The Grand Cham (Lamb, Adventure magazine)/Chapter 1
I
THE GATE OF SHADOWS
IT WAS was evening on the plain of Angora in the year of Our Lord 1394. The sun was a glimmering ball of red, peering through a haze of dust at the caravan of Bayezid the Great, surnamed the Thunderbolt, Sultan of the Osmanli and Seljuk Turks, master of the Caliphate and overlord of the Mamelukes of Egypt.
Bayezid reined in his white Arab.
“We will sleep the night here,” he announced, “for this is an auspicious spot.”
At Angora a decade ago, as leader of the hard-fighting Osmanlis, Bayezid had won his first pitched battle. He had been acclaimed sultan and straightway had slain his brother with his own hand. From that moment Fate had been kind to the man called the Thunderbolt.
“To hear is to obey,” cried his followers. “Hail to the Mighty, the Merciful, the All-Dispensing One!”
Bayezid glanced around through the dust haze and saw the quivering shapes of silk pavilions rising from the baked clay floor of the plateau as his camp-followers scurried about. A line of grunting baggage-camels stalked into the nest of tents that marked the quarters of his grandees. Attended by Negro slaves, the several litters of his women halted beside the khanates that separated his household from the small army that attended him.
A slow smile crossed his broad, swart face. A powerful hand caressed the pearls at the throat of his tunic. Fate had indeed exalted him. He had been called the spiritual effigy of the formerly great khalifs of Damascus and Baghdad. He knew himself to be the supreme monarch of Asia, and in that age the courts of Asia were the rendezvous of the world.
True, on the outskirts of the sultan’s empire, to the East, was Tamerlane the Tatar and his horde. But had not Tamerlane said that Bayezid, given the men to follow him, was the wisest of living generals?
As for Europe, Bayezid had advanced the border of his empire into Hungary; Constantinople, glittering with the last splendor of the Byzantines, was tottering; Venice and Genoa paid tribute for permission to use the trade routes into the Orient.
Bayezid glanced curiously at the group of Frankish slaves whose duty it was to run beside his horse. They were panting, and sweat streaked the sand that coated their blackened faces. Fragments of cloth were wrapped about their bleeding feet.
Five of the six captives bent their heads in the salaam that had been taught them. The sixth remained erect, meeting the sultan’s eye.
Bayezid half frowned at this boldness which broke the thread of his thoughts. His hand rested on the gold trappings of his splendid horse. To the side of this horse slaves were dragging a cloth of silver carpet that stretched to the opening of the imperial khanates.
This done, the hawk-faced Sheik of Rum, through whose territory mid-way in Asia Minor the sultan’s caravan had been journeying from Constantinople to Aleppo—the lord of Rum approached his master respectfully.
“O Light of the Faith,” the old man observed gravely, “it is the hour of the namaz gar, the evening prayer.”
“True.” Bayezid started and his glance went once more to the white man who stared at him. “I will dismount. Bid yonder Frank kneel by my horse that I may step upon his back.”
All around Bayezid the grandees were kneeling in their heavy robes upon clean prayer carpets, washing their hands and faces in fresh water brought by slaves from the springs that marked the site of the camp. The sheik bowed and gave a curt command to the master of the slaves, El-Arjuk, a stalwart, white-capped Janissary, whip in hand.
“The body of the Frank will be honored by the foot of the Great, the Merciful.”
At this the captive stepped forward before the Janissary could touch him. Bayezid reflected that the white man understood Turki, which was the case.
And then to the surprise of the onlookers, the captive folded his arms and shook his head.
“Kneel,” hissed the sheik. “Dog of a caphar—unbeliever”
“I hear,” said the captive. “I will not obey.”
The Janissary reached for his whip and the old Moslem for his scimitar. The sultan checked them, springing easily from his peaked saddle to the cloth of silver carpet. From his six feet of muscular height he looked down at the white man. His beaked nose seemed to curl into his bearded mouth and his black eyes snapped.
Then the sultan knelt, facing toward the southern sky-line beyond which was Mecca, and repeated the Allah akbar in his clear, deep voice. When the last of his followers had completed the evening worship Bayezid arose, his smile cold as the glitter of steel, his nervous fingers playing with the jeweled sword-hilt at his girdle. He noted the wide brown eyes of the captive who still stood quietly at his side, and with the interest of a born leader of men he scrutinized the square high shoulders, the long chin and the wide, delicate mouth upturned in a half-smile.
The man’s face was burned by the sun to the hue of leather; his ragged tunic fell away from a heavily thewed pair of arms. His body had the lines of youth, but his eyes and mouth were hard with fatigue.
“You know my speech,” observed the deep voice of the Thunderbolt. “And your eyes tell me that you are not mad. What is your name and rank?”
“Michael Bearn,” responded the Christian.
“Mishael Bi-orn. Your rank?”
“None, my lord.” The man’s smile broadened slowly.
“In what army did you serve?”
“None, my lord.”
The patrician sheik, whose fathers had been warriors, spat upon the ground and assured his master the sultan that this dog and the other Franks had been taken when a Christian galley was shipwrecked on the Anatolian shore a year ago. The Turks who took them had said that this dog was khan of the galley, that he was a caphar magician who steered his craft by a bedeviled needle that pointed always to the north.
“What is your country?” demanded Bayezid.
“I have no country. The sea is my home.”
Michael Bearn had been born on the cliffs of Brittany. His mother, an Irish gentlewoman, had landed from his father’s ship for the birth of the boy. When his father, a taciturn Breton, had died, Michael had left his mother in a tower on the Brittany coast and had taken to the sea.
There had been talk of a crusade against the Turk who was master of the Holy Land. Michael’s mother had pleaded with the boy to wait and join one of the bands of warrior-pilgrims to Rome. But Michael had no yearning for the cassocked priests. The sea called him and his father’s blood urged him to strange coasts.
It was the way of women, he had told the Irish mother, in his young intolerance of belief, to seek comfort of priests and to covet the insignia of the cross. His mother had hid her tears and Michael did not know how he had hurt her.
Following the bent of that time, a few years had brought him to the Levant and the glamor of trade with the Orient. He had been master mariner of the galley wrecked on the Anatolian coast while it was being pursued by Turkish pirates.
“And so,” mused Bayezid, “a slave without rank, without race and an unbeliever dares to disobey a command of mine? So be it. You have strength in your arms and pride. It pleases me to put both to the test.”
It was part of the secret of the Thunderbolt’s achievement that he enforced cruel discipline among his followers. Michael Bearn’s eye lighted and he lifted his head.
“Set a scimitar in my hand,” he said quickly. “My lord, choose one of your skilled swordsmen and let him wear his mail. With a scimitar—his weapon, not mine—I will stand against him in my shirt.”
The stubborn pride of the Breton that had not let him prostrate himself under the foot of a Turk flared at the chance to strike a blow with a weapon. He had endured captivity doggedly, seeking for a chance to escape to the hills to the east where were tribesmen who did not owe allegiance to the sultan.
But he had not been willing to demean himself, to gain time for a further chance at liberty with his five comrades. Like all seamen of the age, he was experienced in the use of sword and mace.
A swift death was better than months of running beside the horse or litter of a Turkish master.
“Shall a dog be given a sword?” growled the aged sheik, quenching Michael’s new hope. This time Bayezid glanced at his follower approvingly.
“Bring this man,” he ordered, “with the five caphars, his comrades, before my tent. Bring a sword, and”—he nodded thoughtfully—“the iron sleeve.”
AT MENTION of this instrument of torture which broke the bones of a man’s arm as easily as glass, the slaves who understood Bayezid’s words shivered and stared at Michael. They followed, however, after the white cap of the swaggering Janissary, to see the torment inflicted.
The dark face of the Thunderbolt softened in pleasant expectancy as he knelt on a priceless carpet under the open portico of his tent and scanned the six Christians. He was accustomed to play with his victims. Disdaining further to address the captives openly he whispered to the Sheik of Rum, who stood in the half-circle of courtiers behind the sultan.
“Know, O ill-omened ones,” translated the old Moslem in bastard Greek, “that your leader has offended against the Majesty, the Splendor. Torture will be the lot of your khan unless”
With an eye to dramatic effect he paused, nodding to the master of the slaves who advanced from the group of watching Janissaries, a spear’s cast away. The warrior carried a misshapen thing of iron resting on a wooden table. The rusty metal was formed in the semblance of a lion with an enormous mouth, lying prone on the table. Twin bars projected on either side from the ribs of the beast.
“—unless,” resumed the sheik, “one of you five caphars will offer to fight in defense of the body of your friend.”
Michael Bearn looked up quickly, intending to warn his mates not to accept the proffer of the Moslems. But they did not meet his eye. They were Portuguese and Italians, wasted by sickness and misery.
“It is not fitting, verily,” the spokesman went on, interpreting the low words of Bayezid, “that a good weapon should be given to the hand of one who is accursed. Yet a lion may slay a dog, and the sight of an infidel’s blood is a blessing to a true believer. So, one of you may take up the quarrel of your comrade and fight with swords against one of the champions of the Janissaries. Whether your champion conquers or not, the man named Bearn will be spared the torture.”
Whereupon the sheik drew his own scimitar and held out its hilt.
Michael Bearn would have taken it, but the wily Moslem shook his head.
“Not you,” he explained in Arabic. “The Most Wise will presently make a test of your strength. Now he tries out the Christian hearts of your comrades.”
As none of the others volunteered for the duel, the sultan made a further concession. The man who offered to fight would be set free—if he lived—with Bearn.
But the five men would not hazard their lives on a chance of liberty. They cast sidelong glances at the glittering scimitar and at a stalwart warrior who stood forth from the guards, his shield dressed ready for the conflict.
It gave keen pleasure to Bayezid to see these men refuse the issue. He smiled to think that they clung to the ignoble life of slavery. His own men were trained to value their lives lightly in battle and to die for their faith.
It pleased Bayezid, also, to deny Bearn the chance of the fight, for he knew that the young seaman would have welcomed it.
“So be it,” he nodded. “The torture.”
The expectant master of the slaves summoned the waiting warrior and set the table before Michael Bearn.
“Hold forth your arm,” he commanded.
Michael paled and set his lips as he extended his left hand.
“The right one,” objected Bayezid, following all that passed with the eye of a connoisseur.
A moment later Michael’s right arm had been thrust up to the elbow into the iron gullet of the lion and strapped into place. The Breton stiffened as he felt the cold touch of the vise, concealed within the form of the lion, grip his bare forearm. Bayezid nodded, leaning back on his pillows, under the sweep of a peacock fan in the hands of a slave.
The two Janissaries threw their weight on the projecting levers and there came to the ears of the spectators a dull crack as if an arrow had been snapped in half.
But Michael did not cry out. Sweat started on his face and blood dripped from his lip where his teeth had set upon it. This did not suit Bayezid, who had expected screams and a prayer for mercy.
“Again,” he snarled. The two torturers altered the position of Michael’s broken arm slightly and clamped the levers into place a second time.
This time Michael groaned softly and swayed on his feet, sinking to his knees.
“Now the caphar’s pride is broken because his strength has passed from him,” thought Bayezid, watching keenly. To the attentive sheik he whispered:
“The broken ends of the bone of the arm have been ground together and he will whine for mercy—like the other dogs who have no stomach for pain.”
The Janissaries released Michael’s arm from the instrument of torture at a glance, from the sultan. On the back of the forearm the skin had been broken by a bloodied fragment of bone.
Supporting himself by his left hand on the table, Michael rose slowly to his feet, wincing and setting his lips as he did so. His eyes were dark with agony as they sought Bayezid’s face.
The youthful pride and humor had vanished from Michael’s countenance, leaving a grim mask of purpose. The abundant vitality of his powerful body had been sapped by the ordeal. But there was a new vigor in his poise, the strength of an unalterable determination.
So the captive faced his tormentor.
“I shall not forget this, my lord sultan.” He indicated his maimed limb. “I shall be avenged—” His voice choked.
The Sheik of Rum who had been studying the eyes of the injured man now drew his weapon again and salaamed before Bayezid.
“O Most Wise, it would be best to slay this one. An injured snake is quick to strike.”
The Thunderbolt shook his head coldly. He had not yet tasted the delight of the torture to the fullest.
“Nay. I would watch the caphar run beside my litter on the morrow, and see how he bears his pain.”
The Sheik of Rum was very wise.
IT WAS a week later that the six captives made their attempt to escape from the caravan of the Osmanli. During the week they had been ascending to the cooler plateau of Lake Van, where the summits of the Caucasus were visible far to the north.
Yet it was to the east that the six had decided to flee. They had seen that the outriders of the Turks who pillaged supplies in the villages of lesser Armenia had kept a vigilant outlook in that direction.
To the east lay a pass called the Gate of Shadows, leading into the lands of Tatary. Michael and his mates did not then know why the Turks shunned this pass. But they believed that once in the Gate of Shadows they would be safe from pursuit owing to this superstition of the Turks.
The night on which they made their venture was clear. The stars shone brilliantly through the colder air of the height by the lake. Men and beasts of the caravan were weary after a long march. Bayezid was never sparing of his followers.
Two things had decided the Christians upon this night. They were at the point of the march from Constantinople to Aleppo which was nearest the Gate of Shadows. And the Moslems had fasted for three days. That night was the feast of Miriam when the long fast was broken and warriors and courtiers alike satiated themselves with meat and wine.
Bayezid, although calling himself head of the faith, always allowed his men their fill of debauchery, knowing that it drew soldiers to his ranks.
Consequently the Janissaries who watched the aul where the Christian captives were kept apart from the slaves of other races were a little drunk and more than a little sleepy.
Michael, by tacit consent, had been chosen the leader of the six. Memory of the torture to which he had been subjected had made the Portuguese and Italians eager to flee. Cowards at heart, the nearer peril of the “iron sleeve” made them willing to risk the death that was penalty for an attempt to flee their bondage.
And Michael, who yearned for the freedom that would afford him a chance to strike back at Bayezid, had formed a plan readily.
The aul was a rough square shelter of rocks resembling very much a large hut without a roof. The stone walls were as high as a man. The two yawning spearmen who acted as guards had built a fire just within the entrance.
As usual the prisoners gobbled down the evil-tasting pilau—broth of rotting sheep’s flesh—that was set before them in a kettle. The evening prayers of the Moslems had been completed long since and soft radiance coming from the silk pavilions of the nobles indicated that the feast was well along.
A heavy guard of wakeful Mamelukes stood about the enclosure where Bayezid was quartered and other mounted sentries paced about the circuit of the fires around which warriors and slaves alike drank, sang and slept.
It was the first watch of the night when one of the Portuguese rose and tossed a double armful of dried tamarisk branches on the fire that had sunk to embers. A crackling blaze climbed skyward barely three paces inside the aul entrance.
For a moment the interior of the walled space would be concealed from the glance of passers-by. One of the Janissaries growled and spat, motioning the Portuguese back to his place. The other sentry leaned on his battle-ax half-asleep.
Making signs that he wished to communicate something, the captive moved nearer the first sentry, while one of the Italians arose stealthily and keeping within the large shadow cast by the three men near the fire, slipped to the rear of the Janissary.
Michael appeared to be asleep. In spite of his crippled arm—the bones had been rudely set by a hakim of the sheik who, in obedience to the pleasure of his master, intended Michael to live—in spite of his weakness and the fever that had set upon him for several days, the guards always kept vigilant watch upon him, knowing that the Breton was more dangerous than his mates.
Through his half-closed eyes Michael could see the Italian detach a stone from the top of the wall behind the three men silently. The arms of the captives had been left free although their ankles were secured at night by heavy leather thongs that would not yield to their fingers. Naturally none of them had a weapon of any kind.
The sentries had no reason to expect an attempt to escape. Even if the two Janissaries could be disposed of, the captives would have to pass through the camp and pierce the cordon of riders in the outer darkness in order to gain the plain.
Even clear of the camp they would be pursued by well-mounted warriors and the odds against them in a hostile country were very great.
The first sentry was staring mockingly at the Portuguese who cringed beside him, gesturing futilely. And then the Italian cast his heavy stone with both arms.
It struck the Janissary at the base of the skull and pitched him forward a dozen feet. He fell, stunned, with his face within the edge of the fire. The second warrior started out of his doze and his lips parted for a cry. But the Portuguese, frenzied by peril and hope of escape, clutched his throat. The Italian had leaped after the stone and caught up the spear of the man he had slain.
This spear he thrust into the clothing over the stomach of the choking sentry.
“Harken.” Michael had run to them and addressed the struggling Moslem. “Be silent and do as I bid ye or your body will lie in the fire.”
A stringent odor of burning flesh and cloth came to the nostrils of the sentry and he ceased struggling, waiting for the blow that would slay him. But Michael with his left arm dragged the smoking corpse from the flames and swiftly directed two of his men to conceal it under some of their robes in a corner. Before doing so, he saw that they took a dagger and scimitar from the dead Janissary and stowed the weapons under their own clothing.
“Now,” Michael commanded the watching sentry, “your life will be spared if you do this; call twice for El-Arjuk, master of the slaves who is in command of the aul this night. He gorges himself at a nearby fire. Do not cry for aid, but call his name.”
The man winced as the spear in the hands of the Italian pricked his belly. He did not believe that he would be permitted to live, yet he had smelled the burning flesh of his comrade.
“El-Arjuk!” He lifted a long, wailing cry while Michael listened closely. “Ohai—El-Arjuk!”
“Again,” whispered the Breton and the call for the master of the slaves was repeated.
This time a harsh voice made answer. Michael’s eyes narrowed and he ordered the fidgeting captives back to their sleeping robes with the exception of one man who stood against the wall, drawing the sentry back with him and pressing a dagger’s point from behind into his flesh.
Michael caught up the long battle-ax that had supported the Janissary in his ill-timed doze. He hefted it in his left hand, found its length unwieldy, and broke the wooden shaft in two under his foot.
Taking up the shortened weapon, he held it close to his side, away from the fire.
“Keep back,” he hissed at the others, “for this is my fight.”
They mumbled and straightway fell to staring in fear as a burly form strode through the entrance of the aul and came around the diminishing blaze of the fire.
“Who called?” growled El-Arjuk, glancing at Michael and the one sentry swiftly.
He was flushed from drinking, although his step was steady. In feasting he had laid aside his armor, but held a small target of bull’s hide and a scimitar. Noticing the absence of the other Janissary and the strange quietude of the one sentry, he started.
“Blood of Sheitan”
“I summoned you,” said Michael grimly. “To your reckoning. Guard yourself!”
With that he leaped, swinging his haft of the battle-ax. With one motion El-Arjuk flung up his shield and slashed forward under it with his sword.
The blade met nothing but air. Michael’s jump had carried him over the low sweep of the Turk’s scimitar, while the hastily raised target momentarily obstructed the vision of his adversary.
The Breton’s broad chest struck the shield, bearing it down, and his shortened ax fell once, the full weight of his powerful body behind it. El-Arjuk had started to cry for aid when the blade of the ax crashed into his forehead and the cry ended in a quavering groan. Michael fell to the sand with his enemy, but he rose alone, listening intently.
From somewhere outside the aul a question was shouted idly, for the thud of the two bodies and the moan of the master of the slaves had been heard.
“Reply,” snarled Michael at the staring Janissary who was going through the motions of ablution, kneeling in the sand. The Moslem wished to die with this rite performed. “Reply with the words I put into your mouth or we will fill your throat with the unclean flesh of the dead.”
The warrior hesitated, then bowed his head.
“It is naught,” he called back over the stone wall as Michael prompted him, “but the death of a dog, upon whom be the curse of Allah for his sins.”
A satisfied laugh from the listeners without, who believed that a Christian slave had been killed, came to the ears of the captives. Wasting no time, Michael had green tamarisk branches cast on the fire causing smoke to fill the aul entrance.
Behind this makeshift curtain he ordered El-Arjuk stripped of his brilliant yellow coat and insignia and instructed the nervous captives how to rewind the white turban so as to conceal the blotches of blood.
This done, the Portuguese who was like the master of the slaves in build was clad in the garments and given the shield and scimitar. Meanwhile the excited men would have slain the stolid sentry had not Michael intervened.
“I made a pledge,” he said coldly. “You want blood, methinks, and you will find plenty before long.”
So the surprised sentry was bound and wrapped around with the clothing of the Portuguese until he was helpless either to move or cry out. Then, with the two bodies, he was laid in a corner of the enclosure and covered with sheepskin robes.
“Say to Bayezid,” smiled Michael, “that I bid him not farewell—for I shall seek him again.”
When the fire died down presently and passing soldiers glanced idly into the aul, a group of men issued forth without torches. At their head was the familiar uniform of the master of the slaves, and their feet were bound with leather thongs, permitting them to walk only slowly.
It was entirely natural that El-Arjuk should have work for the caphar slaves to do that night, so the revelers paid scant heed to the group. It was whispered, moreover, that one of the infidels had been slain, so it was entirely to be expected that the others would be used to dig a grave.
At the outskirts of the tents where darkness concealed them Michael called a halt. Passing near the fires, the garments of El-Arjuk had been their safeguard; in the dark they would be challenged at once by the mounted riders who patrolled the camp.
So Michael waited, kneeling on the ground in order to raise passing figures on the sky-line. He ordered his comrades to cut off with the weapons they had concealed under their clothes their bonds and to carry the cords until they could be concealed at a distance from the camp. Not until he was satisfied that a patrol of horsemen had passed the ridge in front of him did he give the word to advance.
An hour later they were beyond the outer guards and running due east, under the stars that guided them, toward the Gate of Shadows.
ON THE second night they took their ease. Michael had gone among the hill villages at twilight. He had worn the dress of El-Arjuk and when he returned to the men waiting in the thicket up the mountain-slope he said:
“The Darband-i-Ghil, the Spirit Gate, lies six hours’ march above us. Come.”
The six had run before now—too swiftly at first for long endurance—by the north shore of Van. Michael had steadied them to a slow trot and had taken pains to pass through such rocky ravines as offered, in order to wipe out traces of their passage. They had seen no pursuers, even after leaving the lake.
“Nay,” growled a Genoese. “Par Dex, our bones ache and our feet bleed. We must sleep.”
“Sleep!” cried Michael. “With Mamelukes riding in our tracks who have orders not to return alive without us. I’m thinking that Bayezid made short work of the Janissary guard whose life we spared. Will his horsemen yearn for a like fate?”
He himself was near the point of exhaustion, for his arm was scarcely knit and fever had weakened him. But the men would not move from the spot where they had been watching the lights of the Kurd village and talking among themselves.
Realizing that they must rest, Michael sat down against a tree for a brief sleep. The half-light of dawn was flooding the thicket and the sky over the black hills to the east was crimson when he woke at the sound of approaching footsteps.
It was his own band and they were coming up from the village. Some of them were reeling, though not from fatigue, and their breath was heavy with olives and wine. They looked back over their shoulders and grinned uneasily when they met his eye.
“We’ve taken the Moors’ food,” boasted one fellow. “It’s their own law, methinks. An eye for an eye. They’ll remember us.”
Michael glared. These were common men, very different from the belted knights who had sometimes visited his mother’s home in Brittany. She had hoped that he would be a knight. Instead, he had led a rough life and had toiled against hardships until—this.
“, what fools! That was a Kurdish village, and the men have good eyes and horseflesh. Well, I must bide with you, for you have named me leader. Come.”
They ran sturdily through the dawn. Months of trotting beside the nobles of the Osmanli had schooled them to this. By midday they were above the fields in a place of gray rocks and red clay. In front of them a half-dozen bowshots away a great gully between mountain-shoulders showed the blue of the sky.
“The Gate of Shadows,” they cried.
And with the words riders came out of the woods behind them.
Michael measured the distance to the gully, glanced back at the shouting Mamelukes, and shook his head. He pointed to a mound of rocks nearby and led his five men there.
“’Tis the gate of heaven you will see,” he grunted. “No other, and not that, if you can not die like Christians.”
And the five, to give them their due, fought desperately, using the few weapons they had carried from the Turkish camp, and eking these out with stones.
The Mamelukes, reinforced by Kurds from the hill village, tried at first to make them yield themselves prisoners. But the captives knew what manner of death awaited them at Bayezid’s tent and hurled their stones. The big Portuguese went down with an arrow in his throat. The Genoese leaped among the horses, knife in hand, and struggled weakly even when his skull was split with a mace.
The rearing horses stirred up a cloud of dust that covered the mound. Into this cloud Michael strode, swinging his half-ax. The first rider that met him was dragged from saddle and slain. Michael went down with a Mameluke on top of him and neither rose, for Michael’s left hand had sought and found the other’s dagger in his girdle.
When the last Christian had been shot down with arrows, the Turks dismounted and proceeded to pound the skulls and vital parts of the bodies of their victims with rocks. If any of the men of El-Arjuk had been in the party Michael would have suffered the fate of his comrades.
But the Mamelukes had neglected to give him the coup de grace owing to the body of their warrior that lay upon his. When they lifted up their dead they saw only a prostrate Frank besmeared with blood—not his own—and with a swollen, bruised right arm that looked as if it had been crushed with a stone.
The senses had been battered out of Michael by the mace of the dead Mameluke and it was a fortunate thing for him. Because by the time he crawled to his feet there were no Turks within view.
Instead, black-winged birds casting a foul scent in the air hovered over his head. The vultures had been descending on the bodies of the five men when Michael Bearn stood up.
Now they circled slowly in the air or perched on the rocks nearby patiently. Michael looked at them long, and then at the bodies of his comrades.
The five had not been brave men, but they had died bravely.
Michael walked slowly away from the knoll toward a rivulet issuing between rocks in the mountainside that rose mightily above him. He knelt and drank deeply. Then he dipped his head in the stream, wiping away the dried blood. The flapping wings of the vultures impelled him to look up.
His glance penetrated straight down the ravine that was called the Gate of Shadows and he studied thoughtfully the vista of brown plain that lay beyond. Once within the pass he knew that he would see no more of the Turks. The evening before he had been told when he visited the Kurd village that the rock plateau in front of the pass had been the scene of a massacre by the Turks.
The skeletons of the dead were in the pass and a superstition had arisen that the souls of the slain had not left the place. The voices of ghils had been heard in the darkness. So the Moslems considered the place not only unclean but accursed.
“’Fore God,” he sighed, “we were at the Gate, the very Gate. Well, here must they wait for me—my five mates that were.”
So saying, he went back to the knoll, driving away the birds, and dug with his battle-ax a broad shallow grave in the loose sand. Dragging the bodies into this with his one useful arm, he covered them up first with sand, then with large rocks that he rolled down with his bare feet from the knoll.
FROM A wisp-like tamarisk thicket clinging between the boulders of the plateau, he cut two stout staffs with his ax. These he bound roughly together at the middle with a strip of leather cut from his jerkin. The longer staff of the two he imbedded in the sand at the head of the grave.
He had fashioned a cross.
“Rest ye,” he said gravely and extended his left arm over his head. “Vindica eos, Domine.”
Now as he said this he glanced again at the ravine and the plain beyond where he could find food and a tent among the Tatar villages. Then he turned to the northwest where beyond the hills lay the Mormaior, or Black Sea, and beyond there the great cities of Europe.
To the northwest, if he could penetrate thither, were his countrymen, and theirs, he thought, was the power that might some day strike at the Thunderbolt.
It was to the northwest that he began to walk, away from the grave and the Gate of Shadows. Greater than the will to live was the will to seek again the man who had crippled him.
When darkness came and covered his movements he pressed forward more rapidly, swinging his short ax in his left hand. As he went he munched dates and olives that he had plucked from trees near the mountain villages. He found no men to accost him in these orchards, for the fields were scarred by hoofs of many horses and the huts were charred walls of clay.
Bayezid’s riders had been pillaging the villages of Lesser Armenia.
Once, walking barefoot, he came upon a young wild sheep and killed it with his thrown ax. By now the villages had been left behind and below and the moon stared at him steadily from above the pillars of huge pines as he entered the forest-belt.
Another thought came to Michael. He remembered that, in the tower of ill-fitting stones on the sea cliffs of Brittany where the grass was short because of the ceaseless winds, a black-haired woman waited, sitting by her weaving. He had vowed that he would come back to sit at his mother’s table and tell of the voyages to the East. And this, she would know, he would do. A lawless boy, with his father’s hot blood in him, he always kept his word.
From time to time he was forced to beat off the attacks of wild dogs with his ax as he worked through the passes of the Caucasian foothills. His bloodshot eyes closed to slits under the lash of the cold wind and he swayed as his heavily thewed limbs carried him down toward the place where he had seen a glimmer of water in the distance.
It was bodily weakness that drew his thoughts home to the tower and the coast where he had played as a child. For a space he forgot Bayezid and the torture. He had been hale and strong as a boy. Was he to go through life a cripple? Was that the will of God of which his mother had spoken, saying—
“The ways of God are beyond our knowing.”
Thirst had been his invisible companion and the water-courses that he crossed were dry. They led him down to a plain of gray rocks and white salt, where the salt particles in the air dried up the moisture in his throat and brought blood to his lips.
The smell of water coming toward him from the wide shore fired him with longing. He went forward in a staggering run and knelt to dash up some of the water in his hand.
It was thick with salt and dull green in color.
“The Sarai Sea,” he reflected, “the sea of salt. Eh, a rare jest to a thirsty man.”
He knew then that he had come out on the border of the sea now called the Caspian and not the Mormaior (Black) Sea. But, rising, he saw some dull-faced Karabagh fishermen staring at him from a skiff in an adjoining inlet and he laughed exultantly, lifting his hand to the sunset in the west.
The skiff would fetch him to a Muscovite trading-galley, and in time Astrakhan, then Constantinople. He had heard at the court of Bayezid that the Franks were mustering a crusade, to assemble at that city. The chivalry of Europe was taking up arms against the Turk.
“There will be a battle,” he whispered to himself, “and I shall have a share in it, God willing.”