by Harold Lamb
"Patience! " he muttered. "Nay, I have no more. Thy fingers would lift the horns from a bull. Now give heed. Thou hast seen the farangi merchant with the red beard. He rides to Sarai, as doth Yashim, with the next caravan. He hath with him only one swordsman, yet he bears heavy chests. He bath talked with Yashim, yet he buys no slaves. Do thou pry out what is in those chests, 0 nimble of fingers and wit!"
"Akh! Is that work for me?"
"On the book of the bakshi it is written that this Tron is a jewel merchant. Still he swears that he hath upon him only precious stones to the worth of a single horse. The chests are locked."
Crawling away from the yurt, Mardi Dobro gained the gate and stood up, chuckling to himself. After a glance at the stars to learn the hour, he retraced his way to Ku Yuan's house and found the Cathayan reading by an oil lamp.
"There is a letter," the shaman said, "to be written to the khan."
He himself could write prayers to sell to the ignorant. But a message to his master was another matter, calling for deft brushwork in the Mongol characters.
"By courier or pigeon?"
"By pigeon. It must go swiftly to the camp."
Ku Yuan brought out a small square of rice paper, a slender brush, and a tablet of ink.
"To the Lord of the West and the East," the shaman dictated, "from the humble reader of omens at the sea gate of Tana, these tidings. The wolves of Islam are gathering in packs about his city of Sarai, and they will hunt before the breaking of the ice. Let the khan turn his eyes to the golden domes of his city. His men there are few, the wolves many. Now, Master Ku, let me see thee make thy mark below."
Mardi Dobro could not read the lines of Mongol characters, but he knew the Cathayan's mark. Satisfied on this point, the shaman snatched up the rice paper, folded it, and rolled it into a tiny silver cylinder. He did not let the cylinder out of his hand until he had fastened it over the claw of a pigeon that he took from a cage hearing a special mark.
Going out into the darkness, he tossed the pigeon up and stood to watch it circle up against the sky. His keen eyes saw it rise and head to the south and west. Then he yawned and bethought him of sleep. Four days later the great caravan from Tana to Sarai was on the road. They had halted for the night in the serai at the beginning of the desert that stretched as far as the rivers of Sarai.
Tron, Nial, and the two followers had quartered their ponies in a corner of the enclosure. They bought hay for the beasts and brush and dried dung for a fire. The merchant, who knew the cold of the snow plain, had secured for Nial and himself two chabans-long sheepskin coats, with hoods that could be drawn over their heads and sleeves that hung down to their knees. Wolfskin caps and boots of soft greased leather kept them warm.
The walls sheltered them from the north wind. A score of fires like their own illumined the dark masses of camels kneeling by their loads, the lines of ponies crowded together, and the throngs of men: helmeted Tatar guards who watched, like the indifferent sentinels of purgatory, over the mingled cattle drivers, merchants, and princely envoys seeking the road to Cathay; blue-cloaked Iranis with towering turbans, shivering in the northern air; sallow Armenians gabbling in a tongue of their own; and the strutting bulk of pockmarked Yashim, the Bokharian slave dealer, who wore three coats and gave commands to a hundred wild Turkoman weapon men who served as guards for his women freight, and who had elbowed a Khotenese jade dealer out of the best place in the serai. Through this encampment moved Mardi Dobro in his red robe, alert as a dog.
After supper, while the Turkomans were noisily making the night prayer and the fires had died down to embers, Tron went over to talk with the Armenians, leaving Nial to watch the packs.
A half moon lighted the serai, and the swordsman retired to the angle of the wall, taking a sheepskin and the jewel sack with him. Here he could stretch out in the darkness and see all who passed in the haze of moonlight.
The Greek servant was snoring among the packs, wrapped up in a rug, and the guide had gone to gossip with friends. For a time Nial watched the bearded faces gathered about the dying fires. A figure would rise, now and then, and cough and come to the well near Nial to drink. Drawing the sheepskin over his legs, he turned over on his back, picking out among the stars the Flying Geese, with the Bear.
How long the figure had been bending over the packs he did not know. Raising himself on an elbow, he watched the prowler examining Tron's chests, and he heard the clink of metal thrust into a lock. The figure wore a hooded chaban like his own.
Taking his sheathed sword in one hand, Nial got to his knees and leaped forward silently. The figure in the white chaban started back, but Nial's free hand closed on the visitor's arm.
"Hai, thief!" he grunted.
A knife flickered under his eyes, and he bent his body aside swiftly as the blade ripped into the folds of his heavy coat. He did not loose his hold of the intruder and, before the knife could strike again, he swept the heavy hilt of his sword down on the other's wrist. With a sharp moan of pain his antagonist let the dagger fall.
Taking the other's wrists in his right hand-for the slender strength of the thief was no match for his own-Nial thrust the hood of the chaban back. He looked down upon a woman's heavy hair, bound by a silver band, and a young face, tensed in pain. Tears trickled from the closed eyes.
"Yah bint," he cried softly. "0 girl, what is this?"
From half-closed lids her eyes searched his face. Nial was aware of the scent of jessamine oil. He had not seen her before, upon the road or in the serai, and certainly he had seen none so fair as she.
Instinctively he relaxed his grasp, knowing that he must be hurting her, although her heavy sleeve had broken the force of his blow. He wondered what she might be and whether she understood Arabic.
"Who art thou," he asked again, "to steal in a corner?"
This time she answered swiftly-
"Hush, thou!" And then, imploringly, "0 my lord, master of swordsmen, I did not steal. Nay, I was looking only at the strange boxes."
"And their locks," said Nial, who had met other thieves upon other roads.
He set his foot upon the dagger, but he wondered again what girl of the steppes could have hair like that, and how she came to be loose, unveiled.
Most of the travelers in the serai were Moslems, and even Yashim, the slave dealer, carried his women in camel hampers.
"Nothing is harmed, my lord," she whispered, "and it would shame me to be dragged before the guards."
"What is thy name?"
She glanced from right to left.
"Shedda it is, and my lord hath hurt my arm."
Bending down, Nial pushed the sleeve back from her slender wrist, finding upon it a heavy band of silver. There was writing upon the silver of a kind unknown to him. As he peered at it the girl Shedda suddenly wrenched her arm free. Before he could seize her again she had darted among the piled-up bales between the fires. He heard a low laugh in the shadows.
Nial knew better than to try to follow; for a woman like Shedda would have men within call, and the men would have arms. And he had a mind to let her go. He picked up the dagger, and then remembered the jewel sack he had left in the corner.
Hastily he went and felt in the sheepskin. The sack with its barley and precious stones was gone.
Nial drew a long breath and silently cursed himself as he listened and heard only the steady snoring of the Greek. So the girl had tricked him, drawing him out of his covert while another, who must have known what to look for, had carried off the sack. But then, why had she struck at him with a knife? For he who drew steel in a serai must be ready for steel in return. Nial turned away and sought Tron among the blanketed traders.
"I have lost the sack, your sack," he said bluntly.
With a cry the Genoese sprang up and hastened back to their corner.
"Now tell me-" he whispered. "Ah, what in Satan's name?"
Upon the topmost pack of their baggage lay the leather sack, tied as usual. Tron snatched it up and thru
st his hand within it. Then he shrugged his shoulders. The barley was there but every jewel had been taken out. He listened intently to Nial's account of the theft.
"Shedda!" he muttered. "Who moves like a panther and hath fire-red hair?"
"Red or gold."
"Yashim's slave." Tron remembered the courtyard in Tana. "A Circassian wench who will serve one man faithfully and draw blood or gold from all others. Eh, she led you about like a sheep. And this is your skill, to be plucked by caravan thieves."
"The fault is mine," Nial agreed quietly. "And if I can, I will make it good."
"A lordly pledge from a beggar."
"Yet," Nial added, "will I listen to no abuse."
The Genoese snarled, but put a rein upon his tongue and sought his sleeping furs. Both of them knew it would be useless to complain to the Tatar guards of the serai without witnesses to back their tale. A dagger gave no proof, and Shedda had not carried off the sack. To go to Yashim would be worse than useless. Only Tron knew the amount of his loss.
But within the week he discovered that the young swordsman, who had been tricked by a girl, could hold his own against men.
They were passing over a bare hollow, where a stagnant salt lake was bordered by white crustations, and the wind and the sun had swept the sand clear of snow. Red sandstone buttes towered over the hollow.
That day Tron's cavalcade was in company with the Armenians and the envoy from Persia. As all of them rode horses, they had drawn a little ahead of Yashim's kafila and the other laden camels, the horses making better going in the snow. A squad of ten Tatar warriors accompanied the envoy, who had besides a score of his own followers, nobles and servants. From the rock pinnacles on their flank a cloud of horsemen swept down upon them without warning of any kind.
Yelling like demons of the wastes, the raiders raced toward the caravan track. They numbered several score, perhaps a hundred, and they carried lances with tufts of horsehair beneath the points. They bestrode shaggy ponies and were so wrapped in dark skins and leather that they seemed to be animated beasts, tearing in for the kill.
In the caravan the Armenians huddled together like sheep, while the servants shrieked in terror. Only the Tatars, who had been half asleep until then, acted in silence. Their squad came together at a single command. The riders drew bows from their hip cases, strung them and sent shaft after shaft whirring into the raiders.
Separating to escape the deadly arrows, the nomads drove at the ends of the caravan. Some Armenians, kneeling in helpless terror, were ridden down, lanced or clubbed, to writhe on the ground.
Tron, pale but calm enough, had urged his horse toward the Persian prince, while the envoy's escort snatched out their weapons, crying upon Allah. Nial had got his great shield on his arm and had drawn his sword, wishing heartily for a good charger between his knees instead of the hired pony.
"What devils are these?" he asked the Genoese.
"Tribesmen. Nogais raiding after the winter-ha!"
The raiders plunged in among the Persian horsemen, stabbing with their light lances and hacking with their short, curved swords. Horses wheeled and reared, as iron crashed upon leather shields and a man screamed.
Nial drove his pony into the mass of them. His shield was proof against the lance points, and his long sword slashed over the shorter sabers of the nomads. He turned slowly in a half circle, upon his shield side, checking the jumps of his startled pony and beating off the tribesmen who rushed him. They drew back before the steady lashing of his sword, and the Persian swordsmen formed around him.
"char-ghar-ghar!"
The Nogais clamored like gulls, swooping about their prey. But their round leather shields broke under the weapons of the warriors of the caravan, and they had no heart for a hand-to-hand fight. When saddles began to empty they hung back, and the Tatar guards, who had cleared their end of the skirmish, sent a volley of arrows among them that tore through furs and leather like paper. The Nogais turned away, snarling.
Nial had watched them with steady eyes. He had marked a tall bay horse with a fine head. As they drew away he urged his pony forward, parried the slash of a saber, and came knee to knee with the rider of the bay horse. The man tried to shorten his lance, then reached instead for a knife.
They were too close together for a sword thrust, but Nial smashed the tribesman between the eyes with the pommel of his sword before the knife could touch him. The man reeled from the saddle. Nial caught the reins he let fall and turned swiftly to rejoin his friends of the caravan.
"Kai!" cried a Tatar who had watched him. "The boy bath taken a horse from his enemy. That was done like a man."
By the time Nial had mounted his new charger, the raiders had withdrawn beyond reach of the Tatar arrows. They hovered before the rocks, shouting and whipping up their courage for a fresh charge, when Yashim's kafila hastened up, attracted by the sound of fighting.
The Turkoman warriors raced their ponies forward to snatch spoil from whichever side might have had the worst of it. They turned upon the Nogais, who fled like wild dogs before a wolf pack. The men of the caravan sheathed their weapons and went to examine the wounded and claim the spoil upon the ground. Many came to look at Nial's prize, saying that it was a Kabarda, a racing breed.
"Eh," said Paolo Tron, "you have skill with a sword, Messer Nial. We can get forty byzants for the horse in Sarai."
"Here-" Nial laughed-"'tis better to have a horse than forty byzants."
Flushed with excitement, he examined the saddle, which had worn silver work upon the horn and the short shovel-stirrups. He did not heed Yashim's camels that paced past him with creaking loads, until a soft voice called to him:
"0 lord of swordsmen, what need hast thou of a little dagger? Give it back, I pray. In the garden of Mahmoud the Blind, the horsedealer-" the camel had passed with its screened hamper-"in Sarai."
Nial recognized Shedda's voice. He had kept the dagger, a slender thing of pliant steel inlaid with a gold inscription, in his wallet. And she dared ask for it!
"Nay," he called after the voice, "even an ass will not drink twice of bitter water."
Paolo Tron had faced serai thieves and tribesmen with cool courage; but now, with only the open road ahead of him, he became ill at ease.
"In two days," he told Nial, "we shall be over the rivers, if the ice holds."
They were coming out of the barren land to a rolling plain where villages nestled in the hollows, and Tron decided to push ahead of the others. The road itself became crowded. Trains of fur-laden sledges came in from the North, and immense herds of horses and cattle appeared out of the plain.
Once Tron's band had to draw aside when a high-pitched shout echoed down the line of caravans. Nial saw a rider go past on a white horse, dark with sweat and mud. The man was plying his short whip as a racer does to keep up a horse's pace at the finish. He wore no furs or armor and carried no weapons.
His stooped body was bound tight in oiled leather, and bands covered his forehead and mouth, while silver bells chimed on his girdle. With a cry, "Make way," and a thudding of hoofs, he was gone.
"A courier of the khan," Tron explained, as they turned back into the road. "He can take the road from a prince."
"He comes from the great khan?"
"Messer Nial, little know you of what lies before you. The great khan, Kublai, hath his city at Kambalu in the far land of Cathay, which is a year's journey to the edge of the world. Ha, so! 'Tis under the very rising of the sun, and no man of Christendom hath seen it, or hath lived to tell of it again."
"Yet Sarai-"
"Is the city of Barka Khan. He rules the Golden Horde, which is here upon the threshold of the East. Aye, he is master from Christendom to the Roof of the World, where even the valleys lie above the cloud level. But content you, young warrior. For if your king of England were here in this land, he might serve Barka Khan as Master of the Herds, no more. For the Tatars who came out of Cathay have overthrown all that lay in their path. They have divided
into different Hordes. But in Sarai Barka Khan hath stored the treasures stripped from a hundred palaces."
"What manner of man is he?"
Tron glanced about him and shook his head.
"Guard your words! Even in Sarai there will be men who know our speech. They are the spies of the Golden Horde. As for the khan, he is a man of great courage, who is ever with the army. For the present he is away, at war with the I1-khan in the south. Yet men say that Barka Khan often rides through his lands with his face hidden. He listens to the talk in serais and taverns, and marks down here a man to be slain, and there one to be tortured for information. So it is well to see much, and say little."
At the bank of the first river the merchant reined in and pointed. The dark road led across a two-mile-wide sweep of glistening white. Ships drawn up for the winter on the far shore looked like specks. A line of men and beasts threaded over the frozen breast of the great river, all going east.
"The first," Tron muttered. "Already, perhaps, the ice hath gone out of its mouth, down in the heart of the sands."
And Nial knew that when the ice broke there would be no crossing the mighty stream for weeks.
"Nay, lords," quoth a high voice behind them, "this is the second gate, where the wise turn back."
On a shaggy riding camel, Mardi Dobro grinned at them, perched sidewise on a roped quilt. And he leaned down to hold out an empty begging bowl to them.
"Away!" Tron snarled. "I will pay nothing."
"Look beyond the gate, 0 lord of nothing. The wolves are sitting on their haunches, the vultures are hovering in the air. I have eyes to see!"
In spite of himself Tron glanced around, and Mardi Dobro struck his camel, urging it past them.
"Ye may see nothing," he cried over his shoulder, "but they are there."
"A mad mountebank," the Genoese muttered.
The next day they crossed a second, smaller river. Climbing the eastern bank, Nial halted with an exclamation. The dark line of the road stretched straight to the east, between twin lakes. Far in the distance he made out a gray wall, dwarfed by the immense white wall of mountains behind it.