Riders of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  "Nay, I am no blind minstrel," Khlit muttered, "yet I have a tale to tell to your master."

  When the dwarf had feasted his eyes on the ducat he made a sign for the Cossack to follow him and went off into the darkness hugging his bearskin about him. At a postern gate he paused to listen until he was satisfied that no guards were within; then he darted into a narrow stairway that led, Khlit thought, into a tower because it wound upward without the trace of a window.

  Evidently Kholop was familiar with the way. He thrust open a narrow door boldly and Khlit followed him into a hall occupied only by a sentry who stood, halberd in hand, before a curtained door. Into this the dwarf disappeared, presently returning with a gentleman-in-waiting who frowned at the old Cossack and fingered his beard irresolutely.

  "So you are a grandfather from the border? My master has a ready ear for vagabonds' tales, but if you are a magician he will have you set alive on a stake."

  "Nay," growled Khlit, "I am no magician."

  "It will go ill with you, if you are," insisted the noble, searching him for hidden weapons or evidence of the sorcerer's art. "Mind now, if you try to set a spell on his majesty, or to lift footprints, the dogs will have you."

  He raised the curtain and Khlit and Kholop passed into a low chamber where, in spite of the heat, a fire smoldered. The walls were hung with silk tapestries and in one corner Khlit saw upon an ebony stand an ivory elephant with gleaming emerald eyes, and a howdah of wrought gold with its silver canopy.

  In an armchair before the fire sat a man whose white skin shone from the mesh of a black beard, whose fine eyes wandered from the flames to the glimmering elephant and to the old Cossack who bowed deeply.

  From behind the armchair advanced a kambardnik—a youthful boyar who wore jauntily his purple and gold kaftan, his brocade tunic with its gold eagle on the breast, and his purple kid boots with their gold spurs. One hand rested on the long butt of the pistol in his belt as he took station behind the Cossack.

  "O great prince," Khlit voiced the customary phrase, "grant me to speak and live."

  Boris Godunov made no response, except a gesture of a plump hand.

  "Be your tale of Turagin the dragon or the falconship Potuik, speak, minstrel," whispered the boy behind him.

  Khlit cleared his throat and leaned on his staff. Many a time had he heard the tales of the minstrels, but he did not know how to repeat them. He was a man of few words and the years had not made him talkative. But he knew what was in his mind.

  "Zdorovenky botuly O Kha Khan! Health to you, White Lord," his deep voice rumbled. "This is truth! Beyond your kingdom, if you ride with the rising sun on your left hand, is the Blue Sea. Beyond that is the desert of gray salt. If you know where to seek you will find the round stones and sand of a river. No water flows in the river in these days, but once it was otherwise, for a city stands by these golden sands. The name of the city is Urgench, and it is the stronghold of the Turkoman khans."

  The round head of Boris turned slowly toward the Cossack and Kho-lop began to look frightened, because Khlit was not speaking in the manner of the minstrels and the dwarf fancied that his reward would be not a ducat but a whipping.

  "It is ten days' ride from the reeds of the Blue Sea to the city of Urgench and the lord of the city is Arap Muhammad Khan, a brave man and an experienced warrior. In his terem—his dwelling—the khan has gathered spoil from Khiva and Bokhara. I have seen in this place woven silks from Cathay, coral from the Indian Sea, and carved ivory finer than that elephant."

  Khlit pointed his stick at the corner and folded his arms meditatively.

  "Dog of the devil, but the treasure of the Turkoman khans is a good one. The best of it is jewels, rubies from Badakshan, and circlets of shining sapphires and a pair of emeralds as large as a man's eyes. These last I have not seen, but the Tatar khan who told me was not a liar."

  The glance of Boris Godunov rested fleetingly on the green eyes of the elephant and he lifted his hand impatiently.

  "What tale is this? Of Urgench have I heard, yet no batyushka ever wandered within sight of the Blue Sea. What man are you?"

  "One who has seen Urgench and the riders of the Turkoman khans, O prince."

  "What is that to me?"

  "The spoil of Urgench is worth having."

  Boris Godunov had an alert mind; he was ambitious, covetous perhaps, but wise beyond others in Muscovy. A hard man, who had held the reins of power during the bloody reign of Ivan the Terrible, he was clever enough to accomplish by scheming what another would have gained by sword-strokes. And he had strange fancies.

  "Kholop," he said gravely, "would you ride beyond the border to the Blue Sea and bring me the spoils of Urgench?"

  "Sire," the dwarf responded boldly, "White or Black, I fear me no sea, but this thing that lies in the desert I do fear. If a sea is in the desert some devil put it there for no good. Aye, and dried up the river into the bargain."

  "I see you are a good councilor but a poor soldier, Kholop."

  "Nay, Uncle Boris, I am a good soldier because I am better than the illustrious lord-colonel that went against the Don Cossacks."

  "How so, bogatyr?"

  "Because while I am a head shorter than other folk, he was shortened by a head."

  While he had been teasing the dwarf the tsar had been thinking. It was a way of his to turn suddenly upon men, and so he spoke to Khlit.

  "My regiments have never been able to come within sight of the Blue Sea."

  Unperturbed, the old Cossack nodded agreement. "O Kha Khan, would you send a dog to rob an eagle's nest?"

  "Speak, then. I give you leave. What is your thought?"

  Khlit's answer came swiftly, and they who heard it knew that he was indeed no minstrel but one who had had men to his command. "Send the Don Cossacks to sack Urgench. They are steppe wolves; they can find the way. If you put them to death in Moscow, Sire, you will gain naught save the enmity of their fellows on the Don. Bloodshed and fire will repay their deaths."

  "I would do well indeed, batyushka, to set loose five hundred devils along the border." Boris permitted himself a smile.

  "They are Cossacks, Sire. If they give pledge to fare to Urgench they will keep their word. Your regiments are posted in their home villages, and their families are surety for their faith."

  For a while Boris considered, and not even the kambardnik who was his bodyguard could read his thoughts in his face. "I am of two minds, concerning you, Cossack—for such I take you to be. What was your purpose in coming to me?"

  "O Kha Khan, it is an evil fate to be hanged to hooks. The road to Urgench is a hard one and it may be that the Donskoi will not live to ride back upon it. But death in the saddle is honorable. Once in the time of the Tsar Ivan I was Koshevoi Ataman of all the Cossacks."

  Chin on fist, Boris studied the old warrior, and spoke suddenly.

  "And if I order you to lead the Don men to Urgench?"

  Khlit stroked his mustache and his bleak eyes softened. "Hide of the devil, that is good hearing!"

  "At least," Boris laughed, "you are no okolnitchi—no courtier. I begin to suspect that you are a magician." Swiftly his mood changed to the dark humor that so often fell upon him. "Take this wayfarer to the guards. Keep him under key"—he motioned impatiently to the nobleman who was in attendance, and Khlit was led away.

  Left alone with the dwarf, Boris was silent. From the rank of a councilor he had risen to the eagle throne, by the murder of Ivan's son. He had planned well and yet he was not satisfied. Plague and famine had taken toll of the land; the border was rising against him; the far-lying empire of Ivan was dwindling. The Tatars from whom Ivan had taken Kazan and Astrakhan were in arms again.

  Under the rule of the warrior Ivan a band of Cossacks headed by an adventurer, Irmak, had won Siberia for the tsar. What if the Don Cossacks brought him the treasure of Urgench!

  Boris was a statesman rather than a soldier. If he could restore peace on the Don and strike a blow at the Turkoman kh
ans it would be something gained. And the treasure?

  He frowned at the fire reflectively. The southern border of the empire was the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus; to the east lay the caravan route to Cathay, passing through a desert that was without life—cosmographers at his court said that here was a hollow in the earth's surface, where the land lay below the level of the sea.

  In the center of this desert traders had seen the Blue Sea1 a month's ride from the frontier of Muscovy. And more often of late the caravans bearing his goods had been plundered near the Blue Sea by the Turkoman. Urgench, the city of the khans, was the stronghold of the raiders, and men said that gold was plentiful there as silver in Moscow.

  "Kholop," said the man in the chair, "bid the Tatar slaves come to me, armed. Send for the leader of the Don warriors."

  On the following day from the windows of the Terem the Tsar Boris Godunov watched his officers cut down one of the stakes in the pen of the Don Cossacks. The captives poured through the opening, shouting, leaping and hugging one another. Bandages were torn off, and they rioted, mad with joy, until the guards led them away to be fed and quartered in the barracks of the strelsui.

  Then command was given to ring the bells of the city, for Boris Godunov went forth with his high-born boyars and the councilors, to the throne in the Palace of Facets, where he was accustomed to receive envoys from other peoples. Seated upon the dais, his hands resting on the lion heads that formed the arms of the throne of Solomon, with two young kam-bardniks on his right and left he listened while a minister read aloud an agreement written upon parchment.

  "By command of the most serene and most potent tsar, and Great Prince Boris Godunov by the grace of God emperor of the whole, Great, White and Little Russia, great Duke of Vladimir, Monarch of Moscow and Kiev, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Siberia, lord of many lands, commander of peoples extending east, west and north, the inheritance of his ancestors—

  "Before all, with good intent and friendly desire and in accordance to our holy Christian faith—freedom of life and limb is granted to certain masterless men, the Cossacks of the Don, upon condition that they fare forth to the city of Urgench and there make war upon the Moslems and do not return to their own villages except by way of Kamushink upon the border, where they will deliver all spoils and gains from their adventure into the hands of the governor, to be conveyed to us. Written in our dominion in our palace and city of Moscow in the fourth year of our governance."

  The eyes of the boyars rested upon Khlit and Demid, the chief of the Don Cossacks who stood before the dais between two guards armed with silver halberds.

  "You have heard the command of his most Christian and most compassionate majesty," pursued the councilor who had read the ukase, "and now do you give oath that you will fulfill your part of the agreement— yourselves and your men."

  "We swear it," said both Cossacks promptly, "by our Faith."

  The chancellor seemed startled by this brief pledge, but before he could speak Demid advanced a pace and bowed to the girdle. His eyes were shining and he held his head high when he spoke.

  "Great Prince, we have a long road before us and who knows what is at the end? Give us then weapons and horses."

  "What will you need?" asked Boris.

  "A thousand horses—fifty strong carts for baggage, grain and powder. Three hundred lances and two hundred firelocks, and sabers for all."

  The tsar spoke with one of his officers, and nodded. "No more than five hundred horses can be spared, Cossack. These, with the lances, will be given to your regiment at Moscow. The other arms and the carts you will find at Kamushink, the frontier post on the Volga by which you are to leave and enter the empire."

  "I thank you, and my men will also thank you."

  "On your way to Kamushink two regiments of the boyars' cavalry will accompany your Cossacks."

  Demid flushed and bowed again, silently.

  "Consider this, warrior," went on Boris sternly. "My forces on the border are close to the villages of your people; if you play me false, or if you return to the empire without the spoils of Urgench your people will be the ones to suffer. You have lifted your hand against our rule, and our forbearance allows you to seek the ransom of your lives."

  The young Cossack chief started as if his back had been stung by a whip, and this amused the boyars who were watching him curiously.

  His life had begun on the prairies where there was no law except the old customs of the Cossacks, and no peace except that which could be won by the sword from the Tatar and the Turkish hordes. He did not understand the Muscovites, who built cities and sent caravans of merchants into the east, but he had seen their power. Their great churches filled him with awe and the sight of nobles buying and selling serfs aroused his contempt. His people—the rovers who lived on the fish in the rivers and the game in the forests—were being pressed back farther and farther into the steppe, and roads were being built over the virgin wilderness, roads that led to Moscow. All this Demid did not understand.

  "Great Prince," he said after a moment's thought. "If we win gold and silks and jewels we will bring them to you as we have sworn, because of such things Cossacks have no need. We can take them from our enemies.

  Our word is not smoke. If we do not stand before you in this place again it will be because our bodies lie in the desert."

  "Well said, brother," muttered Khlit with satisfaction.

  "Not long ago," went on the tsar coldly, "a masterless man, Irmak with his Cossacks who were brigands, fared into Siberia and took it from the Tatars. Their wrongs were pardoned them and they were honored by the Tsar Ivan."

  Demid bent his head in assent. The blind minstrels had sung of Irmak who had left his body in a river in the East; but Ivan had been a warrior who led armies across the border, while Boris was intent on trade and intrigue.

  "We will do what we may, O Tsar. We bow the head to you for your mercy, and ask leave to depart."

  A shadow of suspicion touched the broad face of Boris, but it vanished in a ready smile and he rose from the throne. No sooner had he left the hall than he called Kholop to him and retired to his rooms unattended except by the dwarf and an old Tatar who had been present at the audience.

  Throwing himself in his chair the tsar glanced at the native anxiously and spoke under his breath. "O Shamaki, you who have skill to read what is to be—you who have learned the secrets of Nasr-ed-din and the wise Ptolemy, can you tell me whether I shall gain riches in this venture."

  Kholop, who had a healthy dread of the Tatar conjurer, squatted close to his master and watched while Shamaki, who seemed not at all surprised at the request of his master, drew from his girdle a wooden bowl and a sack. From the sack he poured a small torrent of millet seeds of different colors, and turned the bowl slowly in his withered hands.

  Then, kneeling on the floor, he began to rock on his haunches, rumbling in his throat more like an animal than a man. To Boris and the dwarf it seemed as if the millet seeds were still whirling in the bowl, although the Tatar's fingers no longer moved.

  Presently the magician bent his head to stare into the bowl and Boris moved restlessly in his chair, for in all his undertakings he never failed to consult this conjurer.

  "Ai Kha Khan," croaked the old man, "I see bloodshed—the brown sands turn red. I see the black vultures dropping from the sky."

  "What more?"

  "I see the gray bones of death, and the white pearls of wealth."

  "And what gain to me?"

  The Tatar closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. "Only God knows, O Kha Khan."

  When others had come into the room, Kholop sidled up to Shamaki and grimaced. "Fool—you could have had a silver coin if you had foretold gain to my master. If the men die how can they bring wealth?"

  The bleared eyes of the Tatar turned on the dwarf and his thin lips parted, soundlessly. And Kholop was frightened by this silence of the old native who thought less of a silver rix-dollar than he did of millet seeds,
red, white and black, running around in a bowl.

  Chapter 4 Kamushink

  The road through the forest is marked by verst posts; the trail over the prairies is known by the hay-ricks; but only the bones of the dead mark the path into the desert.

  A month after the Tsar Boris gave out his ukase concerning the freedom of the five hundred Don Cossacks, the expedition arrived at the frontier post of Kamushink, having covered six hundred miles over a newly made highway through the forest belt and the steppe pastures to the southeast of Moscow. When the captain Van Elfsberg, the Swedish officer in command of the escort, saw the broad gray expanse of the Volga river between the mountain peaks that towered over the town, he sighed with relief.

  An excellent soldier, Van Elfsberg, tall, with yellow mustaches that curled up to his eyes—a fine figure in hip boots, polished breastplate, fringed sash and broad lace collar. He served the Muscovite tsar for pay, which he seldom received, and he obeyed orders, of which there was no lack.

  He had left the plague-ridden city of Moscow behind him with pleasure, but now the vast wilderness into which he had penetrated rather depressed him. For two hundred versts they had not seen a town, nor a tavern. Before him the rolling grassland had stretched endlessly, with its herds of wild horses, its diminutive marmots, and its clamorous flights of geese and cranes.

  The road had been no more than vague tracks at the river fords and the ashes of former camp fires. Van Elfsberg found that, near the end of his journey to the frontier, instead of escorting the Cossacks, he was being guided by them.

  They had been given poor horses in Moscow because the tsar's officers had been unwilling to spare good ones—horses, in any event, were scarce in this time of famine. They had had no saddles at all; but by degrees, once they moved out on the steppe, the Cossacks became better mounted. Where they got the sturdy ponies that they now rode the Swedish captain did not know.

  He suspected that marauding parties left the lines of the Donskoi after nightfall; several times he had seen Cossacks riding after the herds of wild horses with lariats made out of horsehair and cords begged from the wagon train.