The Witch of Aleppo/Chapter 6

S 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.”

BNOL 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.