Warriors of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  At a sudden silence which fell upon the worshipers she lifted her head for the first time.

  Coming from the shrine of the elder gods she saw a massive elephant, appareled for war, an armored plate on his chest, sword blades fastened to his tusks, his ears and trunk painted a bright orange and leather sheets strapped to his sides. And, seeing, she gave a low cry.

  “Asil Rumi!”

  The elephant was advancing more swiftly than it seemed at first, his great ears stretched out, his small eyes shifting. On his back was the battle howdah. Behind his head perched the mahout wearing a shirt of mail. In the howdah were two figures that stared upon the crowd.

  Asil Rumi advanced, interested, even excited, by the throng of men. Schooled to warfare, he followed obediently the instructions of his native master, scenting something unwonted before him. Those nearest gave back hastily.

  For a space the throng believed that the elephant was running amuck. Never before had man or beast interfered with the progress of the god. But as Asil Rumi veered onward and the leading pullers at the ropes were forced to scramble aside an angry murmur went up.

  Then the voice of Kurral rang out.

  “Infidels!” he cried. “Those upon the elephant are men of Matap Rao.”

  The murmur increased to a shout, in which the shrill cries of the women mingled.

  “Blasphemers! Profaners of Jagannath! Slay them!” Nagir Jan raised his arms in anger.

  “Defend the god!” he shouted. “Turn the elephant aside.”

  Already some men had thrust at Asil Rumi with sticks and spears. The elephant rumbled deep within his bulk. His wrinkled head shook and tossed. His trunk lifted and his eyes became inflamed. He pushed on steadily.

  A priest stepped into his path and slashed at his trunk with a dagger.

  Asil Rumi switched his trunk aside, and smote the man with it. The priest fell back, his skull shattered. A soldier cast a javelin which clanged against the animal's breastplate.

  Angered, the elephant rushed the man, caught him in his trunk and cast him underfoot. A huge foot descended on the soldier, and the man lay where he had fallen, a broken mass of bones from which oozed blood.

  Now Asil Rumi trumpeted fiercely. He tasted battle and glanced around for a fresh foe.

  The bulk of the towering car caught his eye. With a quick rush the elephant pressed between the ropes, moving swiftly for all his size and weight.

  The clamor increased. Men dashed at the beast, seeking to penetrate his armor with their weapons; but more hung back. For from on the howdah a helmeted archer had begun to discharge arrows that smote down the leaders of the crowd. The mahout prodded Asil Rumi forward.

  The elephant, nothing loath, placed his armored head full against the car. For a moment the pressure of the crowd behind the wooden edifice impelled it against the animal. Asil Rumi uttered a harsh, grating cry and bent his legs into the ground.

  He leaned his weight against the car. The wooden wheels of Jagannath creaked, then turned loosely in the sand. The car of the god had stopped. A shout of dismay went up.

  Then the mahout tugged with his hook at the head of Asil Rumi. Obedient, even in his growing anger inflamed by minor wounds, the elephant placed one forefoot on the shelving front of the car. The rudely constructed wood gave way and the mass of the car sank with a jar upon the ground, broken loose from the support of the front wheels.

  By now the mob was fully aroused. Arrows and javelins flew against the leather protection of the animal and his leather-like skin, wrinkled and aged to the hardness of rhinoceros hide.

  A shaft struck the leg of the native mahout and a spear caught in his groin under the armor. He shivered, but retained his seat. Seeing this, Khlit clambered over the front of the howdah to the man's side.

  “Make the elephant kneel!” he cried.

  Asil Rumi knelt, and the forepart of the car splintered under the weight of two massive knees. It fell lower. Now Asil Rumi was passive for a brief moment, and Sawal Das redoubled his efforts, seeking to prevent the priests with knives from hamstringing the beast.

  “Come, Retha!” cried Khlit, kneeling and holding fast to the headband beside the failing native.

  The woman was now on a level with him. She understood not his words, but his meaning was plain. The shock to the car had dislodged many of the men upon it.

  The temple women clutched at her, but she avoided them. She poised her slender body for the leap.

  “Slay the woman!” cried Kurral, scrambling toward her.

  A powerful Bhil perched beside the head of the elephant and slashed once with his scimitar. The blow half-severed the mahout's head from the body. Before he could strike again Khlit had knocked him backward.

  Retha sprang forward, and the Cossack caught her with his free arm, drawing back as Kurral leaped, knife in hand. The priest missed the woman. The next instant his body slipped back, a feathered shaft from the bow of Sawal Das projecting from his chest.

  “Ho—Kurral—your death is worthy of you,” chanted the archer. “Gully jackal, scavenger dog—”

  His voice trailed off in a gurgle. And Khlit and the girl were flung back against the howdah. Asil Rumi, maddened by his wounds and no longer hearing the voice of his master, started erect.

  He tossed his great head, reddened with blood. His trumpeting changed to a hoarse scream. The knives of his assailants had hurt him sorely.

  The sword blades upon the tusks had been broken off against the car. The leather armor was cut and slashed. Spears, stuck in the flanks of the elephant, acted as irritants. His trunk—a most sensitive member—was injured, and his neck bleeding.

  While Khlit and Retha clung beside the body of the mahout, Asil Rumi shrilled his anger at the throng of his enemies. He broke crashing from the ruins of the car wherein lay the unattended figure of Jagannath, and plunged into the crowd. Weaving his head—its paint besmirched by blood—Asil Rumi raced forward.

  He rushed onward until no more of his tormentors stood in his path. Then the elephant hesitated, and headed toward the trail up the hill which led down to his quarters at Thaneswar.

  “Harken,” said a weak voice from the howdah.

  Khlit peered up and saw the archer's face strangely pale.

  “Asil Rumi will run,” said Sawal Das, “until he sees the body of the native fall. Hold the mahout firmly.”

  A few foot soldiers had run after the elephant in a half-hearted fashion. There were no horsemen in the crowd, and few cared to follow the track of the great beast afoot. Asil Rumi had struck terror into the worshipers.

  His appearance and the devastation he had wrought had been that of no ordinary elephant. Among the Hindus lingered the memory of the elder gods of the ruins from which Asil Rumi had so abruptly emerged. And some among them reflected that Vishnu, highest of the gods, bore an elephant head.

  So had the deaths inflicted by Asil Rumi stirred their fears.

  The sun had set, and the crimson of the western sky was fading to purple. The calm of twilight hung upon the forest through which Asil Rumi paced, following the trail. A flutter of night birds arose at his presence, and a prowling leopard slunk away at the angry mutter of the elephant, knowing that Asil Rumi was enraged and that an angry elephant was monarch of whatsoever path he chose to follow.

  Again came the voice of Sawal Das, weaker now.

  “My heart is warm that the Lotus Face is saved for my lord,” it said—neither Khlit nor the girl dared to look up from their precarious perch where the branches of overhanging cypresses swept.

  “An arrow—” the voice failed—“tell the Rawul how Sawal Das fought—for my spirit goes after the mahout—”

  A moment later a branch caught the howdah and swept it to earth. Retha and Khlit clung tighter to the head-straps, pressing their bodies against the broad back of Asil Rumi. Khlit did not release his grasp on the dead native.

  The wind of their passage swept past their ears; the labored breath of the old elephant smote their nostrils pun
gently. Ferns scraped their shoulders. They did not look up.

  It was dark by now, and still Asil paced onward.

  Dawn was breaking and a warm wind had sprung up when Matap Rao and Abdul Dost with the leaders of the Rinthambur clan passed the boundary tower of Thaneswar. A half-thousand armed men followed them, but few were abreast of them, for they had ridden steadily throughout the night, not sparing their horses.

  Dawn showed the anxious chieftain the unbroken stretch of the Thaneswar forest through which he had passed on his bridal journey. He did not look at those with him, but pressed onward.

  So it happened that Rawul Matap Rao and two of the best mounted of the Rinthambur riders were alone when they emerged into a glade where a path from Thaneswar crossed the main trail. And here they reined in their spent horses with a shout.

  In the path lay the body of a native. Over the dead man stood the giant elephant, caked with mud and dried blood, his small eyes closed and his warlike finery stained and torn. And beside the elephant stood Khlit and Retha.

  What followed was swift in coming to pass. After a brief embrace the Rawul left his bride to be escorted back to Rinthambur by Khlit and Abdul Dost at the head of a detail of horsemen while he and the Rinthambur men wrested Thaneswar from the priests.

  It was a different matter this, from the assault upon the palace by Nagir Jan, and the followers of the temple were forced to give way before the onset of trained warriors.

  The religious fervor of the Kukushetra men had suffered by the misfortune that befell their god before the ruins, and the fighting was soon at an end.

  But it was not until Matap Rao was again in Thaneswar with Retha that Khlit and Abdul Dost turned their horses' heads from the palace. Peace had fallen upon the province again, for Matap Rao had sent a message to the shrine of Puri, and the high priests of Vishnu, among whom the ambitions of Nagir Jan had found no favor, had judged that Nagir Jan had made wrong use of his power and sent another to be head of the Kukushetra temple.

  “Aye, and men whispered that there was a tale that the mad beast of the ruins was the incarnate spirit of an older god,” laughed Abdul Dost, who wore new finery of armor and rode a fine horse—the Rawul had been generous. “Such are the fears of fools and infidels.”

  Khlit, who rode his old pony, tugged his beard, his eyes grave. “It was not the false gods,” he said decidedly, “that saved Matap Rao his wife. It was verily a warrior—an old warrior. But how can the Rawul reward him.”

  Abdul Dost glanced at Khlit curiously.

  “Nay,” he smiled; “you are the one. You are a leader of men, even of the Rawul and his kind—as I said to them. Belittle not the gratitude of the chieftain. He would have kept you at his right hand, in honor. But you will not.”

  “Because I am not the one.”

  “Sawal Das?”

  “Somewhat perhaps.”

  Khlit's voice roughened and his eyes became moody.

  “Asil Rumi is the one. Truly never have I seen a fighter such as he. Yet Asil Rumi is old. Soon he will die. Where is his reward?” Whereupon Khlit shook his broad shoulders, tightened his rein and broke into a gallop. Abdul Dost frowned, pondering. He shook his handsome head. Then his brow cleared and he spurred after his friend.

  The Masterpiece of Death

  In the dust of the crossroads are marks of many feet. Some have come from the desert to the well; some have passed through the jungle—and they are weary. Some there are that have passed under the spur of fear and others follow after these.

  He who is keen of eye will read the tale that is written in the dust of the crossroad. He who is dull and heavy with sleep—he sees the mark of a snake in the sand and thinks it a trailing rope.

  But a snake has crossed the road.

  Beside the road, in the jungle, a grave is dug for the one who is blind of eye, and dull.

  This is the tale of the crossroad, and it is true.

  Jhond, the money-carrier, walked slowly, aiding his tired feet with his staff. Behind him plodded a mule weighted with heavy saddlebags. The shadows were lengthening across the shimmering heat of the highway. And the mule lagged on its halter, sensing the approach of evening and a halt under the cypress trees that lined a nearby water course.

  This was on the road that entered the Ghar Pass, at the headwaters of the Jumna River in Pawundur province. In the accounts of the great vizier, master of the treasury of Jahangir, Mogul of Hindustan, the Pawundur province was written down as the most northeastern of Hindustan proper, and was noted as lawless. All this being in the year of our Lord 1609.

  Obedient perhaps to the mute urging of his mule, Jhond turned into the cypress nullah, followed by his dog, a nondescript of brown skin and visible bones, a byproduct of the Delhi bazaar and a beneficiary of the kindliness of aged Jhond, who was scarcely less beggarly or less sharp and furtive of eye.

  Those who were walking beside the money-carrier guided him down the nullah away from the road to a cleared space. They were chance wayfarers, not guards, for the men of Jhond's profession traveled alone. Their pride of caste rendered large sums safe in their keeping and their poor garb made them safe from ordinary thieves.

  Jhond was tired for he had made a long stage on an important mission. He was glad that the Muslim merchants—they were four—who had caught up with him at the entrance of the Ghar knew the way. One who had gone ahead awaited their coming in the glade beside a ditch, wherein two coolies sat.

  Two of the merchants led him to a brook. He was thirsty. The fourth had lingered behind to see that no thieves had marked their passage from the main road. The dog whined.

  “Drink,” said one. “Here is the place.”

  “Aye,” said Jhond and knelt.

  A strip of cloth passed over his eyes and tightened around his neck. One of the men at his side gripped both his arms. While Jhond was held thus, the noose closed until he could no longer breathe. The dog ran about in little circles, whining and barking at the men.

  When there was no longer any life in Jhond, his body was mutilated by kicks in the vital parts and cast into the ditch. The two filled in the ditch with fresh earth. This done, a fire was lighted on the grave so that the upturned earth should be concealed.

  Not until then did the watch return from the high road with the word that they had not been seen. The six men went to the mule and ransacked the heavy leather sacks. They had, before this, searched the grimy clothing of the money-carrier and found nothing.

  Nor was there gold or silver in the sacks; nothing but meal and a few pieces of cloth. Jhond, the money-carrier, had not had anything of value about him; nothing except the mule. This was strange.

  But fate also was strange. And the men who had slain him were accustomed to the vagaries of fate. Besides, they had the mule. And they would have slain for less.

  An owl hooted in the gathering darkness. Whereupon the men chattered anxiously together. Again came the cry of the owl. This time they took up their belongings, loaded them upon the animal and departed. They were heedful of omens.

  But before they went they killed the dog by a blow on the skull with a stick. Otherwise the mourning beast might have dug into the grave or attracted other men to the spot.

  So when they had gone there was nothing upon the spot where Jhond had planned to camp for the night: nothing, that is, except the dead dog and the embers of the fire, which soon went out.

  Which was—all of it—as the six men dressed as merchants had planned.

  “And after Jhond,” explained the elegant Nazir u'din Mustafa Mirza, “was sent one named Chutter.”

  Mustafa Mirza—a tall man with narrow eyes and a thin beard, surnamed “the Moghuli”—leaned back upon the carpet which was spread on the balcony, halfway down into the well. The well was in the outer court of the Pawundur palace and it provided a grateful shade for those who wished to escape the heat that beat into the sun-dried clay of the courtyard.

  “Chutter,” he said, “was a trusted servant of my master.
Alas! Few may be trusted in this land of dust and wind and thorns and tangled ferns. But my master, the ameer, trusted Chutter.”

  He inserted a portion of betel nut in his crimson-stained mouth and yawned, expelling thereafter the wind from his stomach after the manner of a beast. For Mustafa Mirza was sure of the interest of his two listeners. He had a rare tale to tell and it concerned them.

  Idly he fingered the turquoise chain at his scrawny throat and gazed attentively into the tiny mirror upon a ring which ornamented a none-too-clean thumb. He was weaponless, yet his tunic was rich with spoil, taken after the manner of the conquering Muslims from the Hindu merchants and their women.

  “It was perhaps two moons ago during the festival of Miriam that Chutter was sent to the pass of Ghar, to the tower of Ghar,” he resumed. “And no trace—not so much as a sandal or the skin of his mule—had we found of the money-carrier Jhond. It was said that the half-eaten body of his dog was seen in a nullah where an owl feasted. Ho! Yet where the dog was Jhond was not. He may have camped there. Some ashes were seen. I know not.”

  “What of Chutter?” asked one of the listeners.

  “Aye, Chutter. A slave. A dog of many fathers. He was mounted on a good horse. A pity, that; for the horse also was lost. He rode from here toward Ghar. An armed trooper followed him. That was at my bidding. Although my master, the ameer—may his shadow be long on the land of Pawundur—trusted Chutter, yet I trusted not the child of a Gentu, or Hindu.”

  He chewed at the betel and spat, after picking his teeth. “Nevertheless it availed not. After sunset one day the trooper thought he heard a scream, choked off in the middle—thus.” Mustafa Mirza snarled shrilly, then coughed gutturally. “The rider put spurs to his horse, for Chutter, the Gentu dog, was a bare double bowshot ahead. He saw lying upon the road a man clothed like a merchant of Samarkand. The man was writhing in a fit and foam was on his lips. So the trooper dismounted.

  “The sick man, however, was not Chutter. And when the trooper reined forward again there was naught to be seen on the road save many footprints in the dirt. There was a deep pool near at hand. The man saw some shadows moving in the brush nearby and stayed not to look twice. He had a fear—a heavy fear.”