by Harold Lamb
Here and there where rocks thrust up in the gray flood, a veil of mist hung over the cataracts—mist foam—flecked, and colored by shifting rainbows.
It was late afternoon, in the Autumn of the year 1611 of our Lord. The only human being visible in the calm water below the cataracts was a thing of skin and huddled bones covered only partially by rags, a fisherman. He sat in a skiff at the edge of the reeds that lined the bank, holding a line of twisted gut.
Then he shaded his eyes and pulled in his line hurriedly. Out of the mist that drifted over the lower cataracts a man emerged in a canoe. Kneeling Tatar fashion and using the short, broad oar as a paddle, he swept around a nest of rocks and plunged over one of the rapids.
For a moment, while the fisherman gazed from narrowed eyes, the pad-dler lost control of his craft. It turned broadside to the current, and swept down upon the last of the rocks.
Without hurrying, the man in the narrow skiff shifted his paddle to the other side, checked the rush of his boat, and reversed ends in time to fly past the glistening black stones. Unharmed, he glided out on the calmer current of the basin and directed his course toward the bank where the boat of the fisherman was anchored.
By now the watcher perceived that the man who had shot the cataracts was long and bony of figure, that his sunburned head was shaven except for the scalp lock that hung from the ridge of his skull, like a cock's comb. This meant that he was not a Tatar but a masterless man1— a Cossack.
So the fisherman, instead of pushing his boat to the shore and running away, laid some wet rushes and weeds over his catch of sturgeon. The Cossacks, he knew, were the defenders of the border against the all-powerful Turks and the Tatar tribesmen; but Cossacks had a way of being hungry and of taking whatever food came to hand when they were.
"Health to you, uncle!" The stranger checked his craft within speaking distance. "Can you tell me where the siech is?"
At this the fisherman dropped his line in fright, and glanced from the corners of his eyes down the broad river. Here, where the Dnieper widened were hundreds of islands, fringed by reeds and willows. On one of these islands was the siech, or war encampment of the Zaporogian Cossacks.*
In the siech gathered adventurers, wanderers, restless Cossacks—all who were sworn enemies of the Turk. Sometimes the Zaporogians numbered thousands, sometimes hundreds; usually they were at war with the Moslems or the Polish nobility that claimed them—fruitlessly—as serfs by feudal right. The situation of this farthest outpost of the Christian swords was kept a secret. The camp might be on any one of the multitude of islands, all looking alike from the channels.
Only the Zaporogians themselves, a few of the river-men, and the peddlers and minstrels who dogged the heels of the warriors knew the secret of its place. And the secret was well kept because those who clung to the fringe of Cossack power knew that their bodies would be torn apart by the warriors if they betrayed the war encampment.
A month ago a flotilla of the sultan's boats had come up from the Black Sea with several thousand janissaries, armed and equipped to wipe out the nest of Cossacks. They had landed on the island where the barrack huts of the frontiersmen stood. But the warriors of the siech had moved the day before to another island, on a whim which they afterward attributed to the intervention of good Saint Nicholas himself.
"You are not one of the Zaporogians," the fisherman muttered from toothless gums. The stranger wore a leather svitza flung over his high shoulders; his lean arms were bare, his wide pantaloons were of the richest green nankeen. His sword was a Tatar scimitar, and his beard, instead of falling over his chest, was trimmed to a point. And his brown eyes slanted slightly, suggesting Asiatic blood.
The fisherman did not wish to be tied in a sack and put to rest forever in Father Dnieper by the Cossacks for giving information to a spy of the Turks. Not he! The Dnieper banks were alive with enemies who would pay a round sum in gold sequins to learn the position of the siech.
"Nay, old fellow." The stranger's teeth flashed under his drooping mustache. "I am Demid, and I have come from the river Don in the northeast. I seek a friend in the camp."
He waited a moment patiently.
"If you don't speak up I'll take one of those fish you've hidden and ram it down your gullet," he added without a trace of anger.
"Eh—eh!" The river man chuckled. "Now I know that you must be a Cossack knight. It is the way of the noble sirs to address a chap like that— only they threaten in the first breath, and kick a fellow with the second and throw him a silver piece with the third. They are splendid folk, but then, alas, they always scatter wealth as soon as they get it, on anything that comes to hand."
He sighed. "Not for long are the same Cossack faces seen about here. Their noble limbs soon adorn the torture racks of the Poles, or fester under the mud of the Black Sea!"
Having completed his scrutiny of the newcomer, the old man now pointed down river. Two hours' paddling would bring Demid, he said, to some large islands. If he would look then on the left hand, toward the Tatar bank, he would see one with three oaks standing on a knoll at its head. The siech was on the island below this.
"But if you are really going to the camp," continued the fisher, "you must swim to the island, or find a horse and jump him over the mud wall, or get a Tatar's head, somehow, and tie it to your belt. Every Zaporogian must perform some feat, to distinguish him, or the noble knights and their leaders will not drink with him."
Demid nodded, and tossed the other a gold coin that flashed in the sunlight. The river-man caught it eagerly and scrambled to his feet to bow like a marionette.
"By the Father and the Son, you are verily a noble knight. I will pray every saint's day for your soul, after you have been slain by the Moslem swords. A true Cossack, as God is my witness!"
A half smile touched Demid's thin lips as he moved away. Still, the fisher, intoxicated by the glint of gold, called after him.
"May you earn endless glory in the steppe, good sir! May you slice off the head of a hero of the sultan himself. May the children speak your name, and the gray haired bandura players sing of your Cossack glory when the high grass grows over your bones. And until then may you find gold and jewels—fine horses and silk garments—the fairest women of the infidels—the richest wine to warm your veins—"
The roar of the cataracts drowned his words.
Shortly before sunset Demid sighted the island of the three oaks and, steering to the left, passed slowly along a body of land bordered by rushes as tall as spears.
Although the young Cossack had lived in a wilderness and had hunted from the time when he was able to loose an arrow from a bow—although he studied the bank of the island carefully and analyzed every sound— he perceived nothing that indicated the presence of men, unless it were a haze in the air that might be smoke. When, however, some waterfowl flapped up from the shore—growth some distance ahead of him, he turned inshore and stood up in his canoe.
Whereupon the rushes were parted in front of him and a bearded face peered out over the muzzle of an arquebus.
"Halt and speak your name and rank! What the-do you want?"
He submitted to inspection, and after a moment an arm reached forth and pulled in his canoe, and another voice muttered a warning not to break the rushes. Poling his boat through the forest of giant reeds, he touched the mud and sprang out to pull it up on the shore, with the help of the Cossack patrol that had challenged him. Several other skiffs were visible, and a stack of oars. Two of the guards took him along a faint path through willow clumps, up over a grassy ridge to a wide plain.
Here in a bowl-like depression fires glimmered in front of him, and he passed lines of stalls where Jews and Armenians were selling brandy, food and garments to a smattering of Cossacks. On the other side of the path forges, sunk in the earth, were clanging and clattering as sturdy smiths labored at mending swords or beating out dented armor.
Entering a wall of dried mud, Demid for the first time saw the thatched roofs of the
Zaporogian kurens—the barracks. Between these were wide squares where groups of men sat at ease with their pipes, or ate their supper of kasha and barley cakes. In other groups where corn brandy was flowing he saw warriors leaping about in the wild dance of the steppe, their silver heels thudding on the hard-packed earth, the firelight mingling with the red glow of sunset to crimson their sweating faces. A shout of approval at some feat of the dancers broke through the muttered voices that accompanied the strumming of the banduras.
Some of the warriors called a greeting to the two who escorted him, and looked at Demid carelessly.
"-take you Vladimir, and you, too, Ostab—what have you got
there?"
"A Tatar, good sirs."
A roar of laughter greeted this. "Ostab has caught a Tatar—must have set out a bowl of milk for him to lap!"
Demid had passed the last years in the river-watch on the upper Dnieper, where he rode patrol alone, and—although he had his share of fighting— he had never entered a gathering of warriors before. These were tall men, almost invariably, and all bore scars of some kind.
"No, no!" shouted a pock-marked giant, looking up from a throw of dice, "Look at his beard! Hide of Satan! It was trimmed by a Polish wench. Don't you see he's a Pole—fell off his horse, by my faith, and couldn't get up again. So Ostab caught him."
Demid did not see Ayub, the stout knight of the Urals who had befriended him not long since on the Dnieper. He forebore asking for his acquaintance, until he had been examined and passed by the Koshevoi Ataman, the chief of the Cossacks.
At the entrance of a small hut in the center of the camp several warriors were at dice, while others were chuckling over a Turkish chessboard on which two of their number were rolling about the gold and silver chessmen, heedless of the rules of the game, which they could not play. The thin faces of vagabonds were pressed over the shoulders of wandering boyars, noblemen who had gambled or warred away fortunes and had come to the siech for the last throw of fortune that could end only in death.
A man with a black beard and a priceless ermine coat spotted with tar rose at their coming. Demid squared his shoulders, sniffing the air heavy with smoke, with the scent of dried grass and sweating sheepskins. The Koshevoi Ataman glanced at him keenly, listened to the report of the guards, and asked briefly if Demid believed in God, and Christ.
"Well, then, Cossack, cross yourself and join whichever kuren you prefer."
"Ayub is my brother-in-arms. I will go to his kuren."
The brows of the Zaporogian chief knitted together, and he looked at Demid long and searchingly.
"In what manner did this fellow come to the camp?" he demanded at length of the guards.
"Like a fisherman, sitting in a canoe," grunted the one named Vladimir scornfully. "A woman's feat, that!"
Demid recalled the warning of the river-man, that each recruit to the ranks of the siech must perform some feat, to be welcomed by the gathering on the island.
"Take him to Ayub, if he wants to go!"
The chief turned back to his hut, and Demid was escorted, not to the line of barracks, but to the central square where a torch burned beside the great drum that served to muster the men of the camp in an emergency.
Here he beheld a long spear stuck into the ground. Bound to the spear by cords that held his arms above his head was Ayub.
Demid's solitary friend in the siech glanced up, and hung his head. He lacked both sword and cap.
"He is a thief," said Vladimir bluntly. "One of the bravest of our ranks, a thief! This dawn was he strung up as you see, to abide here for three days. If, at the end of three days the four hundred gold sequins that he stole—or an equal value—are not restored to their owner, he will be cut to pieces by Cossack swords."
The sentry shifted his arquebus to the other shoulder, and added in a lower tone:
"Do you wish some fine mead, Ayub? Or some gruel and bread? A man must die, you know—that always happens—still, by my faith, a comrade need not starve."
Ayub shook his head.
"Leave me Vladimir and you, too, Demid. I am a thief."
The guard went away, but Demid sat down on the drummer's bench nearby and took out his pipe and tobacco sack. Lighting his pipe at the torch, he studied the burly form of Ayub thoughtfully.
"Tell me why you are a thief."
It was no easy matter to get the veteran to talk about his crime. The bandura players, he said mournfully, would not mention his name, hereafter; children would point at him; his old comrades of the siech—and Ayub had many—would forget him.
To steal, in the camp, was one of the greatest of crimes. The night before Ayub had been drinking, in the stalls of the camp followers. He had run out of money and had gone back to his barracks to sleep. In the dark, he had thrown himself down in another man's sheepskins. But that often happened.
In the morning, the ataman, the captain of the barracks, had discovered that a sum of money he had hidden in the earth under his sleeping-robes was missing. Four hundred sequins had disappeared during the night. Ayub had been seen by several of the warriors to go into the shed and fumble around among the sheepskins. The Koshevoi Ataman was called to investigate, Ayub was searched, and a half dozen of the gold coins were found in one of his coat pockets.
"--take me," muttered the Cossack, "if I laid hand on one of Boron's
coins! I went to sleep, right off, in the barracks, and did not move until dawn."
"Who is Boron?"
"A bogatyr, a hero—he's my captain." Ayub considered. "That's the worst of it. Last evening, in a Jew's dram-shop I said that he was the only Cossack in the camp who was rich—who didn't spend all he had on his comrades, like the rest of us. The Jew repeated what I said."
Two things had weighed against Ayub in the minds of the Cossacks. First, he had slighted Boron, who was one of the most reckless among men who admired daring in any form. Only on their last expedition to the Black Sea, Boron had led the boats of his kuren to the strait of the Imperial City2 itself, and burned down the Pharos, the lighthouse. Half of the kuren had been wiped out and Boron had fought his way through the ranks of the Moslems single-handed and escaped with his life by swimming. In the last year he had taken a cartload of spoil from the Moslems.
Second, Ayub had claimed to be penniless when he left the drink-ing-place. But in the morning some gold pieces had been found in his pocket.
"Why did you say that against Boron?" asked Demid after a while.
"Because I had been drinking corn brandy."
The veteran shook his head sadly.
"Besides, it's true. Up the Dnieper, where you came from, the captain has a tower, guarded by serfs, that glitters like a princess's arm with gold and such things."
Demid nodded. He remembered the tower. He puffed at his clay pipe for a long while. The bustle of the camp disturbed him—who had come from the east where the tribesmen tended horses, and lacked for human companionship. He was troubled. He liked Ayub very much—the stout Cossack had befriended him, and that was a debt that must be paid. But how?
"Four hundred sequins," he reflected aloud. "I have eighty, taken from a Greek merchant, up the river. Will your comrades add more to it?"
Again Ayub shook his head. Many of his cronies of the kuren had died at the Pharos; the others were stripped of gold and gear by now—the raid on the sultan's towns had been two moons ago, and Cossacks never kept their spoil for long.
Demid gazed up at the canopy of stars beyond the spluttering torch. His comrade could not have been so drunk that he took Boron's coins without knowing it—Ayub had a hard head, when it came to mead or brandy. It was curious that he should have overlooked the gold pieces in his pocket. But then the true thief might have placed them there when he dug up the captain's treasury.
"Of course Boron has wealth enough," muttered Ayub, "but the hero is angered at me. Besides, why should I ask him? See, there he is by the koshevoi's hut, playing at chess."
He was surprised when
he saw that Demid had left his side without making a sound.
In fact the man from the Don had sauntered over to the group by the chief's fire. The hero Boron reclined on a sable robe, taking up the Turkish chessmen and explaining to a group of listeners the powers of the various pieces and cracking a jest about each.
Boron had wide shoulders and muscular hands—a hawk's nose, and keen, attentive eyes. A bold man, and hard, Demid thought. No man could say that Boron had a loud tongue and a quiet sword. Apparently the bystanders lacked skill to engage him in a game of chess.
"Good sir," said Demid, "will you play with me?"
"Or with Satan himself!" Boron's teeth flashed under a black mustache. "If you have a wager to put up, on victory. What man are you?"
"It is Ayub's new brother-in-arms," answered someone, and the bogatyi surveyed the young Cossack with a quizzical smile.
"Have you skill at this game, comrade of Ayub, the thief?"
"Some little have I learned from the friendly Tatars of the Don," responded Demid promptly, and the onlookers nudged each other, whispering that the new recruit looked like a Tatar.
But Boron waved them aside when Demid poured out the gold pieces from his pouch to the ground beside the board. "Here are eighty sequins, noble sir, and with them will I wager my leather coat and silk girdle, set with blue stones-against a hundred gold pieces."
The amount caused the watchers to stare, but Boron immediately counted out that number of coins and shoved them out with his foot. The two men set up the pieces and Boron began the play, moving his miniature warriors out carelessly and talking with his friends the while. Soon, however, he frowned and began to devote all his attention to the game.
Demid had put forward a skirmish line of pawns that broke up the older man's attack and cost him a piece. Boron tried to sweep away his adversary's defense, and exchanged knights and rooks readily but found himself the loser by another piece at the end of the maneuvering.
"The-!"
He swept all the men off the board.