Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  He turned his back on us and strode out with that air that not even the great stage-actors can ever acquire, of becoming suddenly and utterly oblivious of present company in the consciousness of deeds that need attention. Generals of command, great captains of industry, and a few rare statesmen have it; but the statesmen are most rare, because they are trained to pretend, and therefore unconvincing. The generals and captains are detested for it by all who have never humbled themselves to the point where they can think, and be unselfishly absorbed. Kagig stepped out of one zone of thought into the next, and shut the door behind him.

  A minute later we heard his voice uplifted in command, and the business of shepherding those women and children was taken out of our hands by a man who understood the business. The intoxicating sounds that armed men make as they evolve formation out of chaos in the darkness came in through open door and windows, and in another moment Kagig was back again with a hand on each door-post.

  “You have brought all those cartridges!”

  He thrust out both hands in front of him, and made the knuckles of every finger crack like castanets. In another second he was gone again. But we knew we were now forgiven all our sins of omission.

  Somewhere about midnight, with a nearly full moon rising in a golden dream above the rim of the ravine, we started. And no wheeled vehicle could have followed by the track we took. It was no mean task for men on foot, and our burdened animals had to be given time. Whether or not Kagig slept, as he had said he would, on horse-back, he kept himself and our prisoners out of sight somewhere in the van; and this time the rear was brought up by a squadron of ragged irregular horse that would have made any old campaigner choke with joy to look at them.

  Drill those men knew very little of — only sufficient to make it possible to lead them. No two men were dressed alike, and some were not even armed alike, although stolen Turkish government rifles far predominated. But they wore unanimously that dare-devil air, not swaggering because there is no need, that has been the key to most of the sublime surprises of all war. The commander, whose men sit that way in the saddle and toss those jokes shoulder over shoulder down the line, dare tackle forlorn hopes that would seem sheer leap-year lunacy to the martinet with twenty times their number.

  “Who’d have thought it?” said Fred. “We’ve all heard the Turk was a first-class fighting man, but I’d rather command fifty of these, than any five hundred Turks I ever saw.

  There was no gainsaying that. Whoever had seen armies with an understanding eye must have agreed.

  “Turks don’t hate Armenians for their faults,” I answered. “From what I know of the Turk he likes sin, and prefers it cardinal. If Armenians were mere degenerates, or murdering ruffians like the Kurds, the Turk would like them.”

  Fred laughed.

  “Then if a Turk liked me, you’d doubt my social fitness?”

  “Sure I would, if he liked you well enough to attract attention.

  The fact that the Turk hates Armenians is the best advertisement

  Armenians have got.”

  We were entering the heart of savage hills that tossed themselves in ever increasing grandeur up toward the mist-draped crags of Kara Dagh, following a trail that was mostly watercourse. The simple savagery of the mountains laid naked to view in the liquid golden light stirred the Armenians behind us to the depths of thought; and theirs is a consciousness of warring history; of dominion long since taken from them, and debauched like pearls by swine; of hope, eternally upwelling, born of love of their trampled fatherland. They began to sing, and the weft and woof of their songs were grief for all those things and a cherished, secret promise that a limit had been set to their nation’s agony.

  In his own way, with his chosen, unchaste instrument Fred is a musician of parts. He can pick out the spirit of old songs, even when, as then, he hears them for the first time, and make his concertina interpret them to wood and wind and sky. Indoors he is a mere accompanist, and in polite society his muse is dumb. But in the open, given fair excuse and the opportunity, he can make such music as compels men’s ears and binds their hearts with his in common understanding.

  Because of Fred’s concertina, quite without knowing it, those Armenians opened their hearts to us that night, so that when a day of testing came they regarded us unconsciously as friends. Taught by the atrocity of cruel centuries to mistrust even one another, they would surely have doubted us otherwise, when crisis came. Nobody knows better than the Turk how to corrupt morality and friendship, and Armenia is honeycombed with the rust of mutual suspicion. But real music is magic stuff. No Turk knows any magic.

  At dawn, twisting and zigzagging in among the ribs of rock-bound hills, we sighted the summit of Beirut Dagh all wreathed in jeweled mist. Then the only life in sight except ourselves was eagles, nervously obsessed with goings-on on the horizon. I counted as many as a dozen at one time, wheeling swiftly, and circling higher for a wider view, but not one swooped to strike.

  Once, as we turned into a track that they told us led to El Oghlu, we saw on a hill to our left a small square building, gutted by fire. Twenty yards away from it, on top of the same round hill, strange fruit was hanging from a larger oak than any we had seen thereabouts — fruit that swung unseemly in the tainted wind.

  “Turks!” announced one of Kagig’s men, riding up to brag to us. “That square building is the guard-house for the zaptieh, put there by the government to keep check on robbers. They are the worst robbers!”

  The man spoke English with the usual mission-school air suggestive of underdone pie. As a rule they go to school at such great sacrifice, and then so limited for funds, that they have to get by heart three times the amount an ordinary, undriven youth can learn in the allotted time. But by heart they have it. And like the pie they call to mind, only the surface of their talk is pale. Because their heart is in the thing, they under-stand.

  “By hanging Turkish police,” said Fred, “you only give the Turks a good excuse for murdering your friends.”

  “Come!” said the man of Zeitoon. “See.”

  He led the way down a path between young trees to a clearing where a swift stream gamboled in the sun. Down at the end of it, where the grass sloped gently upward toward the flanks of a great rock was a little row of graves with a cross made of sticks at the head of each — clearly not Turkish graves.

  “Three men — eleven women,” our guide said simply.

  “You mean that the Turkish police—”

  “There were fifteen on their way to Zeitoon. One survived, and reached Zeitoon, and told. Then he died, and we rode down to avenge them all. The Turks took the three men and beat them on the feet with sticks until the soles of their feet swelled up and burst. Then they made them walk on their tortured feet. Then they beat them to death. Shall I say what they did to the women?”

  “What did you do to the Turks?” said I.

  “Hanged them. We are not animals — we simply, hanged them.”

  Somewhere about noon we rode down a gorge into the village of El Oghlu. It was a miserable place, with a miserable, tiny kahveh in the midst of it, and Kagig set that alight before our end of the column came within a quarter of a mile of it. We burned the rest of the village, for he sent back Ephraim to order no shelter left for the regiments that would surely come and hunt us down. But the business took time, and we were farther than ever behind Kagig when the last wooden roof began to cockle and crack in the heat.

  Will and Gloria were somewhere on in front, and Fred and I began to put on speed to try to overtake them. But from the time of leaving the burned village of El Oghlu there began to be a new impediment.

  “We are not taking the shortest way,” said Ephraim. “The shortest way is too narrow — good for one or two men in a hurry, but not for all of us.”

  We were gaining no speed by taking the easier road. There began to be vultures in evidence, mostly half-gorged, flopping about from one orgy to the next. And out from among the rocks and bushes there came fugi
tive Armenians — famished and wounded men and women, clinging to our stirrups and begging for a lift on the way to Zeitoon. Zeitoon was their one hope. They were all headed that way.

  Fred detached a dozen mounted men to linger behind on guard against pursuit, and the rest of us overloaded our horses with women and children, giving up all hope of overtaking Gloria and Will, forgetting that they had come first on the scene. In my mind I imagined them riding side by side, Will with his easy cowboy seat, and Gloria looking like a boy except for the chestnut hair. But that imagination went the way of other vanities.

  There was neither pleasure nor advantage in striding slowly beside my laboring horse, nor any hope of mounting him again myself. So I walked ahead and, being now horseless, ceased to be mobbed by fugitives. At the end of an hour I overtook two horses loaded with little children; but there was no sign of Gloria and Will, and losing zest for the pursuit as the sun grew stronger I sat down by the ways-side on a fallen tree.

  It was then that I heard voices that I recognized. The first was a woman’s.

  “I’m simply crazy to know him.”

  A man’s, that I could not mistake even amid the roar of a city, answered her.

  “You’ve a treat in store. Monty is my idea of a regular he-man.”

  “Is he good-looking?”

  “Yes. Stands and looks like a soldier. I’ve seen a plainsman in Wyoming who’d have matched him to a T all except the parted hair and the mustache.”

  “I like a mustache on a tall man.”

  “It suits Monty. The first idea you get of him is strength — strength and gentleness; and it grows on you as you know him better. It’s not just muscles, nor yet will-power, but strength that makes your heart flutter, and you know for a moment how a woman must feel when a fellow asks her to be his wife. That’s Monty.”

  I got up and retraced a quarter of a mile, to wait for Fred where

  I could not accuse myself of “listening in.”

  “Fred,” I said, when he overtook me at last and we strode along side by side, “you were right. America’s way with a woman is beyond belief!”

  I told him what I had heard, and he thought a while.

  “How about Maga Jhaere’s way, when she and Will and the Vanderman meet?” he said at last, smiling grimly.

  Chapter Thirteen “‘Take your squadron and go find him, Rustum Khan!’ And I, sahib, obeyed my lord bahadur’s orders.”

  “TO-MORROW WE DIE”

  All that is cynical; all that refuses

  Trust in an altruist aim;

  Every specious plea that excuses

  Greed in necessity’s name;

  Studied indifference; scorn that amuses;

  Cleverness, shifting the blame;

  Selfishness, pitying trust it abuses —

  Treason and these are the same.

  Finally, when the last lees ye shall turn from

  (E’en intellectuals flinch in the end!)

  Ashes of loneliness then ye shall learn from —

  All that’s worth keeping’s the faith of a friend.

  Never to be forgotten is that journey to Zeitoon. We threaded toward the heart of opal mountains along tracks that nothing on wheels — not even a wheel-barrow — could have followed. Perpetually on our right there kept appearing brilliant green patches of young rice, more full of livid light than flawless emeralds. And, as in all rice country, there were countless watercourses with frequently impracticable banks along which fugitives felt their way miserably, too fearful of pursuit to risk following the bridle track.

  There is a delusion current that fugitives go fast. But it stands to reason they do not; least of all, unarmed people burdened with children and odds and ends of hastily snatched household goods. We found them hiding everywhere to sleep and rest lacerated feet, and there was not a mile of all that distance that did not add twenty or thirty stragglers to our column, risen at sight of us out of their lurking places. We scared at least as many more into deeper hiding, without blame to them, for there was no reason why they should know us at a distance from official murderers. Hamidieh regiments, the militia of that land, wear uniforms of their own choosing, which is mostly their ordinary clothes and weapons added.

  With snow-crowned Beirut Dagh frowning down over us, and the track growing every minute less convenient for horse or man, word came from the rear that the hamidieh were truly on our trail. Then we had our first real taste of what Armenians could do against drilled Turks, and even before Fred and I could get in touch with Will and Gloria we realized that whether or not we took part with them there was going to be no stampede by the men-folk.

  Nothing would persuade Gloria to go on to Zeitoon and announce our coming. Kagig came galloping back and found us four met together by a little horsetail waterfall. He ordered her peremptorily to hurry and find Monty, but she simply ignored him. In another moment he was too bent on shepherding the ammunition cases to give her a further thought.

  Men began to gather around him, and he to issue orders. They had either to kill him or obey. He struck at them with a rawhide whip, and spurred his horse savagely at every little clump of men disposed to air their own views.

  “You see,” he laughed, “unanimity is lacking!” Then his manner changed back to irritation. “In the name of God, effendim, what manner of sportmen are you? Will not each of you take a dozen men and go and destroy those cursed Turks?” (They call every man a Turk in that land who thinks and acts like one, be he Turk, Arab, Kurd or Circassian.)

  It was all opposed to the consul’s plan, and lawless by any reckoning. To attack the troops of a country with which our own governments were not at war was to put our heads in a noose in all likelihood. Perhaps if he had called us by any other name than “sportmen” we might have seen it in that light, and have told him to protect us according to contract. But he used the right word and we jumped at the idea, although Gloria, who had no notions about international diplomacy, was easily first with her hat in the ring.

  “I’ll lead some men!” she shouted. “Who’ll follow me?” Her voice rang clear with the virtue won on college playing fields.

  “Nothing to it!” Will insisted promptly. “Here, you, Kagig — I’ll make a bargain with you!”

  “Watch!” Fred whispered. “Will is now going to sell two comrades in the market for his first love! D’you blame him? But it won’t work!”

  “Send Miss Vanderman to Zeitoon with an escort and we three—”

  “What did I tell you?” Fred chuckled.

  “ — will fight for you all you like!”

  But Gloria had a dozen men already swarming to her, with never a symptom of shame to be captained by a woman; and others were showing signs of inclination. She turned her back on us, and I saw three men hustle a fourth, who had both feet in bandages, until he gave her his rifle and bandolier. She tossed him a laugh by way of compensation, and he seemed content, although he had parted with more than the equivalent of a fortune.

  “That girl,” said Kagig, from the vantage point of his great horse, “is like the brave Zeitoonli wives! They fight! They can lead in a pinch! They are as good as men — better than men, for they think they know less!”

  Fred swiftly gathered himself a company of his own, the older men electing to follow his lead. Gloria had the cream of the younger ones — men who in an earlier age would have gone into battle wearing a woman’s glove or handkerchief — twenty or thirty youths blazing with the fire of youth. Will went hot-foot after her with most of the English-speaking contingent from the mission schools. Kagig had the faithful few who had rallied to him from the first — the fighting men of Zeitoon proper, including all the tough rear-guard who had sent the warning and remained faithfully in touch with the enemy until their chief should come.

  That left for me the men who knew no English, and Ephraim was enough of a politician to see the advantage to himself of deserting Fred’s standard for mine; for Fred could talk Armenian, and give his own orders, but I needed an inte
rpreter. I welcomed him at the first exchange of compliments, but met him eye to eye a second later and began to doubt.

  “I’m going to hold these men in reserve,” I told him, “until I know where they’ll do most good. You know this country? Take high ground, then, where we can overlook what’s going on and get into the fight to best advantage.”

  “But the others will get the credit,” he began to object.

  “I’ll ask Kagig for another interpreter. Wait here.”

  At that he yielded the point and explained my orders to the men, who began to obey them willingly enough. But he went on talking to them rapidly as we diverged from the path the others had taken and ascended a trail that wild goats would have reveled in, along the right flank of where fighting was likely to take place. I did not doubt he was establishing notions of his own importance, and with some success.

  Firing commenced away in front and below us within ten minutes of the start, but it was an hour before I could command the scene with field-glasses, and ten minutes after that before I could make out the positions of our people, although the enemy were soon evident — a long, irregular, ragged-looking line of cavalry thrusting lances into every hole that could possibly conceal an Armenian, and an almost equally irregular line of unmounted men in front of them, firing not very cautiously nor accurately from under random cover.

  It became pretty evident, after studying the positions for about fifteen minutes and sweeping every contour of the ground through glasses, that the enemy had no chance whatever of breaking through unless they could outflank Kagig’s line. I held such impregnable advantage of height and cover and clear view that the men I had with me were ample to prevent the turning of our right wing. Our left flank rested on the brawling Jihun River that wound in and out between the rice fields and the rocky foot-hills. There lay the weakness of our position, and more than once I caught sight of Kagig spurring his horse from cover to cover to place his men. Once I thought I recognized Fred, too, over near the river-bank; but of Will or of Gloria I saw nothing.