by Harold Lamb
It was funny that running down the steps he felt as if he had forgotten something. . . .
Along the platform everything appeared different, with most of the lights out and the train over on a siding. He passed a lot of uniformed groups smoking outside the doors before he found his freight car and climbed in. Not until he started to undo his duffel bag did he remember that he had sighted no familiar M.P.s.
A lantern flickered outside, and three husky Red Army soldiers climbed in, two of them with tommy guns slung on their shoulders. Sokol the Cossack followed with the lantern. The sergeant had no chance to ease out, if he had wanted to.
It was clear to him that the Cossack had come back with three of his mates to settle the argument between them. He was rolling up his sleeves when Sokol sighted him, and registered surprise, saying something unintelligible, and motioning outside.
Mac shook his head. “This is good enough for me, you ham actor,” he grunted.
Sokol laughed, and put down the lantern, saying something to his bodyguards. Then he let fly with both fists. He seemed to be cold sober.
THE sergeant had had a few seconds to plan what he wanted to do; that was to end the bout in one round. After jabbing Sokol away with his left, the paratrooper dove under a savage swing, caught Sokol under the crotch and bashed his head against the crates. Before Sokol could grip anything, Mac was pounding the Cossack’s forehead against the metal flooring. In ten seconds Sokol went limp.
Now for it, Mac reasoned and slid back to the carbine. As he did so, the train jerked and took off. With his weapon the sergeant crouched against the wall, ready for the rush of the bodyguards.
One with a crooked nose ejaculated “Shabash!” The other two had not unslung their automatic weapons, but they were between the sergeant and the door. They were working over Sokol with a vodka bottle. Mac watched their hands.
Presently Sokol coughed and sat up, wiping the blood out of his eyes. He grunted “Shabash!” Then he held out the bottle to Mac who did not take it.
A Russky with medals over his blouse stepped front and center. “Yank!” he shouted. “You will—understand—basic English, Yank?”
“Sure,” admitted the sergeant cautiously, “I guess so.”
The other waved a husky arm. “American okay,” he bellowed over the rattle of the train, “British well done, Russian Shabash. You understand?” They were grinning.
The sergeant heaved a long sigh. They weren't ganging up on him. Warily he accepted the bottle and drank thirstily. It was water.
To get a break to think, Mac handed around cigarettes, which they all took. He saw that the train was really an express now; it was hiking along too fast for him to jump. Then Sokol reached out for his guitar-ukelele thing, and they began to sing, a strange sort of blues with a bit of a hymn thrown in. The train swayed and groaned, huffing through tunnels, and then hanging on by its wheels to the rock of a mountain’s face so steep that Mac blinked when he looked up. It was racing itself down the mountain while these crazy Russians who had taken over the car sang to glory ... Mac gave up thinking about it.
When at last it stopped, Mac eased out with his stuff, first. The four only waved to him. After a minute he stopped dead.
It could not be! An orange moon sank on one side, while daybreak gleamed on the other. Before him gurgled a rushing waterfall, above him rose a tropical tree hung with bananas. Ahead of him stretched the shore of a lake, big as an ocean. It smelled salt. In its gentle wash hundreds of men and a few women were bathing, stripped. They were singing the blues-hymns, also.
Into this lake extended a jetty. But what held the sergeant spellbound was the yacht, large and white and anchored off shore. A yacht for presidents and Grand Chams. Mac was entirely sober.
“Cathay,” he told himself.
Beholding a big skiff taking off from the jetty, he ran down to it. When he jumped in, it smelled of fish. The rowers, soldiers like himself, did not object. They pulled out to the yacht he indicated. Mac lay back and enjoyed himself. The Volga boatmen must be like this, he thought.
A swimmer’s head bobbed beside him, and a shapely arm grappled the skiff’s side. The Volga boatmen weighed oars and Mac, tugging at the arm, pulled in a young woman. Like the other swimmers he’d seen, she wore no bathing suit.
“Americaniec” she panted, smiling. “I have seen pictures of the United States Army. Do you speak English?”
“Sure,” said Mac. Princesses in Cathay went swimming in the dawn’s earliest light. This one had a nice figure, and she said her name was Katya.
When the two of them climbed the steps to the yacht’s empty deck, gold gleamed from the stanchions’ knobs, and gold gleamed in Katya’s bobbed hair as the sun rose and she dried herself on a shirt.
“So this is Cathay,” Mac commented.
“So this is—what?” Katya wondered.
He explained, and the more he explained, the more questions she asked. And while she asked questions, she put on her shirt, and she changed. In boots and pants she looked not so much like a princess as like an incredulous and suspicious young woman. She still looked pretty good.
Finally she asked for Mac’s papers. “I am the commandant’s first category interpreter,” she identified herself. She put her finger on the word Teheran in his T.O.’s. "Tihran is not here. It is far back behind you, Sergeant.”
So Teheran-Tihran must have been the stop where he had eaten dinner with Anna.
Katya began to do some explaining herself: “At Tihran, Russian crews take command of all the trains. But the man Sokol was inspector, who journeys all the way with shipments to the Soviet Union. Do you understand?”
“Sort of—” Mac admitted.
Katya jabbed a finger at the seaside town, with the train. “This is Bandar Shah, the end of the railroad. It is not Cathay.” Her voice sharpened: “There is no Cathay among the autonomous republics of the Soviet Union. This”—and she jabbed a finger overside—“is no lake. It is Kaspy More, the Caspian Sea. This yacht is no recreation ship; we guard it and are allowed to swim from it. Now do you understand all of everything?”
As she considered him, her gray-green eyes softened. Mildly, she said, “But you can stay here and swim as long as you like, Sergeant.”
Now that he could see her clearly, Katya looked husky. While he pondered, she jumped up. So did Mac.
Behind them stood a man in a weather-stained soldier’s tunic. He had one empty sleeve, and the face of a tired poet. Behind him five officers waited with portfolios.
“The commandant,” breathed Katya, “the distinguished General Dobra Khan, who goes ashore in the boat.” And she interpreted: “He is asking what he can do for you, American soldier?”
For a moment the paratrooper looked into the eyes of the commander who might have been a poet, who was more tired than any human being he had run across in his travels. . . .
With Katya interpreting, Mac told Dobra Khan of his search for Cathay. Feeling easy under the poet-general’s kind gaze, he even told of his desire to go over the hill. After a long pause. Dobra Khan spoke. MacKenzie listened, spellbound. . . .
TWO evenings later Sergeant MacKenzie of the Teheran battalion of M.P.s walked into the garden of Madame Suhaily, and over to the table where Anna sat alone. Pulling up a chair for himself, he sat down. It felt good here. Anna looked beautiful with her eyes shining, when she brushed back her hair.
“Did you find Cathay, Sergeant?” she asked softly.
“Yes, and no.” Leaning his elbows comfortably on the table, Mac considered. “I met a big shot, a kind of Grand Cham who knew the answers. He said Cathay wasn’t a country any more, it was a place that tired soldiers looked for and never found. So I came back here. What do you think, Anna?”
She didn’t tell him. “I’m glad you came back,” she said.
The Stolen Countess
THAT fair May morning the man hunt started. It started when they told Eugenia about the thieves. She was breakfastin
g in bed, putting off her day's duty as the young Countess of Karth as long as she could. Eugenia did not like to sit over an embroidery frame or inspect a wine press or watch a cow dropping a calf until it was necessary to do so. So she made Elfrida and Old Fred—he was too old to be head of the foresters, but she kept him on—tell her all the doings of this thief.
Over at Durenstein castle, explained Old Fred, three horses had been taken, and one of them was a great dappled war horse. From the hunting lodge of Konigstor, next door to their land, a bag of silver coins had been snatched, and along with it a fine silver-mounted hunting horn.
And only last night, from the courtyard of Karth castle itself, right under their feet, a side of salted venison had been carried off, and along with it a jug of the best Sava wine.
“Horses for the thief to ride away on.” Eugenia smiled, interested. “Meat to stay his hunger and silver to pay his way. So he took those things. But why take a charger trained to battle, or a horn to sound a hunting call, or vintage wine to guzzle?” When the servants did not answer, she said, “Because this thiever has a taste for noble things.”
“Noblemen,” objected Old Fred who had grown up before the world wars, “do not steal.”
“Don’t they?”
Eugenia thought of her first cousin, Leopold the First, Duke of Austria, who had slunk back so early from the last Crusade that he found the bishop still preaching the duty of all Christians to free Jerusalem from the pagan Saracens. She thought of her second cousin and nearest neighbor, young Otto of Konigstor, who had not gone to the war but hunted deer in her forest.
Duke Leopold was increasing his power, to make himself a king. He wanted Eugenia to marry Cousin Otto so that their small family of Babenbergs might have a son in it, but Eugenia had not said that she would.
“Whatever the thief is,” sniffed Elfrida, “he has changed his shape thrice.”
At Durenstein the thief had looked like a thickset wagon driver, leading off the horses. Yet poor Otto's foresters swore that he was a thin minstrel, full of funny jokes.
“Ay," amended Elfrida, “yesternight he took the shape of a tall pilgrim with staff and pouch. He looked in upon you, my lady, at dinner—”
“At me?”
“Ay, and he asked gently for a taste of meat and sip of wine. Then, when our backs were turned, he carried off enough to stuff ten churls.”
This thief seemed to Eugenia to be no man of the countryside; still, thrice he had walked boldly in and out, as if he had a right to do that. “He may be three men, Elfrida,” she pointed out.
And what, she wondered, would he be doing this morning? Surely not riding the great dappled charger, wearing the horn, along the highway to Venice where he would be seen and marked.
“He will be after hiding out,” announced Old Fred, “until the hue and cry dies down.”
“Where?”
The veteran forester knew the mountainlands of Karth better than any written book. “High along the ridges,” he decided, “above the paths, where the forest is thickest, where a stream runs by an open glade—for he will be needing water and grass for the beasts.”
EUGENIA sent for her mare to be saddled. Then alone and unarmed she rode out upon her man hunt. Fast she rode from the courtyard.
“Jasomirgott,” breathed Elfrida after her mistress. “So help me God.” It was the family oath of the wayward Babenbergs. “The poor lamb, alone and twenty-and-one years old—six years past the marrying age, and still unwed.”
The girl’s beauty was a shield to her in these savage mountains. Her small head, you might say, had its helm of bright bronze hair; her slight, straight body, its armor of fashionable gown and flowing mantle and silken scarf. For the sight of her was known to the forestfolk, and what man would dare harm the lovely cousin of the Duke of Austria?
“She rides fast to her rendezvous,” said the charcoal burners at the timber’s edge, where lindens spread over a rushing stream. For, though the man she had loved was dead, it was thought she rode thus, and often, to meet his spirit in the forests.
Eugenia had no fear of hunted beast or landless men. She had waved that scarf of hers, gaily, to Walt when he had ridden off to the war, four years before.
Walt—so she named Waldemar—had been stubborn. Yes, he had stayed beyond the sea with that stubborn Richard, called the Lionheart, to fight their last battles, for glory in defeat. “For God and for King Richard of England,” she whispered fiercely, hating the war, and Richard. Walt had died in the last days, without seeing Jerusalem. Since then her mocking gray eyes could look through a man who tried to touch her body.
She heard a horn’s note sounded, recognized it as her cousin Otto’s, and knew by token of it that her young neighbor would be riding after deer—here, on her land—and not searching for the thieves at all. Otto was like that.
So she reined the mare to a walk, to let the huntsmen pass by ahead of her. She wanted no one near her when she reached the rendezvous where no other came to meet her now. There in a glade by the forest stream she had lain in Walt’s arms that last evening, unable to believe that she would not feel the touch of his hand again, perhaps for years.
Since then, other men of mark had stayed the night at Karth. Sometimes she had felt the mad surge of her blood, when her eyes searched their faces for the semblance of a remembered glance, or even of the turn of a dark head toward her—and the distant echo of a voice that chimed with hers. At such times she had recognized only a certain hue of hair, or a way of speech, and the hunger in their eyes for her beauty—only bits of Walt in these wraiths of men who had visited Karth for a night and had gone away.
Eugenia had smiled at them all to hide the aching that passed from her heart into her body. And in Vienna the great dames of the ducal court, the margravines and chatelaines—her kinswomen, all of them—had said among themselves that she was light of love, remaining unwed to welcome many men to her door. Ay, that she should rather fear God and obey the Duke’s behest to marry Otto and bring forth sons of the Babenberg blood—
NEARER now Otto’s horn resounded, and she heard a snatch of song, although she saw no one as yet. Then she told herself, knowing it to be true, that there was nothing more left of Walt than this, her memory of their forest rendezvous.
She reined the mare toward the glade. She had seized upon Old Fred’s words, that a thief might be hiding there, as an excuse to visit it this morning—
She started in the saddle as a slim man sprang up beside the trail where it opened into the sunny glade. He had streaks of gray in his long hair under the funny seaman’s cap, and he stroked the harp in his hand as he sang with a sweet careless voice:
“Fresche com rose en mai— De cuer gai—”
Fresh as a May rose—gay of heart— He was singing about her in French. A stranger, then, a minstrel, and—the thief! Bowing to her courteously, he caught her rein fast. “Ma dame,” said he briskly, “my lady, I have taken a most lovely and unexpected prisoner.”
Amused, she said—knowing well the language of the courts and Crusades: “Your lovely song takes an unexpected turn, singer. Whence come you?”
“From beyond the sea.”
Having had a moment to size him up, Eugenia smiled, to disconcert him. She bent forward to look into his eyes, and pivoted the mare with a quick jerk of the rein. This broke his grip and she wheeled away.
She had not heard the other rider come up behind her, but she felt him. A rough arm closed around her waist and held her fast. The man behind the arm was as young as she, and tall, in a brown pilgrim’s cloak, and angry.
“Blon—Luke!” he cried. “Will you never learn to stay under cover? Be still, girl.”
She was still, hiding her anger. Her downcast glance recognized Otto’s silver-mounted hunting horn hanging at his belt—a plaited knight’s belt. So this was the second thief.
An animal crashed through brush, a doe and a fawn flicked across the glade and vanished. An oncoming huntsman
hallooed at sight of this game. And her captor muttered, “Too late now, Luke.” Eugenia vowed silently that she would not be long in running free as the deer. Suddenly she looked up into the face above hers. Sweat darkened his sun-bleached hair. A scar’s ridge ran from chin to forehead, and the blue of his eyes shone down at her gravely, touching some core of memory within her. Yet he did not seem to see her up-tilted face.
“Keep as you are, or you will be hurt!” his voice snapped. His glance flicked across the jeweled clasp, bearing the family crest, in her hair. “Countess, you are our prisoner. I’ll loose you now only if you swear to remain so”—his words raced at her—“and hold your tongue, rescue or no rescue. Swear it on your honor, or on whatever you like best."
THROUGH the brush, horses galloped nearer. Now that she saw her way to escape, Eugenia thought it was all fantastic and exciting. His sword had a Crusader’s Jerusalem cross on it. She should know one. His horse had no saddle. From somewhere under his brown cloak he had whipped out a helmet of chain mail and had settled it over his head.
"I do not yield me,” her voice mocked him with the gibberish of chivalry, "to an unnamed man.”
“My name is Mark.”
“Mark who—Mark what?”
His suspicion stabbed at her. “Rescue or no rescue, and you'll hold that tongue of yours until sunset?"
“Jasomirgott! So help me, God.” But she did not mean it, for the name he had given her was plainly false.
“Wind the horn, Mark,” the singer, Luke, chuckled. "You'll need a longer name than that to win the lady's silence. Why don't you tell her?"
“No!" Mark jerked his arm away from her as stout Otto and eight huntsmen broke from the forest mesh into the clearing. At sight of her, Otto gave a view halloo. Eugenia was glad that they carried light spears and swords.
Otto hesitated, and—as she knew he would—reined over to her, to ask irritably, “Who’s your friend, Gene?"