Wolf of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  That is all that is written, because much was left out owing to the evil influence of the eunuchs about the emperor. Still, the chronicles state that an open rebellion by the forces of the Lady Li was only averted by the fortunate appearance of the Son of Heaven at the yamen. Owing to this the silken cord of happy dispatch was sent to the Lady Li, for her slim throat, by order of Wan Li himself.

  Khlit had kept his imperial prisoner by his side and, escorted by Dokadur Khan and the remaining huntsmen, sought for and found the party of Li Yuan and the Ming nobles who were encamped near the yamen, a few hours' ride from the tomb. In the ranks of the Togra men a man was found who could converse with the emperor, and through him it was explained that his huntsmen had seen him imprisoned in the tomb and had rescued him. Whereupon they gave the Son of Heaven food and wine.

  This done, Wan Li promised them that their lives should be safeguarded and they should receive a fitting reward. All this does not appear in the annals of his reign, owing to the power of Wei Chung, who censored all that was written.

  Khlit and Dokadur Khan saw that Wan Li was delivered to Li Yuan, who greeted him on bent knees, accompanied by the other nobles of his party.

  “It is a night of true beneficence,” murmured the delighted astrologer. “Because the influence of the star of evil omen has been overcome by the rising birth-star of the Son of Heaven and the Lord of Ten Thousand Years.”

  Khlit did not understand this. He waited impatiently on his horse while the court kowtowed. He saw the silken cord of suicide sent to the beautiful favorite, without understanding what it meant.

  But Wei Chung, who had arrived at the yamen, heard, and sent a messenger to Wan Li bearing congratulations on his return and saying that his faithful servant, Wei Chung-hsien, had been striving to punish those who had conspired against the throne, the evil servants of the doomed Lady Li—so said the messenger—and who had nearly caused the Son of Heaven to lose his life while in the care of Wei Chung, who was innocent—thus ran the message—of all blame, because he had not been aware of the conspiracy of the Lady Li nor of the eunuch who had impersonated Wan Li.

  “It is a lie!” Li Yuan had cried, lifting his clenched fists.

  But Wan Li had hesitated. Nor would he give the word to slay the eunuch.

  Hearing of what had passed from the plainsmen who understood the talk, Khlit did not at first believe that Wei Chung was actually to be spared. But his own eyes told him that Wan Li hesitated, unwilling to believe evil of the chief eunuch. Whereupon Khlit swore and whispered to Dokadur Khan to assemble his men. Unnoticed in the confusion, they left the yamen. Riding swiftly, they gained the plain.

  There they met the rest of their men with loaded pack horses. Under cover of darkness they made their way out to the Togra. Dokadur Khan swaggered jubilantly in his saddle.

  “Hey, old warrior,” he cried familiarly to Khlit, “it is a good night's work. The spoil of the Golden Tomb, taken after we left with Wan Li, will well repay my men. Half of the treasure, as you have asked, will be sent to the Tatars, your old friends. You have served well me and mine, and I will see that the division is even, to the weight of a hair. The Tatars shall have a royal gift from you.”

  Khlit did not reply at once.

  “I have seen the master of a million men,” he said at length, “and he is a weaker man than you or Arslan or I. For he cannot safeguard the lives of those who are his friends. Nor can he save his own. He will yet die by the hand of Wei Chung.”

  The tribesmen listened, for these were the words of one who had done them a great service. But they understood them not. At Khlit's next speech, however, they laughed with him.

  “Hey, good sirs,” he cried, leaning forward and patting the neck of his horse, “we have our lives and our good horses, and the free steppe is before us. It is well.”

  The Rider of the Gray Horse

  In the temples are the many-handed gods. High is the wisdom of the gods.

  Is the wisdom of the gods one with Fate? Nay, how can it be known?

  And in the palace is the face of a woman. There is perfume in her heavy hair, and the eyes of the maiden are dark, as with sleep. Her hand is small as a lotus blossom.

  Yet in her petal-hand is the destiny of a man, of many men.

  The gods have ordained it, and it is true.

  Khlit, called by his enemies the Cossack of the Curved Saber, was followed.

  He was aware of this. It caused him no uneasiness. For, he thought, if a rider carries nothing of value, should he fear thieves? He was not less watchful, however, on that account. It was the Year of the Rat, reckoned by the Chinese calendar—in the first decade of the seventeenth century of the Christian Era—and the border of the desert of Gobi was a refuge of the lawless.

  From time to time the Cossack reined in his horse and glanced backward over the wind ridges which formed an ocean of sand on three sides of the rider. On the fourth was the river Tarim. This Khlit was following, having heard that it would take him from the desert to the southern mountains. Beyond these mountains, he had been told by wandering priests, was the fair land of Ladak and Ind.

  Wise in the ways of warfare and plunder, the old Cossack knew that only one rider followed him. Save for this half-perceived shadow that clung to his path, Khlit was alone. Such was his custom. Years since he had ridden from the war camp of the Cossacks—an outcast.

  Now, disgusted with the silken treachery of the men of China, whither he had come from Tatary, the warrior had taken up his journey in a new direction, south. A veteran of many battles, impatient of authority, his shrewdness, enforced by very expert swordplay, had safeguarded him in a time when men's lives hung by slender threads. And had earned him enemies in plenty.

  As he guided his mount beside the riverbank Khlit meditated. Why should one rider follow him? It was clearly to be seen that he carried no goods worthy of plunder. Merely some handfuls of dried meat and milk curds in his saddlebags. Even his horse was not one to be coveted by a desert-man, being a shaggy steppe pony.

  Perhaps the rider in his rear planned to wait until he dismounted at nightfall, slay him, and take the horse. Yet it was not the custom of the Gobi bandits to hunt their prey alone.

  Down a steep clay bank his pony slid, pursuing the half-visible caravan track marked by dried bones and camel droppings. At the bottom of the slope, beside a stunted tamarisk, Khlit halted and faced about, drawing a pistol and adjusting the priming. He would see, he decided, what manner of man followed him.

  Quietly the Cossack waited, his tall form upright in the saddle, sheepskin svitza thrown back to allow free arm play. His keen eyes peered under tufted brows at the summit of the mound down which he had come, searching the skyline.

  The stillness of the place was unbroken. The sluggish river moving through the waste was lifeless. There were no birds or game in the region. Even the warmth of a Summer sun was seasoned by the high altitude of the southern Gobi.

  The horse pricked up his ears. Khlit lifted his weapon and scowled. By now the other rider must be near. His sharp ears had caught the impact of a stone dislodged from a nearby ridge.

  Back and forth along the ridge summit his glance flickered. There was no sign of movement. A second sound arrested his attention. It was faint, coming from no definite direction. It was a low, whispering laugh.

  The sound came from the stillness around him, softly mocking, almost caressing. It was a tiny sound, akin to the drip of sand. It might have issued from the ground under his feet. Then he heard a brief, dull mutter, as of a sword drawn from a rusted scabbard.

  Still Khlit waited, impassive. His horse seemed to have lost interest in what was passing near at hand. In fact, Khlit himself was not oversure the sounds had not been a trick of the imagination.

  With a stifled oath he swerved his mount and spurred up the ridge, his weapon ready in his free hand. His pursuer, apparently, had sighted him and turned back. The pony dug his leather-shod hoofs valiantly into the sand, which afforded evil footi
ng, and gained the summit panting.

  Khlit cast a quick glance over the plain. Nothing was to be seen of the other rider. True, the depressions between the ridges might shelter the other. But the scattered tamarisks and forlorn bushes by the river offered no concealment. Khlit was standing on the edge of the bank some hundred feet above the water, and the thickets in the region whence he had come were clear to view.

  He looked down thoughtfully at his horse's tracks, outlined along the caravan trail. Then he swore aloud.

  “Dog of the devil!” he grunted.

  Beside his own tracks were those of another horse. They came within a yard of where he was, then ceased.

  Khlit searched the summit of the ridge carefully. There was no mistaking the message in the sand. A second horse, making small, clearly indented tracks, had walked nearly to the crest of the sand. It had not returned, for there were no traces leading rearward. Nor had it passed him—his own eyes had been witness to that.

  The Cossack replaced the pistol in his belt and tugged at his heavy mustache. The sounds might have been his imagining. Certainly the soft laugh had startled him. But the hoof prints were not fancy.

  Khlit thought briefly of the tales he had heard from the gylongs —wandering beggar priests of Buddha—concerning the Ghils of the desert. These were spirits which followed the course of travelers, appearing beside them in the shape of men and luring them to destruction.

  Woman's tales, he reflected, and not to be believed. The priests had warned him against the shrill cries of the Ghils heard at night. But he was familiar with the strange noises the sands make at times, similar to the sound of drums or horse's hoofs.

  The priests, he reasoned, would no doubt say that he had been followed by one of the spirits of the desert, which took flight into the air when he observed it. Khlit scowled at the tracks in the sand.

  Undoubtedly another horse had come to the sand ridge. Since it was not to be seen, it had left. But where, and how?

  Khlit laughed, a gruff hearty laugh, and slapped his thigh. Then he dug spurs into the pony's sides and as the animal sprang forward jerked the beast's head to one side. Down the embankment of sand into the river went pony and rider.

  II

  “Ho, one-without-sense!” growled Khlit as the pony struggled in the current of the Tarim. “Do you fear to do what another has done? Nay, we go not back here.”

  The thought had come to Khlit, standing on the ridge, of how the other rider had vanished. Only one way was possible—into the river. And a slope of loose sand, as the Cossack knew, left no tracks.

  He guided his pony down the current in the direction he had been going. This way the other must have gone. Or Khlit would have seen the rider as he searched the riverbank to the rear. Clearly his companion of the desert path was anxious to pass him by rather than meet him. This stirred Khlit's curiosity the more.

  As he crouched in the saddle, Cossack fashion, he scanned the shore keenly. His pursuer, he thought, must have been anxious to press ahead. And to escape observation. Otherwise the rider would have passed him by along the sand ridges instead of choosing the river. Of course, to do so would render the other visible to Khlit. Hence the leap into the Tarim.

  Who, wondered Khlit, rode the caravan track alone and in haste, yet in fear of observation?

  With difficulty Khlit kept the pony's head away from the bank. The water, in spite of the hot rays of the sun, was cold and torpid, winding between its banks with the silence of a huge reptile passing over the barren waste of the desert. A cold wind stirred the sand on the ridges and fanned Khlit's beard.

  The Cossack presently gave an exclamation of satisfaction and headed for the bank. He had seen the tracks of a horse leading up the slope. Dark water stains showed that the horse and rider he was following had but recently passed that way. He had guessed correctly the maneuver of his erstwhile pursuer.

  He urged his pony into a quick trot, following the traces in the sand. Before long he was convinced that the other's mount was fleet of foot, for he gained no sight of rider or beast, urge his horse as he would.

  He saw only that the rider had returned to the caravan track. The sun, which had been low on the plain to the west, disappeared suddenly. The sky overhead changed from a clear blue to a dull purple. Khlit reined in his pony and dismounted.

  Warmth, gathered during the day, was still exuding from the sand, but the Cossack knew that the night would be chill. He picketed his beast in the depression between two sand mounds, collected a bundle of tamarisk roots and kindled a small fire.

  He placed his leather saddle-cloth between the sand slope and the fire and seated himself thereon with his saddlebags, preparatory to making a meal of dried meat. The other rider, he thought, would not molest him, judging by what had happened at the river.

  Khlit lay back on his heavy coat, gazing up into the purple infinity overhead. One by one the stars were glittering into being. Khlit knew them all. He had followed their guidance over the Roof of the World into strange countries. Unlike most men, he was best contented when alone. His few companions in arms had been slain, and as for women, the Cossack regarded them as rather more troublesome than magpies or the inquisitive and predatory steppe fox.

  The next instant he was on his feet, sword drawn, limbs taut and head sunk forward between his shoulders. A horse and rider had moved into the circle of firelight.

  Khlit's first glance made sure that the intruder held no pistol. His second, that no weapons at all were visible. Nevertheless, he did not lower his sword. He had seen death reward imprudence too often.

  And then he heard the echo of the soft laugh that had startled him by the river bank. Peering at the newcomer, he grunted. It was a woman, clad in a fur-tipped khalat, under which a silk shawl was wrapped over head and breast. Over a veil which shielded the lower half of her face two dark eyes scanned him calmly. Black hair of shimmering texture, evenly divided, crowned a high, fair forehead.

  So much Khlit observed in surprise. He noted that the horse was a mettled gray stallion and the saddle trappings costly.

  The rider of the horse spoke in a limpid tongue unknown to Khlit. Then Khlit sheathed his sword.

  “Nay, I know not your song, little night-bird,” he said in Uigur, the semi-Turkish dialect of Central Asia. “Devil take me—I knew not the great desert breeds such as you.”

  The dark eyes snapped angrily.

  “What matters your knowledge, O small-of-wit?” the rider lisped in the same tongue. “Among my people a gray horse is a sigil of wisdom. Here I find it on the mouth of a fool.”

  Khlit considered the woman in surprise. By the shifting firelight she appeared beautiful of face. Certainly her figure under the khalat was rounded and slim. What was such a maiden doing alone on the desert? True, they were not two days' ride from the city of Khoten; but the caravan tracks were peopled with scoundrels, and Khoten itself was a rendezvous for the lawless of all nations.

  Moreover, the woman puzzled him. She was not Chinese; her beauty was too great for a Khirghiz or flat-faced Usbek. Her dress and imperious manner were not those of a Turk.

  She leaned forward in the saddle, eyes bent intently on him. Her attitude suggested that she was ready to wheel and flee on the instant.

  “Hey, you have truly the tongue of a magpie!” grumbled Khlit. “Were you the rider that braved the waters of the Tarim to pass me by along the caravan trail?”

  “Aye, dullard. While you were swearing like a caphar and reading lies in the tracks in the sand. Now it is my whim to seek you. A fool, and an old fool, is harmless.”

  So saying she urged her horse nearer to the fire by a slight pressure of the knees—for she rode astride, as a man.

  “Whence come you? Whither go you, in the great desert, O prattle-tongue?” asked Khlit.

  The bright eyes over the veil were fixed on the fire, yet Khlit was aware that they kept him well in view.

  “Nay, gray-beard, am I other than a Ghil of the waste? Have you seen me com
e to your fire? I am here at the word of one who was master of the earth. Now he is dead, yet his word keeps me here.”

  “Ha! The fat Son of Heaven who is master of China?”

  “Nay—” the black eyes half closed in a tantalizing smile—“a greater one than Wan Li. Because of his death there is no bed where I am safe, nor any palace gate where I may enter. From beyond the grave his hand reaches out to me.”

  “Child's riddles,” grumbled Khlit, striding to the fire.

  He cared little that a woman of rank, and unescorted, should be in the Gobi. One thing he had guessed. The soft, quick speech of the woman stirred his memory. He recalled another who had spoken similarly. His visitor was a Persian by birth.

  She placed a jeweled hand lightly on his shoulder.

  “I am hungry,” she said plaintively. “And those who were to meet me here by the Tarim, two days' journey from Khoten, have not come. I have no food—and it grows cold.”

  “Dismount, then, and eat.”

  Long and earnestly the dark eyes scanned the tall Cossack. As if reassured, the girl slipped from the saddle of the gray steed to ground, uttering an exclamation of pain as the circulation started in numbed feet. Khlit silently arranged a seat for her on his saddlecloth and set about preparing a meal with the small means at his disposal.

  III

  “While I sleep, gray-beard, you may mount your horse and watch, lest others approach too near. With the dawn you should see two riders coming from the south in haste, for they are belated—a sin worthy of death by bastinado to those not of such high caste as these two.”

  Khlit eyed his companion grimly. Was he one to be ordered about by a woman? Even such as this one? For she had put down her veil on eating, explaining that, as he was a caphar—a Christian—there was no sin in his seeing the countenance of a woman who was a true believer. When Khlit asked how she knew he was a Christian she touched the miniature gold cross he wore at his neck with a ringed forefinger. Khlit saw that the ring bore an emerald of great size.