by Harold Lamb
“The monastery,” growled the hetman. “The monastery!” shouted others, and the assembly cried its assent.
Khlit wasted no time.
“So be it—the monastery,” he snarled. “But one fit for a warrior. Tell your leader that Khlit has gone—tell the Koshevoi Ataman that he of the Curved Saber has sought a place where no other Cossacks have been. Get back to your kennels, dogs!”
Still fuming, he wheeled to the hetman and drew out his whip.
“You have put the old wolf from the pack;” he said bitterly, “and you will find many jackals among the pack. When you tell the Koshevoi Ataman what you have done, he will send for me. But a wolf does not run with jackals. Rather, he goes alone until he has silenced the whimpering of the jackals. Hey, alone!”
Before the others could respond or move, the veteran Cossack had swung his horse from the throng. Leaving the winding trail to the monastery, he darted forward down the slope of the mountain. It was not long before he was lost to view in the trees.
The chimes had ceased their tocsin when the Cossacks again caught sight of Khlit A mile below them his horse was swimming out into the swift waters of the river. Beside his horse, one hand in the beast’s mane, another steadying his powder and pistols on the saddle, Khlit was swimming. Horse and rider were headed for the farther bank of the Dnieper, beyond which lay Tatary.
II
It was in winter, the year of the ape, according to the Mongol calendar, that Tal Taulai Khan, Chief of Chiefs, leader of the Black Kallmarks, told his wives that he was tired of them. Instead of killing them and obtaining others from Circassia, Georgia, or Astrakhan, Tal Taulai Khan began a hunt through the mountains that separated him from the lands of the west.
The Grand Khan of the Kallmarks knew no bounds to his kingdom. The wall that girded China, Sabatsey, the Land of Dogs, was no bar to his entrance. His horsemen thronged to the shores of the Salt Sea. When he hunted, the chiefs of the country came to pay homage. If they neglected to do so their towns were sacked. To make easier the royal pathway, the commander of his armies, Kefar Choga, made, as they went along, a road that was wide and level. If a gorge was to be crossed a bridge was built. If the hunt delayed long in one spot pavilions were built of solid tree trunks and ebony.
It was the will of Tal Taulai Khan to hunt, and never during his life had the will of Tal Taulai Khan failed to achieve its purpose. That it was winter made no difference. The cold in the mountains of the Black Kallmark land was great. Snows were deep. Passage, for ordinary travelers, was impossible. Yet Tal Taulai Khan announced that it was his will to hunt to the summit of the mountain called Uskun Luk Tugra in Kallmark tongue, or Pe Cha in the speech of the Mongol Tatars, which signified the “roof of the world.”
Nothing else would be worth the while of Tal Taulai Khan. In the woods that girdled the slope of Uskun Luk Tugra he had heard from an Usbek Tatar that there were noble stags, while on the summit of the mountain was a frozen lake on the shores of which gleamed at night a curious fire the color of emeralds.
In appearance Tal Taulai Khan was true to his descent, which was from Genghis Khan, leader of the Golden Horde, and the chiefs of the Mongol Tatars. He was taller than most of his followers, impassive of face, with the narrow eyes and high cheekbones of his breed, massive in figure, with a wide, firm mouth, black mustaches, and a heavy chin.
Men spoke of him as the leader of three times a hundred thousand horsemen. Tal Taulai Khan desired above all things to be waging a war. In the year of the ape, however, the peoples on his borders were quiet, so the Khan declared that he would hunt. Whereby came the great hunt of Uskun Luk Tugra, when the rivers that came from the mountain were red with blood on their frozen surfaces and Kallmark warriors drank the blood of dead enemies to keep the life and warmth within them, owing to the cold which smote them when they ascended to the roof of the world.
The Khan’s impassive eyes had shown a gleam of interest when he questioned the bonzes, who were servants of the god Fo and came to his court from the Dalai Lama through the land of the Great Muga, as to the success of this hunt. They had made reply that it was written in the sacred texts of the god Fo that hunting was honorable for such as the Grand Khan, and that in the year of the ape he would hunt such game as he had not met with before.
Wherefore the zeal of Tal Taulai Khan, who had some respect for the words of the bonzes, was great for the hunt, and the death of ten thousand horses the first cold night’s march was only an incident in the advance of his horde toward the west of the Kallmark land and the summit of Uskun Luk Tugra. It is so related in the annals of one named Abulghazi Bahadur Sultan.
III
Great was the pride of Khlit of the Curved Saber, whereby great was his anger. As he rode east he cursed hetman and Cossack who had called him fit for the monastery. To Khlit, inmates of monasteries were no more than suckling swine. To be ordered hence by the hetman of his kuren, or barracks, was more bitter than the dregs of arack, the Tatar wine.
Khlit was not blind to the fact that if he had appealed to the Koshevoi Ataman, the decision of the hetman and the hasty council by the gate of the Holy Spirit might well be overruled. Once when his arm was stronger, he had been hetman. Age had lost him his rank. But such an act was not agreeable to Cossack pride, the pride of an old hetman. The matter, to Khlit, called the Wolf, was simple. Some Cossacks, jealous or hostile, had driven him from the Siech. They must live to regret what they had done.
During the weeks of travel to the heart of Tatary this thought fastened upon the mind of Khlit, even as the sun began to circle farther to the south and the night cold became keener. The Cossacks who had cast him out at the monastery had not seen the last of him. The time would come when they would see him again.
Khlit knew that the Tatar hordes were gathering for war, and his instinct told him that it was directed toward the Ukraine. Where war was, Khlit was at home. He did not intend to join the ranks of the Krim Tatars, servants of Mirai Khan, for an old score lay unsettled between the Khan and Cossack, and Khlit’s head would have honored one of Mirai Khan’s tent poles.
But beyond the Krim Tatars, his ancient foes, were the Black Kallmarks, of whom he had heard, but who had never set eyes on Cossacks. It was to the Kallmarks Khlit rode. So great was his anger that it carried him swiftly over three wide rivers, the familiar Dnieper, the Don, and the Volga.
Khlit’s anger cooled, as his own danger grew. Riding by night and keeping well to the north, he passed the land of the Krim folk in safety. Tatar horsemen were gathering at the valley camps, he noticed, leaving their herds on the hills. Isolated riders met the Cossack and after keen scrutiny of his horse and weapons, rode by with a backward glance until out of pistol shot. There is a saying that a Tatar’s hand goes quickest to his sword. Yet Khlit’s aspect commanded respect, and hence the right of way along his journey. Once only did he stop a rider.
During the first days of his journey the Cossack had the good luck to kill a stag with a pistol shot. Some time he spent in cutting the meat from the carcass, drying it in the sun, and placing it under his saddle, between the leather and the back of his horse, where friction and heat would keep the meat tender and warm. He had dismounted to eat a strip of his meat and smoke a pipe in a slight depression along his path where he would not be visible from the steppe.
Khlit’s ears were not dulled with age, or he would not then be alive, and when he heard a rattling as of saddle trappings and weapons he dropped food and pipe and sprang to the edge of the gully where he had taken concealment From the sounds he had expected that a troop of Krim riders would be passing, but he saw only a solitary rider trotting slowly by at some distance. At the sight his mustache twitched in a smile.
By old experience he knew the sight of a Krim shaman, or conjurer, and he grinned as he noted the hideous mask which garbed the man’s features, the long cloak that floated over the tail of the horse, and the mass of miniature iron images of birds and beasts that cluttered up the magician’s saddle
and which had given forth the sounds he had heard.
Relieved of an apprehension, Khlit drew out a pistol and advanced from his place of concealment. Wrapped up in his own thoughts and lulled by the clatter of his accouterments, the shaman did not notice the Cossack’s approach until they were nearly abreast, when Khlit spoke.
“Hey, swine of the devil’s sty,” he cried in fluent Tatar, for he had a lifelong knowledge of the speech, “stop your horse and share the meat of a Christian Cossack!”
The shaman cast a hasty glance around and decided that resistance was not to be attempted. Yet the appetite with which he shared Khlit’s piece of meat was not great. Khlit, however, was in high good humor at the meeting and plied the other with meat, cakes, and tobacco.
“The men of the Krim steppe do not sleep in their huts,” he observed craftily after a while. “They ride together in banks with weapons. What is in the mind of Mirai Khan?”
The shaman chewed his meat and his dark eyes scanned Khlit narrowly.
“There are wolves loose on the steppe with the coming of winter,” he began. “And the word has gone forth from Mirai Khan, our leader, that they are to be hunted down lest too many of the sheep and oxen be taken. Perhaps you have heard the cry of the wolves—”
“I have heard the gathering cry of the packs, shaman,” snarled Khlit. “But they have two legs, and swords instead of teeth. Tell no more lies, Flat-Face, or I will cut open your belly. I asked, what is the word that goes through the Krim land and brings the riders together with arms?”
“I will tell, noble chief,” responded the conjurer hastily. “It is the truth, every word! This is the year of the ape, when it is written in the sacred books of our cult that there will be a battle. It is written in the books that they shall win victory in battle if Mirai Khan leads them, not otherwise.”
Khlit mentally sifted the words of his companion and arrived at the conclusion that the Krim folk were actually getting ready for war, and that Mirai Khan, whose tricks he knew of former years, had secretly ordered the shamans to declare that he must lead them into battle. It needed no more to assure Khlit that the Krim horde was preparing to swoop down on the land of the Ukraine. Yet what was the delay? Why wait until winter? It seemed as if Mirai Khan was not yet ready to strike.
“And the Black Kallmarks,” continued Khlit thoughtfully, watching the shaman, “are they likewise on the march? Is anything written in the books concerning them? Where are they to be found, son of a devil’s dog?”
The shaman’s face twitched involuntarily in surprise and his eyes narrowed. For a second too long be thought.
“Aye, noble Cossack,” be whined at length. “The Black Kallmarks, who are the finest warriors in the world—except the Cossacks—are marching, and marching, and with them the Mongol Tatars, all under the leadership of the celestial Tal Taulai Khan. But it is a hunt. They are bound for Uskun Luk Tugra, the roof of the world, where the green fire burns by the frozen lake. It is the word of Tal Taulai Khan that they hunt.”
“In winter?” Khlit scowled. “Their prince must love the chase to freeze his bones on the mountains. Have the Kallmarks ever come into the land of Mirai Khan?”
The shaman’s gaze shifted. “Not for two men’s lifetimes,” he responded. “Yet Tal Taulai Khan has commanded a hunt. He wishes his men to become hardened, for he desires good fighters. Go you to the court of Tal Taulai Khan, noble sir? I will tell you how to find it.”
“Aye,” said Khlit shortly.
“Then ride into the rising sun for the space of a month. When you come to the wide Jaick River, turn south unto the mountain peaks, with snow and ice covering. One, the higher, is Uskun Luk Tugra. Pass between the two and in time you will hear the approach of Tal Taulai Khan, who rides higher.”
“Good!” Khlit rose and swaggered to his horse. “Tell Mirai Khan that you have spoken with Khlit, he called the Wolf, who rides past the land of the Krim Tatars to see the face of Tal Taulai Khan. He will remember me.”
The Tatar spat in the direction of Khlit’s back. As the Cossack rode away, the face of the shaman writhed into an evil smile.
Khlit, usually prompt to fathom the minds of his enemies, had passed over the words of the shaman lightly. He had overestimated the man’s fear of him—a common trait of the Cossacks. He had perceived the man’s reluctance to speak of Mirai Khan. Yet he had not noticed the other’s readiness to speed him on to Tal Taulai Khan.
The shaman, on his part, viewed the departure of Khlit with the certainty that he would not return. All the Krim Tatars had heard of Khlit, the Cossack Wolf, and Mirai Khan counted the days until he could achieve the death of Khlit. And Mirai Khan, as the shaman knew, was at present in the camp of Tal Taulai Khan. For the first time in the knowledge of the shaman tribe, Krim Khan had ridden into the court of the Grand Khan. Hence, if Khlit reached his destination, and Mirai Khan was still alive, it meant the death of the Cossack. Which was what the shaman desired.
IV
The rivers of the foothills of Uskun Luk Tugra wave frozen, and the sun’s rays did not serve to thaw the ice when brazen strokes on the copper basin outside the pavilion of Tal Taulai Khan summoned his host to the hunt that seemed without an end.
Kefar Choga himself, leader of the Kallmark army, stood by the copper basin, waiting with bowed head for the appearance of the Khan. Kefar Choga was a Mongol Tatar, with the olive face and black eyes of his breed. Beneath his fur cloak his legs bowed to the shape of a horse’s barrel. His bronze helmet reflected the faint light of the winter sun.
Behind Kefar Choga stood the chieftains of the army, leaders of tribes from the land of the Great Muga, the Khirgiz Steppe, Mongol Tatars. Wrapped in furs, fortified with heavy drinks of arack and hasty mouthfuls of half-raw horse’s flesh against the cold of the mountains, they waited the coming of the man they called Chief of Chiefs, Khan of the Kallmarks.
Near the group Of chieftains were ranged the bonzes, priests who had journeyed to the Kallmark court from the kingdom of the Dalai Lama, their chests and arms naked in spite of the morning chill, and their furs white and gray. They poised their stout bodies in an attitude of reverence, not without an inward groan at the discomfort of their position.
In an outer ring thronged the mirzas and tribal leaders who had come to visit the Path Of the Khan, as custom demanded, and shared in the hunt. Policy as well as fealty dictated this course, for Tal Taulai Khan was inclined to lay waste the territory any chieftain who neglected to visit him. With the visitors mingled the leaden of the hunt, Tatar horsemen, Usbek guides, caretakers of the royal packs of dogs.
At some distance from the pavilion, which was mounted on wheels, full two hundred feet wide, and drawn by a hundred yoke of oxen, crowded the courtiers, Mongols and Chinese, loaded with accouterments, jars of refreshment and food should it please the Khan to halt before reaching the next camp, and silken cloths to lay under him if he descended from his horse. They were watchful of the hangings over the door of the pavilion, awaiting the appearance of Tal Taulai Khan.
A cry of welcome went up from the courtiers and visitors as the far hanging was pushed aside and the figure of the Khan emerged.
For a moment Tal Taulai Khan stood facing the sun, as his pavilion was always placed to face the sun’s rising place. The assemblage bowed salutation but the Khan glanced only toward his horse, waiting by the pavilion steps, Kefar Choga at the bridle.
Seizing the hammer from the attendant at the copper basin, Tal Taulai Khan struck an impatient summons that echoed the length of the great camp. Folding his arms over his wide chest, he watched the streams of riders that started from either side of the encampment up the valleys at the note of the gong. A steady stream of horsemen made its way to either flank, to take station perhaps ten miles away, forming the two horns of the human net that was to sweep the hills of game, closing in to a circle, so that Tal Taulai Khan could find and kill the cornered game.
This done, Tal Taulai Khan descended the steps and sprang on his horse
with a lightness and agility surprising to one who did not know that the Khan spent the days of many months of the year in saddle, riding with his horde to war or hunt. Once he was seated, the chief’s jeweled turban nodded affably to Kefar Choga, who bowed to the stirrup, remarking to himself that the Khan was in good humor this morning.
Drawing his scimitar from its sheath, Tal Taulai Khan noted with approval that it had been sharpened in the night by Kefar Choga, and, as further evidence of his satisfaction, ordered a beaker of arack to be brought him, which he emptied with a single heave of his furred and silken shoulders.
“Horsemen from the hills,” said he to Kefar Choga, “say that there are many of the horned sheep in the foothills Of Uskun Luk Tugra, so there will be excellent sport today. To hunt mountain sheep with spear is better even than slaying a full-grown stag with a sword.”
“That is true, O Chief of Chiefs,” growled Kefar Choga, who had something on his mind. “But the sun must be higher before the beaters are at station on the flanks. Meanwhile, if it pleases you, there is one who would speak with you, the leader of the Krim Tatars, Mirai Mirza.”
In the presence of the Grand Khan, all khans lost their title, being called mirzas. Kefar Choga was a man of few words. He had received a hundred good Arab horses with five camel loads of weapons from the hand of Mirai Khan to gain the ear Of Tal Taulai at an opportune moment. This, however, he did not mention The brow of the Kallmark chief darkened.
“Is this the hour, O Kefar Choga,” he responded sulkily, “to think of mirzas or the welfare of tribes? Have the Krim Tatars ever given me aught but disrespect and raids? Mirai Khan was bold to come hither without fifty thousand horsemen. Are the beaters in place yet?”
Kefar Choga mentally vilified the ancestors and descendants of the Krim leader, and hastened to smooth over his mistake.
“In a short hour we can proceed, O Chief of Chiefs,” he muttered, “for I have planned a great hunt for today, with a sweep of twenty miles.” Tal Taulai grunted approval. “Yet already”—Kefar Choga cast about for some means to distract his leader—“already, at sunup our outposts have taken the first game of the day.”