Riders of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  Ayub crossed himself and breathed a sigh of relief.

  "Eh, tell me brothers—she is beautiful, that's the truth. Is she a witch, or"—he pondered a moment—"a woman who wished to reign like a king?"

  But Khlit and Kirdy heeded him not. They were looking intently at a figure moving toward them in the murk of the forest. It proved to be a mounted man, Shmel on his nag, shambling forward uneasily and yet hopefully.

  "Noble colonels—and I swear you will be generals now that the illustrious Cossacks are at war—I obeyed in everything your ordered. I rode to the Tatar horse-herds, and as God lives, they came near ending my life with their arrows. When they heard the name of the ataman Khlit they bowed to the girdle and gave up the horses, pointing out the right ones to me. Then, believe me, I rode like mad to your nobility—"

  "Give him gold," Khlit said to his companions.

  The three Cossacks untied their wallets and tossed them to Shmel, who was struck dumb by this evidence of madness, and by the circumstance that the warriors had not even counted the gold and silver pieces in the heavy wallets.

  "The siech’s at war, Jew!" Khlit's beard bristled in a grin, as he tightened his reins and made off.

  He was unusually happy. Not four days ago he had said to Ayub that Kirdy's eyes were not yet open. Until now the young warrior had not met with treachery; but at Tor he had dealt with the enemies who were hidden, and with the hatred of a proud and ambitious woman. Kirdy was unharmed—a stab in the throat, but unharmed in his spirit and much the wiser.

  So great was Khlit's satisfaction, he actually praised Kirdy.

  "You did well enough, for a mewling cub. Only don't give up the horses again, you little dog's brother!"

  Appendix

  Adventure magazine, where all of the tales in this volume first appeared, maintained a letter column titled "The Camp-fire." As a descriptor, "letter column" does not quite do this regular feature justice. Adventure was published two and sometimes three times a month, and as a result of this frequency and the interchange of ideas it fostered "The Camp-Fire" was really more like an Internet bulletin board of today than a letter column found in today's quarterly or even monthly magazines. It featured letters from readers, editorial notes, and essays from writers. If a reader had a question or even a quibble with a story he could write in and the odds were that the letter would not only be printed but that the story's author would draft a response.

  Harold Lamb and other contributors frequently wrote lengthy letters that further explained some of the historical details that appeared in their stories. The letters about the stories included in this volume, often with introductory comments by Adventure editor Arthur Sullivan Hoffman, follow, and appear in order of publication. The date of the issue of Adventure is indicated, along with the title of the Lamb story that appeared in the issue. Lamb did not write a letter about every story.

  October 20, 1923: "Men from Below"

  A word about the siech. It was the military encampment of the Cossacks in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

  Here gathered the picked warriors who left their tribes and families for the wars. To escape annihilation by the Turks and Tatars, it was kept an open camp, moved constantly up and down the banks of the Dnieper, below the cataracts, its exact position being concealed. So the warriors came to be called Zaporogians, or "Men from Below the Rapids."

  The brotherhood of the warrior Cossacks was a military democracy; the Koshevoi Ataman, or camp commander, exercised authority over the free Cossacks, but only in time of a campaign. In peace, which was seldom, they did as they pleased.

  Every entrant turned over his personal property to the ataman of his barracks, to be used for the common good. A thief among the warriors was almost unheard of, and stealing was punished by imprisonment in the stocks. A cudgel was placed by the stocks and any Cossack was privileged to beat the criminal as he passed by.

  Lying was rare, and resulted in severe punishment. Murder was taken care of by burying the murderer alive under the corpse of the victim. Women were barred from the siech rigorously—possibly because it was desired to keep the situation of the war camp hidden.

  The brief stay of the free Cossacks in the siech was an orgy of drinking, feasting and gaming—as long as the spoil taken in the last expedition held out. But once on the march again a man found drunk was shot down. In any dispute the older Cossacks decided what was to be done.

  For weapons, the free Cossacks were forced to rely on what they could take from the Moslems, who were the best-armed troops in Europe at that time. No one received any pay. Often the barrack atamans buried some particularly rich treasure, intending to dig it up again when the regiment was broke or funds were needed. But, more often than not, the chronicles relate, they forgot about it or were killed in battle.

  When a free Cossack wished to go back to his village or family, his name was taken from the roll of the Zaporogians.

  Such was the brotherhood of the free Cossacks. Only two conditions were made to a newcomer: he must be able to use weapons, ride, and take care of himself, and he must be a believer in God and Christ. Every new arrival was expected to perform some feat to show his worth. A good many died in attempting to shoot the cataracts of the Dnieper, or in jumping their horses over the palisade around the camp.

  During the reign of Lenin and Trotsky in Petrograd recently, the Bolshevik party tried to win over the Cossacks, and subsequently to break their strength, but found the "Free People" just as much opposed to Bolshevism as to the old tyranny of the nobles.

  For the opening verse of the song quoted in a former story, "The King Dies," and for the version of Ivan Sirko's letter as well as several points in this summary, the author of these tales is indebted to Captain W. P. Cresson, whose history "The Cossacks" is the only modern account of this adventurous people in English.

  September 30, 1925: "Bogatyr"

  From Harold Lamb something in connection with his complete novelette in this issue. Step up and be introduced to kurgans if you have not already met them.

  Kurgans such as the one mentioned in "Bogatyr" are in reality tumuli, or burial mounds. They are found in the vast steppes between Europe and the great wall of China.

  I remember a Russian officer saying that in one mound near the Don River, a primitive cannon at least four centuries old was unearthed. The Russians used to dig into these mounds on the chance of finding gold ornaments, weapons, and so forth, very much as we Americans calmly dig up the burial sites of Indian tribes.

  The similarity of the kurgans in Siberia, north of the Gobi, with those several thousand miles distant on the Black Sea, seems to indicate that they were built by the Mongols—perhaps in the age of Genghis Khan, perhaps in the day of Tamerlane (as we call Timur-I-lang), perhaps in the time of the khanates of Central Asia—the Golden Horde, etc., in the sixteenth century. No one knows for certain.

  There are also found in the steppes curious stone warriors and women that face always to the east. And I think the figure monuments of Siberia are very much like them. The Cossacks relate that when these stone women are carried away to make gateposts for a house in some Russian village, it takes a half dozen oxen to drag them to the west, although one can draw them back again. Moi, je ne sai—

  At any rate most of the Cossacks are extremely unwilling to dig up the burial sites, the kurgans. A hundred years ago the British explorer, Clarke, asked the hetman of the Don Cossacks for some men from the village to help him the next day. The men were ready enough until they found out that he wanted to uncover a nearby kurgan. They refused point-blank—said it was unthinkably unlucky—and Clarke did not get a look at the inside of the mound.

  Some readers might very well think it a bit of imagination on the part of the author to picture a village of Cossacks being ordered to go and settle in the wilderness by the tsar. But this custom of advancing the Cossack stanitzas into the steppes of Asia was the chief means of Russia's expansion toward China—and into Alaska for that matter, or I
ndia.

  Moreover, whole villages were not always sent. Five hundred or a thousand families would be ordered to transmigrate. As late as i86i some Don Cossacks were ordered to migrate to the Caucasus, and proved rebellious. "But they soon recovered their senses," remarks a Russian historian, "and the colonization was effected without resort to specially severe measures." As to the title, we find it among the Mongols of Genghis Khan (Bahator) and among the ameers of Timur-i-lang, in India, as Bahadur, and in Russia as Bagatyr or Bogatyr— "g" being sounded as "h" in that language.

  November 30, 1925: "White Falcon"

  From Harold Lamb a word in connection with his three-part story beginning in this issue—something concerning the history that lies behind it:

  The expedition of the Cossacks to Urgench took place in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Abu Ghazi, sultan of the Uzbeks, gives a good account of it. He was alive at the time or, at any rate, heard the details from no less a personage than Arap Muhammad Khan himself, a remarkable chieftain and a dour fighter if ever there was one.

  More than a hundred years later Peter the Great sent an expedition on the same mission, under command of Prince Becovitch-Cherkassi. Although four thousand strong, this little army was wiped out by the Turkomans, who executed the prince and sold most of his men into slavery.

  Probably only a Muscovite tsar of the seventeenth century would have sent five hundred men to bring him the treasure of a Muhammadan city, in the very heart of the power of the sultans of Central Asia, beyond the salt deserts and the inland seas. I have tried to tell the story of these five hundred Cossacks.

  In 1602 five hundred Cossacks marched across the desert which divides the Caspian Sea from the Sea of Aral and took Urgenj, which is barely two days’ march from Khiva.

  They returned with enormous booty, but were overtaken by the Khan of Khiva and the whole of their force was annihilated with the exception of only three Cossacks, who survived to convey the tidings of the disaster on the Jaick.—

  From The Rival Powers in Central Asia, by Josef Popowski.

  Arap Mahamet Khan having taken the field to pass the summer with the lords, his vassals, upon the banks of the river Amu—the Urusses of Jaigik (Russians of Jaick) who were informed that there were no soldiers in summer in the town of Urgens, came there with a thousand men and after they had cut the throats of above a thousand of the inhabitants, they loaded about a thousand carts with all sorts of valuables and, having set fire to what they could not carry away, they returned.

  But Arap Mahamet being informed of it in time went to cut off their passage, and lay in wait for them at a certain defile, which he so well entrenched and palisaded in haste that the enemy could not force him till after an attack of two days and were obliged to leave all their booty behind.

  In the meantime Arap Mahamet Khan, who did not deign to let them escape him so cheaply, having got the start of them, went to wait for them again at another defile; the Urusses not having been able to force this passage notwithstanding all the efforts they made to effect it; the water, which is very scarce in those parts, began at length to fail them, which reduced them to so great extremity that after having been obliged to drink the very blood of their slain companions to quench in some measure the thirst that had afflicted them, they were constrained to make a last effort to force the barricades of Arap Mahamet Khan.

  It succeeded so ill with them that there escaped scarce a hundred men of them who made over to the banks of the River Khisil (Red River) and there built a cabin a good way on the other side of the town of Tuk where they lived by fishing, waiting some favorable opportunity to reach their own country; but Arap Mahamet Khan having been informed, five days after, of the place of their abode, sent men there who slew them all. —

  From the History of the Tatars, by Abul-ghazi Bahadur Khan

  The account of Abul-ghazi Bahadur Khan is interesting, as he was alive at the time—nephew, I think, to Arap Muhammad Khan, but his "thousands" are the usual Moslem historian's round figures.

  I think the three survivors reached the border.

  Glancing at the map, from Moscow to Khiva, it will be seen that the march of the Donskoi was a notable one—in the early seventeenth century. That was the time of the height of the Turkish power, and the Moghuls of India were still mighty.

  Between these two the Uzbek and Turkoman khans and the Persians were fighting continuously. To march over the border of Islam in 1602 took a bit of nerve.

  The attitude of Boris Godunov toward the Donskoi is about correct, historically.

  The tsars did send the Cossacks on just such hopeless missions. You may remember I told you about the Cossack hetman, Platov, who was sent in Napoleon's time across these same deserts to conquer India—with three or four thousand men! Some of them came back.

  We are indebted to Captain Victor L. Kaledine, essaul of the Don Cossacks, for the translation of the words to the "March of the Donskoi."

  January 10, 1926: "The Winged Rider"

  Something from Harold Lamb in connection with his novelette in this issue. In view of our Camp-Fire argument concerning Julius Caesar, I wonder whether that gentleman too read Sun Tsu.1

  The wings used by the rider of the white horse were often met with on the borderland in those "times of the troubles." A generation later the armored hussars of Poland wore them, and they there became as famous as the bearskin shakos of Napoleon's guard in another century.

  Sun Tsu, quoted in the chapter headings, wrote what is believed to be the first treatise on the art of war, 500 bc. It's mighty good reading. It was translated and studied by Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and the German high commanders who fought in the last war. Sun Tsu got precious little credit.

  The map, by the way, is a copy from one old Russia Company "presented to the House of Lords." But I had to modernize the geography a little and change the old spelling.*

  1

  Here Hoffman refers to the long-running debate about Julius Caesar's depiction by Talbot Mundy (pen name of William Lancaster Gribbon) in his multi-part saga of Tros of Samothrace. Of all the Adventure authors, Mundy and Lamb are the two most frequently discussed today. Mundy's Caesar is a brilliant, amoral schemer, which excited a storm of controversy amongst those used to reading of Caesar as an upright hero. A careful craftsman with a great deal of insight into human nature, Mundy could write a cracking good adventure tale and is still popular in some circles today.

  *In lieu of the map mentioned by Lamb, refer to the map printed within this volume.

  About the Author

  Harold Lamb (1892-1962) was born in Alpine nj, the son of Eliza Rollin-son and Frederick Lamb, a renowned stain glass designer, painter, and writer. Lamb later described himself as having been born with damaged eyes, ears, and speech, adding that by adulthood these problems had mostly righted themselves. He was never very comfortable in crowds or cities and found school "a torment." He had two main refuges when growing up—his grandfather's library and the outdoors. Lamb loved tennis and played the game well into his later years.

  Lamb attended Columbia, where he first dug into the histories of Eastern civilizations, ever after his lifelong fascination. He served briefly in World War I as an infantryman but saw no action. In 1917 he married Ruth Barbour, and by all accounts their marriage was a long and happy one. They had two children, Frederick and Cary. Arthur Sullivan Hoffman, the chief editor of Adventure magazine, recognized Lamb's storytelling skills and encouraged him to write about the subjects he most loved. For the next twenty years or so, historical fiction set in the remote East flowed from Lamb's pen, and he quickly became one of Adventure's most popular writers. Lamb did not stop with fiction, however, and soon began to draft biographies and screenplays. By the time the pulp magazine market dried up, Lamb was an established and recognized historian, and for the rest of his life he produced respected biographies and histories, earning numerous awards, including one from the Persian government for his two-volume history of the Crusades.

>   Lamb knew many languages: by his own account, French, Latin, ancient Persian, some Arabic, a smattering of Turkish, a bit of Manchu-Tartar, and medieval Ukranian. He traveled throughout Asia, visiting most of the places he wrote about, and during World War II he was on covert assignment overseas for the U.S. government. He is remembered today both for his scholarly histories and for his swashbuckling tales of daring Cossacks and Crusaders. "Life is good, after all," Lamb once wrote, "when a man can go where he wants to, and write about what he likes best."

  Source Acknowledgments

  The stories within this volume were originally published in Adventure magazine: "An Edge to a Sword," July io, 1923; "The Baiting of the Warriors," September io, 1923; "The King Dies," September 30, 1923; "Men from Below," October 20, 1923; "The Witch of Aleppo," January 30, 1924; "Bogatyr," September 30, 1925; "White Falcon," November 30, 1925; and "The Winged Rider," January io, 1926.

  University of Nebraska Press

  Also of Interest in the series:

  Wolf of the Steppes

  The Complete Cossack Adventures, Volume One By Harold Lamb Edited by Howard Andrew Jones Introduction by S. M. Stirling

  Wolf of the Steppes is the first of a four-volume set that collects, for the first time, the complete Cossack stories of Harold Lamb and presents them in order: every adventure of Khlit the Cossack and those of his friends, allies, and fellow Cossacks, many of which have never before appeared between book covers.

  isbn 0-8032-8048-3; 978-0-8032-8048-9 (paper)

  Warriors of the Steppes

  The Complete Cossack Adventures, Volume Two By Harold Lamb Edited by Howard Andrew Jones Introduction by David Drake

  This second volume collects all five tales of Khlit's greatest friend, the valorous Abdul Dost, and Dost's comrade Sir Ralph Weyand. Contained herein are the three never-before-collected stories of Khlit the Cossack, including the short novel The Curved Sword.