Adventure Magazine Cover — page 42: what you’re looking at

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

26 the air. His quiet heartened the Cossacks, who went on munching their barley cakes and dried meat. ‘“Were you not afraid to let the witch girl touch your” they asked Ayub. They believed implicitly in ghosts of uns buried warriors and spirits of the waste places—vampires who sucked a man’s blood, hob-gobs who turned horses into toads, and will-o’-the-wisps who could lead even the hardiest astray of a dark night. They were sure that Lali had laid a spell on Ayub. “Oh, that is a small thing with me,” Ayub swaggered a bit. ‘‘When I was born my mother put me in a snowdrift to season me; and though the dogs howled all night and the vampires were thick as locusts in harvest time, I came out without a chill. Once, when I was old enough to ride herd, @ witch came into our village in the like- ness of a panther to draw some blood from the horses. But I said a prayer and took her by the tail “Only think!” The Cossacks shook their heads in amaze- ment at such daring. ‘and twisted it. Straightway, she turned herself into an eagle, and tried to fly off, but I had hold of her tail-feathers ‘“‘Such a man as he was!”’ _ The warriors lifted their hands helplessly. ‘“‘__so that she was fain to change herself to a maiden, like a flower for beauty. kh, I danced with her a day and she could do no more with me than this peacock— in the name of the Unhallowed One, what are these?”’ The Cossacks glanced up in alarm, seeing Ayub’s jaw drop. ‘To your sabers!”’ shouted Demid angrily. Down the cliff wall on either hand were scrambling human beings who resembled limbs wrapped in coarse wool, long hair hanging about their eyes they glared at the warriors. Some perched on narrow ledges, poising heavy stones; others leveled small bows. Out of the mist and the drifting smoke, shaggy heads came into view silent- ly. Only goats, the warriors thought, could have made their way down the cliffs. The Cossacks formed in a ring around Demid and the horses. As they did so, a score or more of the gnomes emerged from a cleft in the rock near the fire. They were squat and stoop-shouldered, and they glided forward moving softly in the loose snow. Among the rearmost, Demid made out the Adventure brown face of the Armenian lad who had undertaken to be his guide, and who had set him on the path to this gorge. It was Michael of Rohan, ever careless of events, who laughed. ‘Burn me, but here are the wolves of the mountains. And yet—they have come a little early to pick our bones.” “IBNOL HAMMAMGI, | Ibnol Hammamegi!”’. . The girl, sitting apart from the ring of warriors, called-clearly, and at once a shape disengaged ‘itself from the other shapes. This was a bent figure wrapped in a shawl over which thrust out a head bald as a vulture’s. A single ghttering eye fixed upon the singing girl;.the other eyeball had vanished from its socket. Ibnol Ham- mamgi shambled forward and, with discon- certing suddenness, - twitched ‘the veil from Lali’s face. ‘“‘Eh—eh,”’ he whined; “verily you are the child of Macari, the cral of our folk. It is eight Winters since Macari, your father, was burned alive by our Turkish overlords be- cause the tithes of our clan were in arrears to them. Yet I know your face.”’ “Tbnol Hammamgi, the day the Moslems raided our village, they took me with other slaves as payment of the tithes ‘Aye, that also is known to me. Our folk numbered you among the dead, daughter of Macari. Until yesterday when the youth, your messenger, came to me at Sivas with his tale.” ‘You saw my smoke?”’ “T am not blind. We hastened. A goat- herd ran up to us with word that many Turks have entered the lower defiles.” Being headman of the clan, Ibnol Ham- mamgi would not condescend to question a young woman, but his eye turned apprais- ingly on the Cossacks. ‘They are Franks from across the sea. Their sword edges are sharper than their wits, or they would not be upon the road to Aleppo. I want you to lead them from this place, to our folk. Can you save the horses?” Ibnol Hammamgi hunched himself closer in his shawl and shook his great head gently from side to side. ‘The horses, aye. 9 The men are another matter “You will profit much. vis ““Howr”’ COMmicCcboooks.Gom