Riders of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

"There were no tracks in advance of us in the ravine—no fresh tracks."

  "Eh, the khan knows this country as a tiger its lair. He must have entered the heights with his thousand by another path before the last sunrise."

  "Then Demid did ill to ride into the gorge when he might have found another way through the ridges."

  Khlit leaned on his saddle horn and fingered the leather thong that held his saddlebags in place. "Little grandson," he grumbled, "it is a simple matter to say of a leader 'He chose the wrong path.' Could Demid leave Makshim and his Cossacks to the arrows of the Turkomans? You have been put in command of a half squadron. See to it that your men loosen their saddle girths and eat; then come to the council at the standard."

  The kuren atamans and Khlit and Ayub gathered around the pole of the standard of the white falcon in the second hour of the night when Kirdy who had been posting sentries rode up and dismounted. The bivouac of the Cossacks was quiet, except for the grating of the spades that were digging shallow graves, and the restless movements of the horses.

  Down in the maw of the gorge the Turkomans could be heard moving about, seeking plunder; but they had not ventured to attack the plateau.

  Ivashko was speaking as Kirdy squatted down behind the ring of Cossacks.

  "—And we have lost forty-seven in the ravine. We have no horses to spare: The water will be gone at noon tomorrow. Hai, it has gone hard with us."

  "It will be better for us in the open country," said another.

  "To go back is not to be thought of; to go ahead will cost many Cossack lives."

  "The dogs of Turkomans are rolling heavy stones down below; it is plain they are blocking the ravine."

  "Good!" cried Demid so unexpectedly that the kuren atamans were silent. "If they are at work in the gorge they will not look for us elsewhere."

  "How, elsewhere?"

  "The way we entered," hazarded Ayub's voice from the outskirts of the circle. "That is open."

  Demid's short laugh was like a bark. "Aye, open. Go thither and before the shadows are short we will meet with the Moslems coming up from Urgench."

  It was Ayub's turn to be silent and probably he was thinking of the palanquin and his cup-bearers of three days ago, because he chuckled. "Eh, we frolicked in Urgench! Khlit, old wolf, what way does your nose point? What plan have you?"

  "Dog of the devil!" grunted Khlit. "If your ataman had no plan, it would be time for me to speak, sir brothers. He has a plan and so it is fitting that we should listen instead of baying like hounds when the scent is lost."

  Hearing this the Cossacks crowded closer and held their breaths to hear what the young leader should say.

  "The Moslem horde is gathering, and Arap Muhammad Khan is closing the passes. We must go forward before the next sunrise. We must join Goloto and the wagon train, a day's ride from this place. The Turkomans expect us to ride through the gorge where Makshim was slain. But on our right—see, as I sit here, on my right hand—a pass leads to the north."

  Kirdy remembered that the bowmen he had scattered had fled down this gully, that twisted among buttresses of rock until it was lost to sight.

  "In this ravine is the dry bed of a stream, and a stream would flow to the plain. So it my thought that the gully will lead us out of these hills. It may be blind, or it may end in a precipice—God alone knows. But it offers a way out, my brothers, and thither we will ride at the end of the third watch."

  "And we will leave the Turkomans rolling boulders," laughed Ayub.

  "Perhaps," responded Demid dryly. "I will take the lead with Makshim's lancers. And now, to your men. See that the horses are fed and rubbed down with grass."

  As they left the circle, Ayub sought out Kirdy and put his good arm over the boy's shoulders. They walked past the men who were digging graves and the big Zaporogian recognized the white-topped kalpaks of Makshim's squadron.

  "Aye," he muttered, "the lads will be burying their father so that the jackals will not get at his body. Well, he was outspoken and if he was bold with his tongue he was no less so with his sword—a good Cossack, and I would stretch out him that says otherwise. Will his spirit mount a stallion and ride with us on the morrow? Nay, Kirdy, he ever loved good sport, and it would go hard with him to lie pent down under rocks."

  Crossing himself, the warrior sighed and then yawned heavily because he was weary. At the standard they parted, Ayub to roll himself up in his svitza and sleep and Kirdy to find his men and give them the news of the morning's march.

  But of that march, begun before the first streak of light in the east, Kirdy saw little and knew less.

  Kobita woke him with the whispered announcement that an essaul had come up from the standard with orders for the half squadron to take the rear of the column. By the time the men were in the saddle and assembled, the leading squadron under Demid struck the Turkomans who had been left to guard the shallow ravine on the right.

  The slight stir of the moving horses had attracted the notice of Moslem outposts halfway up the plateau, but these, believing that the Cossacks would not advance until daylight—and then on the main gorge— merely fell back on their comrades by the boulder barrier.

  And Demid's lancers must have surprised the guard in the other ravine, because when Kirdy passed the spot where the fight had been he heard only riderless horses plunging about the hillside, and the groans of wounded men.

  He advanced into the utter blackness of the ravine and trusted to the piebald pony to keep its feet. Hoofs clattering in advance and the distant creaking of saddles guided him, yet there was no risk of losing the way because rock walls hemmed him in. They went forward at a round trot, and though Kirdy drew rein many times to listen and peer into the void behind him, he could hear no sound of pursuit.

  A cold wind whipped through the narrow gully, and into the teeth of this they pressed, taking comfort with each moment of quiet, until the stars paled overhead and they could make out the familiar gray rock ridges on either hand—empty of life.

  The gully grew wider, and for a while they halted, perforce. The column had stopped and the Cossacks of the squadron next in front of them were sitting their horses, listening to the clash of steel and shouting ahead.

  Kirdy faced his men about as soon as he knew that Demid had been checked by a strong party of the enemy, and for an anxious half hour he and Kobita watched the gully in the rear grow lighter until the red showed in the limestone and the horses began to graze on the dry grass.

  The veteran sergeant was clawing at his unruly beard, glancing anxiously into the eyes of his young leader. It was then that the boy realized that keeping the rear of a column in retreat was no simple matter. He tried to think how long it would take Arap Muhammad Khan to find out that the Cossacks had left the plateau and how long it would be before the Turkoman horde came up with them.

  "Glory to the Father and the Son!" muttered Kobita thankfully when they heard the kuren ataman of the next squadron give the word to advance.

  The sunlight was gleaming on the spear points of the column when Kirdy came to an open stretch. Here a strong detachment of Moslem had camped for the night—he counted the ashes of a dozen fires. Here, too, saddle-cloths, khalats and weapons strewed the ground and a half-hundred bodies of Cossacks and tribesmen lay in the sandy depressions and among the rocks. The Moslems were not Turkomans, because they were broad, stalwart men with full beards and small turbans knotted over one ear.

  Many of them wore mail, and the weapons scattered among the bodies were scimitars and light spears—not the yataghans of the khan's followers. Kobita and his mates had never seen such warriors, but Kirdy enlightened them.

  "These be Usbeks," he said gravely, "from the east. Some of them are from the cities under the roof of the world."

  "Two hundred made camp here, little father," assented Kobita, "and it is in my mind that they used their weapons well. How come they here?"

  "Pigeons."

  The Cossacks nodded understanding, and some who had thought t
hat Kirdy was over-young to command them now were pleased that the grandson of Khlit should be able to tell them such things. As for Kirdy, he reflected that the Moslems from the surrounding districts were rallying to Arap Muhammad Khan and each hour increased the peril of the Cossack column.

  In the early hours of the morning they passed from the ravine to an open slope that led them down to the northern plain in which Goloto and the wagon train awaited them.

  Chapter 10 The Tabor

  They left the hills, no more than four hundred strong and many sorely wounded; and in the darkness the pack horses bearing the gold had been lost during the fighting, so that the iron-bound chest alone remained of the treasure of Urgench, but this to their thinking was the best part and by then the lack of water weighed on them more than the loss of the gold. At noon the last goatskin of water was given to the wounded.

  Whether Arap Muhammad Khan followed them closely they did not know, because a haze was in the air—fine sand stirred up by the bleak wind. The wind and the haze obscured their trail and they had some hope of throwing off pursuit; but it was no easy matter, now that the sun was obscured, to keep direction, and the most experienced Cossacks, casting ahead and to the flanks, were often at fault until they heard musket shots afar off.

  "Goloto must be signaling to us," remarked Witless who—the pack animal train being a thing of the past—had been riding at Kirdy's stirrup.

  "Eh, your stallion has more wisdom than you," cried Dog-Face, who was never parted from the tall Cossack. "How could Goloto be signaling when he knows not if we be in Urgench or on the devil's gridiron. The kuren ataman is not a koldun, a magician."

  "Nay, brother," Witless vouchsafed after long cogitation. "But Sha-maki is a koldun, and you know the Tatar magician left Urgench the night before we took to the road."

  "Only listen to him!" Dog-Face shook his head apologetically, but his comrade's remark seemed to stick in his head, because he muttered, "You have at least as much sense as a horse, and some men are only to be compared to camels and asses. Nevertheless, Goloto is an experienced leader and he would not burn powder unless he had to."

  Dog-Face proved to be in the right, as they discovered when they headed toward the sound of firing. At sunset the air cleared and they could see the wagon train. It was drawn up in a hollow square with the horses within, and from the carts puffs of white smoke darted out, drifting away toward the heights.

  Around the carts, as gulls flutter about a stranded ship, tribesmen circled, loosing their arrows and sweeping in—only to wheel away when the matchlocks barked in their faces. They numbered close to two hundred and when Demid's column neared the square of the tabor, Demid saw that the foemen were men in soiled sheepskins with enormous sleeves hanging to their boots.

  They wore black lambskin hats even larger than the Turkomans'— were armed with a beggar's arsenal—and looked for all the world like dogs worrying a carcass. And like dogs they drew off snarling, to higher ground, there to squat and watch with insatiable eagerness. Kirdy knew that they were Kara Kalpaks—Black Hats, inveterate robbers but lacking both the cruelty and courage of the Turkomans—jackals who followed a wolfpack.

  The Cossack horses were too weary for pursuit. And indeed to pursue the Kara Kalpaks would have been more difficult than to track down the wind itself in these gullies.

  Goloto strode out of the tabor and held Demid's stirrup while his forty men tossed their hats in the air and rained greetings on the dust-coated and tired squadrons.

  "Health to you, ataman, and to you, sir brothers!"

  "God be with you, Goloto! You have not been idle, I see."

  "Nay, these vultures have been sitting up with us. May bullets strike them!"

  When the wagons had been drawn into a larger circle, and men and horses had had a little water—for the spring was small and there was need of filling goatskins and buckets against the next march—Demid sought out Khlit, who was sharing a barley cake with Kirdy by the fire.

  "O father of battles," the young ataman said softly in Tatar, "tell me one thing. The horses are spent, the men sleep in their saddles. It is true that Goloto's oxen and horses are fresh, but that is not enough. To take the road now would be to waste strength in the darkness. I shall let my men sleep and move with the carts in the morning. Is this a good thing?"

  Khlit chewed his gray mustache and looked for a long time into the fire before he answered.

  "When there is little hope, the boldest course is best."

  Demid inclined his head. "Yet Arap Muhammad Khan will be up, with dawn."

  "Well, do not trust his promises."

  And with dawn Arap Muhammad Khan came up to the tabor. It was a shining day, clear and windswept, and from Alexander's pillars of victory to the open plain a solid mass of Moslems surrounded the circle of wagons. Against the mauve and gray of the clay slopes fluttered the striped khalats of the Turkomans, and the long white coats of the Usbeks. Farther away the Black Hats hovered on skeleton horses, and the level rays of the rising sun glittered on spear point and sword hilt and the silver headbands of the ponies.

  Standing in the wagons, the Cossacks counted three thousand tribesmen.

  They had not long to wait. Kettledrums sounded in the Turkoman horde, and a young warrior trotted out mounted on a black stallion holding his right hand empty above his head. He was allowed to come within speaking distance of the tabor although more than one Cossack, matchlock in band, eyed the horse longingly.

  "O caphars," the Turkoman cried, "O unbelievers, are ye weary of life? Harken, then! I am Ilbars Sultan, son of the khan, and by my mouth Arap Muhammad, Khan of Khiva, lord of Urgench and Kharesmia, Shield of the Faithful, Lion of Islam, Jewel in the Shield of Allah, bids ye lay down your weapons, O ye Urusses.1 Submit and your lives will be spared!"

  "Nay," Demid answered at once.

  The small head of Ilbars Sultan turned toward the chieftain disdainfully, and after a moment the Turkoman spoke again.

  "Harken, O Ye Urusses—give to my father the leather-covered chest that is bound with iron, leave the wagons and oxen and ye will be free to ride to the north, weapons in hand."

  Some of the Cossacks laughed and before Demid could make response, the wagon in which he was standing lurched, as Ayub climbed up beside him. "The forehead to you, Demid. Allow me to answer the young cock. I know what you would say but I have finer words in my head."

  Filling his lungs he shouted so that the nearest Moslems could hear plainly: "Say to Arap Muhammad Khan, the slave galley cook of the Blue Sea, swineherd of Urgench, Jackal of Islam, Flea in the Bed-Sheet of Allah—the Cossacks will take care of their lives, and thank him for the hospitality of his castle."

  Ilbars Sultan started as if stung and seemed to strangle in the effort to find words. His rage was not improved by a roar of laughter that went up from the Cossacks—followed by a second shout when those who did not understand Turki had Ayub's response explained to them. The slim Turkoman spat towards the tabor and wheeled his horse without touching the reins, muttering something about "dogs of Urusses" as he galloped back to the khan, who was easily distinguished in the circle of emirs by his green turban.

  A buzzing as of innumerable bees went up from the Moslem lines and in a moment the Turkoman horde, shields on arm, javelins and yataghans flashing, galloped down on the wooden fortress of the Cossacks.

  A flight of arrows rattled harmlessly among the carts and when the foremost Moslems were fifty paces distant two hundred matchlocks blazed and roared. For a few seconds dense smoke covered the broken array of riders, and when it cleared the Turkomans were seen trotting back with several score empty saddles among them.

  "Well done, sir brothers," bellowed Ayub. "We have singed their beards for them, the traitors. That is the way to answer when they try to trick you with words."

  The volley fired by the arquebuses affected the Moslems profoundly; the Turkomans had encountered firearms before now in the hands of the Persians and during the fight in the gorge th
e Cossacks had been able to do little damage to the agile bowmen; but now, entrenched behind the tabor, they fired with deadly aim and the Turkomans were dismayed by the devastation wrought by the single volley.

  And the Usbeks and Kara Kalpaks, who knew little of arquebuses, were profoundly depressed. It was an hour before Arap Muhammad Khan mustered his men for a second charge. This time the kettledrums sounded and the cymbals clashed, and the riders began to shout in chorus as they put their ponies to a trot. Instead of coming down in a single mass they separated into detachments of a hundred and began circling the tabor, sweeping in and out, to draw the fire of the Cossacks, stirring themselves into frenzy with their chant:

  "Yak hai-Y’Allah, il allah!"

  An experienced chieftain, the khan knew that once the arquebuses were discharged, a half minute must elapse before they could fire again. If the Cossacks loosed another volley, he meant to strike in at once with his detachments and be upon the carts before a second volley could be fired. Meanwhile the drums and the shrill ululation spurred on his warriors and even the stolid Usbeks on the hillside began to chant and finger their weapons.

  The hour of grace had been put to good account by Demid. The young leader rearranged his forces. Bidding the kuren atamans select the seventy best marksmen, he placed every man in a separate cart on the whole circumference of the circle. With the marksmen he put two other warriors with arquebuses, giving them orders not to fire but to load the weapons of the first Cossack and pass them forward to him.

  The sacks of grain, bales of hay and other baggage were piled on the outer side of the cart, to form a breastwork, and between the wagons stood dismounted Cossacks with lances. The ponies were strongly tethered and the oxen yoked in a solid mass so that they could not break loose. He kept no warriors in reserve because he had none to spare, and because he counted on holding the line of the wagons, placed with the ends of their poles tied to the outer wheel of the cart in front.

  So the Turkomans found that instead of holding their fire, the Cossacks began to pick off riders as soon as they came within bowshot; moreover, no sooner had a Cossack discharged his piece than another arquebus blazed in his hands.