Riders of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  "Look here," Ayub complained when he surveyed the goods they had bought, "let us give them a string of pearls from the saddlebags, and then they will let us have a pair of camels and a yurta."

  "Nay," Khlit objected, "if we let them see we have jewels hidden they will suspect we have more and will rob us when we leave this place. Besides, we cannot take one jewel from the hoard because they are not ours."

  "That is so," Ayub agreed. "They are the ransom of the Donskoi."

  "We need nothing more," put in Kirdy, who had been bred in such country as this. "Game is on every hand, wood is plentiful, and no enemies are on the trail."

  "Aye, no enemies but wolves, Tatars and the ak-buran, the white blizzard."

  "These," muttered Khlit, "are less to be feared than the man who sits in the Kremyl at Moscow."

  So they took to saddle again, under the Mountain of the Eagles, and Khlit and Kirdy proved to be in the right, for two months later the three riders drifted in the teeth of a snow storm across the frozen Volga and entered the gate of Kamushink which was unguarded except by a white mound over the sentry box.

  When they had stabled their horses they made their way to the house of the commandant, the Swedish captain Van Elfsberg and, having bowed to him, took their seats on the stove at once, their padded coats steaming and reeking of mutton and horses.

  All they would vouchsafe in answer to his questions was that they had come back from Urgench alone, and were ready to be taken to the tsar. Nor would they speak of the treasure.

  The Swedish captain Van Elfsberg was accustomed to obey orders without question. The tsar had instructed him to wait at Kamushink until the Cossacks returned and then to escort them to Moscow and to take charge of whatever spoil they brought back, placing the royal seals upon it.

  Van Elfsberg was heartily weary of Kamushink, and decided to set out at once in three sleighs, taking only his orderly and the Tatar drivers. It was impossible to move his two companies over the snowbound steppe. And, besides, he had only the three wanderers to guard. He did not think that the Cossacks would have journeyed three thousand miles over the desert and the Blue Sea, to run away from him now. As to the treasure that was to ransom them—that was their own affair.

  On the second day out he was surprised and displeased to discover that, although the Cossacks had not escaped him, they had run away with him.

  They had been talking to the Tatar postilions and the sleighs were flying over the white plain toward the southwest instead of to the northwest.

  "Eh, captain," Khlit said indifferently, when Van Elfsberg complained, "all that is true. But tonight we will come to a river, and upon the ice of the river we will make up for these two days."

  "What is this river, old man?"

  "The Don."

  "Mort de ma vie! Are you taking me to the villages of the Donskoi? We will have a hard welcome there, after what has happened."

  "Nay, we will have a royal welcome."

  "But your dark-faced chieftain and all his men—are dead."

  "And in the villages of his people the story must be told; the bandura players, who are our minstrels, must hear of his deeds—aye, and the children of the slain heroes will know of it all."

  Van Elfsberg considered this, with some doubt. "The devil! Cannot that wait until you have presented yourselves before the tsar?"

  Khlit shook his head. Before going there the buntchauk must be returned to the Cossack elders who had given it to Demid on his setting forth from Kamushink, and—most important of all to the old warrior—the elders of the Donskoi must hear of the deeds of Kirdy. If so, they might give him a Cossack name, by which he would be known to all men.

  Meanwhile Ayub had seen the perplexity of the Swede, and leaned forward to clap him on the knee—the three of them were in the first sleigh.

  "Allah birdui, sotnik! Are we to go into the presence of the Muscovite emperor clad in this fashion with fleas and rags and sheep's grease? They would loose the dogs on us. You, who are an officer, know that we ought to wear the regalia of our rank."

  This impressed the punctilious captain rather favorably, and he only asked of Khlit, "You will certainly appear with me in Moscow?"

  He was the more resigned when they entered the first clay huts of a large village, and Khlit led him to quarters in a tavern and, with a word to the Cossack innkeeper, left him to his own devices. The mead was excellent, the spirits heady, and the soup and sausages and little cheese cakes struck the captain as far superior to the Muscovite fare in Kamu-shink. He ate heartily, drank and slept the sleep of a self-possessed man who does not quarrel with circumstances.

  During the next day he rather expected to encounter a deal of weeping among the women and angry recrimination from the few warriors and the old men of the stanitza. He was aware that riders were coming in continually from the steppe—that candles were carried to the white clay church with the painted door, and that groups of men went from door to door. Apparently Demid's people did not sleep at all that night.

  Van Elfsberg was more struck by the fact that his bed had linen sheets as white and soft as those of Sweden, and the hour was late when he rose and went down to breakfast, brushing his tawny mustaches, adjusting his cloak to fall over the tip of his long scabbard and putting his hand on the polished steel sword hilt.

  He breakfasted as well as he had dined in a room filled with old Cossacks and young, who wore low Turkish boots and scimitars, who smoked short clay pipes and greeted him with grave courtesy, doffing their caps when he pulled off his plumed hat and bowed.

  "Chlieb sol," they said—"Our house is your house."

  Although he listened to their talk, he could make out only that they spoke of the atamans and a certain Ak-Sokol who appeared to be a stranger in the village.

  Once he ventured to address in his broken Russian a youth that he thought he had seen in Kamushink when the Donskoi set into the desert.

  "Eh, batyushka—it was unlucky, that raid of your regiment."

  The young Cossack turned and bowed. "With the forehead, captain. God gives!" He thought for a moment. "But the jewels are splendid—how they shine! The emeralds are as large as your thumb."

  Van Elfsberg checked the cup be was raising to his lips, and frowned. The Cossack was unwilling to say anything more, and the officer observed to himself: "Well, it is clear that Boris will have to whistle for his treasure, and that won't help my career at the Muscovite court."

  If the three Cossacks had brought jewels from Urgench across the border, in their heavy coats, or saddlebags—the devil knew how—he did not think the court at Moscow would ever see those jewels, and he decided that it would be best for him to say nothing at all about it.

  When he walked from the tavern he heard singing in the church, and the women who passed him in the street were not weeping. Their faces were pale and shadows were under their eyes, as if an internal fire had left its ashes visible. Van Elfsberg was glad to find Khlit and his two companions ready for the road. He stopped in his tracks when he saw them.

  "The devil!"

  Khlit's spare form was clad in a sable svitza; his new boots were blackened with tar, and his green sash spotted with it. His kalpak was gray lambskin, and he held in his hand an ivory baton, the image of St. George carved in the tip.

  "What is that uniform?" Van Elfsberg stopped a passing Cossack to ask.

  "That, captain, is the regalia of a Koshevoi Ataman of the siech, which is the war encampment of all the Cossacks."

  A second glance was necessary to identify Kirdy. His cap was of white lambskin, the top red velvet, his boots were red calfskin, shining with gold varnish. The Swedish captain gasped when he studied the boy's svitza. It was pure ermine, girdled with a green sash, wound around and around his slim hips, and embroidered with gold. He, too, held an ivory baton without ornament.

  "And that, your Excellency," said the Donskoi, noticing his glance, "is the regalia of a buntchauk ataman of the Don Cossacks. We have just given Ak-Sokol the bat
on."

  Van Elfsberg saw that the splendid head of the boy, thinned by hardships and suffering, was flushed and his black eyes gleamed joyfully.

  "But that is Kirdy, the grandson of Khlit," he objected.

  "Aye, sotnik," the Cossack at his side nodded good-naturedly. "Yet now he is Ak-Sokol, the White Falcon. It is our custom to give to every man a name, when he has performed some deed. Since he was the last to stand at the side of Demid, our Falcon, and since by his daring the standard of the Donskoi was brought back to us, it is right that we should name him Ak-Sokol. Now he is going to Moscow to tell the tsar of the deeds of our ataman and our brothers."

  In the chronicles of the reign of Boris Godunov it is related that three masterless Cossacks from the border were summoned to dine with his majesty in the Terem one afternoon and there did relate how Urgench was captured.

  It was the White Falcon who told the story, stepping into the clear space between the tables, facing the tsar who sat alone, a golden flagon in his hand and a pet gyrfalcon on its perch near his shoulder, and the dwarf Kholop crouched at his feet and grimacing. But on either side the tsar were ranged the kambardniks with their silver axes, and the eyes of Boris Godunov crept without ceasing from the faces of his chancellors and officers to the throng of the courtiers and ambassadors seated at the lower tables.

  He seemed not to listen to the narrative of the boy, yet from time to time he threw at him a keen question, as to the number of caravans in the desert, the strength of the Turkomans and the battle that had endured for a week.

  Often he drank from the cup and when he did so the throng in the low dining hall with the carved and gilded wooden rafters rose to its feet, and Kirdy was silent, until Boris Godunov signed for him to continue. And the eyes of the tsar were quick to see who, among his court, were ready to pay him this respect and who lagged in obedience.

  But by degrees he hung upon the words of the White Falcon, and even the minstrels who sat against the wall, teorban and fiddle in hand, leaned closer, because the story of the battle was one to stir the blood when Kirdy told how each leader of the Cossacks had met his end. When he had done the tsar sat in thought for a minute and then motioned for one of his boyars to fill the gold cup and offer it in turn to the three Cossacks, who bowed to him before they drank and gave thanks after their fashion.

  And Boris Godunov drank deep of wine and spirits, because the shadow that lay over Muscovy was mirrored in his broad, lined face, and he had come to his throne by the murder of a boy younger than Kirdy.

  "Out of the five hundred, only three returned," he said, looking at Kholop.

  "Aye, lord," responded Kirdy.

  "It was prophesied that the venture would end in achievement, and also in bloodshed," the tsar meditated aloud, recalling the words of Sha-maki, who had fled from his court.

  "Aye, lord."

  "Yet you have brought me no treasure."

  At this Khlit rose and left the dining hall, back almost at once with a slave bearing his two saddlebags. When he reached Kirdy's side, he cut the lashings and poured out on the tiled floor streams of millet in which glittered many-colored precious stones and clear amber and gray-green jade, and softly resplendent pearls.

  Seeking for a moment, he picked out a great emerald and placed it on the table before the tsar.

  "Lord prince," he said, "here be the jewels of Urgench, and the word of the Donskoi is made good."

  Boris Godunov scrutinized the emerald between thumb and forefinger without change of expression.

  "It is strange," he remarked. "So the matter was foretold—achieve-ment and death have come to pass at the same time. Yet it puzzles me. Your grandson has said that you lacked for money among the Tatars and sold your girdles and neckcloths. Why did you not take one such stone and buy camels and horses?"

  "The ransom was not ours. It was gained by Demid and the sir brothers."

  "By the apostles—they were dead!"

  When Khlit remained silent, the tsar considered them, frowning, and signed to Van Elfsberg, among his officers, to approach. When the captain bowed at his ear, the emperor spoke to him in Latin. "Sic itur ad astra— such is the rise to fame. I did not think these savages would prevail."

  The Swedish officer bowed, well pleased at the success of the mission— seeing that Boris Godunov was satisfied.

  "These men would not understand," went on the tsar. "I care little for this." He touched the glowing emerald lightly with his plump finger. "The wealth of Muscovy must be gleaned from its trade. A route must be opened for our goods, to Cathay and to India. These men have dealt a blow to the robbers who have hindered the trade of my merchants. Sum-mum bonum—that is the true gain."

  "The wisdom of your majesty is the blessing of the people."

  "But what shall I do with these three? They must he rewarded."

  Van Elfsberg pondered a moment, and smiled. "If your majesty pleases— they would make excellent irregular cavalry."

  Boris Godunov was searching with his eyes the heaps of millet, and the facets of the jewels that winked back at the candles on the tables. Of the warriors who served him he knew little and cared less—it was all in the hands of the boyars and the foreign officers. But it occurred to him that men who had brought him such a treasure could be trusted near his person—could guard him from assassins.

  "Your services," he assured Khlit and Kirdy, who waited patiently before his table, "are such that we offer you posts in this our palace. The youth, although not a boyar's son, may serve as kambardnik. The old man may take his place among the minstrels—food and wine will be his as long as he lives."

  So said the tsar to the chancellor who sat nearest, but it was Kirdy who responded without receiving an invitation to speak. He looked once at the boys who stood, silver pike in white-gloved hand, motionless as statues behind the chair of Boris Godunov.

  "Great prince, it was your pledge that we should ride free. Aye, and the villages of the Donskoi should be free. We are little accustomed to a court, and we seek to go our own way."

  "Well said," muttered Khlit, under his breath, as he scanned the line of musicians, buffoons and jesters that the dwarf Kholop was mustering in readiness for the entertainment of his master. There was a stir among the courtiers and Ayub thrust his great bulk into the cleared space, his brown face rife with anxiety.

  "Since you have reminded us of our pledge," said the tsar, frowning, "it is not needful"—he signed to the chancellor, who rose and bowed profoundly.

  "The pledge given by the high emperor of all Muscovy is not to be called into question. You are free to go when and whither you will.

  "And yet," pursued Boris Godunov, "the stout warrior appears to desire mead and reward from us. To him we offer a command in the Moscow strelsui."

  A glance passed among the Cossacks, who had been growing more and more restless, and they bowed to the girdle, their scalp locks falling upon their shoulders. "Nay, lord prince!" they cried. "'Tis time to go for those who have the road before them."

  A thing unheard of, at the court of Muscovy—the warriors turned and left the Terem before the repast in the presence of the tsar had come to an end. Without a word they hastened to the stables and amazed the grooms by leading out their horses although the early twilight was falling over the narrow streets blanketed with snow.

  And the wan afterglow of a Winter's sunset found them plying whip and spur as they approached the river gate, where heavily cloaked halberdiers of the strelsui shivered and beat their arms to keep warm in the sentry boxes.

  Nor did Ayub pause this time for any badinage. A musket shot beyond the walls, they reined in to look back at the domes and pinnacles in the dusk, and the White Falcon shook his head gravely. "It is hard to believe, my brothers. Surely we brought the treasure in our hands to the great prince, and yet—he sought to make me a slave, to hold a silver axe. And he would have set the Koshevoi Ataman of all the Cossacks to eat among the fiddlers."

  Khlit glanced at Ayub and a smile twitch
ed his gray mustache. "Eh, he would have made Ayub a sergeant of the town militia."

  The Winged Rider

  Whoever draws a sword and sheathes it without having used it will taste shame; whoever lets a blade rust in the scabbard will know death. Nay, let thy weapon be bright and clean as thine honor, but use it not until there is need.

  Proverb of the Afghans

  Upon a day early in the seventeenth century three Cossacks trotted south on the snow road that ran beside the river. They were in no haste because they had far to go and this portion of the steppe was unknown to them.

  In the vast plain that stretched from the forests of the north to the deserts of Central Asia they might have pressed on for a month without coming upon any landmark in the white sea of snow under the gray clouds.

  The inhabitants of the steppe, men and beasts, were in Winter quarters; the herds of half-wild cattle and horses that grazed in the rich grass during the brief Summer were penned up; the fields of corn and wheat that gave sustenance to the isolated villages were invisible; the wagon tents of roving Tatars had gone elsewhere; even the river Volga was ice-bound—no merchant barks appeared within its reaches and the songs of the boatmen were no longer heard.

  It was a time of hunger, when the starving preyed on the full-fed, and the wolfpacks ran lean.

  The three Cossacks who followed the narrow trail had a sufficiency of food in their saddlebags, and they were not the sort of men to lose their way. Only, hereabouts, they must turn to the right and leave the river. They were on a broad bend of the Volga and some twenty miles to the west the river Don made a similar bend toward them. At this point merchants bound for the Black Sea landed their goods and carried them over to the Don. And pirates, tired of one river, would work their skiffs overland to the other. All that day the three warriors had been looking for traces of the portage.