Adventure Magazine Cover — page 46: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

40 Methodically Demid emptied out the contents of the sacks. Gold armlets, a silver head-band!for a horse studded with sapphires, bits of ambergris, poniards from India with ivory hilts, odds and ends of coral. He had gathered together the pick- ings of the warriors on their ride up from the coast—some hasty plundering, done at his command. Now, to give the headmen time to weigh the value that was scattered on the rug by their knees, he paused to light his pipe. This served, too, to stifle the smells of the hut, for overhead on the rafters were drying woolen pantaloons, and salted fish, and the stove hinted at goose feathers and bones in the fire—distasteful to the Don Cossack, who had no liking for the odors of a house, especially a dirty one. But long before he had replaced the booty in the bags, a dozen agile brains had guessed the value of his takings to a copper drachma in the markets of Trebizond or Sinope. “T leave these sacks in your keeping,” he said to Ibnol Hammamgi, in the Turkish that the Armenians understood, “until we ride back from our raid. If we are success- ful all this shall be yours. If we fail we will take them again, having need of them.” “Whither will the noble lord raid?” “To the castle of Sidi Ahmad, in Aleppo.” “Impossible!’’ The headmen drew back into their fur- lined caftans like birds ruffling their plumage at a sudden alarm. “That is madness!” ‘How, madness?” Demid pushed the sacks away from him. “Is not Rurik, our cral, captive at the Imperial City, with many Cossack knights? Does not the sultan demand ten thousand ducats for his ransom alone? Well then, we must lay our hands on a treasure and surely there is a treasure at Aleppo.” The elders all began to talk at once, lift- ing their hands, and raising their voices, one above the other until Ibnol Ham- mamgi shrieked louder than the rest and shrieked : for silence. ‘What do you want of us?”’ he demanded, and now the headmen were quiet, seeking to weigh Demid as they had his booty. But this they found more difficult. “A guide—horses—information.”’ ‘“How many horses?” “Two tens. Put they must be good ones, Kabarda breed, or Kabulis.” Adventure “‘Not to be thought of! The horses would be lost to us, because you will never come back.” “Some of us will come back, Ibnol Hammamgi, and you will do well to aid us because one of your blood rides with us.” “To Aleppo?” The bald head of the chief shook with a dry chuckle. “We do not visit the stronghold of Sidi Ahmad, the Turk. Once I visited Aleppo, and they took a toll from me—thus.” He shut his good eye and opened the red socket of his blind side. “Lali, daughter of Macari, goes with us.” “Ekh! Does a clipped hawk fly back to the hunter? The daughter of Macari is not one in heart with the Moslems; in her veins is the blood of her people. Does the noble lord think that now, when she is re- stored to us, she will be off at once to that demon’s place, Aleppo?” The noble lord looked at Ibnol Ham- mamgi thoughtfully. To tell the truth he had not reflected much upon Lali. The singing girl, that evening, had assured him that she would journey with the Cossacks to the castle of Sidi Ahmad, and Demid had found it a fruitless task to try to reason out why a woman—Lali especially—did things. ‘Perhaps the distinguished captain,” went on Ibnol Hammamgi, “does not know that Lali el Niksar is the child of a line of kings. Like a wild goose she is not to be tamed; her forefather was Kagig the First, who was monarch of a thousand spears when Greater Armenia was free, when the Frankish crusaders passed under our moun- tains and our chivalry fought at their side, and the ravines ran blood in rivers. Chris- tos vokros! ‘That was a day of days.” A gleam came into his sunken eye and his fingers clawed restlessly at his wisp of a beard. ‘Blood will flow again before our horses turn their heads, O cral. Bid the girl Stand before you, and you shall hear the promise she made.” Ibnol Hammamgi muttered over his shoulder and a tousled lad upheaved from a nest of sheep-skins, to run out of the hut in quest of Lali. Meanwhile the fire had departed the pallid face of the chief and the habitual mask of caution descended upon it. It would not do at all, he reflected, for the Cossacks to make trouble for the tribe of Sivas. COmiclboook (©