The Witch of Aleppo/Chapter 3

HERE 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!

EHOLDING 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 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.”

N 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.

AI—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:

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.