"Has Captain Ballaban any explanation of this conspiracy against him?"
asked one.
"None!" was the laconic reply. But after a moment's pause he added:
"Perhaps there was no conspiracy, except as our jealous neighbors are
willing to take advantage of every unseemly circumstance that can be
twisted to point against any of the Yeni-Tscheri. This may explain
something. The girl that I captured at the Giaour village was no
common peasant, by the cheek of Ayesha! Her face, as lit by the
blazing konak, was of such beauty as I have never seen except in some
dreams of my childhood. Her voice and manner in commanding me to
liberate her were those of one well-born or used to authority. It was
well that I bethought me to give her into the keeping of that
dull-headed Koremi, or she might have bewitched me into obeying her
and letting her go. My belief is that the girl was rescued. It may be
that our men were heavily bribed to give her up, or that some one
personated myself and demanded her, and that the story of my return
may be thus accounted for, but I cannot see any treachery in Koremi's
manner. If she was of any special value to Scanderbeg he would find
some way of running her off, though he had to make a league with the
devil and assume my shape to do it. The Arnaouts, you know, believe
that the Vili are in collusion with Scanderbeg, and that one of them,
a he-vili, Radisha, or some such sprite, is his body servant. That
will account for it all," added he, laughing at the conceit.
"But," said the second Aga, "Caraza-Bey's insult was none the less, if
your surmise be true. We must wash it out in the blood of a hundred or
so of his hirelings to-morrow."
The chief shook his head.
"But," continued the second Aga, "the jealousy of our corps must be
punished. You see how near it came to losing for us the life of one of
our bravest. Caraza-Bey must fight me to-morrow."
"Bravo!" cried all; while one added, "And let the challenge be public,
that the entire force of the Yeni-Tscheri be on hand and all the
troops of the Beyler Bey of Anatolia, and--" lowering his voice-- "we
can manage it so that the fight become general, and teach these
reptiles of Asiatics that the Yeni-Tscheri are the right hand and the
brain of the empire."
"Ay, _are_ the empire!" said another. "Let us have a scrimmage that
will be interesting. The war with Scanderbeg is getting monotonous.
One day he comes into our camp, like a butcher into a slaughter pen,
and the next day we are marched out to him, to be slaughtered
elsewhere. It requires one to be full of Islam, the Holy Resignation,
to stand this sort of life. Yes! let's do a little fighting in our own
way and get rid of some of this soldier spawn which the Padishah has
brought with him from across the Bosphorus!"
"But you forget, my brothers," said Ballaban, "that this fight with
the Sanjak Bey does not belong to any one beside myself. His lie was
about me. I then am the man to take off his head; and I think I can do
it with as good grace as the executioner was nigh to taking off mine
just now."
"No, Captain!" said the chief. "Your rank is as yet below the Bey's,
and he would make that an excuse for declining the gage. Besides,"
said he, lowering his voice, "I have special service for you
elsewhere, which cannot be delayed."
When the agas, making the low courtesy, retired, the chief walked with
Ballaban.
"Captain, I have heard no report of the errand upon which you were
sent."
"No, Sire, I was arrested the moment I returned to camp."
"You succeeded, I know, from the movements of the enemy: although the
slowness of the Padishah in ordering an advance, when Scanderbeg was
diverted by your ruse, prevented our taking advantage of it."
"Yes," said Ballaban, "I succeeded as well as any one could, not being
seconded from headquarters. But I did some service incidentally, and
picked up some helpful information. The night after leaving the hamlet
we fired, I fell in with a company of Arnaouts who were coming to the
rescue. They would have got into the narrow valley before our men got
out, had I not managed to trick them. I was in disguise and readily
passed for an Arnaout lout, giving them false information about the
direction our party had taken, and so lost them an hour or two, and
saved the throats of Lovitsch's fellows, a mere rabble, good enough
for a raid, but not to be depended upon for a square fight. But we
must have no more raids. Scanderbeg has means of communication as
quick and subtle as if the clouds were his signals and the stars were
his beacons.
"I then came upon a Dibrian settlement, pretending to be a fugitive
from the valleys to the north; and entertained the villagers with
bug-a-boo stories about the hosts of men with turbans on their heads
and little devils on their shoulders who had destroyed all that
country, and were now pouring down toward the south.
"By the way," continued Ballaban laughing, "there was an old fellow
there, very lame, with a patch over one eye, who could hardly stand
leaning on his staff, he was so palsied with age. But the one eye that
was open was altogether too bright for his years; and his legs didn't
shake enough for one who rattled his staff so much. So I put him down
as one of Scanderbeg's lynxes--they are everywhere. I described to him
the Moslem movements in such a way as to let a trained soldier believe
that we had entirely changed front, with the prospective raising of
the siege of Sfetigrade and alliance with the Venetians for carrying
the war farther to the north. The old codger took the bait, and asked
fifty questions in the tone of a fellow whose head had been used for a
mush-pot instead of a brain-holder; but every question was in its
meaning as keen as a dagger-thrust into the very ribs of the military
situation. Well! I helped him to all the information he wanted; when
with a twinkle in his eye, he hobbled away, as wise as an owl when a
fresh streak of day-light has struck him: and before night the whole
country to the borders of Sternogovia was alive with Scanderbeg's
scouts; and every cross-path was a rendezvous of his broken-winded
cavalry.
"I saw one thing which gave me a hint I may use some day. At a village
the women were carrying water from a spring far down in a ravine,
though there was a fine flowing fountain quite near them. It seems
that a dog had got into the fountain about a month before, and was
drowned. These Dibrians believe that, if any one should drink the
water of such a spring before as many days have passed as the dog has
hairs on his tail, the water will make his bowels rot, and his soul go
into a dog's body when he dies.
"The next night I spent inside the walls of Sfetigrade."
"No!" cried the chief. "Why, man, you must fly the air with the
witches!"
"Not at all, I have some acquaintances in that snug little place; and
when they go to bed they hang the key of the town on a moonbeam for
me. If it is not there, I have only to vault over the walls, or sail
over them on the clouds, or burrow under them with the moles, or hold
my breath until I turn into a sprite, like the wizards on the Ganges,
and lo! I am in. Well! that night I lodged with a worthy family of
Sfetigrade, pretending that I was a poor fugitive from the very town
we had raided a few nights before. And, by the hair of the beautiful
Malkhatoon![52] I saw there the very captive I had taken. She lay
asleep on a cot just within a doorway--unless I was asleep myself and
dreaming, as I half believe I was."
"Yes, it was a dream of yours, no doubt, Captain," said the chief,
"for when a young fellow like you once gets a fair woman in his arms,
as you say you had her in yours the night of the raid, she never gets
out of the embrace of his imagination. He will see her everywhere, and
go about trying to hug her shadow. Beware illusions, Captain! They use
up a fellow's thoughts, make him too meek-eyed to see things as a
soldier should. The love passion will take the energy out of the best
of us, as quickly as the fire takes the temper out of the best
Damascene blade."
"I thank you for your counsel, Aga," replied Ballaban, his face
coloring as deep as his hair. "But there was one thing I saw with a
waking eye."
"And what was that?"
"That there was but one well of water in the town of Sfetigrade; the
one in the citadel court. But another thing I didn't see, though I
searched the place for it;--and that was a dog to throw into the well;
or I would have thirsted the superstitious garrison out. They have
eaten up the last cur."
"Then the surrender must come soon," said the Aga.
"No," replied Ballaban, "for the voivode Moses Goleme came into the
town as I was leaving, driving a flock of sheep which he had stolen
from us; for he had cut off an entire train of provisions which had
been sent to our camp from Adrianople."
"Then I must have you off at once on another errand, Captain. You see
yonder line of mountains off to the northwest. It may be necessary to
shift the war to that region for a while. Ivan Beg,[53] the
brother-in-law of Scanderbeg, has raised a pack of wild fiends among
those hills of his, and is driving out all our friends. Nothing can
stand against him unless it be the breasts of the Yeni-Tscheri.
Scanderbeg may compel us to raise the siege of Sfetigrade, for he
bleeds us daily like a leech. A diversion after Ivan Beg will at least
be more honorable than a return to Adrianople. Now I would know
exactly the passes and best places for fortification in Ivan's
country; and you, Captain, are the man to find them out. You should be
off at once. Take your time and spy thoroughly, making a map and
transmitting to me your notes. And while there feel the people. It is
rumored that the young voivode, Amesa, is restless under the
leadership of Scanderbeg. If a dissension could be created among these
Arnaouts, it would be well. Amesa has a large personal following in
that north country; for his castle is just on the border of it."
"But," replied Ballaban, "I must first pluck the beard of that
cowardly Caraza-Bey!"
"No! I forbid it. Your blood is worth more in your own veins than
anywhere else. I should not consent to your risking a drop of it in
personal combat with any one except Scanderbeg himself."
The fight between the second Aga and Caraza-Bey did not take place.
That worthy was conveniently sent by Sultan Amurath, who had learned
of the feud, to look after certain turbulent Caramanians; and leaving
behind him a wake of curses upon all Janizaries from the chief to the
pot-scourers, he took his departure for the Asiatic provinces.
Had he remained, the Turks would have had enough to occupy them
without this gratuitous mêlée. For during the night scouts brought
word that Scanderbeg had massed all his forces, that were not behind
the walls of Sfetigrade, at a point to the right of the Turkish lines.
Hardly had the army been faced to meet this attack, when scouts came
from the left, reporting serious depredations on that flank. Amurath,
in the uncertainty of the enemy's movement, divided his host. The
Asiatics were given the northern and the Janizaries the southern
defence; either of them outnumbering any force Scanderbeg could send
against them. But, as a tornado cuts its broad swath through a forest,
uprooting or snapping the gigantic trees, showing its direction only
by the after track of desolation, which it cuts in almost unvarying
width, while beyond its well defined lines scarcely a branch is broken
or a nest overturned among the swaying foliage--so Scanderbeg swooped
from east to west through the very centre of the Turkish encampment,
gathering up arms and provisions, and strewing his track with the
bodies of the slain. By the time that the Moslems were sufficiently
concentrated to offer effective resistance the assailants were gone.
At the head of the victorious band Scanderbeg rode a small and
ungainly, but tough and tireless animal--like most of the Albanian
horses, which were better adapted to threading their way down the
pathless mountain sides, than to curveting in military parade--their
lack of natural ballast being made up by the enormous burdens they
were trained to carry.
The figure and bearing of Scanderbeg, however, amply compensated the
lack of martial picturesqueness in his steed. He was in full armor,
except that his sword arm was bared. His beard of commingled yellow
and gray fell far down upon the steel plates of his corselet. A helmet
stuck far back upon his head, showed the massive brow which seemed of
ampler height, from the Albanian custom of clipping short, or shaving
the hair off from the upper forehead.
Wheeling his horse, he engaged in conversation with a stout, but
awkward soldier.
"You and your beast are well matched, Constantine. You both need
better training before you are fit to parade as prisoners of Amurath.
You sit your horse as a cat rides a dog, though you do hold on as well
with your heel as she with her claws. Your short legs would do better
to clamp the belly of a crocodile."
"Yes, we are both accustomed to marching and fighting in our own way,
rather than in company," replied Constantine. "But the beast has not
failed me by a false step; not when we leaped the fallen oak and
landed in the gulch back yonder. The beast came down as safely and
softly as on the training lawn."
"And you have done as well yourself," replied the general. "That was a
bad play though you had with the Turk as we cut our way through the
last knot of them. But for a side thrust which I had time to give at
your antagonist, while waiting for the slow motions of my own, I fear
that your animal would be lighter now by just your weight. You strike
powerfully, but you do not recover yourself skilfully. A good
swordsman would get a response into your ribs before you could deal
him a second. Here, I will show you! Now thrust! Strike! No, not so;
but hard, villainously, at me, as if I were the Turk who stole your
girl! So! Again! Again!--Now learn this movement"--pressing his own
sword steadily against his companion's, and bending him back until he
was almost off his horse. "And this," dealing so tremendous a slash
with the back of the sword that Constantine's arm was almost numbed by
the effort to resist it.--"And this!" transmitting a twisting motion
from his own to his opponent's weapon, so that for one instant they
seemed like two serpents writhing together; but at the next
Constantine's sword was twirled out his hand.
"You will make a capital swordsman with practice, my boy. And the
girl? Keep a sharpened eye for her; and tell me if so much as a new
spider's web be woven at her door."
A peasant woman stood by the path as they proceeded, holding out her
hand for alms, as she ran beside the general's horse. He leaned toward
her to give something; but, as his hand touched hers, she slipped a
bit of white rag into it:
"The map of the roads, Sire, twixt this and Monastir!"
"And your son, my good woman?" inquired the general kindly.
"Ah! the Virgin pity me, Sire, for he died. We could not stop the
bleeding, for the lance's point had cut a vein. But I have a daughter
who can take his place. She knows the signals--for he taught them to
her--and can make the beacon as well as he; and is as nimble of foot
to climb the crag. But please, Sire, the child did not remember if the
enemy going west was to be signalled by lighting the beacon before or
after the bright star's setting."
"Just after, good mother. If they go to the east and cross the
mountain, fire the beacon just before the star sets. And the brightest
of all stars be for your own hope and comfort!"
"And for dear Albania's and thine own!" replied the woman,
disappearing in the crowd, as a man dashed close to Scanderbeg on a
well-jaded steed.
"The Turkish auxiliaries will be at the entrance to the defile in
thirty hours."
"Your estimate of their number, neighbor Stephen?"
"From three to five thousand."
"Not more?"
"Not more in the first detachment. A second of equal size follows, but
a day in the rear."
"Good! Take with you our nephew, Musache de Angeline, and five hundred
Epirots each. This will be sufficient to prevent the first detachment
getting out of the pass. I will strike the second from the rear as
soon as they enter the pass. They can not manoeuvre in that crooked
and narrow defile, and we will destroy them at our leisure. Strike
promptly. Farewell!"
"Miserable sheep!" he muttered, "why will these Turks so tempt me to
slaughter them?"
FOOTNOTES:
[52] Bride of Othman.
[53] Ivo, the Black, or Tsernoi, from whom the mountain country to the
north of Albania was called Tsernogorki, or, in its Latinized form,
Montenegro.