Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures

suspicious of the hand-holds. High above the last tier of tombs the dim ladder ended at the mouth of a cavern Ivan had not noticed from below. It was much larger than the others; in it Ivan could stand upright. He saw that, instead of being a mere notch in the cliff like the others, this cave ran back and disappeared in darkness.

“Up this shaft came the ancients bearing their dead,” said Kral. “It leads to the vale of Ekrem. Once another shaft led down from tier to tier to the floor of this place, but that has been long choked with the falling in of the walls. If you follow this tunnel, you will come out behind the castle of the Kurd, El Afdal Shirkuh, that overlooks Ekrem.”

“How shall it profit us?” grunted Ivan.

“Listen, and I will tell you a tale!” exclaimed Kral, squatting in the semi-darkness, his back against the cave- wall. “Yesterday when the slaughtering began, I strove for awhile with the Turki dogs; then when my comrades had been cut down, I fled, and leaving the valley, ran down the gorge of Diva. In the midst of this gorge there is a great heap of boulders, masked by thickets. I sought refuge there, only to find it occupied by a strange band of warriors. I was among them before I was aware of them, and they beat me down with the barrels of their pistols, and bound me, asking me questions as to what went on in the valley – for as they rode down the gorge, they had heard the shots and shouting, and had halted and entrenched themselves on the knoll, and were about to send scouts forward. They were Algerian pirates and they called their emir Osman Pasha.

“While they questioned me, a girl came riding like one mad, with the Turkomans at her heels. When she sprang from her horse and begged aid of Osman Pasha I recognized her as the Persian dancing-girl who dwells in the castle. He and his men scattered the Turkomans with a volley from their matchlocks, and then he talked with the girl, Ayesha. They had forgotten me and I lay near, bound, and heard all they said.

“For more than a year, Shirkuh has held a captive in his castle. I know, because I have taken grain and sheep to the castle, to be paid for after the Kurdish fashion – with curses and blows. Kazak, the prisoner is Orkhan, brother of Murad Padishah!”

The Cossack grunted in surprize.

“This Ayesha disclosed to Osman, and he swore to aid her in freeing the prince. As they talked the Turkomans returned in full force and reined in at a distance, wishful to attack, yet fearing the matchlocks. Osman hailed them, and they had speech, he and their chief Arap Ali who commands since their khan was slain, and at last the Turkoman came among the rocks and squatted at Osman’s fire and shared bread and salt. And the three plotted to rescue Prince Orkhan, and put him on the Ottoman throne.

“Ayesha had discovered the secret way from the castle. This day, just before sunset, the Turkomans are to attack the castle openly, and while they thus attract the attention of the Kurds, Osman and his Algerians are to come to the castle by the secret way. Ayesha will have returned to Orkhan, and will open the secret door for them. They will take the prince away, and ride into the hills, recruiting warriors. As they talked night fell, and I gnawed through my cords and slipped away.

“You wish vengeance – here is a chance for both vengeance and profit, yah kahwand! I will show you how to trap Osman. Slay him – slay the girl – and their followers – take Orkhan and wring a mighty price from Safia. She will pay you richly to keep him out of the way, or to slay him.”

“Show me,” grunted the Cossack incredulously. Kral nodded. Groping into a pile of goods in a corner, he produced a torch, which he lighted with flint and steel. Then beckoning Ivan, he started off down the cavern. The Zaporogian drew his broadsword and followed.

“No tricks, Kral,” he cautioned, “or your head leaves your shoulders.”

The Armenian’s laugh rang savagely bitter in the gloom. “Would I betray Christians to the butchers of my people? You and your swaggerers might rot in hell for all of me. But through you I may have vengeance. Therefore trust me.”

Ivan made no reply, and Kral led the way through a narrow doorway and into a tunnel beyond. Here the vaulted roof was higher than a man could reach, and three horses might have been ridden abreast. The smooth rock floor slanted slightly downward, and from time to time they came to short flights of steps cut into the stone, giving onto lower levels. Ivan twisted his moustache reflectively and stared about him. The flickering torch-light shone on figures carved all along the walls in bas-relief. They were mostly shapes of men, short, thick-bodied, with round heads and broad noses. They made war on one another, hunted lions, brought gifts to a fantastic anthropomorphic figure that must have been a god, and in some of the carvings fought men of an unmistakably different race, taller and more symmetrically shaped men, with long beards and hook noses. Ivan detected a faint resemblance between these figures and Kral.

As they progressed, the Cossack seemed to hear a murmur of running water from time to time. He mentioned this.

“We have left the tunnel the old ones made,” answered Kral. “We are in an old water-course now. Once a stream ran through here, cutting through the solid rock. For some reason it changed its course, God only knows how many thousands of years ago. It is that you hear, flowing through the darkness not far away, but through another channel. Soon you will see it. It has its head far up among the mountains, but is mainly subterranean.”

Presently Ivan heard the unmistakable ripple of falling water, and ahead of him the tunnel ended abruptly in what appeared to be a solid rock wall. But it was too smooth and symmetrical to be the work of nature; it was a huge block of stone, shaped by the hand of man, and about the edges stole a thin grey light. Extinguishing the torch, Kral fumbled in the darkness, and Ivan heard him strain and grunt. Then the block, which was hung on a stone pivot, swung aside and a sheet of silver shimmered before the Cossack’s eyes.

They stood in the narrow mouth of the tunnel, which was masked by a sheet of water rushing over the cliff high above. At the foot of the falls a circular pool foamed and eddied, and from it a narrow stream raced away down the gorge. Kral pointed out a ledge that ran from the mouth of the cavern, skirting the edge of the pool, and Ivan followed him, first wrapping his powder-flask and pistol-locks carefully in his silken sash. At the edge, the falling water formed such a thin sheet that neither man was completely soaked in gaining the outer world. Ivan saw that he was in a narrow gorge that was like a knife-cut through the hills. Nowhere was it more than forty or fifty paces wide, and on either hand sheer cliffs towered for hundreds of feet, higher on the left than on the right. No vegetation grew anywhere, except for a fringe about the edge of the pool, and along the course of the narrow stream. This stream crossed the canyon floor meanderingly to plunge into a narrow crack in the opposite cliff – eventually to find its way into the river that traversed Ekrem, Kral said. Ivan glanced back the way they had come; the falling water completely masked the tunnel-mouth. Even with the door-block pulled aside, he could have sworn the falls rushed down a blank stone wall.

He followed Kral up the gorge which did not run straight, but turned and twisted like a tortured snake. Within three hundred paces they lost sight of the waterfall and only a confused murmur came to their ears. At this point also, the floor of the gorge began to slant upward at a steep pitch. A few more hundred paces and the Armenian, leading the way with renewed caution, drew back, clutching his companion’s arm. A stunted tree stood at a sharp angle of the rock wall, and behind this Kral crouched, pointing.

Looking over his shoulder, the Zaporogian grunted. Beyond the angle the gorge ran on for perhaps eighty paces, then ended in a blank impasse. But on his right hand the cliff seemed curiously altered, and he stared for an instant before he realized that he was looking at a man-made wall. They were almost behind a castle built in a notch of the cliffs. Its wall rose sheer from the edge of a deep crevice; no bridge spanned this chasm, and the only apparent entrance in the wall was a heavy iron-braced door.

“It was by this path that the girl Ayesha escaped,” said Kral. “This gorge runs almost parallel to Ekrem; it narrows to the west and finally comes into the valley beyond where the villages stood. The Kurds blocked the entrance there with stones so that it can not be discovered from the outer valley, unless one knows of it. They seldom use this road. And even they know nothing of the tunnel behind the waterfall, or the Caves of the Dead. But yonder door Ayesha will open to Osman Pasha.”

Ivan gnawed his moustache. He yearned to loot the castle himself, but he saw no way to come to it. The chasm was too wide for a man to leap, and anyway, there was no ledge to cling to on the other side.

“By Allah, Kral,” said he, “I’d like to look on this noted valley.”

The Armenian glanced at his bulk and shook his head.

“There is a way we call the Eagle’s Road, but it is not for such as you.”

“By God!” roared the giant Cossack, bristling instantly. “Is a skin-clad heathen a better man than a Zaporogian?