Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures

his heart. With a groan he crumpled, his sheepskins dyed red, and she sprang like a she-panther to his horse, seeming to soar to the high-peaked saddle, so lithe were her motions. The tall steed neighed and reared, and she wrenched it about and raced up the valley. Behind her the pack gave tongue and streamed out in hot pursuit. Arrows whistled about her head and she flinched as they sang venomously by, but urged the steed to more frenzied efforts.

She reined him straight at the mountain wall on the south, where a narrow canyon opened into the valley. Here the going was perilous, and the Turkomans reined to a less headlong pace among the rolling stones and broken boulders. But the girl rode like a leaf blown before a storm, and so it was that she was leading them by several hundred yards when she came upon a cluster of tamarisk-grown boulders that rose island-like above the level of the canyon floor. There was a spring among those boulders, and men were there.

She saw them among the rocks, and they shouted at her to halt. At first she thought them Turkomans; then she saw her mistake. They were tall and strongly built, chain-mail glinting under their cloaks. Their white turban- cloths were wrapped about steel caps that rose to a spire-like peak. Their dark faces were strong and reckless. If the Turkomans were jackals, these were hawks. All this she saw in that moment, her quick perception abnormally whetted by desperation. She saw too the muzzles of matchlocks among the rocks, and caught the flicker of burning fuses. And she made up her mind instantly. Throwing herself from the steed, she ran up the rocks, falling on her knees.

“Aid, in the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate!”

A man emerged from a clump of bushes and looked down at her. And as she looked, she cried out again incredulously.

“Osman Pasha!” Then recollecting her urgent need, she clasped his knees, crying, “Yah khawand, protect me! Save me from these wolves who follow!”

“Why should I risk my life for you?” he asked indifferently.

“I knew you of old in the court of the Padishah!” she cried desperately, tearing off her veil. “I danced before you. I am Ayesha – ”

“Many women have danced before me,” he answered. “I have no quarrel with these desert-dogs.”

“Then I will give you a talsmin,” said she in final desperation. “Listen!” And as she whispered a name in his ear, he started as if stung. Quickly he raised his head, staring at her as if to plumb the depths of her inmost mind. For an instant he stood motionless, his grey eyes turned inward, then clambering up a great boulder, he faced the oncoming riders with lifted hand.

“Go your way in peace, in the name of Allah!”

His answer was a whistle of arrows about his ears. He sprang down, waving his hand. Instantly matchlocks began to crash from among the rocks, the smoke billowing about the thicket-clad knoll. A dozen wild riders rolled from their saddles and lay twitching. The rest gave back, yelling in dismay. They wheeled about and cantered swiftly back up the gorge toward the main valley.

Osman Pasha turned to Ayesha, who had modestly resumed her veil. He was a tall man, with grey eyes like ice and steel. There was in his manner a certain ruthless directness rare in an Oriental. His cloak was of crimson silk, his corselet of close-meshed chain mail threaded with gold. His green turban was held in place by a jeweled brooch, and his spired helmet was chased in silver. Ivory butts of gold-mounted pistols jutted from his shagreen girdle, which was resplendent with a great golden buckle, and his boots were of finest Spanish leather. Salt water, powder smoke and blood had stained and tarnished his apparel; yet the richness of his garments and weapons was notable, even in that age of lavish accoutrements.

His men were gathered about him, forty Algerian pirates, as ruthless and courageous a race as ever trod a deck, bristling with firearms and scimitars. In a depression behind the knoll were horses of a rather inferior breed.

“My daughter,” said Osman Pasha in a benignant manner that was belied by his cruel eyes, “I have made enemies in this strange land, and fought a skirmish on your behalf, because of a name whispered in my ear. I believed you – ”

“If I lied may my hide be stripped from me,” she swore.

“It will be,” he promised gently. “I will see to it personally. You spoke the name of Prince Orkhan. What do you know of him?”

“For three years I have shared his exile.”

“Where is he now?”

She pointed up toward the mountains that overhung the distant valley, where the turrets of the castle were just visible among the crags.

“Across the valley, in yonder castle of El Afdal Shirkuh, the Kurd.”

“It would be hard to take,” he mused.

“Send for the rest of your sea-hawks!” she cried. “I know a way to bring you to the very heart of that keep!”

He shook his head.

“These ye see are all my band.”

Then seeing her incredulous glance, he said, “I am not surprized that you wonder at my change of fortune. I will tell you – ”

And with the disconcerting frankness of the man, which his fellow Moslems found so inexplicable, Osman Pasha briefly sketched his fall. He did not tell her of his triumphs; they were too well known to need repeating. Five years before he had appeared suddenly on the stage of the Mediterranean, as a reis of the famed corsair, Seyf ed-din Ghazi. He soon outstripped his master and gathered a fleet of his own, which owned allegiance to no ruler, not even the Barbary beys. At first an ally of the Grand Turk and a welcome guest at the Sublime Porte, he had later enraged the Sultan by his raids on Turkish shipping.

A deadly feud had arisen between them, and at last fate had declared in favor of Murad. Pillaging along the Dardanelles, the corsair had been trapped by an Ottoman fleet and all his ships destroyed except two. But the Sultan had spared his life, giving him a task that practically amounted to a death sentence. He was commanded to sail up the Black Sea to the Dnieper mouth and there destroy another foe of the Turk’s – Skol Ostap, the Koshevoi Ataman of the Zaporogian Cossacks, whose raids into Turkish dominions had driven the Sultan well-nigh to madness.

The Cossacks at intervals shifted their Sjetsch – their armed camp – from island to island, secretly, to avoid surprize attacks, but Osman’s luck had been with him to a certain extent. A Greek traitor had led him to the Dnieper island then occupied by the free warriors, and at a time when many of them were away on a raid against the Tatars across the river. The flying raid had failed in capturing Skol Ostap, lying helpless of an old wound, because of the ferocious resistance of the Cossacks with him. In the midst of the battle the riders had returned from pounding the Tatars, and Osman fled, leaving one of his ships in their hands. He knew the penalty for failure, and instead of fleeing toward the Turkish fleet which waited down along the coast, he struck straight out across the Black Sea, soon pursued by the Cossacks in his captured ship, using its crew for oarsmen. He did not understand the ferocity of their pursuit, not knowing that a bursting shell from his cannon had slain the wounded Skol Ostap and maddened his kunaks thereby.

When the eastern coast was in sight, the reckless Cossacks had drawn up within cannon-shot, and in the ensuing battle only the rising of the oarsmen on their craft had won the day for the corsair.

“So we ran the galley ashore in the creek. We might have repaired her, but whither go? The Sultan’s fleets hold the gateway out of the Black Sea, and he will have a bowstring ready for me when he knows I’ve failed. We found a village up along the creek – Moslems of a sort who toiled among vineyards and the fishing nets. There we procured horses and struck through the mountains, seeking we know not what – a way out of Ottoman dominions, or a new kingdom to rule. Who knows?”

They had pushed on through the mountains for days, preferring the wild desolation of uninhabited land to the risk of falling afoul of Turkish outposts. Osman Pasha had an idea that already swift couriers had carried the word throughout the empire that he was doomed. Whatever else the Turkish sultans were or were not, they were thorough in their vengeance. He had been wandering without a plan, trusting to his luck. The fatalism of the Turk was not his.

Ayesha listened, and without comment began her tale. As Osman well knew, it was the custom of the sultans, upon coming to the throne, to butcher their brothers and their brothers’ children. Bayazid I began that custom, and