Riders of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  "Aye, so," muttered another, setting his back to the wind, "because there are certainly devils abroad in the air. I could smell witches' oil, where I stood. And a dwarf came up from behind a log and pulled my coat, crying, just like a child in pain—"

  "Evil times," assented a warrior who lacked a coat and leaned his spear against his shoulder to hold his fists the closer to the blaze. "Tomorrow—"

  "Tomorrow," broke in the captain curtly, "is a holy day, and the vampires and hob-gobs will all bivouac under the earth."

  "I heard a maiden's voice singing in the treetops, and her dark hair flew over my head like this smoke. If we had a priest in the camp such things would not be, but we have no priest."

  "Ai-a," assented the man without a coat, "our fathers, the elders, hold council in the church. Eh, they cannot sprinkle us with holy water. Our batko, the priest, went down the river to shrive a sick wench. A Turkish patrol found him and sent him back—"

  "With the soles of his feet cut off," nodded the officer grimly. "Aye, they fitted him out with a pair of red slippers. That is how they sent him back to us."

  They glanced with one accord toward the low structure of logs and mud where the body of the priest now lay awaiting burial. Only the sot-nik looked thoughtfully at a nearby hut without a light. This was the quarters of the koshevoi—the chief of the Cossack war bands. And it was empty because the siech lacked a leader as well as a priest.

  Rurik, called "The Fair," a one-eyed veteran of many wars, had been the chief of the Cossacks. During the hard campaign of last Summer when the frontier had been overrun by the Turks from Constantinople, Rurik had been taken prisoner. After being paraded in chains before the sultan he had been set to work with the other Christian slaves and a demand for ransom sent to the siech. And the demand was for more than a king's ransom—ten thousand gold sequins.

  So the temper of the Cossacks who had remained at the siech was savage, because in all the wide steppe of the Ukraine there was not such a sum in gold. The Jews, with a shrewd eye to the hazard, refused to lend it, though promised half the spoil taken by the Zaporogians in their raids for the next few years.

  To the men of the patrols who tried to forget the gnawing of hunger in the glow of the fire, the death of the priest was a worse misfortune than the loss of their leader. But the captain knew that without a strong hand to lift the baton of a chief, the unruly clans of the steppe would never hold their own against the Moslems.

  So long as Rurik lived, no new koshevoi could be elected. Besides, it was unthinkable for Cossacks to forget the ties of brotherhood and leave Zaporogians to be flayed alive by the Turks. Rather, they would consent to have the Syrian and Jewish merchants spit upon their mustaches.

  Nothing remained for them but to find the ten thousand pieces of gold. Constantinople was too strong to attack, and as for ventures upon the seas—the Turks and the Barbary beys were masters there.

  "We cannot ransom the koshevoi," the captain mused, "yet if we do not keep faith with our father, all the warriors of the world will point at us and say there is no faith in the brotherhood of the Cossacks. And how is that to be endured?"

  "Easier if we had vodka and gruel," said mournfully the man who lacked a coat.

  "Or if the batko were here to start a carol. Eh, he had such a fine throat—like a brass funnel it was, for the wine that went down and the songs that came up."

  They threw more wood on the fire and pressed closer moodily, leaning on their spears, for no one wished to be the first to break away to a dark shed to try to sleep upon an empty stomach this Christmas Eve.

  "If we had an ataman—a colonel like Khlit of the Curved Saber," muttered the sotnik, "who could open up a road for us to follow! By Saint Nicholas, we would find a ransom and weigh it out in blood."

  "It was otherwise in those days," nodded a veteran who had traveled long roads with Khlit and Rurik. "Now the brothers do nothing but chew sunflower seeds, and when they hear that noble Cossacks are burned alive by the Turks—"

  "To the-with you!" growled the captain.

  "—they spit out the sunflower seeds." Anger, like the dull wrack of the clouds overhead, settled upon the men by the fire, and the last thing to come into their thoughts was that they should actually have a feast that Christmas Eve, or that songs would be heard in the camp.

  The door of the church opened and a Cossack emerged, wrapping the collar of his svitza about his ears. As he passed by the fire the men who had come in from patrol glanced up, with a vague hope, but saw that it was only the scribe's orderly.

  "Someone back yonder," he jerked a thumb toward the church where the council of elders sat, "is mad as a werewolf. Such a night, and a war party is ordered out!"

  "What kuren?" demanded the captain.

  "And they must send me to rout out those —— of Don Cossacks."

  The messenger shook his head sourly, and passed on, the lanthorn in his hand flickering as it swung beside his bowed legs. The men from the Don country were said to take after their leader, Demid, who was a sword slayer, and a falcon.

  "Eh, they will be at home upon the snow road this night," he thought, "because what is not Gypsy or Tatar or brimstone in their blood is akin to the witches."

  Unnoticed by the scribe's orderly and the others, a figure came out of the open door of the church and moved after him. This was a man so tall he had to stoop to pass under the lintel, and he walked with the swaying gait of one who had spent the better part of a lifetime in the saddle.

  Their course took them by the high palisade, open to the weather, where prisoners were penned. Hearing a muttered curse hurled after the orderly's light the giant paused in his stride. But what mattered the storm to condemned men who would know the feel of a rope around their necks or the icy embrace of Father Dnieper before another day dawned?

  They passed the empty stalls, once occupied by dram-shop keepers. Too well the camp followers had probed the leanness of the purses in the siech. True, the wide Cossack steppe was fertile, but the villages had been reduced to burnt posts sticking up in the snow, the harvests had been garnered by the Turks, the horse herds thinned by Tatar thieves, and the cattle were dying off from lack of fodder.

  Gaining the lee of the last barrack shed, apart from the others, the messenger kicked open the door.

  "An order, good sirs—" he began, with misgivings.

  Abusive shouts interrupted him at once—"May the dogs bite you!"

  "Close the door, you son of a jackal!"

  "You have been swilling the sacred wine, now that the priest is dead. As God lives, you think you are our colonel, to give us an order!"

  "No, he is looking for his own quarters, the gallows pen—what evil business are you about, 'Bandy Legs?'"

  Sitting in groups about smoking fires some three score warriors were casting dice on scraped hides or matching each other at odd and even. Overhead, hung to the rafters, black sheepskin coats were steaming, and the reed-strewn clay that served as a floor was littered with bear and wolf skins.

  In the corners lay men nursing wounds, the evil aroma of short day pipes filled with Turkish tobacco mingling with the smoke of damp wood and half-dried horse-dung. They were bearded and dark-skinned. Several bore the purple scars of recent sword cuts on cheek and forearm— big-boned fellows, taller than the usual run of Cossacks. The orderly noticed that no gold or silver lay on the gaming boards, and that only the wounded were smoking. Tobacco was in scant supply here, as elsewhere in the Cossacks' camp.

  "Sabers and saddles, my turtle doves!" he chuckled. "With saddles and sabers for relish, if the fare likes you not. You take the snow road this night."

  "You lie, dog face!" snarled one of the nearest.

  Plucking a half-burned barrel stave from the fire, he advanced threateningly on the soldier.

  "Satan would not stir out of hell this night. I'll singe your beard, you hyena—"

  The essaul, the sergeant, loomed up, stripped to the waist. Under his white skin his heavy biceps s
welled, and the unlucky orderly paled visibly.

  "Nay, 'tis an order, good Togrukh."

  "Whose order? Our sotniks are dead, and our ataman, our colonel, is up the river. Who gives an order to the Don regiment?"

  Togrukh reached out and gripped the orderly's beard, swinging the smoldering board with his free hand to keep the flames going. His white teeth gleamed through the tangle of a black mustache.

  "So, good sir," he growled, "the noble elders would like to give an order to the men from the Don, eh? They sent you, shrinking rose vine, and you came, lovely little flower!"

  "The rosebud came, the lovely little flower," chanted the warriors gleefully.

  Togrukh was about to apply his brand when the giant figure in a wolf skin svitza entered behind the orderly, stooping as he did so to clear the lintel.

  "Are your saddles oiled?"

  He glanced up at the pegs on which a hundred saddles perched, each one different from the rest, but each ornamented in some way, worked with silver, or gold coins, covered with flowered silk. All were in good order.

  "Your sabers cleaned? Have you boots, a pair to each man? Are they whole?"

  To every question the moody Togrukh nodded, puffing at an empty pipe, his handling of the messenger suspended for the moment.

  "All is as it should be, Colonel Ayub," he muttered. "The forehead to you, colonel. We did not know you were here."

  "That is evident," grinned Ayub.

  He had a good-natured, muscular face. His black eyes, set far apart, scanned the assembly without anger. The warriors surveyed him with equal interest, dwelling upon the mighty barrel of his chest, and the two-foot handle of the broadsword strapped to his back. This weapon was unique in the siech, for Ayub had taken it from a German man-at-arms and had used no other weapon since. He alone of the free Cossacks could cut a cross in the air with the fifty-pound blade held in one hand.

  Moreover the ataman Ayub was a kunak, a good fellow. They called him colonel although he had never commanded a regiment; instead he had been in more scrapes than an eel out of water. Togrukh and his mates knew that Ayub's ribs had been burned black over the brazier of a Turkish torturer, and a pound or so of his three hundred-weight consisted of grapeshot in the chest and thighs from a Polish culverin. Because of his reputation for nosing out trouble as a hound scents a hare, he never lacked for followers among the Cossacks.

  "Ayub," said the stolid Togrukh, "we know that you are the comrade of the falcon, our colonel. As God lives, you are a very brother to him, and that is good. But what is this about an order? We have no officers in the camp. If you had not come we would have pricked this swollen bladder—" he spat at the orderly—"for bidding us to our sabers this night. Doubtless the scribe wants the life let out of the prisoners in the pen, and it is always the Don regiment that is summoned when a dog's work is to be done."

  "If the falcon, your colonel, gave an order would the Donskoi obey?"

  An angry mutter went up from the listeners, who plainly considered themselves affronted by this remark.

  "Aye," responded Togrukh, who was the only surviving noncom, "if we obeyed not—there would be terror."

  "Then," Ayub assured him, "there be terror if you do not obey now. Demid, your chief, is here in the camp. He rode in at vespers and is at talk with the grayheads in the church. He gave the order."

  "Allah!" Togrukh shot one threatening glance at the orderly who had failed to mention this all-important fact, and reached up to jerk down his fur-lined greatcoat. "On your feet, dog-brothers!" he barked over his shoulder at his mates who were scrambling into coats, boots and belts.

  "Thirty of you, only!" commanded Ayub. "Two tens with lances, one ten to go to the supply shed, to be issued firelocks, powder horns, matches and bullet sacks. The rest to the stables, to rub down the horses with hay. Two horses to a man, and double saddlebags."

  A raw-boned oldster, donning a second shirt, looked up with interest.

  "The forehead to you, ataman! That means a long ride: do we go far?"

  "Far, Broad Breeches." The Don warrior wore, tucked into his boots, a pair of leather pantaloons, wider than any other in the camp, as Ayub noticed admiringly.

  "With Father Demid, good sir?"

  "With young Demid, and me, dog-brother."

  "That means sword strokes." The veteran seemed satisfied. "It may be we shall frolic with the Moslem patrols, eh, sir brother?"

  "It may be." Ayub, usually talkative enough, was strangely reticent. "Take what you must have for a journey of some moons, but sparingly. Do not saddle the beasts now. There will be drinking before we mount. Togrukh, when your men are equipped report to the ataman, Demid, at the church."

  With that he went out of the barracks. Almost as he closed the door, the thirty warriors stood clothed and armed for the road. Taking the first saddlebags that came to hand they began to ransack the various belongings of the barracks, without thought for the question of ownership. One youth tucked a short balalaika, a guitar, into his sack, along with flint and steel and a costly icon—a holy picture set in a jeweled frame.

  Broad Breeches—he of the two shirts—took a plentiful stock of tallow, long needles, a hunting-knife and the best of the woolen leg-wrappings lying about. Togrukh surveyed this stock with approval and gathered together a similar one for himself. Tongues were loosened, and the wounded who were to be left behind speculated upon the possible destination of the war party. The orderly could not enlighten them, but added that they were to get from the wagon master a sledge load of tar and a dozen axes.

  "Boats!" growled the oldest Cossack. "Hide of a hundred devils! May

  I roast in a brazen bull if we are not going to build long skiffs."

  "But, Broad Breeches," objected the youngest of the party, "the Dnieper is frozen deep."

  "I can't help it, Girl Face, if Father Dnieper is solid."

  The veteran knotted up the mouth of his sack and selected a lance to his liking.

  "It must be that we are going upon an ocean," he added thoughtfully.

  "How, an ocean? Where is there an ocean near the siech?"

  A roar of laughter from the Don men greeted this evidence of ignorance. The veteran, his tall black hat stuck upon one side of his shaven skull, grinned under his mustache.

  "Eh-eh! His mother's milk is still wet on his lips, the little swaddled one!"

  "The little swaddled one!" echoed Togrukh with relish.

  "Why," added one of the disabled, offering his pipe to Togrukh, "all the oceans of the north must be frozen, or some such thing. So as God lives, sir brothers, you are going to the Black Sea, to the south."

  "Or the White1 or the Red," put in the veteran, moving about nimbly.

  "Black, White or Red," muttered the orderly sullenly, "you will roast in that brazen ox, and the Turks will put your ashes in their gardens, Broad Breeches, before you come back to the siech. The ataman, Demid, brought down the river from Kudak on two sledges kegs of brandy and vodka. Where there is a great revel before the march," he concluded sagely, "few warriors come back from the trail."

  Togrukh, more and more pleased with events, glanced around to assure himself that the thirty were ready. Confronting the orderly he put his hands on his hips and swelled out his chest.

  "By the shadow of the cross, our ataman is a falcon, a golden eagle. He soars high—he sees far! Brandy and vodka! What a night this will be! And you, you goose, said naught of what was important in your orders. Hei, brothers—pluck the goose, pluck the goose!"

  In spite of the resistance of the scribe's orderly, he tore the coat from the man, and swung him around to the oldest Cossack, who, waiting alertly, tripped up the messenger and jerked off his boots as he struggled to rise. Then, jumping about like a gamecock, the experienced Broad Breeches planted his booted foot on the victims buttock's and sent him reeling toward the young warrior who ripped off his bag trouser.

  "Singe the goose, singe the goose!" several began to cry.

  Clad only in his sh
irt, the unfortunate orderly was whirled about until he was dizzy; then he was knocked down into the embers of the largest fire. Shouts of laughter greeted his efforts to scramble out of the hot coals, and an odor of burning skin was perceptible. His shirttails blazing, and his beard smoking, the messenger howled and tried to run toward the door, but his dizziness drove him against the walls instead, until Togrukh thrust him through the open portal into the snow.

  Then, followed by the loud good wishes of the sick and disabled, the Don warriors tramped out, some to go for arquebuses, some to stack lances in the stables and rub down the shaggy ponies, but all with an eye to where, in the center of the muster ground, the dark figures of the patrols off duty were gathered around certain great kegs standing in the snow close to the red glow of the bonfire.

  In the log chapel where lighted candles stood under the painted pictures of Christ and Mary, the deliberations of the council had come to an end. The score of gray-haired warriors had laid aside their tall kalpaks, the black Cossack hats with red tops, and stood, in stained ermine coats and costly sable cloaks, about an open grave, dug in front of the altar.

  They looked at one another questioning, the steam of their breathing rising in the cold air. In a rough coffin on which rested his square can and gold-embroidered stole, lay the body of the batko, the priest of the Cossack camp, and they were wondering in what manner they should bury the holy man who had so often performed the ceremony for their brethren but now was past doing it for himself.

  "It is well," spoke up one ataman, "that the good father should be planted here. This, sir brothers, was his camp and from it he sallied forth whenever the drums rolled for battle."

  With that, several, led by the judge and the scribe of the camp, laid hold of the box and lowered it into the grave. Then they drew back and others came forward with shovels to fill in the grave to the level of the earthen floor.

  "A thousand fiends fly away with you!" remonstrated Ayub. "Would you plant the batko without prayer or bell?"