CHAPTER XVI.
Constantine, who was now a manly fellow of nearly eighteen years, had left the house when it grew dark. The night was thick, for heavy clouds had spread their pall over the sky. A little space from the house was the kennel. A deep growl greeted his approach to it.
"Still, Balk!" muttered he, as he loosed an enormous mastiff, and led the brute toward the side of the house on which the clijet, or chamber, occupied by Morsinia was located.
"Down, Balk!" he said, as again and again the huge beast rose and placed his paws upon his master's shoulders. Balk was tied within a clump of elder-bushes a little way from the house, and at the opening of a foot-path ascending the mountain. The young man lay down with his head upon the mastiff. Nearly an hour passed; the silence unbroken except by a querulous whine of the dog as his comrade refused to indulge his playful spirit. Suddenly Balk threw up his head and sniffed the air nervously. Yet no sound was heard, but the soughing of the winds through the budding trees, and the murmur of the brook. The animal became restless and would not lie down except at the sternly whispered command.
Leaving him, Constantine opened the shutter of the clijet occupied by his father and himself, and quietly entered. Though in the dark, he strung a strong bow, balanced several arrows in his hand to determine the best, saying to himself as he did so, "I can send these straight in the direction of a sound, thanks to my night hunting!" A dagger was thrust into the top of his leather hose. He wound his head in the strooka—the cloth which answers for both cap and pillow to those who are journeying among those mountains and liable to exposure without bed or roof at night.
The noise though slight awakened Milosch, who had fallen into a light sleep.
"Where now, my boy? No coon will come to you such a night as this."
"Father, I did not tell you, because you laugh at my fears," said Constantine in a low tone. "But the anxiety of Uncle Kabilovitsch and the great captain, too, when I went to camp last week, makes me more cautious about Morsinia. The Vili are about, as the girls said."
"Nonsense, you child! It's a shame that a boy of your years should believe such stuff. Besides what have the Vili to do with our daughter?"
"Look here, father; when I was searching for a rabbit's burrow this afternoon I saw the footprint of one of them, and it wore a soldier's shoe too. That is the sort of Vili I believe in."
"Why, boy!" said Milosch, "your head is so full of soldiering that rabbits' burrows look like soldiers' feet. Or your head is so turned with love for our girl, that you must imitate the Latin knights, and go watch beneath the shutter of your lady's castle. Go, along, then, and let the night dews take the folly out of you. Foolish boy!" added he, as he turned toward the wall.
Constantine went back to the dog. The huge beast had thrust himself as far as the cord would allow him in the direction away from the house, and stood trembling with excitement as he peered into the black shadows which lay against the mountain. Constantine could detect no unusual sound save the creaking of the gigantic limbs of the trees as they rubbed against each other in the rising wind, the sharpening whistle of the breeze, and the crackle of the dead brushwood. Yet the mastiff's excitement increased. He strained the rope with his utmost strength, but the hand of his master upon his neck checked the whining growl.
A branch snapped on the hillside in the direction of the path.
"No wind did that," muttered he. A stone rolled down the declivity.
"No foot familiar with that path did that. You are right, Balk!" and by main strength he pressed the mastiff's head to the ground, and, with his arm about his neck, kept him crouching and silent.
Stealthy steps were heard.
"One! Two!" counted the boy. "You and I are enough for them, eh, Balk?"
The dog licked the face of his master in token that he understood, and would take his man if Constantine would do equally well.
"Three! Four! Five! A large band! Too many for us, Balk! We must rouse the village——"
But at the moment he would have started, his attention was arrested by low voices almost at his side.
"The clijet nearest. When she is taken I will sound the bugle call—the Turkish call, so that your dash through the village will be thought to be one of their dashes. Do as little real damage as you can, keeping the appearance of a genuine raid; but no matter if you have to cut the throats of a half-dozen or more; especially the red-headed fellow you have seen in camp, and the old devil with the paralyzed arm. I and Waldy will carry the girl, and wait for you by the horses on the open road. Let's inspect!"
Two dusky outlines moved toward the house. Constantine cut the rope, and, at a push of his hand the dog crawled a few feet until he was clear of the copse; then sprang into the air. There was a hardly audible exclamation of surprise and terror; a low growl of satisfied rage, as when a tiger seizes the food thrown to him in his cage. One man is down in death grapple with his strange assailant whose teeth are at his throat. A sharp whiz and a cry of pain tell that the arrow of Constantine has not missed its mark.
A second whiz, and the form topples!
The boy stood stupefied with the reaction of the moment. But the multiplying footfalls along the ledge aroused him. He darted into the house, swinging the great bar that turned on a peg in the door post across the entrance, and thus securing it behind him. To arouse the household was the work of a moment. A word explained all. Arms were seized, not only by the men, but also by the women: for even to this day a marauder will meet no more skilful and brave defenders of the villages of Albania than the wives and daughters who encourage the men by their example as well as by their words. Their hands are trained to use the sword, the axe, the dagger; and the cry of danger transforms the most domestic scene into an exhibition of Amazons.
The expected attack was delayed. Fears were excited lest the raiders were about to set fire to the house. If such were the case, the policy of the inmates was to sally forth and cut their way through the assailants, at whatever cost. Some one must go out. It might be to meet death at the door. Standing in a circle they hastily repeated the Pater Noster, each one giving a word in turn; the one to whom the "Amen" came accepting the appointment as directly from God. With drawn weapons they gathered at the door, which was opened suddenly. No enemy appearing, it was closed, leaving the new sentinel without.
After going a few paces the guard stumbled over the dead body of the dog, by the side of which a man was vainly struggling to rise. Drawing his dagger he would have completed the work of the mastiff's fangs,—when he checked the impulse by better judgment—
"No, it's better to have him along with us. He'll come handy before we get through this job!"
So, grasping the two arms of the wounded man in such a way as to prevent his using a weapon, if strength enough should remain, he swung the helpless hulk upon his back, as he had often carried the carcass of a wolf down the mountain; and, giving the preconcerted signal at the door, was instantly re-admitted.
The wounded man wore the Turkish uniform, and was evidently the officer in charge of the raiding party. This fact sufficiently explained the delay in following up the attack, for doubtless his men were still waiting for the order which he would never give.
"We must rouse our neighbors," said the old man, who was recognized as the commandant of the dwelling, and obeyed as such with that reverence for seniority which is to this day a beautiful characteristic of the Albanian people.
Constantine held a hurried, but confidential talk with Milosch, who proposed that Constantine and his sister should undertake the hazardous venture of alarming the next house. All remonstrated against Morsinia's venturing, the patriarch refusing to allow it. Milosch persuaded him with these words, which were not overheard by the others—
"She is the chief object of attack; this I have discovered. If she remains in the house she will be captured. Her only safety is to leave it, and disappear in the darkness. Once out there she can hide near by, or can thread her way up among the crags, where no stranger's foot will ever come. She knows every stone and tree in the dark as well as a mole knows the twists and turns of his burrow."
Morsinia caught at once the spirit of the adventure, and in her eagerness preceded Constantine to the doorway. The thrill of fear on her account gave way to a thrill of applause for her as she stood in readiness. She had donned a helmet of thick half-tanned hides, and a corsage of light iron links, looped together and tied with leathern thongs, about her person. Her arms were left free for the use of the bow and stock which swung from her shoulder, and the klaptigan, or short dagger, which hung in the plaits of her kilt.
"The Holy Virgin protect her!" was the prayer which came from all sides as she flung her arms about the neck of Milosch, and as she afterward bowed her head to receive the kiss of the patriarch upon her forehead. The light in the room was extinguished that their exit might not be noted by any without when the door should open.
For a moment Constantine and Morsinia stood close to the door which had closed behind them. Their keen hearing detected the fact that the house was surrounded, though by persons stationed at a distance, chiefly upon the higher slopes of the hills. The road to the next house was evidently guarded.
Constantine insisted upon Morsinia's concealing herself rather than attempting to go with him to the neighbors; but only after remonstrance with him did she consent to his plan. Silently crossing the road, and without so much as breaking a stick or rustling a dead leaf beneath her feet—a dexterity acquired in approaching the timid game with which the mountains abounded, and which she had often hunted—she disappeared in the dense copse.
Constantine moved cautiously by the wayside, easily eluding the notice of the men whose dark outlines were discerned by him as they stood on guard at intervals along the road. He had nearly approached the neighboring house when the still night air was rent with the shrill note of a Turkish bugle call from the direction of the dwelling they had left.
"Could it be that the captured officer had recovered sufficient reason and strength to break from his captors and give the signal?" thought Constantine. The call sounded again—it was evidently from a distance, beyond the village. A score or more dim forms at the sound gathered in the road; some emerging from the bushes near, others descending from points high up the slopes on either side—their hurried but muffled conversation showed that they were about to make the appointed dash upon the doomed dwelling. But a second blare of trumpets sounded far down toward the entrance of the valley, followed by a clanging of armor and clatter of horses' feet. Torches glared far away. A party was evidently just winding out of the defile into the open space where the hamlet stood. Rescuers doubtless! for the first party of raiders scattered to right and left, and were heard climbing again up the wooded slopes. Morsinia hastened to Constantine, and together they hurried to meet the new comers. But they were not rescuers. They attacked the house with shouts of "Allah! Allah!" They fired it with their torches. Some poured along the road toward the next house.
They were genuine Turks. Unable to conquer Scanderbeg in battle, the great army had spread everywhere to lay waste the country. In fertile meadows, along every stream, wherever a castle or chalet was known to be, raged the numberless soldiers, who, beaten in nobler fight, sought vengeance by becoming murderers of the more helpless, and kidnappers of women and children to fill their harems.
With flying feet Constantine and Morsinia outstripped the riders, alarmed the second house, and ran to the third. Behind them the crackling flames told that it was too late to return. All who could escape gathered at the great konak. Since a similar raid, some years before, this building had been converted into a rude fortification. The wall which surrounded it, as an enclosure for sheep and cattle, had been built up high and strong enough to prevent any approach to the main structure by an anticipated foe, except as the scalers of the wall should be exposed to the missiles of those within. The konak proper was pierced with loop-holes, through which a shower of arrows could be poured by unseen archers.
The court was already filled with the fugitives, while some had entered the building, when it was surrounded by the Turks. Constantine had gained from Morsinia a promise to avoid exposure; and had agreed upon a place of meeting on the mountain, in the event of their both surviving the conflict. But the eagerness of Constantine overcame his discretion, and, heading a group of peasants who had not been able to enter the konak, he mingled in a hand-to-hand fight with the assailants. Morsinia's interest led her to closely watch the fray from the bordering thicket, changing her position from time to time that she might not lose sight of the well-known form of her foster-brother. Seeing him endangered, she could not resist the vain impulse to fly to his assistance; as if her arms could stay those of the stout troopers who surrounded him; or as if a Turk could have respect for a woman's presence. Scarcely had she moved from her covert when strong hands seized her, and, by a quick movement, pinioned her arms behind her back.
"Ho! man, guard this girl! If my houri escapes, your head shall be forfeit," cried her captor, an officer, to a common soldier who was holding his horse. In a moment he was lost to sight in the struggling throng.
The wall was carried, and, though many a turban had rolled from the lifeless head of its wearer, the building was finally fired—life being promised to the women who should surrender. Some of these, who were young, were thrust from the door by their kindred, who preferred for them the chances of miserable existence as Turkish prey, to seeing them perish with themselves. Most, however, fought to the last by the side of their husbands and fathers, and were slain in the desperate attempt to make their way from the flames which drove them out.
Constantine, by strange strength and skill, extricated himself from the mêlée. A sharp flesh wound cooled his blind rage; and, realizing that another's life, as dear to him as his own, was involved in his safety, he withdrew from the danger, and sought Morsinia.
Not finding her during the night, he returned in the earliest dawn to the konak. The building was in ruins; the ground strewn with dead and wounded. With broken hearts the few who had escaped were bewailing their loved ones killed or missing. But there was no tidings of Morsinia. In vain the woods were searched; every old trysting place sacred to some happy memory of the years they had spent together—the eagle's crag, the cave in the ravine, the dense copse. But only memories were there. Imagination supplied the rest—a horrid imagination! The poor boy was maddened and crushed; at one moment a fiend; at the next almost lifeless with grief.
An examination at the lower house discovered the body of his father, Milosch. He had been killed outside the house; for his body, though terribly gashed, was not burned, as were those found within the walls of the building.
Constantine had, up to this time, regarded himself as a boy; now he felt that he was a man, with more of life in its desirableness behind than ahead of him: a desperate man, with but a single object to live for, vengeance upon the Turk, and upon those who, worse than Turks, of Albanian blood, had first attempted Morsinia's capture.
Yet there was another thing to live for. Perhaps she might be recaptured. Improbable, but not impossible! That, then, should be his waking dream. Such a hope—hope against hope—was all that could make life endurable, except it were to drain the blood of her captors.
He was driven by the poignancy of his grief and the hot fury of his rage, to make this double object an immediate pursuit. He felt that he could not sleep again until he had tasted some of the vengeance for which he thirsted.
But how could he accomplish it? He must lay his plan, for it were worse than useless to start single-handed without one. He must plot his tragedy before he began to execute it.
He sat down amid the ruins of the hamlet—amid the ruins of his happiness and hopes—to plot. But he could devise nothing. His attempts were like writing on the air. He sat in half stupor; his power to think crushed by the dead weight of mingled grief and the sense of impotency.
But suddenly he started——
"Fool! fool, that I am, to waste the moments! This very night it may be done."
He hastily stripped the body of a dead Turkish soldier, and, rolling the uniform into a compact bundle, plunged with it through the thicket and up the steep mountain side.