Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures

corsairs.

Ivan studied the shoreline. He could not follow to the creek-mouth, but he believed he could run the galley ashore on a sloping headland that ran out from the hills nearer at hand. He went to one of the steering- sweeps.

“Togrukh and Yermak take the other,” he directed; “Demetri and Konstantine quiet the horses. The rest of you dog-brothers tie up your cuts and then go down into the waist and do the best you can at rowing. If any of those Algerian pigs are still alive, knock ’em on the head.”

There were not. Those the cannon balls of their former comrades had spared had been mowed down by the pistols and swords of the Cossacks as they broke their chains and strove to swarm up out of the waist.

Slowly and laboriously they worked the galley inshore. The sun was setting, the long shadows of the cliffs turning from dark blue to velvety purple. A haze like soft blue smoke hovered over the dark water that sunset turned to dusky amethyst. A few stars blinked out in the east. The corsair galley had limped into the mouth of the creek, vanishing between the towering cliffs.

Ivan and his comrades worked stolidly. The starboard rail was almost awash, and the Cossacks abandoned the oars and came up on the poop. The horses were screaming again, mad with fear at the rising water. The Cossacks looked at the shore, teeming, for all they knew, with hostile tribes, but they said nothing. They followed Ivan’s directions as implicitly as if he had been elected ataman by regular conclave in the Sjetsch, that stronghold of free men on the lower reaches of the Dnieper.

It was the only real democracy that ever existed on earth; a democracy where there was no class distinction save that of personal prowess and courage. To the Saporoska Sjetsch came men of all lands and races, leaving their pasts behind, to merge into the new race that was there being evolved. They took new names, entered into new lives. None asked their real names, nor whence they came. They were of many bloods. Togrukh, for example, was the son of a renegade Hungarian colonel and a Tatar slave-woman.

Whence Ivan came, none knew or cared. He had wandered into the Sjetsch five years before, speaking brokenly the speech of the Muscovites. He had aroused some suspicion at the beginning. He affirmed that he believed in God – which was one of the few questions asked an applicant to the Sjetsch – but he was reluctant to cross himself. After argument he compromised by cutting a cross in the air with his sword. He was narrowly watched for some time, but soon proved his honesty in battles against the Turks, and the Tatars of Crimea. Whatever his former life and tongue, he was all Cossack now. He might have been born and raised on the southern steppes.

His sword was one departure from form, among men where curved blades were almost universally the rule. It was straight, four and a half feet in length from point to pommel, broad, double-edged, a blade for thrusting as well as hacking. Not much inferior in weight to the five-foot two-handed swords used by the Wallachian and German men-at-arms, it was meant to be wielded with one hand. From the wide cross-piece to the heavy silver ball that was the pommel, curved a broad hand-guard in flaring lines of gilt-chased iron. Not half a dozen men on the frontier could wield that sword with one hand. It was in Ivan’s fingers now as he leaned on the useless sweep and stared at the headland which loomed nearer and nearer with each heave and roll of the floundering galley.

II

In the fertile valley of Ekrem happenings were coming to pass. The river that wound through the small patches of meadowland and farmland was tinged red, and the mountains that rose on either hand looked down on a scene only less old than they. Horror had come upon the peaceful valley-dwellers, in the shape of lean wolfish riders from the outlands. They did not turn their gaze toward the castle that hung as if poised on the sheer slope high up the mountains; there too lurked oppressors.

The clan of Ilbars Khan, the Turkoman, driven westward out of Persia by tribal feud, was taking toll among the Armenian villages in the valley of Ekrem. It was but a raid among raids, for cattle, slaves and plunder, meant to impress his lordship over the caphar dogs. He was ambitious; his dreams embraced more than the leadership of a wandering tribe. Chiefs had carved kingdoms out of these hills before.

But just now, like his warriors, he was drunk with slaughter. The huts of the Armenians lay in smoking ruins. The barns had been spared, because they contained fodder for horses, as well as the ricks. Up and down the valley the lean riders raced, stabbing and loosing their arrows. Men screamed as the steel drove home; women shrieked as they were jerked naked across the raiders’ saddle-bows.

The horsemen in their sheepskins and high fur kalpaks were swarming in the straggling streets of the largest village – a squalid cluster of huts, half mud, half stone. Routed out of their pitiful hiding-places, the villagers knelt vainly imploring mercy, or as vainly fled, to be ridden down as they ran.

Foremost in this sport was Ilbars Khan, and lost the chance of a kingdom thereby. He spurred between the huts, out into the meadow, chasing a ragged wretch whose heels were winged by the fear of death. Ilbars Khan’s lance-point caught him between the shoulder-blades. The spear-shaft snapped and the drumming hoofs spurned the writhing body as the chief swept past.

“Allah il allah!” Beards were whitened with foam at the blood-mad cry.

The yataghans whistled, ending in the zhukk! of cloven flesh and bone. With a wild cry a fugitive turned as Ilbars Khan swooped down on him, his wide kaftan spreading out in the wind like the wings of a hawk. In that instant the dilated eyes of the Armenian saw, as in a dream, the lean bearded face with its thin down-curving nose; the gold-broidered vest beneath the flowing cloak, crossed by the wide silk girdle from which projected the ivory hilts of half a dozen daggers; the wide sleeve falling away from the lean muscular arm that lifted, ending in a broad curving glitter of steel. In that instant too, the Turkoman saw the lean stooped figure tensed beneath the rags, the wild eyes glaring from under the lank tangle of hair, the long glimmer of light glancing along the barrel of a musket. A wild cry rang from the lips of the hunted, drowned in the bursting roar of the firelock. A swirling cloud of smoke enveloped the figures, in which a flashing ray of steel cut the murk like a flicker of lightning. Out of the cloud raced a riderless steed, reins flowing free. A breath of wind blew the smoke away.

One of the figures on the ground was still writhing; slowly it drew itself up on one elbow. It was the Armenian, life welling fast from a ghastly cut across the neck and shoulder. Gasping, fighting hard for life, he looked down with wildly glaring eyes on the other form. The Turkoman’s kalpak lay yards away, blown there by the close-range shot; most of his brains were in it. Ilbars Khan’s beard jutted upward, as if in ghastly comic surprize. The Armenian’s arm gave way and his face crashed into the dirt, filling his mouth with dust. He spat it out, dyed red. A ghastly laugh slobbered from his frothy lips. It rose to a shout that scared the wheeling vultures. He fell back threshing the sand with his hands, yelling with maniacal mirth. When the horrified Turkomans reached the spot, the Armenian was dead with a ghastly smile frozen on his lips. He had recognized his victim.

The Turkomans squatted about like evil-eyed vultures about a dead sheep, and conversed over the body of their khan. Their speech was evil as their countenances, and when they rose from that buzzards’ conclave, the doom had been sealed of every Armenian in the valley of Ekrem.

Granaries, ricks and stables, spared by Ilbars Khan, went up in flames. All the prisoners taken were slain – infants tossed living into the flames, young girls ripped up and flung into the blood-stained streets. Beside the khan’s corpse grew a heap of severed heads; the riders galloped up, swinging the ghastly relics by the hair, tossing them on the grim pyramid. Every place that might conceivably lend concealment to a shuddering wretch was ripped apart.

It was while engaged in this that one of the tribesmen, prodding into a stack of hay, discerned a movement in the straw. With a wolfish yell he pounced upon it, and dragged his victim to light, giving tongue in lustful exultation as he saw his prisoner. It was a girl, and no stodgy Armenian woman, either. Tearing off the cloak which she sought to huddle about her slender form, he feasted his vulture-eyes on her beauty, scantily covered by the garb of a Persian dancing-girl. Over her filmy yasmaq – her light veil – her dark eyes, shadowed by long kohl-tinted lashes, were eloquent with fear.

She said nothing, struggling fiercely, her lithe limbs writhing in his cruel grip. He dragged her toward his horse – then quick and deadly as a striking cobra, she snatched a curved dagger from his girdle and sank it to the hilt under