Swords From the East (56 page)

"I don't think you have any second to serve in this duel," interrupted Billings coldly, "unless you wish to call in your friend the Devil. And we can dispense with a surgeon."

For the first time Loosang laughed.

"Ekh, after all you are a fool. Do you not know yet that steel cannot hurt a lama? What will you fight me with? That sword-"

With the words, Loosang cast himself at Billings. His hand darted under his apron and flew up again. In each fist was clasped a long knife. Lifting these over his head, he leaped.

And Billings, leaning forward, thrust his sword through the body of Loosang under the heart.

As he made the thrust he drew to one side, catching the lama's right wrist in his left and avoiding the downward sweep of the other arm. For a space he held the form of the priest passive, while Loosang squealed between set teeth. Then he drew out his blade, pushing the body clear of it, over the ledge into the rush of the falls.

He caught only one glimpse of brown limbs flashing down through green water. But presently over his head he heard men calling, and the scrape of boots on the rocks.

Billings's position on the side of the stream was bad if he was to be attacked, so he climbed up the slope as best he could and came out within a detachment of riders who clustered about his empty scabbard.

They were tribesmen, unknown to him. There were a round dozen of them, and he judged they had been raiding because they had with them several led horses, one a beautiful Kochlani mare; the other two beasts were loaded with skins, silver ornaments, and a large scimitar, splendidly etched with gold.

One of them, their leader apparently, held gingerly what seemed to be a roll of paper. Billings surveyed them until the headman dismounted and knelt, holding up the roll of paper.

"Billings, lord," he said in guttural Tatar, "we are ten and two men of the Yeka Zukor clan that was overcome in Russia and led back to the Volga. Our hearts inclined toward our kin. So Ubaka Khan this day commanded us to seek you out and serve you, under pain of having our limbs pulled from our bodies by horses. We will go back with you to the Volga."

He laid down the object he held in his hands, with a good deal of relief.

"Here, lord, is the map you made of our road. Here-" he pointed-"is a sword of honor from Ubaka, and a horse, and other things. Also your magic things for looking at the stars. We are ready. Say the word and mount and go."

Billings laughed.

"Mount-and come."

Halfway down the mountain they halted to look out over the plain. The long lines had formed again among the clans; the dust rose over the camel caravans. He could see the sun reflected on the muskets as the riders took up their journey to the east and the valley of the Ili. He could almost hear the hoa-hoa of the drivers, the shuffling of the cattle, and the creaking of the wagons.

So it happened that Captain Billings watched the passing of the Torguts along the road that led to the Ili. No other giaour set eyes on them again. But it is written in the annals of Keun-lung that those of the clans that survived the journey gained lands and peace in the valley of the Ili.

After sheathing his sword Billings rode on toward the setting sun. But the Tatar at his side had seen blood stains on the steel blade.

"Has my lord slain an enemy in the gorge?" he asked with interest.

Billings smiled.

"I cut off the head of a snake."

They were torturing the Cossack ataman. They had him down in the garden, over the blue water, and two of them held his arms stretched out.

"He has not groaned yet," one whispered, "but soon he will talk."

The man who was being tortured stiffened his muscles and waited. Sweat glistened on his shaven skull except where his scalp lock hung to his shoulders. He had wide shoulders, and a fierce, sunburned face from which blue eyes gleamed. He was saying to himself that he would not talk.

"Give him the diadem," said a voice from the carpet under the trees.

The eyes of the Cossack ataman turned from side to side. Some men were busy over a charcoal brazier, fanning it to red-hot heat. Smoke rose and vanished into the sunlight. A slave in a leather apron brought an iron ring ornamented with iron flowers. Lifting it in his hands, he set it on the Cossack's bare head. The touch of the iron was cool and pleasant.

Then one of the soldiers at the brazier rose with something held in a pair of tongs. Swiftly he lifted the tongs and dropped something small and round and hard among the flowers of the iron diadem. It fell into a hollow and rested there, almost touching the skin of the Cossack's forehead.

For a moment they all watched the tense face of the young Cossack. Just a trace of smoke came up from the iron diadem, over his forehead. The skin of his head darkened with a rush of blood that clouded the whites of his eyes.

He did not say anything but he moved suddenly, with violent strength. The two soldiers who had been clinging to his arms fell away, and when he struck the one with the tongs, that one went down like a horse shot in the head. Then the Cossack tore the iron ring from his head, hurling it, with its red-hot ball no larger than a pearl, into the water at the garden's edge.

Before he could move again, half a dozen Turks were on him, gripping the massive arms in the loose sleeves, and the legs in their baggy leather breeches. He caught at a sword hilt and jerked the weapon from a janissary's scabbard. But they held his arm fast and wrenched the sword away from him. So he stood still, panting.

There were a score of janissaries and slaves around him, and all about the garden was the serai of the Sultan. It had three courtyards, with guards at the gates. The way out led through all three of the courtyards. And beyond the last gate was the outer court of the janissaries-beyond that the streets of Constantinople, filled with Turks and other Moslems. Around the city stood a triple wall, closed except for the Golden Gate with its seven towers. Well the Cossack ataman knew that he could not escape from this torture.

"Give him the necklace," said the voice from the carpet.

It was Sultan Ibrahim himself, Lord of Kings, Exalted Head of the Ottoman Empire, Guardian of Mecca and Jerusalem, Master of Aleppo, Damascus, Cairo and Babylon, of Africa and Asia and the White Sea and the Black; also conqueror of Greece and Wallachia, Supreme Ruler of the Seven Climates, in the service of Allah. He lay back on his cushions in the shade, sucking sweet mastic. He was Sultan of the Turks, although the unbelievers of Europe in that year, 1644, called him the Grand Seignior. That day he had kicked the Russian ambassador out of his council chamber, and he meant to bastinado the ambassador of France. But now he wanted to see this great dog of a Cossack panting and quivering on the earth at his feet.

"Nay!" the Cossack cried out for the first time, hoarsely. "I will speak."

The young Sultan looked up idly. It would make no difference, of course. Afterward the torturers would play with this infidel captive. Sultan Ibrahim knew a thing or two about torture-he had grown up in the harem among women. Hunting was his obsession-he would send his whole army to ring in the deer, the foxes, and leopards of the countryside, to drive the beasts to where he could shoot one after another with his gun. Between hunts he liked to practice with his gun, sitting here in the shade at the edge of the blue Bosporus, shooting at the people who ventured too near in boats ...

A bimbashi of the divan stepped forward, always keeping his face toward the Sultan, the chosen of Allah. "Then speak!" said the bimbashi. "Where marches the army of the Cossacks? What is its strength? What brings it out of the steppes? What plan have the dog-souls, thy comrades?"

Beside him a secretary of the divan stood with quill and paper to write down the answers-for this Cossack ataman, whose name was Sokol, knew the Turkish speech.

The captive smiled. "Write, thou," he said slowly. "The army of the Cossacks marches in the night. Its strength is the strength of a rushing wind. It comes, the army of the Cossacks, to drive this spayed dog, thy master, from his hole-"

From the hand of the secretary the paper fell. "Yah, Allah!" cried the Turkish officer. But the Sultan rose, quivering. A white ermine kaftan hung from his shoulders and two silver-hilted swords were girded to his sides. Yet he drew a curved knife that flashed in the sun.

As a snake strikes, his arm darted at the throat of the ataman. And checked in mid-stroke. For the Sultan Ibrahim had a quick wit. Aye, he had the cunning of a ferret. He had seen the gleam of triumph in the cold blue eyes of his captive. And he knew that this chieftain of the steppes had almost won himself an easy death by a boy's trick.

"Nay," he said softly, "thy time is not yet." He sheathed the curved dagger, and considered. "Sokol, thou shalt taste the mercy of the Ottoman. Thou shalt go back to thy cell. Thou shalt have the richest food and wine that is craved by Christians. Wilt thou have a young, sweet-smelling slave girl to anoint thy wound and distract thee? Only ask! " He smiled pleasantly. "Then tomorrow, at this same hour, thou shalt appear again in my presence. To dance, Cossack, to dance. Thou shalt have the skin stripped from thy body, a little at a time, to be stuffed with straw and sent back to thy comrades. But thy body will be set free, to dance in the streets of my city without its skin."

Well did the Sultan know that when a man is nerved to meet an end swiftly, death comes unheeded. But when he has had hours of ease to think about what is to come, then courage oozes out of him.

The ataman Sokol held his head high, but his eyes were bleak. "Then give me beer and tobacco and a pipe," he responded moodily.

"Thou shalt have them," Ibrahim promised, making a sign to the secretary. "And what woman? We have all kinds at our command-goldenhaired Circassian maids, ox-eyed Greeks-aye, noble Frankish ladies, fiery Spaniards who once were Christians. Now they are slaves and have learned the niceties of love."

Sokol laughed. "We Cossacks have a mistress," he said. "She whose embrace is strongest, whose kiss lasts forever. Aye, the dark-haired maiden who brings night with her. That is our mistress, Sultan. We call her Lady Death."

"Then thou wilt not have a woman?" persisted the Sultan. It pleased his jaded fancy to send a captive Christian noblewoman in to this captive warrior who was to be flayed alive on the morrow.

Sokol shook his head. He suspected a trick.

After that they took him away. They led him to a cell in the sea tower of the serai where he could look out over the blue water, where he could think about the next day when his wet skin would be stuffed with straw and the bleeding core of him would gibber and shriek in the dusts of the streets.

That afternoon Azadi had played one of her tricks. She was eighteen years of age and she made trouble persistently for the eunuchs and the slave women guards of the Sultan's harem. Because Azadi was a Tatar maid who had been brought a captive from the land of the Khan as a child.

So she had grown up in the harem without any occupation, or hope of any other life. Veiled and surrounded by guards, she was buried in that swarming prison of women, in the wing of the palace with barred window embrasures, courtyards without doors, and gardens where the walls were patrolled by armed eunuchs.

Azadi did not feel sorry for herself. By now she had forgotten her people of the steppes. She gorged herself on sweet things; she had a pet white cat that she combed diligently and scented with musk; she had a tiled room to herself in that honeycomb of galleries and dark chambers, and she had written her name over its bare, whitewashed walls. She had taught herself to write her name, and nothing more.

If she had been one of the girls in the Apartment of the Virgins, she would have been watched constantly by an old slave woman who slept at her feet. If she had been one of the hundreds of hazaki-concubines chosen for their beauty and sent to the harem of the Grand Seignior-she would have been given away before now, probably, to some Turk who merited a favor at the hand of the Sultan. If she had happened to catch the eye and fancy of Ibrahim himself, she would have been exalted to the rank of the chosen concubines who could never be touched by another man. She might even have joined the Mothers of Sons.