Riders of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  The three new Cossacks travel by shaggy pony and captured galley across half the width of Asia in these adventures, fearless and fearsome as Khlit in his prime. Quick to drink, quick to fight, quick to brag and sing, brimming with the zest for life tinged with melancholy that seems intrinsically Russian, the stories involving our three new Cossacks have all the vigor of their famously acrobatic dances, carried along by Lamb's energetic prose.

  These new druzyak are well worth knowing.

  Cossacks in the mold of Ayub and Demid still survive on the Don and Kuban rivers; according to my Russian friends their drinking and dancing, singing and stories have lost none of their legendary heart. I should like to see them in person someday and learn more. In the absence of a trip into the heart of Mother Russia, and numerous visits to museums and libraries, this volume of Harold Lamb will do quite nicely for now.

  Riders of the Steppes

  An Edge to a Sword

  Old Goloto, my uncle, has made many swords. Even sometimes for the gentry that lie a night or so at our hamlet of Rusk when they are journeying along the highway. And my uncle has a saying that every sword he makes grows to resemble its owner.

  I do not know. But upon our rare visits to the manor house, where the boyar Sayanski—the nobleman, our landowner—has a collection of rarities, my uncle has taken up various weapons and said—

  "This belonged to an out-at-heels adventurer who served the devil more than God." Or, "This was cared for, once, by a khan of the Turks."

  Why specks of rust along the blade, and a gilded handguard should make him say the first, or the glint of blue in a scimitar's steel, and the faint lines of chasing that once had been inlaid with gold should hint to him the second, is hard to say. But, whether or no, old Goloto's words often proved true.

  Certainly, he was a plain smith, a God-fearing man, who held no intercourse with the evil spirits. He alone of the good men of Rusk knows the truth of the bewitched sword of Ayub.

  But of this weapon and what befell at the manor house on that Winter night in the year 1610 of Our Lord he has not spoken, save to me.

  What my eyes beheld and what Old Goloto told me I shall set down in few words, being no clerk or even bandura player, like Blind Foma, who was Ayub's friend.

  We were taking our ease on the bench in front of the tavern—that is, Say-anski, the landowner, sat at one end and my uncle and Foma at the other, while I—the lad Gregory—teased the innkeeper's wolfhound.

  It was the quiet hour before sunset, a warm day in early Summer. The drone of the locusts out on the steppe and the rustle of the reeds along the Dnieper's bank were louder than the low voices of the men. By the whipping post across the highway the girls were giggling and Ima, my young cousin, was the worst of them.

  But I heard the boyar Sayanski say that he only sat at the tavern to watch for the coming of his relative, who was an officer in the Moscow guards. He had said the same thing for a month; still, he always drank a good deal of the tavern's best mead. He wore a soiled neckcloth, and his eyes were never still; some said he kept his hands in his pockets so much because his sleeves had no lace, others argued that his fingers were counting over his monies.

  I was wondering whether he really looked for his relative, the officer, or whether he liked the smack of the mead, when my uncle spoke up.

  "Might that be him?"

  Old Goloto never called Sayanski "my lord" like Foma and the rest. We all looked up and saw a rider entering the sloboda with a led horse.

  Now those were uncertain times, and Rusk is in the open steppe country on the highway that runs from Moscow south, along the Dnieper to the Black Sea. We were on the frontier kept by the armies of the Empire, and in our time we saw many an affray between river pirates and the barges of Greek and Armenian merchants, and many a raid by the Tatars from the steppe. So we looked twice at every stranger.

  This one, however, was not the landowner's relative, because he approached from the south. He was a man big around the barrel as a wine keg, with his long sheepskin coat thrown back, for the heat, and his high, black sheepskin hat on the back of his head. So, we saw that the front part of his head was bald and sunburned.

  "That's a good horse," said my uncle.

  The stranger rode a black stallion, massive in the chest, but with good length of limb and a fine head. Well that it was so, for the rider must have weighed more than two hundred pounds.

  "Pig of an innkeeper!" he roared, when he reined in. "Don't you know when a Cossack is thirsty?"

  At this summons the tavern-keeper came out, promptly enough, with a mug of corn brandy, but he hung back when he noticed that the stranger had no coins ready. Nor did he have sword or purse hanging from his broad leather girdle.

  "Dog of the-!" growled the Cossack, his black eyes seeking us out.

  "Good sirs, did you ever see the like? Here a Christian knight who has smoked his pipe in the mosques of Constantinople must go with a dry gullet at the pleasure of this midwife!"

  At this Blind Foma smiled down one side of his greasy face. From eye to chin on the other side his cheek had been ripped up by a wild boar's tusk: this eye had been torn out, and the other was feeble. The children were afraid of him, and I always crossed my fingers when I met him o' nights near the Witches' Wood on the river bank.

  The tavern-keeper rubbed his chin and stood first on one foot, then on the other. Sometimes the Cossacks heaped good coins upon him, and spoil taken from the Turks and Tatars. At other times they gutted his cellar and whipped him to square the reckoning.

  They were a wild folk from the southern steppe, who were always riding to a war, or from one. My uncle did a deal of work for them, sharpening their swords, or mending their cuirasses or shoeing their beasts with good leather. He never complained when he lacked of pay, because he said that if it were not for the knights of Kazakdom the Turks and Tatars would come over the steppe and burn our villages.

  Ima, Goloto's devilkin of a daughter, always liked to see the Cossacks come along the highway, for at such times there would be dancing and music. Just now she was standing at the stallion's head, twisting her toes in the dust and shaking back her long, black locks as she did when she wanted to be noticed.

  Ayub, as the Cossack was called, reached into the pack of the led horse and pulled out a silver goblet, throwing it at the tavern-keeper by way of paying his score for the mead. After the innkeeper had examined the goblet he fell to rubbing his hands and called Ayub a noble knight. But the Cossack grunted and asked Ima to fetch him the mead. She looked at my uncle.

  "Give the Cossack his drink," said Goloto in his slow fashion, and she did so.

  Ayub chuckled and took one of her locks in his big paw admiringly but without trying to kiss her as most men did.

  "Have you any more trinkets like that, Cossack?" Sayanski, the boyar, spoke up, pointing at the goblet, although his eyes were studying the big stallion.

  When Ayub emptied his sack in the road and a fine Moslem helmet rolled out, with a pearl-studded girdle and a dagger shaped like one of our sickles, Sayanski went over and picked them up and said he would give Ayub two gold sequins for the lot and then he would have money for whatever he wanted.

  "As you like," responded the Cossack, dismounting—for our mead was famous.

  And the tavern-keeper muttered under his breath as Sayanski paid over the coins. The sequins did not amount to a fourth the value of the things, and if the landowner had let Ayub alone the tavern would have been the gainer.

  "I see that you have borne yourself like a bogatyr—a hero—in the wars, my fine fellow," went on Sayanski and this time his eyes dwelt on the stallion. "How is it that you lack a sword?"

  Ayub, who was taking the saddle off the black made no response.

  "Doubtless," said Sayanski again, raising his voice, "you broke your sword on the thigh bone of a Moslem. Why should a knight like you trouble to care for two horses? I will give you a fine sword and a score of bright byzants for the stallion. Come, will
you sell him?"

  "Not for a piece of the true Cross," answered the Cossack.

  "For thirty byzants?"

  For the first time Ayub looked at Sayanski carefully, and for some reason my uncle took his clay pipe from his lips and leaned forward, although he is not at all hard of hearing and the landowner had spoken in a high, clear voice.

  But the Cossack only said that he was hungry, and that the innkeeper should roast the quarter of a sheep and bring him a cask of corn brandy. After feeding and bedding down the stallion and the led horse himself in the stable, he came back and swore that things were dull in our village. He sat down on his saddle and smoked a pipe of my uncle's tobacco, and shouted for the bandura players to strike up a measure and the girls to dance.

  Ah, it was a fine feast we had that evening when Ayub spent his two sequins and even the dogs were fat. Blind Foma played, but he could never play fast enough for the Cossack, who jumped in among the villagers and began to leap and shout, striking his silver heels on the earth in the wild dance of the South.

  "Eh—eh! That is how it should be done, you sluggards!-take you;

  what dolts you are!"

  It made my blood throb. And Ima began to show off, as usual, spinning around in the dance like a sprite whirling up a chimney's smoke. When she danced that night her eyes were dark and her cheeks paled. The moon had come up over the osiers behind the inn, at the river bank, and the people looked like shadows. Ayub had eyes only for my cousin, when she danced, and thereafter he cherished her in his heart, although I did not know this until the time came when he first used the bewitched sword.

  It was long, long ago. Who can forget a night like that? The warm breath of the hay fields was about us, but even when the good people were merriest the chill breath of the river came up, through the Witches' Wood, and Blind Foma lifted his head and shivered as if someone had touched him on the cheek.

  The next morning after I had watched Ima drive off the two cows to the fields, I ran around to the inn, keeping out of sight of Goloto's forge, because I wanted to see what Ayub was up to.

  He was not in the tavern. In the middle of the road he lay, his booted feet stretched wide, his scalp lock stretched out above his head in the dust, snoring louder than a dozen wolfhounds. So I waited until the sun should stir him up from his sleep. And presently Sayanski came along, riding his brown mare on business of his own. Seeing Ayub, the boyar tickled his bald forehead none too gently with a whip, and the Cossack sat up snorting.

  "I hear, Ayub, that you have squandered all your money in carousing. Tck! Tck! Well, a man like you must have his fling, I suppose. You'll want some money to go on with, of course."

  As Ayub did nothing but yawn and spit, Sayanski continued.

  "What do you say to twenty-five gold byzants for that stallion?"

  A man who has looked long on the pot is a dour fellow to prod out of his sleep, as I have come to know when Old Goloto was wakened on the morn after a Christian feast day.

  Ayub looked up, his heavy brows drawn down.

  "Have you really twenty-five gold pieces?"

  Sayanski actually laughed and began to count them out, quickly enough, from his pouch. To make sure he counted them back again into his other fist.

  "There my fine fellow, you can see them."

  "Aye, you have them. Well, if you were to offer me twenty-five thousand byzants and a talisman that would make Satan himself turn tail you couldn't have my stallion."

  And then Ayub stretched himself out again with his arm across his eyes to keep out the sun and began to snore. Sayanski thrust the coins back into his pouch as if they were hot, and his thin face grew red. He raised his whip to beat the Cossack, but seeing that I was watching from the hedge, he rode off saying under his breath that Ayub was a ditch-born dolt.

  But before he went he spoke to the tavern-keeper, saying that the Cossack should have neither bed nor board without paying down for it, and the tavern-keeper promised because he feared the landowner. In the village of Rusk were many who feared Sayanski's visits, and the reckoning of his interest books. Still, my uncle said, who ever heard of a village without an owner, or a serf without a master?

  So that morning the Cossack took his beasts out of the stable and went off toward the river. We thought he had crossed Father Dnieper and gone off on the Tatar side of the river, perhaps to steal horses.

  That night, however, Blind Foma said Ayub had cleared a patch of land not far from the village, at the edge of the wood.

  He built himself a hut of osiers, woven together, and plastered it over with wet clay that hardened when it dried. Then he made a low, flat stove of stones, covered with the clay, for a bed when the frost came.

  Foma went to live with him, as the bandura player was accustomed to do when his company was welcomed and there was food to be shared. Together they made nets for bird snares and other woven nets for fish. Ayub added a wattle shed to the open end of the hut, for his horses, so that they could be near the stove in Winter, and worked hard for a while with one of my uncle's scythes cutting hay which he stacked behind the hut.

  In the evenings, when they were most apt to be awake at the same time, I went often to the hut by the river, to listen to their stories.

  Ayub, when I brought some of my uncle's tobacco, would tell me how the Cossacks of the siech—the war encampments—made great skiffs to row down the river to the Black Sea and tackle the sultan's fine craft. And how the comrades of his kuren had died, one by one—some nailed to a cross by the Poles, some burnt alive by the Moslems; others drowned in a tempest on the water, others with their brains scattered by their foes' pistolettes. Fine tales they were.

  Best of them, however, was the account of how Ayub had chased a Tatar over the steppe through the tall grass as high as the riders' heads, until the black stallion gained on the Tatar horse, and their hoofs struck fire so mightily that the whole steppe was soon in flames, whereupon the Tatar's horse began to fly through the air with its tail aflame, going higher and higher until it was galloping around the stars like a streak of red fire. Ayub asked me if I had never seen a star shooting down to earth with a flaming tail. To be sure, such things were!

  But Ayub was very anxious to know if I ever saw such an event near Rusk, because he wanted very much to mount the black stallion and rush to where the Tatar landed on earth again and put an end to him.

  "Eh—eh!" Ayub would chuckle when he had finished this tale. "You are a good lad, Gregory, and some day you will have a horse like mine, and chase a Tatar all the way to Cathay.-take me if you won't!"

  When harvest time came he went into the fields with our people and for a few days did the work of three men. He was stronger, even than Old Goloto in his prime, when my uncle could thrash any two men in the district.

  After that he and Foma had a grand carouse at the inn, and when the first snow came down on the steppe, instead of riding south to the wars, Ayub took to sitting in my uncle's smithy, helping him at times mending saddles, or with the bellows when Old Goloto had a tough piece of work in hand. So he managed to be at the forge when the girl Ima came in at noon with our barley cakes and cheese and varenukha—corn brandy.

  Then Ayub would follow her with his eyes, and chuckle when she teased him. When she sat in the doorway combing her hair or trying on a new cap, he said sometimes that she would make a pretty handful for a husband.

  "Well," Ima would say, tossing her head, "I won't marry you, anyway, Ayub. Why, you would take your black horse and go off somewhere or other and then the Tatars would send back your head in a basket!"

  "True, as God is my witness," Ayub would answer. And he never laughed when he said that.

  "I hear," Goloto would put in, "that the Moslems are tearing the robes off the holy batkos, the good Christian priests in the South. Why don't you mount and ride across the border and teach them a thing or two, Ayub? You could break the sultan across your knee—crack, like that!"

  "The-take the sultan and all the Moslems, too!" A
nd the Cossack,

  chin on fist, would sit and look at my cousin.

  At such times, however, Ayub was moody. His eyes would grow heavy and he would sit without moving. Then he would be restless as a fish out of water, and take out the big black horse, to ride him down the highway and back, the stallion tearing over the hard-packed snow with arched neck and flying mane. Horse and rider would be steaming like mad when they came back. I thought perhaps Ayub was looking for his enemy, up among the stars, to come down to earth near Rusk.

  Whenever he passed Sayanski, who was always about his business on the brown mare, the landowner would rein in and gaze after the stallion as if Ayub owed him rent monies that Sayanski would one day collect.

  But when Christmas drew near, his Excellency's temper changed for the better. At least he gave Ayub the sword that was bewitched.

  Sayanski said it was a pity that Ayub should lack a sword, while he had so many in his collection. The weapon he bestowed on the Cossack was a heavy one with a long hilt and a splendid scabbard of leather in which was an inscription inlaid in gilt. Sayanski said this inscription was a charm.

  Whoever wielded the sword could cut through the body of an enemy as easily as through a tallow candle. An iron shield or a shirt of Turkish mail would fall apart at the touch of the heavy brand.

  Now Sayanski knew this for two reasons. He had the weapon from a wandering Gypsy in the Astrakahn market place, and the Gypsy had stolen it from the tomb of a Turkish khan, where splendid things were kept, among them the magic sword that the Moslems feared to handle after the death of its owner. We, along the border, had heard the tale.

  Also, Foma, who recked a little of Moslem script, said that the writing on the scabbard was the legend

  Steel will not turn aside the edge of this sword when the right hand wields it.

  Only, Sayanski warned Ayub that he must not tamper with the weapon, or take it from scabbard to hew wood or quarter a sheep, or the edge would be dulled. Ayub tended it carefully, too, because once I saw him studying the blade and tapping it with his great fingers as if he feared it might break in his hands.