The Suliote Maiden by James Short

Author:James Short [SHORT, JAMES]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-eight

On his next visit, Suna said, “Is that Malina singing in the next room? Don’t you know slaves aren’t supposed to be so happy?”

“Is that what she is? I thought her purpose was to assassinate the infidel.”

“I’ve come to tell you what I found out about the wager between Ahmet and Tarkan. Your friend Ahmet will tell you Tarkan had become tired of him always boasting about you beating his wrestling opponents and happened upon an interesting way to stop the boasting and put you in your place. Tarkan will give a different story. His father, Fehim Aga, breeds horses and dogs. Tarkan claims that he wanted to see the principles of breeding applied to making soldiers. Don’t believe either….”

Suna went on to relate that in a Christian village in Epirus controlled by Ali Pasha, seven young men decided to start the Greek Independence movement by themselves and resist the Turkish occupiers Ali Pasha represented. They ambushed Pasha’s tax collector and his two guards, killing them. Most unwise. The young men were pursued over the rough terrain and finally trapped in a cave. Tarkan had been visiting Ali Pasha with his father, Fehim Aga. Feeling deprived and depressed because he was away from the real fighting in the north, Tarkan eagerly joined the stalking of the young rebels. Surprisingly, the seven young men held out for twelve days because one was a devastating marksman, even for a Suliote, known for their superb marksmanship. The marksman even wounded Tarkan superficially. Eventually, the musket balls ran out. The soldiers stormed the cave and found themselves confronted by this teenage girl, sixteen or seventeen years old, wildly swinging a cutlass. For the moment, they kept their distance, unsure whether they should kill her or not.

Tarkan asked his father, who had arrived the evening before, whether such a fierce spirit might bear ferocious children. Fehim replied with the question, “Are you such a fool, son, that you want this she-wolf as a concubine?”

“I have someone else in mind,” Tarkan had replied, perhaps not with complete honesty.

Fehim, who knew his son well, said, “You may give her away to breed your soldiers, but I will choose with whom she will breed, which certainly will not be you.”

“Have you known me to keep a woman?” Tarkan asked.

“I’ve never known you to intercede on behalf of a woman.”

“The last woman I’d want as a consort would be this she-wolf.”

At the request of Tarkan’s father, Pasha’s men retreated and found a net because they didn’t want to wound this specimen of a savage female and damage her ability to breed. They stormed the cave again and netted her. From the decomposition of the bodies, it was apparent that she alone, enduring the stench and the flies, had held twenty-six of Pasha’s soldiers off for the last four days.

The netted girl raged, she spat, she tried to bite through the rope and tried to scratch her face to make herself ugly. They bound her arms. She was examined and found to be a virgin, during which she broke the doctor’s nose with her heel.

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