by Harold Lamb
“Hey, men of the steppe,” he cried, “do you hear the hunt of Tal Taulai Khan approaching? The Kallmark horde is not on the chase!”
At a signal from one of their number the Tatars divided, passing to each side into the bush. Khlit waited quietly, hand near his sword, but none came near him. With a breath of relief he spurred on his horse, choosing the thickest cover and bending low in the saddle.
His quick eye did not miss the change in the woods.
Cleared spaces showed him vistas of moving horsemen. Thickets revealed Tatar helmets standing stationary. The snow underground was thickly trampled. Khlit must be nearing the Tatar camp, yet he saw no signs of tents or cattle herds.
Farther into the ranks of the Krim folk he trotted, his skill sufficing to keep him from running into the moving groups.
Isolated Tatars galloped full upon him, stared, and passed on at sight of his drawn sword. Once he caught the sound of horns blaring in the hills above him.
He heard a shot echo behind him. Then another, followed by a crackle of shots that seemed to roll up the hills and back into the valleys. Khlit stopped his horse in a grove and listened. The woods behind him were stirring with sound. Shots continued, and he caught the frightened neigh of a horse. Trumpets sounded from several quarters. Truly the hunt of Tal Taulai Khan, he considered, was growing.
Making fast the reins of his horse to a tree trunk, Khlit clambered from its back to the branches of the fir. Grunting with distaste, for climbing trees was not to his liking, he gained a height where he could look out over his surroundings.
He had a full view of the hunt of Tal Taulai Khan. Swarming over the wooded ridges in his rear, distinct against the snow, he saw myriads of horsemen, interspersed with packs of dogs. Every clearing was black with men moving up into the hills. The hunt was drawing its net about him. Yet Khlit was not alone in the net.
Moving down from the hills, in the valleys he could make out swarms of brown-cloaked riders, mounted on small steppe ponies. These were the Krim Tatars, moving from their encampment. Restlessly they pushed ahead, frequently stopping to consult together or to rally to the colored ensigns which led the warriors of each tribe. Were the Krim Tatars riding to a chase? Had they decided to come down to meet the Kallmark Tatars? Were they uneasy for Mirai Khan, their leader of a score of years? Khlit tugged at his mustache and watched them narrowly.
As he watched he heard the crackle of shots growing like the snapping of fire, and a dull shouting arose. The dice of fate, thought Khlit, were thrown upon the board and he must abide by the issue.
“If Mirai Khan leads the Krim Tatars into battle,” he quoted to himself, “there will be victory.”
But Mirai Khan was dead. The one man who know the hearts of both Kallmark Tatar and Krim Tatar, who had tried to bring together these nations long hostile, was not living.
As he watched Khlit learned the meaning of the shots that grew into a long roll. Across one of the clearings he saw a regiment of Kallmarks gallop. Uneasily the riders moved about, a few horsemen darting out to left and right as if to learn what was going on nearby. Then Khlit saw a strange thing. The leading riders sank from their horses to the ground, writhed, and lay still. Those following went forward a few paces, their ranks thinning.
Distant as he was, Khlit could make out a flight of arrows that swept from the woods into the Kallmark ranks. Other bands of brown-cloaked and helmeted Tatars that were not Kallmarks emerged from the wood and drew in around the remaining riders. Swords flickered in the sun's rays.
And then more Kallmarks swarmed into the clearing. The riders now were so mingled that there was no telling Kallmark from Krim. Yet always, they fell to the snow, singly and in groups.
He had seen what he wanted.
“It will be a good hunt,” he said softly, climbing upon his horse, for above the shouts and confusion he caught the sound of horsemen approaching him.
XI
Glancing back, Khlit saw several figures come into view a quarter mile behind him. He made out the squat, menacing form of Kefar Choga, wearing the cloak embroidered with his rank, and the tall Kirghiz chieftain. They rode behind a pack of dogs. By chance or keen scent the pack had followed him through the maze of firs.
Khlit bent low to avoid a possible pistol shot and urged his horse to full pace. Kefar Choga did likewise, accompanied by the Kirghiz. Khlit's mount had had a brief rest, but the other two appeared as fresh. Looking back a second time, the Cossack saw that the distance had neither grown nor diminished. He remembered Kefar Choga's promise to find him out in the hunt, and he knew that the Kallmark was not one to be lightly shaken off.
Khlit regretted that he had disposed of his pistols to the Kirghiz as he heard the crack of a shot behind him and saw the snow fly up a short distance ahead.
Turning aside, he swept through a thicket down into a ravine, dodged among some boulders, and came out on the level again to find that Kefar Choga had won a hundred paces nearer. Waving his hand at the Kallmark, he urged his horse up a rise, listening for the crack of a pistol.
The tired beast stumbled and floundered its way to the summit. Although the two pursuers should have been near them, instead he heard a sound that made him turn in his saddle.
Kefar Choga had pulled his mount to a sudden halt. The Kirghiz drew up beside him. The pack of dogs scattered to every quarter. In Khlit's ear echoed the shrill battle cry of the Krim Tatars.
A troop of the Krim warriors whom he had not seen on his flank had circled around the Kallmark horsemen. One of them pointed to Kefar Choga's cloak with an exclamation. As a pack of wolves dart in on a stag at bay the horsemen swerved and rode at the two.
The Kirghiz coolly discharged his other pistol without effect. Khlit saw one Krim rider and then another go down before Kefar Choga's weapon. Then the horsemen crowded into a circle. The flashing swords were sheathed, and Khlit knew that the last of his pursuers was out of the way.
Wisely deciding not to attract the attention of the Krim cavalry to himself, he trotted on and found that he was making his way into the encampment of the Krim Tatars. Gray tents stood on every quarter. Embers of fires blackened the snow. Empty wagons were ranged at intervals. In the camp Khlit saw no man stirring
Looking about him curiously, he had almost gained the farther side of the camp, on the point nearest the Uskun Luk Tugra, which loomed overhead, when he saw a movement in one of the tents.
Guiding his horse thither, Khlit noted that outside were piled heaps of baskets that appeared familiar. Costly rugs were torn into shreds on the snow. Gold vessels had been trampled underfoot. The baskets themselves had been emptied and cast aside. Khlit pondered as he eyed the remnants of Tal Taulai Khan's gifts to the Krim Tatars.
Recalling the movement in the tent, he swept the tent pole to the ground with his saber. The cloth covering writhed as it lay prostrate.
“Unnamed one,” growled Khlit, “come, or be spitted to the ground.” The movement under the tent hastened and presently a dismal-looking figure stood upright. A red cloak was tangled in the man's leg and the front of his undergarment bulged, while from it hung an emerald necklace, with a sapphire cross.
“Hey, shaman,” greeted Khlit, remembering his acquaintance of the steppe, “are you a vulture that you prey upon the gifts of a khan? Disgorge the jewels, toad, and come here.”
The shaman obeyed, his face quivering with fright.
“It is the day of fate,” he whimpered, “it is the doom of the Krim folk. The Black Kallmarks are marching upon us. Their lines draw in like a net. They are traitors and idolatrous— foresworn! Before today we had awaited them as friends.”
“Where is Mirai Khan, who leads the Krim Tatars to victory?” mocked Khlit.
“Aie!” the shaman wailed, stuffing a costly necklace unnoticed by Khlit into his sleeve, “Mirai Khan is dead, his head severed from his body. It is the beginning of doom for the Krim nation. None shall survive the net of the Black Kallmarks, who are more numerous than the sands of t
he salt sea—”
He broke off to cower as the din of combat swept up to the two. Khlit's nostrils expanded as with pleasure. He hearkened to the cries and shots that echoed from every quarter of the hills.
“It is not my doom, devil take it,” he cried. “Come shaman, show the way to the summit of Uskun Luk Tugra, the roof of the world, for our tribe knows it well. The doom of this day is great for the Kallmark hunters who have found other game than they sought, yet it is written that you and I, the wolf and the serpent, shall pass through.”
Wherefore it happened that Khlit rode silently behind the moaning form of the conjurer up concealed paths in Uskun Luk Tugra, past waterfalls that moistened his horse's feet, and between chasms that glowed on their summits with green fire until he came out on the snow of the summit and stood amazed at the flat field of shimmering glow that seemed to be the fires of a thousand devils, soft, as deep as an emerald's glow.
“By my faith,” he swore, “is this the court of the devil? No land was ever so flat, and fires burn red, not green.”
He shuddered, while the shaman edged close to his horse for warmth, for the cold on the roof of the world was great.
“Nay, noble Cossack,” he whined, “the flat is but a frozen lake, and the fire is not flame but light. See”—he caught up a bit of rotten wood—“it is harmless. We call it phosphorus and it lies on the dead trees that were killed when the lake gripped their roots.”
The shaman laid his flaming hand on the mane of the horse, which did not stir.
“It is well,” said Khlit. “Come.”
And the journey of the two continued along the lake, lit by the green fire, until they could see down into the valleys where the two hordes had been.
Many fires were there, and over all the dim light of the moon.
The outer wings of Tal Taulai Khan's host were engaged with the remnants of the Krim army. Khlit watched for so long that the shaman became faint with the cold.
Fires that had spread in the groves of firs lighted the landscape and showed where horsemen moved in countless ranks over the farther hills. Khlit had eyes only for sight of this, but the shaman, who had suffered much, shuddered when he saw that the battlefield abandoned by the horsemen was black with moving objects. No sound came up to them, but he recognized the wolves that followed in the track of Tal Taulai's horde, covering the scene of the battle, like vermin upon a wound.
So Khlit saw the end of the hunt of Tal Taulai Khan.
For those who care to know more of the matter there are the annals of Abulghazi Bahadur Sultan, wherein is found an account of how the horde of Tal Taulai Khan turned back from the hunt after the great battle of two days and one night in which the tribe of Mirai Khan was annihilated.
It was thus that the prophecy written concerning the Year of the Ape was fulfilled, although it was the Krim Tatars and not the Cossacks that fought the Grand Khan. In the annals of Abulghazi Bahadur Sultan it is explained that the battle began when the host of the Black Kallmarks advanced unawares against the Krim tribe. Yet the cause of the battle, as written in the annals, was otherwise.
It was due to the gifts of Tal Taulai Khan to the Krim chieftains. For out of the first basket from the Grand Khan opened by the Krim men rolled the head of Mirai Khan, leader of the Krim horde. Yet it is written in the annals that Tal Taulai Khan afterward took an oath upon an image of a god that neither he nor his men had placed the head of Mirai Khan in the baskets that were sent as gifts, not otherwise.
Alamut
It was the Year of the Lion at the very end of the sixteenth century when Khlit guided his horse into Astrakhan. No sentries challenged him in the streets of Astrakhan, for the Cossacks were masters here and no Cossack would dishonor himself by taking precautions against danger. There were many Mohammedans in the streets of Astrakhan, but it was evening and the followers of Allah were repeating the last of their prayers, facing, as was the law, toward the city of Mecca.
Sitting his steppe pony carelessly, Khlit allowed the beast to take its own course. The night, in Midsummer, was warm and his heavy svitza was thrown back on his high shoulders. A woolen cap covered one side of his gray head, and his new pair of costly red Morocco boots were smudged with tar to show his contempt for appearances. Under his shaggy mustache a pipe glowed and by his side hung the strangely shaped saber which had earned the Cossack the name of “Khlit of the Curved Saber.”
Khlit rode alone, as he had done since he left the Siech, where Cossack leaders had said that he was too old to march with the army of the Ukraine. He paid no attention to the sprawling, drunken figures of Cossacks that his horse stepped over in the street. Clouds of flies from fish houses, odorous along the river front, buzzed around him. Donkeys driven by naked Tatar urchins passed him in the shadows. Occasionally the glow from the open front of an Isphahan rug dealer's shop showed him cloaked Tatars who swaggered and swore at him.
Being weary Khlit paid no heed to these. A dusty armorer's shop under an archway promised a resting place for the night, and here he dismounted. Pushing aside the rug that served as a door he cursed as he stumbled over the proprietor of the shop, a Syrian who was bowing a yellow face over a purple shawl in prayer.
“Lailat el kadi," the Syrian muttered, casting a swift side glance at the tall Cossack.
Khlit did not know the words; but that night thousands of lips were repeating them—lailat el kadr, night of power. This was the night which was potent for the followers of the true faith, when the djinns smiled upon Mohammed and Marduk was hung by his heels in Babylon. It is so written in the book of Abulghazi, called by some Abulfarajii, historian of dynasties.
It was on such a night of power, say the annals of Abulg-hazi, that Hulagu Khan, nephew of Gengis Khan and leader of the Golden Horde, overcame the citadel of Alamut, the place of strange wickedness, by the river Shahrud, in the province of Rudbar. It was on that night the power of Hagen ben Sabbah was broken.
But the power of Hagen ben Sabbah was evil. Evil, says Abulg-hazi, is slow to die. The wickedness of Alamut lived, and around it clung the shadow of the power that had belonged to Hagen ben Sabbah—power not of god or man—who was called by some sheik, by others the Old Man of the Mountain, and by himself the prophet of God.
It was also written in the book of Abulghazi that there was a prophecy that the waters of the Shahrud would be red with blood, and that the evil would be hunted through the hidden places of Alamut. A strange prophecy. And never had Khlit, the Cossack of the Curved Saber, shared in such a hunt. It was not of his own seeking—the hunt that disclosed the secret of Alamut. It was chance that made him a hunter, the chance that brought him to the shop of the Syrian armorer, seeking rest.
So it happened that Khlit saw the prophecy of Abulghazi, who was wise with an ancient wisdom, come to pass—saw the river stair flash with sword blades, and the banquet-place, and the treasure of Alamut under the paradise of the Shadna.
“Lailat el kadi,” chanted the Syrian, his eye on the curved blade of Khlit, “Allah is mighty and there is no god but he.” “Spawn of Islam,” grunted Khlit, who disliked prayer, “lift your bones and find for me a place to spend the night. And food.” The Cossack spoke in Tatar, with which language he was on familiar terms. The response was not slow in coming, although from an unexpected quarter. A cloaked figure rose from the shadows behind the one lamp which lighted the shop and confronted him. The cloak fell to the floor and disclosed a sturdy form clad in a fur-tipped tunic under which gleamed a coat of mail, heavy pantaloons, and a peaked helmet. A pair of slant, bloodshot eyes stared at Khlit from a round face.
Khlit recognized the newcomer as a Tatar warrior of rank, and noted that while the other was short, his shoulders were wide and arms long as his knees. Simultaneously Khlit's curved saber flashed into view, with the Tatar's scimitar.
As quickly, the Syrian merchant darted into a corner. Cossack and Tatar, enemies by instinct and choice, measured each other cautiously. Neither moved, waiting for the other to act. K
hlit's pipe fell to the floor and he did not stoop to pick it up. “Toctamish!”
It was a woman's voice, shrill and angry, that broke the silence. Khlit did not shift his gaze. The Tatar scowled sullenly, and growled something beneath his breath.
“Toctamish! Fool watch dog! Is there no end to your quarreling? Do your fingers itch for a sword until you forget my orders?” The curtains were pushed aside from a recess in the shop, and out of the corner of his eye Khlit saw a slender woman dart forward and seize the Tatar by his squat shoulders. Toctamish tried in vain to throw off the grip that pinned his arms to his side.
“One without understanding,” the Tatar growled, “here is a dog of a Cossack who would rather slay than eat. This is the Khlit I told of, the one with the curved sword. Are you a child at play?”
“Nay, you are the child, Toctamish,” shrilled the woman, “for you would fight when the Cossack would eat. He means no harm. Allah keep you further from the wine cask! Put up your sword. Have you forgotten you are man and I am mistress?”
To Khlit's amusement Toctamish, who whether by virtue of wine or his natural foolhardiness was eager to match swords, dropped his weapon to his side. Whereupon Khlit lowered his sword and confronted the woman.
Beside the square form of Toctamish, she looked scarcely bigger than a reed of the river. A pale-blue reed, with a flower-face of delicate olive. Above the blue garment which covered her from foot to throat, her black hair hung around a face which arrested Khlit's attention. Too narrow to be a Tatar, yet too dark for a Georgian, her head was poised gracefully on slender shoulders. Her mouth was small, and her cheeks tinted from olive to pink. The eyes were wide and dark. Under Khlit's gaze she scowled. Abruptly she stepped to his side and watched him with frank curiosity.