by Harold Lamb
IV
The heart of Khan Mirai Tkha, great-grandson of Juchi, leader of the Golden Horde, was not light within him in spite of his successful raid on the Cossacks across the Dnieper. He sat in the sun, his legs crossed under him, his armor laid aside, stroking his black mustache and gazing moodily about the camp of the tribe.
There were many reasons why Khan Mirai should have been carefree, for he had rejoined the main encampment of the tribe with booty and slaves. The host of the Mirza Uztei-Kur, which the Khan was honoring with his presence, was located in a grassy basin, a mile or so in extent, surrounded by a ring of wooded hills.
Nothing better in the way of an encampment could have been desired. And the Khan’s own quarters, the leather and silk pavilion mounted on a wagon drawn by fifty horses, was richly furnished with Mongol draperies and Persian rugs.
But there was a thorn in Khan Mirai’s side—Khlit, the Cossack Wolf, who had followed his riders from the Dnieper far into the land of the Horde, past the Kartan Mountains where no Cossack had set foot before, was still in the vicinity, and, in spite of every stratagem the iniquitous brain of Khan Mirai could hit upon, was still unharmed. And he had set his mark upon the Tatars.
Wherefore, it would not need a shaman, or conjurer, to tell that the Khan was irked. For a Tatar lives by mares milk and flesh, and by fighting, and the Khan was visiting one of his subject tribes who looked to him to deal with the Cossack pest.
To add to his discomfort, that morning when he stepped from his pavilion he had seen seven crows fly across the encampment, and heard their croaking. Khan Mirai knew by this that some misfortune was not far away. It might be possible to ward off the misfortune by aid of the tribe shaman. If this pending misfortune were in any way connected with Khlit, it should be dealt with at once, by all the skill of the conjurer and the intelligence of the Khan, with Mirza Uztei-Kur.
The Khan saw the squat figure of the Mirza approaching him and made room on the wagon step for the leader of the tribe.
Uztei-Kur was more at ease on a horse’s black then on his bowlegs. He stood perhaps five feet in height, with heavy shoulders, a face broad and yellow as a full moon, and slanting beads for eyes. Unlike the Khan, Uztei-Kur was in mail and bore his scimitar. Men said he slept thus.
He did not greet his chief, merely pulling out a pipe which he filled from the Khan’s tobacco jar. A pitcher of soured mare’s milk had made up the other’s breakfast, and this Uztei-Kur emptied with several gulping swallows. Both were silent for a space, waiting for the other to speak.
“Have you news of the Wolf?” asked Khan Mirai at length, speaking what was on his mind.
“Aye,” muttered Uztei-Kur between his lips. “Yesterday we had news of Khlit who calls himself the Wolf. Truly, he was bred of the devil’s jackal. It was when we chased a stag in the woods to the west. As we passed under the brow of a cliff a heavy rock bounded down. Two were crushed and another had his backbone cracked, so we left him to die. The stag escaped us.”
“Did you see Khlit?” queried the Khan.
“Nay, who else could it be?” demanded Uztei-Kur, baring his teeth, which were pointed as a jackal’s.
His eye wandered over the crowded encampment and came to rest on his companion.
“Khlit is hanging around until he gets the woman he asked for. I have seen her. She is worthless to us, for she has the temper of a serpent and the fury of a tiger. None can touch her. Why not give Khlit what he wants and get rid of him?”
“Heart of a lizard!” Khan Mirai spat into the dust at his feet. “Know you not that Khlit is worth a hundred Alevnas to us? Make him slave and we can taunt the Cossacks without measure. He is a prize worth the sack of Garniv.”
“Then hunt him down,” growled the mirza, whose Mind could hold only one idea at once. “And call me not a lizard, Khan Mirai, if you would not find a lizard can sting. I have hunted Khlit for days, without finding more than his horses dung. Consult your shaman, whom you love as a camel loves a spring, and learn how you may snare the Wolf.”
The Khan puffed at his pipe. He was not of Tatar blood alone. He came of Mongol ancestors, and had the tall body and slit eyes of his kind. The mirza he looked on as a dog, to be whipped to obedience, who knew and cared nothing for the arts of the conjurer or the sacred books that had been part of the treasury of the Golden Horde.
“Today,” he said, not without hesitation, “I saw seven crows over the tribe. And I have heard that yesterday the shaman walked alone in the woods as he does when a battle is near. But what battle can come to pass here? And now the shaman wears his mask, another sign that he is disturbed.”
“Aye,” said Uztei-Kur without emotion, “the double-faced one sulks in his house today.”
“He can tell us,” decided the Khan, rising to his feet, “whether it will be possible to trap the Wolf. If so, we shall ask him how, and out of his wisdom which is allied to unseen potencies he will announce a trap. If he declares that the oracle believes we cannot trap the Wolf, then we will give up the girl, perhaps. But the shaman is very wise. He will devise a trap.”
Khan Mirai caused it to be known in the camp that they were going to consult the conjurer, and should be undisturbed. The Tatars were not inclined to disobey the command, for they held the conjurer in wholesome fear, and for the last day he had sulked and spoken to no one, besides wearing his mask, which was a bad omen.
Threading through sleeping camels, the two leaders came to the wagon-house of the man they sought, in a cleared space near one side of the camp. The pavilion was like the others, save for a narrow opening at the dome-shaped top and curious engravings around the leather sides, representing forms of animals and birds, with many crows.
Truly, Khan Mirai discovered, the shaman was sulking. For he called for many minutes at the entrance before the conjurer emerged, wrapped from head to foot in a red cloak, and wearing his mask.
V
Although Khan Mirai had consulted the conjurer many times before he never lost a feeling of awe when he stood before the dark entrance to the house, where so many strange images were hung from the walls. The wizard himself impressed the Khan, for he was a wizened little man, scarcely as high as the Tatar leader, although the latter was standing on a lower step. A peculiar smell, like that of dried poppies, crept into his nostrils and be turned his eyes away as the figure in the red cloak bent its mask in the likeness of a dog’s head upon him.
When he had made known his business and received the grudging assent of the shaman to enter, Khan Mirai stepped inside with Uztei-Kur, and, groping his way through the blackness, seated himself cross-legged upon some antelope skins.
“Tell us what we have come to know, Shaman,” he said, “concerning the Wolf, and you shall have sequins of gold to buy herbs and stag’s antlers.”
The shaman gave vent to a curious chuckling sound at these tidings, and for a space moved about in the darkness—for he had closed the leather flap over the door—making his preparations for the coming oracle.
Abruptly, he jerked the flap from the vent at the top of the pavilion, allowing a ray of sunlight to descend into the center of the house. In this light he stood revealed in all his conjuring attire. He wore his dog’s mask, but the red cloak was discarded, and a myriad of iron figures hung from his body. Iron snakes twined down his legs, iron horses in miniature hung from his arms, with tigers, jackals, birds, and fishes.
The cascade of little images covered him completely, and every move he made was accompanied by a loud clanking. In one hand he held a stick. Before him was placed a wooden drum.
Khan Mirai looked on with satisfaction and not a little awe, as at something he was accustomed to, but with which he was not entirely at ease. The mirza had drawn back into the shadows. Slowly at first, then more rapidly, the shaman began his ritual, every move being followed closely by the Khan.
With his wooden stick the conjurer beat methodically on the drum, facing first toward a huge pair of stag’s antlers on one side of the h
ouse, then toward an elephant’s head mounted in some fashion and stuffed into lifelike semblance, and then toward a serpent, similarly mounted, dimly to be seen in the semi-darkness.
As he proceeded, the cadence of blows on the drum became quicker, the shaman struck up a dance in which his iron cloak rattled and clanked, and accompanied himself with a muttered shrieking, looking now toward the vent in the top of the house. More and more rapidly he danced, wielding his drumstick and shrieking with the full strength of his lungs. As he did so, the Khan leaned forward breathlessly, his eyes fixed on the ridgepole which was visible through the opening.
When the clamor was at its utmost, the shaman suddenly whirled with a loud cry, and pointed to the opening at the top of the house. The Khan sprang to his feet, and as he did so the conjurer fell to the floor and lay motionless beside the drum.
“Did you see?” whispered Khan Mirai to the mirza. “The crow came and sat on the ridgepole. Never have I seen the shaman in such ecstasy. The prophecy will be, without doubt, more wonderful than ever.”
“For twenty summers,” returned Uztei-Kur disdainfully, “I have sat in the gloom and watched, and I have never seen any crow alight on the ridgepole. If it is indeed the great-grandfather of the ravens—”
“Hush,” whispered the Khan, “the shaman is returning to consciousness. It has taken only a moment for the message to reach him.”
Both men were silent as the conjurer stirred, moved his arms, and sat up. Crouching on his haunches, he drew his red cloak about him, and stared at them from behind the dog’s mask.
“I have heard,” he cried in a hoarse voice, “the words of the raven that has given of wisdom—to the first khans of the hinterland—to the great Genghis Khan—to Kublai Khan, lord of mountains—to Yussaf, prince of princes, from whom it came to the camp of Khan Mirai Tkha, great-grandson of Juchi, leader of the Golden Horde, at his summons. In my ears poured the wisdom greater than the locked books of the treasury of Pam, more just than the words of the Dalai Lama, he of the mountains.”
The conjurer stretched his hands before him as if clutching some imaginary object.
“The wisdom concerned the Wolf who follows the track of the Khan—it tells of a trap that may be set. This is the wisdom—the Wolf is cunning, but he is vain of his strength—Mirai Khan may go alone to where the rock fell from the mountain and seek for the slain stag. He will find the Wolf by the stag. He can tempt the Wolf into a trap. Out of his pride, the Wolf will come, and Tatar eyes shall see the Wolf ride into the encampment of Mirai Khan.”
VI
Now Mirai Khan, although he, like most of his people, held the shaman in awe, was no fool, or he would not have been leader of the Tatar riders. After turning over the words of the conjurer in his mind, he decided that after such a successful trance, the message of the raven must be unusually pregnant, wherefore it behooved him to follow the given advice, as his father and father’s father had done before him.
Yet because he was wary, he went to the spot Uztel-Kur named to him, where the rock had fallen from the cliff, mounted and armed. And he went stealthily, approaching through the wood, not from the plain, at a walk, eyes and ears alert for signs of danger. For the shaman had said he would find Khlit, by the stag.
He found time to wonder, as he went, why the stag should be lying in the wood. For Uztei-Kur had said plainly that the deer had escaped him. Khan Mirai was aware, however, that it pleased the shaman to cloak the wisdom of his words in riddles. He was prepared to find something else at the spot.
But he was not prepared to find the body of a dead Tatar, stiff in the grass, for he had forgotten what Uztel-Kur said, that one of the hunters had been crippled by the rock and left to die. By the body he halted warily, for he saw the rock, a boulder about the height of a short man’s belt. For many minutes Khan Mirai did not move. His gaze went from the body to the underbrush about him, and a frown gathered on his swarthy brows.
His keen ears had caught the sound of movement near him in the wood, just where he could not tell. Something was approaching, and the sound told him that the approach was gradual and quiet, not the careless trampling of a deer or wild horse. Khan Mirai reached back into his quiver, fitted arrow to bow, drew his small target over his left arm, and waited for the sound to materialize into view.
He had half expected it, yet he gave a soft grunt of surprise when a horse and rider pushed quickly through the undergrowth into the clear space by the boulder, and Khlit confronted him. The Cossack lounged in his saddle, as he guided his mount to within a few paces of the Tatar. In one hand he held a pistol, of Turkish design.
Khan Mirai had last seen Khlit when the Tatars tossed him bound into a tent to await torture at their pleasure, many years ago. Khlit had escaped then, because a reckless Cossack had ridden through the camp with another horse, at night, and released him, at the cost of his own life.
The Cossacks were surely devils, thought Khan Mirai, for they cared not for their lives in battle. Khlit was older now, but the Tatar did not mistake his scarred face and broad, erect figure.
Neither spoke, for to do so would be to give the other advantage. The Tatar had his bow bent and ready, but so was Khlit’s pistol. An unreliable weapon, but then the arrow might also miss its mark and Khan Mirai was in no mind to meet the onset of the Russian’s heavy steel and whirling saber. So each measured the other in silence, while their mounts pawed the turf and strove to get their, muzzles down to the grass. It was Khlit who broke the silence.
“Have you come to count your dead, Mirai Khan,” he said, “to look for a stag that was slain in a hunt? Have you seen one?”
“One Of our own was slain,” spoke Mirai Khan.
“Aye,” said Khlit grimly. “Here at your feet. Two others were slain at the same time. It was a good hunt. Does it please you? Every day some of the hunted do not return to camp. For I, Khlit, am a hunter.”
“Your will be the hunt, Khlit” returned Khan Mirai. “If not today, very soon. A prophecy has been uttered, that I would find you here, and that you shall be brought to the encampment. The first part has come true, soon the other will be true.”
“Who spoke the prophecy?” asked Khlit with interest.
“A shaman, in holy convulsions. His words are truth, O caphar, more true than an oath you swear on that little gold ornament you carry.”
The Cossack knew Khan Mirai referred to the cross he wore around his neck.
“Was not my promise true also?” he asked. “Eh, that death should sting the tribe like a wasp, if the girl were not given back to me?”
The Tatar scowled.
“Why is Khlit, he of the Curved Saber, eager to gain a woman?” he said contemptuously. “The girl is scarce grown, and with a temper like a vixen.”
“Harken, Khan Mirai,” said Khlit. “The woman is not for me. Years ago when you had bound me, a Cossack rode through your camp and loosed me, being slain in the doing. His son I have made my son. And his son desires the girl Alevna for wife. Wherefore I have come for her, to pay the debt I owe.”
Khan Mirai considered these words and saw a light. Verily, the shaman was potent beyond all foreseeing. For he had told the Tatar that Khlit might be tricked through his pride. And there was the solution.
Khlit, so reasoned the Tatar, was under blood debt to free the girl. So closely was Alevna guarded in one of the wooden houses—none except the Khan and her guards knew which—that it would not be possible to rescue her, even if Khlit were able to gain the camp. So Khlit, failing to terrify him, Khan Mirai, must buy her at a price, and that price should be himself. Gladly would the Tatar surrender a thousand Alevnas to see the Cossack bound before him.
“So, you have come to pay a debt, Khlit?” he asked, watching the Cossack narrowly. “Good! I swear to you that there is but one price that will buy Alevna. If you would clear your debt, you must buy the girl with yourself. Do that, and Alevna shall choose a horse and ride free into the steppe.”
Khlit considered this with ben
t brows.
“The debt must be paid,” he said. “But I do not trust you. When I see with my own eyes Alevna ride free into the steppe and none follow her, I shall be ready to say that you will receive your price”—he hesitated only for a moment—“and then I will ride into the encampment in the plain. This is how it may be done.
“Soon, I shall light two fires on the hills to the west. When you see two smokes arise late in the afternoon give Alevna a good horse. I shall watch her go from the camp past the hill out to the steppe and lose herself to view. Think not to trick me. Then, before the sun kisses earth and the blackbird night flies over us, I will ride into your camp, as the father of Menelitza rode when he lost his life.”
The Tatar studied his foe.
“Do you swear that on the gold token?” he asked finally.
Khlit held up the miniature cross in his left hand.
“I swear it,” he growled. “Devil take it, when did Khlit break his word?”
Khan Mirai knew that the Cossack’s promise was better than other men’s. Moreover caphars did not lightly, strange as it seemed, perjure themselves when they swore an oath on their token. When the Tatar remembered the prophecy of the shaman he felt elated. The conjurer had sworn that Khlit would ride into the camp. Had not the first part of the prophecy come true?
Yes, Khan Mirai thought that the dice of the gods were falling as he wished. To part with the girl was a slight price to pay for the chance—the probability—that Khlit would do as he promised. Of course the Cossack might come galloping with drawn sword. Khan Mirai expected this. But he would be overpowered. The thought of Khlit bound before him settled the question.
“It shall be as you say,” he snarled, his eyes alight. “I shall look for the smoke.”
“Aye,” said Khlit, “so be it.”
The parting of the two warriors was not lightly accomplished. Each urged his horse slowly backward, watching the other. It was not until they were a good bowshot apart that Khlit wheeled his mount and disappeared into the wood that had sheltered him so long from the eyes of the Tatar riders.