maut ahmar.

“A comely dog,” the dark-faced warrior from Egypt muttered, caressing a gold chain at his throat, “but too lean in the limb—his bones will crack like a chicken’s. I have seen——”

He confided, low-voiced, to one of the Turks what he had seen in the way of torture visited upon other Nazarenes. Michael’s voice croaked.

“Yah khawand, a word with yonder noble, El Kadhr. I who go to the Severer of Life ask it.”

“Will you confess the hiding-place of the pig kazaks?"

Michael shook his head, not caring to trust his voice again. He wished to warn Demid that Balaban was in Aleppo and that Balaban was Sidi Ahmad; but when be took an uncertain step forward toward his friend, nausea seized on him.

“Wine!” he whispered. “A cup of wine before the ordeal.”

“To hear is to obey!”

The janizary whispered something to one of the palace slaves, who presently fetched a silver goblet from the courtyard. Michael seized it and raised it to his lips with a hand kept steady by the utmost effort of his will.

Within the cup was vinegar.

Michael quivered and hurled the silver goblet at the Moslem who had tricked him, and the mameluke smiled, beholding his musk-scented companion soaked with the vinegar.

“Eh, there is a devil in this prince of unbelievers! Nay—” as the other, red with rage, strove to draw sword—“this Frank is to be spared for the fate that awaits his kind.”

Perceiving the attention of the throng on him for a second, the warrior of the khalat made a mock salaam before Michael.

“I pray your honor’s honor to ascend the throne prepared for you. Ho, Moslems, give heed to this dog-coronation!”

A ripple of mirth passed over the savage faces, and merciless eyes fastened on the prisoner. Pleased with his own wit, the mameluke leaned forward to pull the stubble of beard that had grown on Michael’s chin.

“Will you go forward to the stake, or shall I bid the palace wenches hither to whip you on?”

For a second the thought of angering the soldier—provoking him to use his sword—came to Michael. But then he was aware that by going to the stake he might speak to Demid, who had recognized him before now.

Michael crossed himself, and, followed closely by a janizary and the mameluke, walked up to the stake. Now he saw that Demid’s face was tense, and that the Cossack’s eyes were smoldering even while he stood with folded arms.

A high-pitched voice, rife with amusement, floated from one of the palace windows.

“Where are the kazaks, O Nazarene?” Sidi Ahmad asked.

Michael halted and from very weariness leaned on the stake, while the slaves pulled forward the ropes attached to the horses.

“Here is a Cossack!”

It was thus that Demid spoke for all to hear, and answered the question of Sidi Ahmad. And before his lips closed on the words, his two swords were out of their sheaths. Michael never knew how the blades were drawn so swiftly, because he did not see Demid’s left hand drop to the hilt of the simitar on his right side, and the other hand to the sword of honor, on his left hip.

Nor did Michael see which blade it was that struck off the head of the mameluke, sending it rolling over the grass. But he did notice that one of the simitars struck down the weapon the janizary drew, and then passed across the-silk vest of the Moslem warrior. The curved blades seemed only to stroke the man, but its razor edge severed the abdominal muscles and left the janizary dying on his feet, still staring in blank amazement.

Demid whirled on the slaves and struck one down; the remaining Moslem took to his heels, but tripped and fell, such was his dread of the steel that had taken the lives from three in thrice as many seconds.

“Two swords—one man,” Michael muttered, still in a half stupor.

For a brief moment the Cossack and the cavalier stood alone by the stake, but already men were recovering from their amazement and rising to their feet under the trees. Sidi Ahmad, the clever, had indulged his whim to test Demid a trifle too far, and the Cossack knew how to use the minute of time that was worth more than the treasure of Sidi Ahmad to him.

“Can you stick to a horse’s back?” he cried at Michael who was stumbling toward him. “Grapple the mane, but stick!”

With that he gave his comrade a hoist up, to the nearest pony. The other horse had shied at the smell of blood, but Demid ran to him, caught the dangling bridle, and glanced over his shoulder.

“On your faces, dogs,” he roared at the oncoming guards. “A Cossack ataman rides through you. On your faces!”

He pointed to the prostrate forms around the stake and a shout of anger answered him. Perhaps the rage inspired by his challenge hampered the effort of the Moslems on the terrace to get near, perhaps no one cared to be the first to step into the path of Demid’s horse. They had grouped toward the road leading to the gate, and hither Demid started, taking the rein of his pony in his teeth.

But almost at once he swerved from his course, caught the rein of Michael’s horse in one hand that held a sword and beat both beasts with the flat of the other blade. They struck into a short-paced trot, and passed between the in-running guards. Demid’s sword flashed on either side, steel striking against steel, and one man fell.

The ponies lengthened their stride, guided by the superb horsemanship of the Cossack, and broke through the foliage of the terrace edge, taking the jump to the garden below, almost unseating Michael as they did so. Demid steadied his friend and headed toward the roadway, which was here unguarded. They reached it before their pursuers could come down from the upper level, and Michael saw that the gate in the main wall was open before them.

A shout from above brought out the warriors who had been squatting in the shade of the wall, but at that distance no command was heard clearly and no man thought to try to stop the notable El Kadhr, who galloped through the gate and down into the market-place.

OLD is Aleppo, mother of cities and father of thieves. Time has brought to its streets in turn the changing peoples of the earth, the Indian, the Parsi, the triumphant Israelite—saints and pharisees, princes and lepers—and the conquering Moslem. Each built upon the ruins of the other, and made of the city a labyrinth where alleys ran underground and bathing wells were the cisterns of former palaces. And where the caravans came, thither came the thieves.

Hither had come the old Arab who had stolen Michael of Rohan, and the boy Hassan, the Arab’s son.

At mid-morning they were sleeping in their cubicle in the serai of the desert men, sleeping with one eye open, because the boy had cut a purse not long before from a soldier who might bring an accusation against them—and they had no desire to face a Turkish khadi, a judge who might have a memory for past crimes, and who would certainly have an itching palm. Also, they wished to lie low before venturing out that evening to join the procession of the Guilds, when quarrels and purses might be picked.

So the curtain was drawn across their compartment, but the weasel ears of the boy Hassan heard the trumpets blare from the direction of the palace.

“Allah,” he muttered, yawning and spitting, “has caused something to happen. The trumpets have called for the city gates to be closed.”

Horses’ hoofs thudded in the alley underneath and entered the arcade of the caravanserai’s shops, and passed on after a fragmentary pause. Both Hassan and his father, however, heard boots on the stone steps that led up to the gallery of the inn, and presently their curtain was snatched aside and two men entered, the leader being the Nazarene slave whom they had sold to the Turks. Michael had guided Demid to the only place of refuge known to him.

Demid strode across the chamber and jerked the old thief to his feet by the beard. The Arab’s whiskers bristled, like an angry cat’s, and he grasped at his weapons, when he recognized his assailant and hesitated.

“O Aga, what is this? It is not fitting to put the hand of violence upon the beard of age—Ai, spare the boy, O captain of men!” Hassan had started to knife Michael in the ribs and Demid bruised the lad’s wrist with a backward slap of his simitar. “Verily, the youth is of tender years, and without guile. What wrong have we done?”

“Enough,” whispered Demid curtly, and proceeded to disarm the desert man by undoing his girdle and letting the various knives and hand-guns fall to the floor. “Off with your garments.”

“What madness is this?” The Arab looked anxiously at Michael, who had caught Hassan by the throat. The plight of the boy affected him more than the danger to himself, and, after a shrewd glance into the set face of the Cossack, he peeled off the hooded cloak, shirt and loose trousers.

Demid bade Hassan strip to his shirt, and kicked the weapons of the Arabs into a corner. Standing between his prisoners and the entrance, he cast off his own valuable garments and the Arab’s eyes glistened on beholding the jewel-sewn folds of the turban and the cloth-of-gold girdle.

When the Arab was naked, Hassan almost so, and the two fugitives clad in their clothing, Demid adjusted a veil about the lower portion of Michael’s face, and turned to study the old man who without weapons and cloak looked very much like a shorn lion.

“Hearken, O father of trickery,” he said quietly. “It is for you to cover the road of our flight with the dust of discretion. You have no love for Sidi Ahmad, and I am his foe.”

“Then you are a fool, because within these walls you can not escape him,” retorted the thief frankly, adding that the gates were closed.

“No more can he escape me," assented Demid, and even Hassan choked with astonishment. “You are the gainer by my garments, but wear them not abroad or show them, lest you be put into a shroud.”

“Mashallah!”

“And these garments of the Frank, conceal them likewise. You will have your weapons back again. But as surety for your silence I will take with me this boy, your son, who must guide us to a place of good hiding.”

At this the Arab wailed and fell on his knees, beating his head against the stone, and crying that Hassan was a piece of his liver, the very core of his heart.

“He will not suffer,” said Demid grimly, “if we are not found by those who seek us out. If you betray us I will cut his body open and lay him out by the butchers’ quarter where the dogs will——”

“Ai-a! Allah prosper thee, harm him not, and the master of the Wolf’s Ear can not make me speak. By my beard, upon the Koran I swear it!”

“Good. I am not a breaker of promises: see to it that you are likewise.”

While he spoke, Demid thrust the sword given him by the Turks under his cloak, signed for Michael to do likewise with the other weapon, and pushed his beard behind a fold of the voluminous garment. Picking up a cord, he bound one end about the wrist of Hassan and the other to Michael’s sash.

“Stoop when you walk, my friend,” he said, “and speak thickly if one addresses you. Look upon the ground, and wonder not. The reason for this will be known to you when we reach the only place that is safe in Aleppo.”

It was not hard for Michael to counterfeit weariness, and they passed unnoticed out of the gallery, through the courtyard, into the crowded alley. Demid caught snatches of talk that told him how their horses had been found not far from here, but as they had dismounted at the end of the arcade where deep shadow had hidden them, no one was sure where the prisoners had gone. Even as they turned away, a detachment of janizaries pushed through the throngs and entered the serai. A miskal of gold had been promised the one who found El Kadhr and the escaped Frank.

Demid however, loitered along and stopped to buy some dates and rice for Michael. When Hassan came up, leading the supposedly sick man, Demid whispered to the boy to show the way to the Gate of Victory. And Hassan gave proof that the byways of Aleppo were well known to him.

From one arcade to another, down into a dark wine cellar, thence through a passage to a coffee house—where Demid took time to sit and drink a bowl—up into the quarter of the saddlers and shield-makers where hides, hung up to dry filled the air with a stench greater than that of the hovels they had left—from there to the covered court of a bathhouse he led them.

Men stopped him, to ask questions, but the boy’s wit found a ready answer and Demid took the center of the alleys, reeling along like a desert man who had sat up with the wine bowl the night before.

“To the well of the lepers,” he muttered, drawing up to Hassan.

The boy shivered, but just then a group of the palace guards came up to search the bath and he turned aside among the heaps of cinders from the bathhouse fires, to a nest of clay hovels grouped around a square hole in the ground. Steps led down this excavation, and Michael flattened against the wall when a mournful figure climbed up past him—a man with loose, white-blotched flesh and swollen lips, who grunted from a tongueless mouth.

At the bottom of the steps where shadow gave a little relief from the sun squatted other foul shapes, watching with lackluster eyes several of their companion lepers bathing in the sunken well. Hassan sought out a corner as far as possible from the sick men, and Michael watched Demid stagger up and lie down beside him.

A drunken Arab and another leper with a boy for guide aroused no interest in the unfortunate people of the well, and no questions were put to the three.

Demid waited until Michael had eaten a little, and then rolled over to whisper: “Sleep will help you, for you are weary. Yet hearken first to what is to be done. The fight at the stake can not change my plans because Lali acts with us, and we may not get word to her before night.”

“Lali—do you trust her?”

“Why not? She could have betrayed me, yet she has been faithful.”

“Aye, she had me taken from Sivas and sold! She was jealous, because you cherished me.”

Demid swore under his breath.

“What a girl! There is a demon in her, and she boasted of her prank to me, then wept because she was not forgiven. We were close upon the heels of your caravan when the Arabs raided it; then I made Lali play the spy upon them, and bring us the tidings that you were being taken to Aleppo. The rahb—the fast camels went too swiftly for our pursuit. Yet that is past and now we have work to do.”

He cuffed Hassan, who had crept closer to listen, upon the ear and promised him a bath in the lepers’ pool if he tried to overhear what was said.

“I owe you my life,” said Michael, starting to hold out his hand but remembering that he was a leper for the time being.

Demid wrinkled his nose and spat.

“Hide of the ——, what a smell is here. I would rather bed down with the goats of —— than in here. Nay, you saved my skin on the galley when I was burdened with the girl. You owe me naught.”

“Balaban!” Michael started, at mention of the galley. “He is here and he is the pasha, Sidi Ahmad. The other is a mask in his place.”

“I saw that.”

Demid was silent for several moments, his lips set in hard lines as he listened to the tale of what had befallen his friend. “So we had the leader of these Moslems on the galley, and knew it not. The thought came to me at the Cossack camp that Balaban was a spy. So I took him with us, to point out the way across the sea, and he escaped our hand.”

The young Cossack frowned, gnawing at his beard, his arms crossed on his knees.

“Ai this is an evil place. Here there was once the church of a Christian saint, and now over its ruins stands a nest of thieves. How is that to be endured?”

His dark eyes fell moody, and Michael knew that one of the fits of brooding had gripped him. Yet the Cossack was not thinking of the opportunity he had lost. He was musing upon the work to be done, and this he explained to Michael, slowly, making sure that the cavalier understood the part he was to play. Demid never hurried himself or his men. When the time for quick action came he took the offensive at once, Cossack fashion; but, always, he had thought out beforehand what was to be done.

So it seemed to his enemies that he acted on impulse, and they spoke of him as a falcon that strikes on swift wings from an open sky; but even that morning at the stake he had seen in his mind’s eye how Michael might be saved. In this he was different from Michael, who—utterly daring as Demid—acted altogether on impulse.

“This night,” said the Cossack, “we will lift the treasure of Sidi Ahmad.”

“’Swounds! That disguise of yours will never pass you into the Wolf’s Ear!”

Demid nodded.

“True, my friend, and that is why Sidi Ahmad will not look to find me within the Wolf’s Ear. So, the fight at the stake has aided us, when all is counted—aye, because it has given a messenger to send to Ayub and my children.”

“What messenger?”

“You, a leprous man.”

Michael shivered, for the well of the lepers did not strike him as much better abiding place than the torture stake.

“Where have you quartered Ayub and his blades—in the lazar house?”

“Nay, with the dead, in the burial place of the Moslems without the city wall. Even Sidi Ahmad did not think to search the grove of trees among the tombs on yonder hill by the Bab el Nasr. The Moslem warriors do not visit the graves, and the women who go there fear the spirits of the place. Ibnol Hammamgi told me of it—he has taken to cover there, in other days.”

“Good!” Michael grinned a little, thinking of Ayub. “But that is without the gate, and the gate is closed.”

“Hassan will open it.”

“With what?”

“With you, O my companion of the road. You will be a leper, about to yield life; he will be your son, taking you to the ditch in the burial place wherein those who are unclean are laid while they still breathe. To rid themselves of you, the guards at the gate will open it a little, unseen, because it will be dark by then.”

“And after that——”

Demid took up the dates left by Michael, who had eaten what he dared, and fell to munching them.

“First there is a tale to tell.”

AND it was a tale that banished all desire for sleep from the weary Michael.

A generation after Christ, the body of St. George was laid in a tomb in one of the cities of the Israelites. When the wave of Moslems over-swept the land, the Turks heard of the legend of al-khidr, the Emir George, and sought for the tomb but did not find it. The Armenians, however, who took refuge from the invasion in the northern mountains knew the situation of the tomb of the warrior saint, and during the crusades pilgrims from their folk visited it—until the order of the Sultan of the Turks forbade Christians to enter Aleppo. So much Demid had heard from the batko—the priest of the Cossacks.

The tomb was at the base of the tower which now formed the Wolf’s Ear, a dozen feet or more underground.

At the time of the Moslem conquest, the last Christians to leave the tower had screened the entrance to the stair leading down to the tomb as well as they could. But since the pasha’s palace had been built around the tower, Ibnol Hammamgi had heard that the stair had been uncovered.

The cral had ventured once with the Armenian patriarch in disguise to penetrate to the site. The patriarch knew of another entrance, also covered up by rocks that led in from the hillside behind the palace at the base of the cliff. They had been able to remove the protecting boulders unseen by the guards of the palace above, and had made their way up a short passage to the vault, only to find that the inner door could not be opened from the outside.

It was on leaving the passage, after replacing the rocks, that Ibnol Hammamgi had been seized and tortured by janizaries. During his captivity Ibnol Hammamgi had used his good eye and his ear to advantage and suspected that the tower was now a treasure vault of Sidi Ahmad.

“FAITH!” cried Michael of Rohan, “the one-eyed mountain goat has the right of it! The torture chamber where I lay may be the chapel of St. George, and the tomb must be below it. Aye, I mind that Sidi Ahmad passed at times up and down a stair into which a door opened from the place of torture.”

He described how he had encountered the master of the Wolf’s Ear the evening before and Demid listened attentively.

“The stair leads higher, into the tower,” Michael added thoughtfully. “The Moslems built it upward, I’ll wager odds on’t, when they turned the chapel into a dungeon. Well for you they did. Small good it would do you, Demid, to enter the vault and pass through the door into the dungeon. They would crown you in my place on the stake.”

“Aye,” responded die Cossack slowly as was his wont. “From the sepulcher the stair will take me high in the tower—the treasure of Sidi Ahmad is bulky, ivory, silks from India, gold plate from Persia—and —— knows what else. He would keep it in a place apart.”

“Saw you such a place in the Wolf’s Ear?”

Demid shook his head.

“Faith! Ibnol Hammamgi found the tomb door closed against him. How then will you enter?”

“Lali will come to the other side. She has pledged it.”

It had been agreed between them that the Armenian girl was to make her way down the stair at the beginning of the second watch of that night, and open the portal to Demid.

“The fox, Sidi Ahmad can not trust his officers with his secret—there is no faith between them—so the place of the treasure must be hidden. Lali will find out what may be discovered. At that hour the procession of the Guilds—the weapon-makers, the gold spinners, the saddlers, will pass through the terraces before the palace as is customary on this day of the year. Many within the palace will have their eyes on the festival—on the lamps, and their ears will heed the kettledrums and pipes.”

“Even so, what if Lali whispers one word to Sidi Ahmad——”

“She could not go back to her people. The girl has a spirit of flame, there is nothing she will not dare. Besides, she has a longing to go back to her tribe. We will see.”

And Demid, in a whisper, told Michael what he must do to aid him. At first the cavalier said stubbornly that he would not leave him, but the Cossack pointed out that Michael’s presence would be of small use if he failed in the Wolf’s Ear, whereas if he won clear he would need Michael and the men, to escape from the city. Besides, if no messenger were sent to the warriors, they and Ayub would remain on the hill outside the wall until they were discovered and slain.

“They had an order,” he added gravely.

“Egad,” thought Michael, “and so have I.”

“Keep Hassan by you until the last; so long as you have him the Arab will not lift his voice against us.”

XI

AYUB ISSUES A CHALLENGE

AFTER sunset when the heat began to pass from the baked streets of Aleppo, the light and tumult of the festival arose and swelled through all the quarters of the guilds, even to the gate, el Nasr, formerly the Gate of the Jews but named otherwise by Saladin the Great.

The flickering lamp against the iron fretwork of the portal—the lamp kept lighted since the day of the prophet Elisha—vied with the colored lanterns of a puppet show before which lean Arabs and stout Osmanlis stood gravely, bubbling, however, with inward mirth.

A party of saddlers assembled in the faya, the cleared space just within the gate, sweating under their sugar-loaf hats and tiger skins and the burden of a float manned by several agile buffoons, who cracked jokes with the half-dozen janizaries on guard at the post.

Other lamps appeared on the balconies of the nearest houses, where veiled women sat, and occasionally a shrill voice rose over the monotonous tinkling of a guitar.

Nimble-footed urchins scurried about in the throng, wielding pig bladders inflated and tied to sticks, casting wary glances when a silence fell at the bulk of the Wolf’s Ear, which, apart from the merry-making, showed black as a bat’s wing against the glowing sky over the hills. But Hassan, the Arab was not among them.

Hassan came limping toward the gate in bedraggled garments, snuffling and tearing at his hair. Behind him staggered a slender figure, veiled. The throng gave back as the two neared the gate and the child’s cry could be heard.

“’Way for him who goes to the mercy of Allah! Riwan hath opened the gate of mercy to this one. Ai-a!”

He tugged valiantly at the rope which seemed to drag the figure of the leper along. Shrewdly enough, Hassan, on seeing that the faya was alight and crowded, had abandoned the idea of secrecy and made outcry sufficient for a half-dozen deaths. Moreover be did not make the mistake of asking that the portal be opened. But he edged closer to the janizaries who drew back with oaths.

“Child of misfortune. Cover the fire of disease with the water of solitude.”

“Ai-a! I am his son!”

“A lie escaped thy tongue.” They began to curse the weeping boy and his ill-omened familiar. “You are the son of all stupidity.”

“I know not where to go.”

“Allah!” One of the maskers spoke up feelingly. “Instruct the boy in what he should do. The leper is far gone: let him go out to the burial place of the unclean.”

Here Hassan began to wail the louder, and the crowd began to revile the guards who did not open the gate.

“It is forbidden!” growled the one in command.

“So also is a dying leper forbidden within the city.”

“This may be the Frank on whose capture is the price of ten slave girls.”

“O pack-saddle of an ass! The warrior Frank was tall as a spear; this one is like an ape.”

The janizary hesitated, and for a moment Michael feared that Hassan might betray him; but the boy remembered very well that the cavalier had a simitar under his cloak, and, besides he had heard his real father swear an oath on the Koran. That was binding on Hassan as well.

“He can not speak,” Hassan forestalled the soldier’s intention of questioning the supposed leper. “Lift the veil and you will see how his tongue is rotted away, and the bone sticks through his nose.”

The horrors of the lepers’ well were still vivid in Hassan’s mind, and his voice shook. When Michael took it upon himself to make some uncouth noises the janizary drew back quickly.

“Darisi bashine—the grain may have been reaped by thee! Go, the two of you! Open the gate to them!”

“Where shall we go?” whined Hassan.

“Mashallah! Where but to the burial hill yonder—behold the grove of pistachio trees against the sky-line.”

So the two slender figures passed under the flickering lamp of Elisha, out into the void of darkness, and the hub-bub at the gate resumed its even key. It was a weary climb for the tired Michael, up the path to the shrines and stones of the cemetery, and for some time they stumbled around, feeling their way toward the blotch of the grove.

Here Hassan gave a real yell of alarm and the skin prickled on Michael’s back. From the deeper gloom ahead of them issued the call of animals and they heard the whining of panthers, the grunting of camels and the whirr of wings. Hassan, knowing that no beasts larger than jackals were in the thickets, started to flee and the rope pulled his companion headlong.

Perforce, they both halted, and the boy whimpered when a muffled screech sounded from a tree almost overhead; but Michael remembered the Cossacks’ trick of mimicking animal calls and cried Ayub’s name softly.

Presently the giant Cossack ataman loomed over them and Hassan quivered, believing firmly that now he was about to be carried off by the djinn—for he never thought a man could be as huge as Ayub.

“Are the men safe?” whispered Michael.

Ayub ran a hard hand over the cavalier’s face, and grunted with pleasure.

“—— fly away with me if it isn’t the little Frank behind a woman’s veil. Have you wine—meat? Is it a feast day in the city? Then lead us to the frolic.”

Other Cossacks crowded up, to salute Michael and stroke his shoulders in high glee at seeing him safe again.

“As I live,” rumbled Ayub, shaking his head sadly, “we have played at ghosts until our own skins crept each cock-crow—not a single pretty woman came to pray at the graves in all the three days. Not a lass.”

“How could you tell, father?” asked one of the younger warriors. “They were all wrapped up.”

“How could I tell? Eh, I can judge what lies behind a Turkish veil, as well as you can tell your nag from another. When I was on a raid in Trebizond, the maidens used to nudge me in the streets so hard that my ribs would have given out if I had not worn a mail shirt. And how is my grand-daughter?”

“Your grand-daughter? What kin have you below the sea?” Michael did not understand the big Cossack.

“Eh, what kin? Why, aforetime, when I raided the Black Sea with Rurik—God break his chains for him—I left sons and daughters in every Turkish port where the women were above ordinary, and by now they have children of their own.”

The warriors, clustering restlessly around their leaders, smiled, knowing that Ayub was more afraid of a woman than of a chambul of Tatars. Michael reflected that the veteran must have kept up the spirits of the detachments rarely in the trying time of waiting for orders.

“That is why,” added the giant gravely, “the Turkish knights have grown so notable of late.”

“Aye, grandfather,” Michael grinned, “you were a great man in your time.”

“In my time? May the dogs scratch you, Mikhail! You are no bigger than a flea and I could break you on my thumbnail.” He breathed heavily a moment, and went on. “But I spoke of my grand-daughter Lali. When she bade us farewell to go off to Sidi Ahmad, she wept like a ewe lamb under the shearer, and I kissed her like a grandfather, not otherwise. She is a good witch, and I will salt down the Turk that harms her.”

“She is to open the postern door to Demid, and we are to contrive to pass through the nearest gate of Aleppo, to ride around to join him at the fourth hour of darkness.”

Michael explained Demid’s plan, realizing for the first time the odds against them. It pleased the Cossacks rarely, and they remarked that they would brew a fine beer for Sidi Ahmad to quaff.

“Sidi Ahmad is really Balaban, so strike when you see him.”

“Eh, that hedgehog? I warned Demid that we should slice him but the mad fellow would not listen.”

Ayub fell moody at this, and became silent as Michael cautioned the warriors to wrap their scabbards and take care to ride without noise as they approached the gate.

“Our scabbards are leather and the boys have hunted Tatars often enough to stalk a gate without making a hub-bub,” he remarked stiffly, “but as you are taking over the detachment, we are at command and will do as we are ordered.”

“At command, little father,” repeated the Cossacks readily.

But Michael understood that Ayub was offended.

“Not so, Ayub,” he responded, against his better judgment. “You will be ataman as before, and I will guide you to the place.”

They decided to leave one man with the spare horses—they had two to a warrior—at the base of the burial hill, a pistol-shot from the gate. A scout sent down toward the Bab el Nasr reported that the revelry within the gate had died down, and Michael reflected that the throngs of Moslem must have gone off to watch the procession at the castle.

The Cossack who had acted as scout said that the guard had just been changed, and this meant the third hour of the night had been reached. They were to meet Demid at the beginning of the fourth hour.

“Time,” announced Ayub, prompted by Michael’s whisper. “Time to mount and go.”

In the dense gloom under the trees the word was passed among the warriors. Here and there a pony stamped and a saddle creaked, then fell silence broken by the snuffling of the horses which were restive after the long idleness. Ayub repeated his instructions in a low voice.

They were to go down in column of threes, the new essaul in advance of the men, within hearing of Ayub and Michael who took Hassan with them. On approaching the gate the leaders would dismount and go forward with the Arab, and they would contrive to have the portal opened. At the first shout, or rattle of weapons, the essaul—the old warrior, Broad Breeches was to bring up his men on the gallop and rush the gate regardless of who stood in his path.

As Ayub had said, the men from the Don descended the hill and walked their horses along the highroad without so much as a rattle of a bridle chain or clink of a weapon. Yet Michael knew that by now their sabers were drawn. He wondered what Balaban was doing—Balaban who had sworn that time would bring his revenge—Balaban who had eyes and ears in every secret place, and in whose power Demid now stood.

When the wall loomed up, he whispered to the sergeant to halt his men, and dismounted, feeling weariness in every fiber. The blood was pounding in his head and he had a mad desire to rush on the iron portal and shout, to end the suspense.

Pulling himself together, he consulted with Hassan instead. That cool youngster pointed out that the gate was formed of open iron scroll-work, and offered to creep up and try to turn the key in the lock on the inner side.

Michael assented and the three made their way forward cautiously, keeping to the side of the highway where the glow of the lamp over the portal would not fall on them. They heard a half-dozen Moslems talking lazily on the other side, but no one was on watch at the threshold because Aleppo was barred in of nights and people of the countryside never approached the walls.

The boy crept along the base of the wall and stood up, to thrust his arm slowly through the fretwork. A low whisper told Michael that the key was not in place.

By mischance one of the guards happened to look toward the gate, and made out the shadow of Hassan, cast by the lamp.

“Kubar-dar! Take care! What is there?”

The half-dozen janizaries hurried up on the other side and Michael drew back against the granite blocks of the gate pillar where he could not be seen. Hassan wisely kept his place.

“Allah be praised,” the boy cried loudly, “I have come in time. The kazaks are hiding in the burial hill, where I went with the leper my father. I have come with the tidings. Take me to Sidi Ahmad that I may have a reward.”

“Who art thou?”

“Hassan, the Arab, who passed out two hours since. Be quick.”

“Still thy crying, whelp.”

The man laughed and Michael knew him to be the janizary who had smoked with the Arab in the serai. As before the soldier reeked of forbidden liquor, and the key he took from his girdle rattled in the massive lock.

“I will see to the matter of a reward for tidings of those accursed swine, the kazaks——”

“Accursed swine yourself!” boomed Ayub indignantly, out of the darkness.

The big Cossack had been growing restive as a horse and the insult was too much for his patience.

“Open this cage and I’ll cut your bristles——”

Michael started and swore under his breath. No help for it—the janizary gave a shout and jerked to free the key. But in the same instant the cavalier passed his simitar through the iron-work and through the body of the officer.

Pulling it free, he turned the key in the lock with his left hand, and Ayub shoved mightily at the gate. The janizaries pressed it on the other side; swords flashed and Michael turned aside a thrust that would have split his companion’s head.

Then he caught Ayub by the arm and flung himself aside with the Cossack as horses raced up and their followers spurred against the gate. It swung open under the weight of the horses, and for a minute there was rapid sword play.

Several of the Moslems turned to flee but were cut down by the riders and soon there was no other sound than the heavy breathing of the horses within the deep shadow bf the wall. The bodies of the guards were pulled out of sight and Michael was satisfied that the fight had been ignored by any who had heard it within the near-by alleys. Brawls among the jazinaries were commonplace and this was the night of the zineh. Hassan had betaken himself elsewhere, unharmed.

Posting two of the Cossacks at the wall where they could not be seen, he ordered the essaul to close the gate and guard it until they returned.

Broad Breeches saluted, and drew back reluctantly as they trotted off keeping to the cleared ground by the wall where no one could see them against the lights of the alleys. They went through the quarter of the Jews, where the houses were shut and barred during the festival and the folk within doors. Once or twice they avoided patrols of janizaries, and fumbled through blind arcades where lights gleamed from cellars and the reek of opium was in the air. Beggars started up out of stairways and stared in bewilderment at the huge bodies of the dark riders, the high black hats and the gleaming sabers.

No Cossacks had penetrated into Islam before and the rumor spread in the alleys that the djinn had come down from the air and were riding winged steeds toward the palace.

But Michael and his men outstripped the rumors, and, guided by the dark bulk of the Wolf’s Ear, reached the steep, rock-strewn slope that led to the rear of the palace. Here they halted under some plane trees and Michael ordered five of the ten to dismount and follow him.

Climbing the slope as Demid directed, he moved under the base of the tower, to where he could touch the wall. Then, spreading out his followers he searched among the heaped boulders until he came to a hollow in deep shadow, where small rocks were piled on either side the depression. Here the air was colder and, dropping into the depression, he felt the mouth of a narrow passage, open before him.

And he heard the clash of weapons from within, and the triumphant shout of Moslems.

“Ekh!” cried Ayub, heedless of caution. “Demid is betrayed!”

XII

A woman’s wit is sharp as the dagger of a Rifi thief; a woman’s soul is like a covered mirror wherein no man can behold truth with his eyes until the veil is drawn.

JAL-UD-DEEN, the treasurer of Sidi Ahmad, was taking a reading of the stars in the cupola of the tower when the third hour of the night drew toward its close. His vulture-like skull gleamed under a red lamp as it bent over a Persian zodiac, and a table of the movements of the planets.

Glancing up from time to time, he peered from an open square in the dome at the pin points of fire in the heavens that were stars. Old was Jal-ud-deen, old and shrewd and cautious. Skilled in astrology, he was about to take the reading of Sidi Ahmad’s birth star.

“Fortune has served me,” murmured the pasha. “Aye, time brings its fulfillment and the day when my standard will be raised in Islam.”

Lying full length on a sofa, only his eyes moved as he watched the labor of the man who had taken his name and place until this time should come, so that Sidi Ahmad should be alive to reap the fruits of his efforts.

“O lord of the planets—mirror of the glory of Allah,” murmured the savant, “that which is written will come to pass.”

“And what is written?”

“The message of the stars is not dear. A portent lies under my hand, and within the hour——”

“Nay, I will name the portent for you.” Sidi Ahmad smiled, well content. “It is good. The Shah of Persia, with whom thou hast been negotiating, hath poured water on his sword. He will aid me. So will the mamelukes of Egypt and the beys of Tripoli.”

The wazir, marking down his observations on a sheet of parchment, inclined his head.

“Within the vault below the tower, O favored of Allah, thou hast a hundred thousand swords.”

Sidi Ahmad started, and then smiled approval.

“Aye, wealth to buy them. And the confidence of the Sultan Mustapha to use them. At the imperial city they say that he who controls the janizaries of the court rules Islam. For a time I feared the king of kings, who made gifts of a dagger’s point to other pashas of Aleppo, but to me he sent a damsel who is like the moon.”

The astrologer frowned.

“Why did the dog of a kazak burden himself with the maiden?”

“She was the surety of his mission—it would have put the shadow of doubt on his tale had he appeared in Aleppo without the woman.”

Sidi Ahmad fingered the scar on his cheek thoughtfully.

“Before the night is past my men will have thrust a spear into every corner of Aleppo, and the dog will be brought to me. He has not escaped the walls.”

“But the other?”

“Is a fool. Behold, I have here the safe conduct given him by the Sultan. Allah deliver us from such safe conducts, for it calls for a life! I shall earn another coin of good-will from my master by sending the Frank’s head with this paper to Mustapha.”

The wazir smiled.

“Then should we have the head washed in rose water, and the beard combed and scented. What has my lord done with the maiden?”

“I have sent for her. The slaves are long in finding the wench. I have a mind to look upon her unveiled.”

“Beware of trickery, my lord. The singing girl prays not with the faithful, and I do not think she is a Moslem at heart.”

“What matter, O reader of the stars? Hath a singing girl a heart?” Sidi Ahmad yawned and sat up abruptly.

“O lord of lords, king of kings, commander of the faithful!” Lali’s voice from the open door of the tower room startled the two men because she saluted Sidi Ahmad as a Sultan. He sprang up, brows furrowed, and snatched the veil from under her eyes.

“Allah! What man told you——”

“Pardon your servant, O Pasha.” Lali bent her dark head, the trace of a smile trembling on her lips. “Am I blind not to know who gives orders in Aleppo? Are you not Sidi Ahmad, the Lion of Islam, the far-seeing, the great in heart?”

The narrow eyes of the tall Moslem sparkled as he realized the beauty of the girl. She met his gaze without flinching, her cheeks pale against the dark flood of hair.

“Verily Riwan hath opened the gates of paradise,” murmured the pasha, “and let out this damsel for my delight.”

But even as he spoke with a satisfied smile, his hand went out and he unclasped the ear-rings that fell to her shoulders. A black pearl was set in each, and Sidi Ahmad felt keener pleasure in the touch of them than in the soft skin of the girl.

“Worth twenty sequins, the pair,” he muttered, and stripped a gold bracelet from her arm. “And this almost as much. Why did you linger, at my summons?”

“Lord,” spoke up one of the armed slaves who conducted her, “we found this woman fumbling at the door that leads to the tomb below the tower—a thing forbidden by your command.”

Sidi Ahmad ceased smiling, and his lips set cruelly.

“Ah, so you have light fingers.”

Lali tossed her head, watching the pasha from under lowered lids.

“Favored of Allah, there was talk that you had in the tower a store of Persian silks and rolls of cloth-of-gold, sewn with pearls——”

“What talk is this?” The man’s cunning was written in every line of his thin face.

“Nay, what have you seen? You had no key——”

He read confusion in the girl’s flushed cheeks and lowered eyes, and nodded thoughtfully. His vanity prompted him to show to Lali greater riches than she had seen at the court, and suspicion impelled him to examine the door at the stairhead. Lali seemed to hang back, and he fancied that she was troubled.

“Come,” he said.

“O my lord!” Jal-ud-deen started up from his calculations. “The portent of the stars is dark indeed. I fear——”

“Bah!”

Sidi Ahmad had eyes only for the singing girl as he strode through the door. The guard was changing, and he took eight swordsmen with him into his chambers on the floor below, leaving the same number posted without—for the guard was doubled that night.

The astrologer, having made his salaam, drew back to study his chart again. From the opening in the dome he stared down upon the lighted terraces where cordons of janizaries stood between the throngs of revelers and the palace. Tall minarets rose against the stars like so many spears upraised. A gong sounded the hour from the courtyard below and the heavy tread of soldiery answered it.

Jal-ud-deen reflected that it was well the pasha’s anger had fallen upon the girl rather than on himself.

WITH a key taken from his girdle Sidi Ahmad unlocked the door in his sleeping chamber and signed for the men to conduct Lali after him. One with a cresset torch went ahead, down a narrow stair that wound upon itself steeply, being built in a corner of the tower. At the landing opposite the dungeon Sidi Ahmad halted his followers and bade them await his coming or his call.

Lighting an oil lamp that stood in a recess of the wall, he signed for Lali to descend with him. At the foot of the last flight of steps he drew back a heavy curtain, and entered a vaulted chamber where the air was chill and heavy.

Here he set down the lamp upon what had been once an altar of black marble. Drawing Lali with him, he stepped to a row of teak caskets placed upon bales of silk. One of the boxes he opened, disclosing to the gaze of the Armenian, a mass of loose pearls.

With the careful fingers of a miser he opened other caskets, showing rubies and sapphires and turquoise—gold ornaments, and rare, carved ivory. At the far end of the wall were heavy bags and Sidi Ahmad explained that they contained coins. He tossed Lali’s trinkets into one of the boxes and turned upon her suddenly.

“So you were minded to escape from the tower and go hence to join the kazak! Nay, I read in your eyes upon the galley that you loved him, and my memory is long. Is it not true?”

“Verily,” said the singing girl, lifting her head, “it is true.”

And there was pride in her voice. Sidi Ahmad shrugged, studying her as he might muse over a wayward hunting leopard.

“Eh, then I must buy you. What is your price?”

Lali looked at him and instead of answering, pointed to a black cross set in the white marble of the flooring—

“What gold can buy that?”

“By the wrath of Allah!” The Moslem frowned. “Here are strange words for a singing girl. Some bones of the accursed Emir George lie hereabouts and his crypt hath served me well——”

“Have you no fear of the wrath you have stored up against you, by entering here?”

The eyes of the girl traveled ceaselessly over the walls of the tomb, searching for the outline of a door. But nothing was to be seen. Solid rows of bricks of dried mud stood on every hand, gray and crumbling with age. Cracks and gaps between the bricks showed only the dark clay behind. Lali had made the round of the chamber, and she dared not tap the wall to seek for the door, if one existed.

With the guards within call on the stair she would not cry out, in the hope that Demid would hear, if he should be near at hand. If, indeed, the Cossack should appear in the tomb now he would walk into a mare’s nest.

Lali’s whole thought was to get Sidi Ahmad away before his suspicions were aroused, and yet he continued to watch her as if taking delight in her distress. If, she reasoned swiftly, there had been a door leading from the tomb into a passage, he would have observed it before now.

Her pulse quickened, at a dull sound close by—a grating, rumbling noise, as if a heavy stone were being rolled about.

Sidi Ahmad heard it, too, and his black eyes darted into the shadows of the tomb. Nothing there. But suspicion like a flame rising in dry tinder seized upon him. His powerful hand caught her slender arm, and his lips drew back from his teeth.

“Ohai, I can read your soul, singing girl. Allah fashioned you to be a dove, but you would fly like a falcon. You came to Aleppo, and you have spied into what is hidden. You know my name, and the place of my treasure, and now your eyes search for a way hence. Did Mustapha set you to slay me?”

His free hand sought fruitlessly for a weapon on the girl, who stood passive in his grasp. His face pressed close to hers.

“Were you sent by the Sultan, to do away with Sidi Ahmad? The truth, or you will not sing again! Ah!”

Lali’s dark eyes blazed into his.

“I came of my own will, and my thought was to cast you down—who slew my father and hunted my people like beasts.”

The words came softly, for his ear alone, yet without pretense of deception. Lali had given utterance to what was in her heart, knowing that her next act would make her defenseless before the rage of the pasha. Her voice, full and clear as a clarion, echoed in the tomb.

“Away Demid! Nine are here with weapons. Away, while there is time!”

The scar on Sidi Ahmad’s cheek grew livid and his hand groped for his sword hilt. And then he crouched as if struck. Something thudded against the wall across the chamber. Dust and fragments of brick flew out. The bricks of the wall moved and fell inward under a series of shocks. A black opening appeared where they had been.

Another blow and a large boulder rolled out over the marble floor. The tall figure of an Arab emerged from the hole.

Although he had looked to see something of the kind, Sidi Ahmad felt a twinge of superstitious fear—fear that the dust and bones of the inmate of the tomb had taken human form. But this passed as he made out the dark countenance of the Cossack, blinking in the glare of the lamp.

Demid strode forward out of the cloud of dust from the shattered bricks that had walled up the passage, and stumbled against the massive rock that—fetched from the hillside—he had used to break down the barrier.

“Go back!” cried Lali, beside herself with anxiety. “Swordsmen wait on the——”

Her lips closed on the last word and a moan rose in her throat. Sidi Ahmad had drawn his dagger and thrust it into her side. The steel blade, slender as the tip of a palm frond, passed through the girl’s silk vest without a sound, and the Moslem made no effort to draw it out.

Lali’s hands flew to the ivory hilt of the dagger, and her eyes opened very wide, fastening on the livid face of the man as if bewildered. His voice shrilled in a shout:

“Ho, Moslems! To me——”

His simitar flashed out in time to parry the first cut of the Cossack who had crossed the tomb in a stride and a leap. The lamp flickered in a draught from the stair and gleamed red on the whirling steel. The swords hung for an instant as if suspended in the air.

Then the Moslem tore loose his blade and hacked at the Cossack, snarling as he felt his weapon turned aside. The scar on his face made it seem as if he were laughing. Demid was smiling, yet his face was dark and the veins on his forehead stood out.

“O pasha—O captain-pasha,” he said softly, “you, who would take the life from a girl, remember the sword trick that I taught you! So, it went, and so—then your sword in the air again, and then—this!”

Demid’s blade whirled around the Moslem’s simitar and passed through his body. Sidi Ahmad coughed and fell heavily, first his knees striking the marble floor, then his head. His followers rushed into the tomb in time to see him stretched out motionless, upon the great cross.

The eight men stared from the body of their master to the strange Arab standing before them sword in hand. Swords slithered from scabbards, but before they could recover from their astonishment the voice of Lali halted them!

“The order is fulfilled, O men of the tower. Lo, I was sent hither by command of Mustapha, the Sultan, upon whom—be peace. And the order was that Sidi Ahmad, who would have betrayed his master, should die.”

Kneeling, one hand to her side, she fought for breath.

“Look, in the pasha’s girdle—a letter there, asking that his head be sent to the court. Harm not the aga, who was sent with me—El Khadr——”

She was silent and the janizaries glanced at one another questioningly. Their eyes fell on the treasure chests, and they fingered their weapons, knowing not what to believe. Lali’s wit served her even when her strength was failing, and for the last time she acted a part, hoping to gain respite for Demid.

One of the janizaries called out that they should go for Jal-ud-deen, another that search should be made for the letter, an other besought Demid—fruitlessly—to cast down his sword.

Instead the Cossack threw back the hood of his garment, and they saw the black scalp-lock that fell to his shoulder. The pent up anger of many days of brooding blazed in his eyes, and those who beheld him thought that he was stricken with madness. The iron restraint of the long journey to Aleppo fell from him when he saw Sidi Ahmad strike Lali, and the blood was leaping in his veins as he watched his foes.

“Come, dogs,” he laughed, “slaves of a slave, come and take me or you will taste the stake and fire. Do you hear? I am the Cossack who rode over you this morning.”

Remembrance of how he had dealt with their comrades made the guards hesitate, but they were no cowards. Spreading out, they advanced on him, and he struck the first one down. Then, turning in his tracks, he sprang at those nearest the wall, warding their cuts and slashing back, hewing to the shoulder-bone the slowest of them.

One of the Moslems stumbled over Lali, as they raised a shout of rage, and the point of the Cossack’s sword raked him under the eyes before Demid stepped back to the wall in the nearest corner.

The gleam of steel was before his eyes, and in a second he was cut across the arm and chest. Two men were pressing him close when the others heard the thud of footsteps drawing nearer, and the war-cry of the Cossacks.

“U-ha!” It was Ayub’s bull voice. “Cut, slash, Demid! Where are you?”

The giant ataman thrust his head through the hole in the wall and displaced a goodly quantity of bricks in getting his body through. Whipping out his broadsword, he made at the five surviving Moslems, and Michael hurried after him. Other heads appeared, and swords gleamed as the Don men came after their leaders.

FAR below the halls of the Wolf’s Ear, the Cossacks worked busily to remove the pick of the treasure of Sidi Ahmad, taking first the jewels, which were thrust into saddle-bags; then the gold ornaments. Ayub, having stationed two warriors on the stair, and satisfied himself that Demid was not seriously hurt, fell to rooting out the best of the carved ivory and the silver fittings. This he did deftly enough, shaking his head with admiration at the hoard Sidi Ahmad had gathered together.

“We must not fail to take off the value of ten thousand sequins,” Demid observed.

He was leaning on his sword while Michael bound up the deep cuts about his shoulders.

“Aye, the ransom of Rurik,” nodded Ayub, intent on his task. “May I never taste mead again, if we fail. Sidi Ahmad had a tight fist, though little good it did him in the end.”

The noise of the fight had been muffled by the depth of the secret stair and the music in the courtyard. Over their heads the Moslems sat at ease, and the astrologer still studied his chart.

But presently a young warrior ran into the vault.

“Father, the brothers at the horses have sent word that people have seen them, and many are crying out——”

“To horse!” barked Demid. “Here with that torch!”

Taking the burning brand, he hurled it among the wooden boxes, and tore down the curtains, tossing them near the flames. Glancing around at the bodies of the slain, he stooped and picked up Lali.

“If you must bear hence the witch,” grumbled Ayub, “give her to me. Your wounds will bleed overmuch.”

The eyes of the girl opened, and the mask of pain lifted from her drawn face when Demid’s arms raised her. Her lips moved.

“To Ibnol Hammamgi—ride to my people!” she whispered. “Ai-a, we have kept faith, you and I. We have ridden far with—a free rein, and have I not—kept faith?”

“Aye,” said Demid, pausing and bending his head to catch the almost soundless words.

“Then set me down. I—am not a witch and I do not fear——”

Her hands reached up to touch his face, but closed convulsively on his cloak as a spasm of pain seized her. Demid moved into the passage, ahead of Ayub.

“Nay, little falcon,” he said, almost tenderly, “the end of the road is not yet, and surely you will go with me.”

THEY were in their saddles, and put the ponies to a gallop before the pasha’s guards could close in on them. Through the deserted alleys of the Jews’ quarter they passed like the first gust of a storm. From balconies and housetops turbaned heads peered at them, but saw no more than gigantic black forms bending over steeds that spurned up a cloud of dust and were gone.

“They ride like the djinn folk!” voices cried from housetop to balcony.

The colored lamps of a pleasure garden touched bearded faces and naked steel, shining through the dust. Here a patrol of mounted mamelukes drew up, in startled haste, in their path. The pistols of the Cossacks flashed and bellowed, and several of the Moslems dropped while their horses reared and plunged, throwing the rest into disorder.

Headed by Ayub who wielded his two-handed sword like the father of all the djinn, the Cossacks bunched, and, standing in their stirrups to strike the better, broke through the mamelukes and strung out toward the Bab el Nasr, while behind them the Moslems rallied, and the pursuit gathered headway. The shrill roll of kettledrums sounded near at hand and behind them from the dark tower of the dead Sidi Ahmad blared the trumpets giving the signal to guard the city gates.

A shot barked somewhere near the wall and Ayub began to ply his whip.

“That is the essaul. The dogs are biting him and his men. U-ha! Brothers, warriors, is your Cossack strength spent—are your horses hobbled? Faster, then!”

Emerging into the cleared space by the gate Michael saw Broad Breeches standing pistol in hand by the iron portal, while one of his men lay stretched on the earth. The other was engaging a trio of Moslems, who drew back as Demid and his men galloped up.

The essaul plucked the key from his belt and twisted it in the lock. Then he tugged open the barred gate, thrusting it back, to allow the riders to pass through without slackening pace.

“After us!” Demid called over his shoulder.

The warrior who had been fending off the swords of the Moslems whirled his horse and spurred through the gate. The old sergeant whistled up his pony, but, beholding the mass of pursuers drawing near from the mouths of the alleys, he changed his purpose.

“Once my mother bore me,” he muttered, and lifted his hoarse voice in a shout as he perceived that Demid and Michael had reined in to wait for him to come up. “Speed on, ataman. Tell the bandura players my name——”

With that he closed the gate hastily, turned the key in the lock, and tossed it far into the darkness on the outer side of the gate. Spitting on his hands, he drew his sword and placed his back against the in side of the iron barrier. He was the oldest of the Cossacks, the essaul, and many Winters had whitened his hair; his eyes were growing dim and his aged heart glowed with satisfaction because the minstrels would now hear of his name and perhaps put it into their songs. Besides, Michael had given him an order to keep the gate closed.

So he drew his sword and his gray mustache bristled fiercely as the Moslems spurred their horses in on him.

The locked gate and the lost key delayed their pursuit for a precious half-hour while they rode to another opening in the wall and circled back to take up the trail of the Cossacks.

MICHAEL had spent his strength. He stumbled down from his saddle when Demid called a halt at midnight, and another warrior changed the saddle for him to a fresh horse. Vaguely he was aware that Demid still carried the body of the young girl and that the flood of her black hair fell down over the ataman’s knee like a silken cloak. She had died before the ride began.

He was too tired to feel the ache in his limbs, or the salty dryness of his throat. With his hands gripping the pommel, he let the pony have its head, and, looking back after a while, he puzzled over a red glow that rose above the black line of the wall of Aleppo. The palace of Sidi Ahmad was burning to the ground, but Michael was past caring.

Dry dust of sand was in the air, stinging his eyes; the wind brushed the damp hair from his forehead; the glimmer of the stars through the haze over the desert grew to a flare of torches, and Michael pulled himself awake by a sheer effort of will, to see that the Cossacks had halted and were lighting flares to search for tracks in the sand to show the path they should follow.

“Why do you talk,” he muttered drowsily, “when there is a debt to be paid?”

A shaggy head loomed over him and a voice rumbled in his ear.

“The little Frank is past his strength. I will see to it, but he has a true thought. We can not bear the money to our brothers if we talk about the road, with Satan’s hunting pack at our heels.”

Demid took the lead and they went on at hazard. Once more the saddles creaked, and the cold wind stirred about them. Michael swayed and went into a deep sleep but Ayub’s arm steadied him until the streak of dawn on their right hand showed them the first ridge and the valley through which the northern trail ran, full ahead.

Here they breathed the horses and let them roll, until dust began to show on the desert floor behind them and they mounted the freshest beasts, going through the pass and striking out for the river Jihan, two miles in advance of the nearest Moslems.

It was not yet dusk when they reached the river and forced the sweating horses across. Their animals were done by now, but the leading pursuers were on camels that balked at crossing the river, and by the time that the horsemen came up, Demid was able to turn aside from the trail and hide his tracks in a rocky ravine. Safe for a few hours, they walked their horses, sleeping in the saddles.

Before dawn they dismounted to eat a little and drink from the water-bags they had filled at the river. With the first light Demid sent men to the nearest heights to try to place the detachments of janizaries that must be well up with them by now.

After ascertaining their position and that of the nearest pursuers they set out, keeping to the clay gullies, for they were in broken country here, close to the foothills.

Michael found that one of his saddle-bags was filled with heavy bits of gold. He took some up in his hand, wondering whether the treasure would serve them in the end. But Demid would not hear of abandoning it.

Late that afternoon they entered the first fringe of timber, on the higher slopes of the mountains, and over their heads loomed the white peaks of the Caucasus. It was here that a youth in sheep-skins came leaping down toward them, crying eagerly that Ibnol Hammamgi was awaiting them in the nearest pass with fresh horses, and that fighting was in progress between the Turks and the Sivas tribe that had waited here to cover their retreat if they came back.

Michael, in fact, soon heard the flicker of arrows in the brush and the neighing of horses. Not until then had he known how close the pursuit had drawn about them. But Demid greeted the chief of the mountain folk without comment and bade him draw his men back with them, for the Turks were in force at their rear.

“I have brought back Lali, daughter of Macari,” he added, “do you bear her to the patriarch, that he may perform the rites due to the child of a chieftain.”

XIII

Where the road ends the warriors dismount, and when all have come up they talk together of the paths each one has followed; but of those who set out in the beginning upon the road, not all have come to the end. Aye, many have followed another path, and of these the warriors talk, saying over the names of those who will not lake to saddle again.

THE sun grew warmer on the Cossack steppe, and the snow dwindled to gray patches; then grass came and the whole steppe was like a swamp, over which no army could move. Spring passed, and crops were sown and still no Moslem banners were seen crossing the frontier.

When the wheat and oats were ripening, minstrels and Gipsies drifted in to the camps of the Zaporoghian Cossacks, where a nucleus of warriors were guarding the frontier. These wanderers from the sea brought word of Demid.

They told how the tower of Sidi Ahmad had been fired, and how the Don Cossacks, or what remained of them, had reached the Armenian mountains and had been conducted by the shrewd hillmen to the east, along hidden valley-trails used by the Armenians. Gipsies told, furthermore, that the Cossacks had been seen off Trebizond, coasting by the shore in two open boats, and that a rabble of Greeks, Syrians and what-not had put out from that port to intercept them, hearing that they had gold.

After that no word came, of Demid and his followers, and the Cossacks of the Siech shook their heads mournfully, and settled down to their watch on the Dnieper. Yet still the Turks hung back from the expected invasion.

There was a reason for this. The burning of the tower of Aleppo and the loss of the treasure had spread suspicion throughout the Turks of Asia Minor. Sidi Ahmad no longer ruled their counsels; some whispered that the Sultan had slain the pasha. The mamelukes, who had not been paid, marched back to Egypt and took their reward in plunder from the cities in their path. Always intriguing, the Shah of Persia held back his forces to use for his own advantage.

Meanwhile Jal-ud-deen met the fate that so long he had feared—an assassin from the court ended his life, and Aleppo,fighting and thieving again quite naturally, the janizaries banded against the townspeople and the Arabs, well content, against both. So Mustapha mustered his army slowly in Europe, hoping for word of the treasure of Sidi Ahmad that had vanished from the ken of men.

It was when the crops were being gathered in on the Cossack steppe, and the favorite time for a Moslem invasion was at hand, that fresh tidings came to the Siech from the imperial city. A new priest took up his abode in the log church of the Siech and gave forth a word that was repeated from the Dnieper to the Don, as far as the forests of the north.

Rurik, the chief of all the Cossacks, was slain.

He had been killed by a quarrelsome Moslem guard, in the last Winter, and the Sultan had kept the news a secret, believing that he could trick the Cossacks out of the ransom money. But Rurik, the greatest of all koshevois, captain of the falcon ship and father of the Zaporoghian brotherhood, had been cut down with a simitar before Demid was fairly on his long journey.

The word passed over the steppe like a grass fire, driven by a high wind. Riders bore it to the far districts of the steppe, and warriors emerged from their villages—veterans of other wars took to horse before sunset and youths came from the horse herds to join them. Bands of black-capped riders began to move south over the steppe, and the balalaikas sounded in the taverns where the men of the lower country were drinking, and talking over their wrongs.

Ten thousand Cossacks, aroused by the death of Rurik, crowded into the Siech and called for a council to be held. The drum was beaten and the warriors thronged from the barracks to the central square where their colonels stood with the priest. The rada—the council of the brotherhood—had not assembled, by the empty hut of the koshevoi, when a message came from the patrol on the river that a new band of Cossacks were swimming their horses across to the island camp.

And these newcomers were from the Tatar side of the river.

“It is that unbridled ——, Demid, come home to roost at last,” said the essaul of the patrol. “Have you food, noble sirs, for the wanderers? Have you garments? If they come from the east they must be lean and tattered.”

“They have passed over a long road,” responded one of the colonels. “We will have food, for their eating. Garments we lack.”

In fact the Siech was bare of aught but a sprinkling of horses and the weapons each man brought. Nor did he resent the rough words of the essaul, for, until the Siech was at war, there was no rank among the brotherhood.

IT WAS quite a while before the men on the outskirts of the assembly sighted the new arrivals. (It turned out afterward that Ayub had halted the band to dress up a bit.)

First came the young warrior who had once asked where the sea was. Now he rode in the essaul’s position, one hand on hip, his hat tilted at a rakish angle. His old boots had been discarded for a new pair of red morocco, with blue heels. His leather belt was replaced by a green velvet scarf, and in it, carefully -displayed, was a long Turkish pistol with gold-inlaid hilt.

Four out of the Don men, decked out in all the finery they could lay hand on, trotted in line after the young sergeant, showing Off the steps of the blooded Kabarda mounts. When the staring Zaporoghians pressed too close they thrust out with their stirrups, and bade the onlookers yield place to the Donskoi who had been on a visit to Aleppo.

“Eh, they are tricked out like pashas, the dogs!” muttered the colonel who had spoken of garments.

Four more of the riders escorted a bullock cart laden with heavy leather sacks. But ten thousand pairs of eyes passed over the cart to focus with astonished admiration on Ayub.

The giant ataman had robed himself that morning for the Siech. His kalpack was white ermine, bordered with gold braid; a purple cloak of damask embroidered with peacock-feathers hung from his broad shoulders; instead of the long Cassack coat he had on a Turkish robe of honor, of the sheerest silvered cloth, studded with pearls. Diamonds gleamed from the armlets that held in place his wide sleeves.

“His trousers!” cried a stranger to the Siech. “Only look at his pantaloons!”

Ayub stroked his mustache, delighted with the attention given him. Instead of the usual Cossack attire, he wore a pair of silk bag-trousers, as wide as sails, and the purest yellow in hue.

Behind the cart Demid and Michael rode into the ring of the rada almost unnoticed. Only eleven had come back, of the thirty-four that had set out. The new priest saluted Ayub gravely, taking him for the leader of the band.

“You have come from a hard road, my son—surely the bandura players and the minstrels will sing of your deeds this night.”

He did not know the man he addressed.

“Why do you talk to me of minstrels, batko? As the saints are dear to me, I have as good a tongue as their’s, and I do not need any fiddles or lutes to give it tone. Come, brothers, a cup of vodka, now—I tasted the pasha’s sherbet in Aleppo, but he had no vodka.”

Some one gave him a cup and he poured it down his throat deftly.

“Not bad!”

He rose in his stirrups and lifted his voice.

“Noble sirs, it is not modest in a man to relate all his deeds, so I will only touch on a few. When you wish to know how to capture the Sultan's navy, I can put a word or two in your ears, where at present there are only fleas. And as for capturing such cities as Aleppo with walls as high as the tallest pines—why I and Demid and the little cockerel of a Frank do not bother our heads about such trifles any more.”

The throng pressed nearer and Ayub’s old comrades began to grin and nudge each other.

“I could tell you how it feels to fight night vampires and ghosts in a Turkish burial ground, or to change the heart of a witch——”

“Enough!” broke in Demid coldly.

“—or to row in an open skiff across the Black Sea, when the waves were like the slopes of the Caucasus; but you, sir brothers, only want to scratch the backs of your heads that itch from too much lying down.”

“May the dogs bite you!” howled an angry warrior. “How did you get away from the Greeks, off Trebizond?”

“How did we do that? Easily—it was nothing at all. When dusk fell the little Frank bade us light two-score slow matches that we still had with us for the arquebuses. As I live, we had no fire-locks any more, but the Greeks, counted the burning matches and sheered off, thinking we were in force. After that we landed, and it is the truth that we passed under the mountain where the blessed ark landed when God flooded the world.^[1] Aye, we climbed mountains—such mountains! The fiend himself could not have flown over them. Then we mauled the Tatars a bit on their steppe and cut down a hundred or so, because we wanted their horses. But as to that, every one in the world knows except you, dog brothers, who are swimming in fat because you have eaten in kitchens so long. I will say only that I—and Demid and Ser Mikhail—-have here a million sequins as ransom for the koshevoi Rurik.”

“Rurik is no longer koshevoi,” observed one of the Cossacks.

“How, no longer?”

“Because the Turks have cut his head open and sliced his heart and salted him down, so that he is no longer alive.”

Ayub’s brown face became grim and Demid spurred up to the speaker.

“When did that happen?” he asked.

“Last Candlemas, ataman.”

“And you stand here, like midwives at a borning!”

The eyes of the young warrior flashed around the circle of lifted faces, and he raised his clenched hand over his head. Seven months of achievement in spite of nerve-trying obstacles—his whole journey into Islam had been wasted.

The nearest Cossacks hung their heads, and avoided his gaze.

“The forehead to you, ataman,” spoke up the colonel who had greeted Demid. “We are not cowards that you should use words like a whip, and we lacked powder, cannon and horseflesh. If the Turks had come up at us we would have pounded them, but we had no leader to go against them.”

“Rurik dead!”

Demid turned to Ayub, who for once was speechless. Then he spoke to Michael, evenly:

“This treasure, then, is ours. Your share is a large one, and I will put it aside——”

“Not so,” answered the cavalier promptly. “It was a rare-voyage—and my share of Sidi Ahmad’s loot goes with yours.”

“And you, Michael?”

“I shall venture with you henceforth.”

“Eh, the wild goose has chosen its flock.” Demid’s white teeth flashed in a smile. “Good.”

Once more he surveyed the watching brotherhood, who were ill at ease.

“Now, noble sirs—” he leaned over to jerk a bag from the cart and toss it to the priest—“here is a new church for the batko, aye and new images of gold and silver.”

Pulling out the other sacks he slashed them open with his sword, releasing upon the ground a flood of shining gold, amber and ivory—and a torrent of the finest jewels.

“It is not fitting for one Cossack to have more than his brothers. So set your hands in this trash and drink it up, or lay it out in garments or horses, just as you will. Guzzle and gorge and then go back to hug your wives and tend your cattle.”

Taking up his reins he turned away, his face dark with disappointment.

For a while the elders of the council were angry, then they scratched their heads, and began to pull at their mustaches moodily. A buzz of talk drifted in from the groups of the warriors, and yet no man put hand to the wealth that lay on the earth.

“He spoke well. That’s a fact.”

“Aye, he has a horned soul in him. There is no milk in his blood. Did you hear him call the officers old women?”

“Well, his sword will back up his words, right enough. No getting around that——”

“He flew down on Aleppo——”

“But we are not old women. Let us buy powder and bullets and carriage guns and pound the Turk.”

The murmur grew to a shout and the colonels asked what the will of the assembly was.

“Our will is that Demid should be koskevoi—chief of all the Cossacks!”

“Aye,” roared Ayub, who had lingered to hear what was to follow, “that was well said. He was Rurik’s chum.”

The head men put their heads together, and admitted that Demid had shown wisdom; he had outwitted the Turks, and only the —— was cleverer than the Turks.

“Demid!” howled the throng of warriors. “Give him the baton, you ox-tails, or we will pound you!”

The colonels held up their hands and gave their assent and a voice somewhere took up a song:

“Glorious fame will arise.
Among the Cossacks,
Among the heroes,
Till the end of time.”

AND that Winter when the bandura players sat by the fireside in the cottages on the steppe, they had a new song. Bending their aged limbs toward the blaze and nodding their lean heads, they told how Demid the Falcon, rallied the strength of the Cossacks along the border and went against the Sultan.

They sang, these bandura players, who were blind minstrels, of the deeds they had not seen, of a slender Frank who was made colonel of a regiment, and of the storm that was brewed by the giant Ayub who rode his horse within sight of the imperial city. They told how the Sultan tore his beard, and the streets of Islam ran red until all the world knew how the Cossacks had come to a reckoning with the Turks for the death of Rurik.

1. ↑ Probably Ayub stretched matters here, but Ararat is vissible from a long distance to the north.

 

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.