Page:Talbot Mundy - Eye of Zeitoon.djvu/324

304 Kagig faced us on the stable roof, and his finger-joints cracked again.

"It is the worst! They have sent Mahmoud Bey against us. I would rather any six other Turks. Mahmoud Bey is not a fool. He is a young successful man, who looks to this campaign to bolster his ambition. He is a ruthless brute!"

"Which Turk isn't?" asked Will.

"This one is most ruthless. This Mahmoud is the one who in the massacres of five years ago caused Armenian prisoners to have horse-shoes nailed to their naked feet, in order, he said, that they might march without hurt. He will waste no time about preliminaries!"

Kagig was entirely right. Mahmoud Bey began the overture that very instant with artillery fire directed at the hidden defenses flanking the clay ramp. Next we caught the stuttering chorus of his machine guns, and the intermittent answer of Kagig's riflemen.

"Now, effendim, one of you down to the defenses, please! There is risk my men may use too many cartridges. Talk to them—restrain them. They might listen to me, but—" His long fingers suggested unhappy fragments of past history.

"You, Fred!" said Monty, and Fred hitched his concertina to a more comfortable angle.

Fred was the obvious choice. His gift of tongues would enable him better than any of us to persuade, and if need were, compel. We had left our rifles leaning by the wall at the castle entrance, and in his cartridge bag was my oil-can and rag-bag. I asked him for them, and he threw them to me rather clumsily. Trying to catch them I twisted for the second time the ankle I had hurt that morning. Fred mounted and rode out through the