Riders of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  The Cossacks gathered up their reins and Kirdy heard something flick past his head. The essaul behind Makshim flung up both his arms and slipped to the ground, one foot still caught in a stirrup. A long arrow had pierced him under the heart.

  "A Turkoman arrow!" cried Kirdy, and as he spoke, unseen bows snapped and other shafts flew down from the heights.

  "God aid us, sir brothers!" groaned a warrior who had been struck in the stomach. The horses snorted, and the underbrush crackled on both sides as the hidden archers plied their shafts. Kirdy beheld, from between rocks and the mesh of tamarisk, gigantic black lambskin hats atop lean and scowling faces darkened by the sun almost to the hue of the kalpaks. Still on foot but with the reins of the piebald tight in his hand, he looked expectantly at Makshim, who gave an order calmly.

  "Take up the wounded! Rush to the knoll up there"—pointing to a place where the gorge widened and a high nest of rock and thorn stood in the center of its bed. "Kirdy—back to the ataman! Back—I order it!"

  The last was flung over his shoulder as he started up the gorge with the dozen survivors of the detachment. Kirdy hesitated for no more than a second. Makshim meant to hold the knoll until aid came up and had sent him to fetch it. An arrow glanced from his saddle as he jerked his pony around and mounted with a leap, whipping the swift-footed beast into a headlong gallop, swerving around boulders and scuttling through gravel beds.

  In another moment he swung over to his right stirrup, gripping the piebald's mane, his own head pressed against the horse's neck. From the other side of the ravine arrows flicked down at him, but only at intervals. Evidently watchers had been posted here and, luckily for the boy, seemed so confident in their aim that they shot for the man instead of the horse.

  Kirdy had time to reflect that an ambush had been set, and that the behavior of the Cossacks, when he dismounted to look for tracks, had made the Turkomans open fire before the time agreed on—or else the tribesman who killed the essaul had been unable to resist temptation when his shaft was drawn on so fair a mark.

  Where the sides of the gorge fell away Kirdy met Demid and Ivashko at the head of a squadron of lancers already entering the shadow of the pass. He reined in, saluting, and told the ataman of the ambush.

  "How many?" demanded Demid, thrusting his baton into his belt.

  "Scores. I think more lie in wait above, father."

  "You think—why?"

  "Because they did not shout. They aimed at men, not beasts. They meant to kill off the advance so that more Cossacks would enter the trap."

  "Well said! Makshim must be brought out."

  He lifted his voice in a long shout. "Ivashko's kuren with me. At a gallop! Kirdy, bring up the next kuren with matchlocks."

  Angry because be was being sent farther to the rear, Kirdy trotted on, while Ivashko—who had succeeded the slain Ivan Aglau—passed with his men. The aspect of the Cossacks changed in an instant. They unslung their lances, and gripped tight with their knees; the ponies, sensing the feeling of the riders, neighed, and the song that had drifted up from the squadrons in the rear changed to a deep shout—"Ou-ha-aa!"

  They began to smile and to joke with one another, well pleased at the prospect of fighting ahead of them.

  "Are the Turkomans really there, little brother?" they asked Kirdy. "Or did the djinn of the gorge cast a spell on you? Make haste, brothers, or our little father Demid will scatter all the Turkomans!"

  Pressing forward on the heels of the lancers, the matchlock men began to light their long fuses from a pot of fire that was carried near their officer. Charges and bullets were already rammed home. Kirdy went with them, because no more orders had been given him, and the rearmost squadrons already had the news and were forming around the wagons.

  "There are the Turkomans right enough!" exclaimed the ataman of the kuren, a merry-eyed, pockmarked Cossack who was a famous drinker. "Only listen to their love song!"

  In fact the ululation of the Mohammedans now echoed from rock to rock, answered by the defiant war cry of the Donskoi. Kirdy reflected that the assailants were standing their ground, and so must be in force. Demid was dealing with no small raiding party. And he felt that the ambush had been well chosen.

  The low walls of the ravine were too steep for a horse to climb except with difficulty in certain places. The jumble of rocks and underbrush was well suited to the bows of the Turkomans, and hindered the Cossacks. He wondered if Makshim had acted wisely in seizing the knoll instead of riding back, or if Demid had not been reckless in plunging into the ravine with his lances. And he wondered how the Turkomans had come there at all—whether a band had managed to find horses in Urgench and had circled ahead of them in order to hold the ravine against them if possible, or whether another tribe had come in from the desert and had sought to waylay the Cossacks.

  Reaching the spot where the body of the essaul lay, he found that Demid and Ivashko had taken possession of the knoll, and the greater part of the lancers were scattered over the slope on the left, riding from cover to cover and driving the Moslem bowmen before them.

  At a word of command from the pockmarked Cossack, those with firelocks dismounted and took open order on either side, loosing their pieces whenever the striped khalats or dark sheepskins of a Turkoman showed against the gray rocks and tamarisks. White smoke from the firearms billowed around the warriors and the reports thundered back from the far side of the ravine.

  "Eh, little brother," said one who had been left to watch the ponies of the dismounted kuren, "those bees yonder can sting. Their shafts took the life out of Makshim, and only two were alive on the knoll when Demid came up."

  On his way to join Demid, the boy came upon the body of Makshim lying propped against a boulder. The kuren ataman had been shot through the throat—his teeth showed under the dark mustache and the faded red coat that had been his pride was now stained a darker hue. The same crimson stain covered his bare chest and the ebony cross that he always wore around his throat. Bending closer, Kirdy saw that one side of the cross was set with precious stones in the Polish fashion, with some words inlaid in gold. This side of his cross Makshim had kept hidden always. It meant that he had been a nobleman, and though his coat was ragged, Makshim had never parted with these pearls and sapphires.

  Valuable as the cross was, Kirdy did not take it. He thought of the words Makshim had uttered so often, mockingly: "Ye are dead men, going whither?"

  And he wondered fleetingly whither the spirit that had been in the body of the ataman had gone.

  "Kirdy," the voice of his commander reached him, "the sixty lancers of Goloto's kuren are coming up. Take them and clear the height on the right. Hold your ground there, and do not pursue."

  Running back to his pony, Kirdy saw that a group of Turkomans on lean and long-legged horses had appeared on the edge of the slope and were shooting from their bows at the Cossacks with matchlocks below. A single rider would discharge a half dozen shafts while one of the clumsy firelocks was being loaded, and though the Moslems in full sunlight offered good marks, they kept their horses in motion so that it was hard to aim at them.

  In the saddle again, he trotted up to the lancers who had been checked by the horses of the other squadrons and were looking around eagerly for Demid.

  "Follow me," he said to the essaul in command, rejoicing that he had not been sent to bid them to do something, but to lead them himself.

  "At command!" responded the sergeant, a wild-looking Cossack from the Terek.

  Kirdy had noticed that at one point a little distance back the edge of the height receded and bushes grew clear to the top of the slope. In the underbrush, he knew, the ponies would find better footing than in the loose shale and treacherous stones.

  And he hoped that if he turned back to this place his movements would not be observed as quickly as if he were to try to scale the height in the midst of the fighting.

  Under Demid's eye he rather desired than avoided risk, but he thought that no sixty men could climb s
uch a distance under the arrows of the mob of Turkomans. He had seen something of the work of those arrows.

  Turning the half-squadron, he led it to the opening and, plying his whip, rushed the slope. His piebald snorted and started up, smashing through the network of tamarisk and often stumbling in the sandy clay. Behind him and on either side he heard the lancers snapping their long nagaika whips and muttering at their horses beseechingly.

  They were out in the sunlight now, and shouts on their left told them that the riders on the summit had seen them and guessed their purpose. Kirdy's eyes were glued to the fringe of bushes that marked the top of the rise, and he expected every second to see a score of arrows flash down into his men. Then he thought they would have to dismount, which would be almost as bad.

  He plunged up into a strip of sand, and out of the corner of his eye, saw the essaul's pony go down, the Cossack leaping clear. Somewhere above him hoofs pounded on hard clay, and he remembered that he had not given command to draw sabers—remembered in the same instant that his men could not handle lance or sword in taking such a slope. Makshim's dark face with its questioning eyes flashed through his mind's vision—

  Then his pony plunged up suddenly and came out on firm footing. Two Turkomans, in full gallop, were within stone's throw of him. The foremost on a bay horse was bareheaded, his skull shaven. Instead of boots he wore cotton shoes, the toes turned up, and his small eyes slanted like a Mongol's. A goatskin cloak floated from his bare shoulders and his mouth was open as if he were laughing.

  All these details became clear to Kirdy in the second that the Turkoman drew back his arm and launched a javelin at him. In the same second Kirdy saw that the weapon would miss him. Mechanically he drew the curved saber on his left side, and the fever of uncertainty left him as it always did when he came to sword strokes. The prickling up and down his scalp ceased and he drew a long breath.

  The Turkoman had whipped out a yataghan and bent low in the saddle. Kirdy reined his pony to one side, parried the slash of the twisted blade and struck down and back as his adversary went by. He felt his steel bite into the base of the man's skull and wrenched it clear.

  The second rider had no javelin—for which Kirdy was thankful—and rose in his stirrups to cut down at him. Their swords clanged together and Kirdy edged the piebald closer, shortening his stroke as he did so, because he saw others coming up. Letting the Moslem's scimitar slide off his saber, he struck his hilt between the man's eyes—a trick he had learned from Khlit.

  The Turkoman reeled in the saddle and a Cossack, coming up behind Kirdy, cut him down.

  Kirdy did not see this, because a third Moslem attacked him, appearing suddenly on his left side. Lacking time to turn his pony, the boy tossed his saber from the right to the left hand and as the two horses came together, struck down the other's scimitar. The Turkoman—a lean, stoop-shouldered warrior in polished mail who crouched behind a round leather shield— shouted in astonishment and dismay.

  Running his blade up to the other's handguard, Kirdy pressed the scimitar down. Feeling the strength of the young Cossack, the tribesman let go his scimitar and clutched at one of the half dozen daggers in his girdle. Kirdy was waiting for this, and caught the man's beard in his right hand. At the same instant he clapped heels into the piebald's flanks.

  When the Turkoman struck with his dagger the blade met only empty air. He was pulled over the crupper of his saddle to the ground, where mail and shield availed him nothing under the lances of the oncoming Cossacks.

  Meanwhile the essaul had caught the best of the three riderless ponies and was in the saddle, while enough Cossacks had climbed out on the summit of the rise to stem the rush of the Turkoman bowmen who came up in straggling order.

  Their charge broken, the Turkomans wheeled and fled. But now the long lances and sabers of the Cossacks served them well and they followed Kirdy among the scattered Moslems, stabbing and slashing and shouting.

  Swiftly as they pressed on they could not overtake Kirdy. The boy crouched in the saddle, his saber arm swinging at his side and as often as a tribesman, hearing the thudding of hoofs, turned, snarling with hate, to match strength with him, Kirdy left a riderless horse.

  The air rushed past his ears, and his eyes were quick and alert. The blood hummed through his veins, and though he would have liked to shout aloud, no sound came from his closed lips. For this work he was fitted. He was a master of the sword.

  He had been following a warrior on a black pony, up a long slope, through a mass of boulders. Suddenly the Turkoman seemed to drop into the earth and Kirdy drew rein in astonishment. A wide gully opened out before him and down the nearer slope of this gully the black horse was leaping from ledge to ledge like a mountain sheep.

  Kirdy was tempted to urge his piebald after the black until he looked around. During the pursuit he had climbed a wide stretch of rising ground, until he gained a small plateau—one of the highest points among the buttes. Shading his eyes from the glare of the sun he looked into the main ravine on his left. It was filled with Turkoman riders.

  Others were in the gully beneath, that must run into the gorge where the main battle was still going on. He looked to the right and saw that most of the Turkomans had turned off in this direction and were being pursued hotly by his Cossacks who were drawing farther away every moment.

  "Stoy!" He remembered Demid's caution about pursuing too far, and called them back. They came obediently, albeit reluctantly, and when they had reached the top of the plateau, gazed curiously at the groups of Turkomans visible from time to time in the ravines to the north—and the wilderness of gray and purple buttes that stretched away from them on all sides.

  "Eh, little father," the essaul looked up from a fine yataghan that he had brought back with him. "'Tis a hard country and there will be hard blows struck before we win free of it."

  He was smiling and the men of the half squadron were in excellent humor after their brush with the Turkomans—just such a skirmish as the warriors relished. Kirdy heard the sergeant relate how he had cut down three riders when he first came out of the ravine.

  "Listen, my brothers! The first one our young ataman dealt with by a backhand stroke. The second he played with, and then pounded between the eyes and left him for you to finish. I was close behind him and I saw it all. The third was a regular fox—wary and keen to bite. Eh, he took that one by the beard and pulled him out of the saddle. That was the way of it—out of the saddle just as peas are shelled from a pod."

  "By the beard?" laughed another who was binding up a cut on the arm.

  "As God is my witness. He is a falcon."

  "We will not lack for saber work if he is to be our leader."

  Kirdy was pleased by these words, because he felt himself that he knew little of the duties of an ataman. But the skirmish had given him confidence in himself and the Cossack lancers grinned when their eyes met his.

  "Essaul," he observed after thinking a moment, "send a rider down to father Demid with this word: The Turkomans have a strong force in reserve in the gorge and others are coming up all the time."

  "At once!" And the old Cossack added ingratiatingly, "My name is Kobita. I was with little father Demid in Aleppo. That was a raid, but in ten generations the dogs of Turkomans will not forget this one."

  Kirdy nodded and went to the edge of the gorge to see what was going on below.

  The Cossacks had advanced up the gorge a half mile or so, and the firelock men were scattered over both slopes, their position marked by the plumes of white smoke. A squadron of lancers had cleared the bed of the gorge and in the rear the wagons and camels and the throng of wounded men were visible in the deep shadow of the ravine.

  But the Turkomans were fighting every foot of the way. They held the edge of the far slope in force and their arrows flew down without ceasing. At times they rolled great boulders down the slope, and these had done more than a little damage to the lead horses and wagons of the Cossacks.

  Kirdy realized that th
e Cossacks were outnumbered, two to one—that they could not win through the ravines to the open plain beyond before darkness set in. Already the sun was nearing the pinnacles in the west.

  After a while Khlit rode up, his heavy saddlebags still in place and his pipe smoking. He studied the country on all sides and made a signal that was answered by a shout from below.

  First one squadron then another moved up to the height beside Kirdy— the wounded men and the sacks of gold from the treasure wagons appeared, with the bodies of the Cossacks slain in the gorge—and finally Demid and Ayub with the last of the firelock men.

  They moved into position around him, and Kirdy saw that they were going to spend the night on the plateau. To remain in the gorge was not to be thought of. They had left the injured horses and the silk and heavier articles of the treasure perforce in the wagons which could not be hauled up the steep slope.

  At this hour when the sun was setting, the cliff on the far side of the ravine was lined with Turkomans. Kirdy saw a tall man in a tiger skin cloak with a narrow black beard hanging down from the point of his chin. The level rays of the sun struck upon gleaming gold in the hilts of weapons in his girdle, and shone upon the white Arab he bestrode. He alone wore a green turban.

  For several moments he gazed at the Cossacks and then wheeled away, followed by a score of riders.

  "That would be their leader," Kirdy hazarded to Khlit.

  "Aye, that is Arap Muhammad Khan, and there are worse leaders than he."

  "The khan! How comes he ahead of us?"

  "By luck and by good horse flesh." The Wolf glanced at his grandson from beneath shaggy brows. "A wounded Turkoman was minded to mock us, and from his lips we learned that Arap Muhammad Khan was not at Khiva when we took Urgench. He was hunting upon a small river to the west with his emirs and a thousand of the horde. That was luck, good or ill. When a rider reached him from Urgench, he turned north—"