by Harold Lamb
“How did that happen?” the Khan demanded. “What hunter took up his spear before I had ended my kill? Roast the soles of his feet over a fire and throw him to the jackals!”
Kefar Choga held up his hand.
“No spear was taken up, O Chief of Chiefs. This game wandered into the outpost. It was neither stag nor mountain sheep. Never have I seen the like.”
“A jaguar?” Tal Taulai showed immediate interest. “A marten?”
“Neither,” Kefar Choga shook his head. “It was a horseman wearing sheepskin, with a fur hat. Never have I seen the like before. He speaks broken Tatar and says he has journeyed for three moons to come here.”
“I will see him,” said Tal Taulai with some disappointment. “It is well that the outlying chieftains come to the camp.”
Kefar Choga waited for no more, but motioned to a group of his officers who were sitting their horses outside a pavilion nearby. The courtiers and chieftains fell back to allow the group to pass to the Khan, who eyed a tall figure in the midst of the Tatars.
Kefar Choga, Tal Taulai thought, had spoken truth. Never had he seen a man so tan who was swathed in furs, with mustaches the length of his belt and shoes that came to his knees, with blue eyes instead of black.
“What is your name, and tribe?” he demanded.
The newcomer looked inquiringly at Kefar Choga, who rendered the speech of the Khan into Western Tatar speech.
“My name,” said the rider, “is Khlit, surnamed the Wolf. I am come from the Cossacks.”
Tal Taulai considered this when it was repeated to him.
“Like a wolf you look, and show the manners of your breed,” he meditated aloud. “Is he the leader of his tribe, come to render homage?”
To the Khan’s surprise, the Cossack shook his head angrily and growled a response.
“He says,” explained Kefar Choga without emotion, “that the Cossacks do not render homage to anyone. And he is not the leader. He has left them to seek fighting elsewhere. He has heard of the Kallmark Khan, and traveled far to see your face.”
For an instant the Khan stared at Khlit curiously. He was not accustomed to men who sat straight in the saddle when speaking to him and acknowledged no ruler. Then his gaze drifted to the mountains and the spreading lines of horsemen.
“If he is a fighter born, see that he is in the front of the first battle,” he instructed Kefar Choga. “Meanwhile watch him, for I like not these strangers from the West. If the wolf shows his teeth, a spear in the back will make him meat for his brethren.”
V
No further notice was taken of Khlit until nightfall. The Cossack had taken a deer’s quarter from the spoil of the hunt and was preparing to make himself a meal beside his horse when a figure pushed through the throng Of Kallmarks around the fires, and Khlit recognized the leader of the army, Kefar Choga.
The Tatar touched him on the shoulder and motioned for him to follow his guidance. At a further word from Choga two of the men seized stakes from the fire and hastily constructed torches with which they accompanied them.
In spite of a long day’s ride, over the snow-carpeted mountains Kefar Choga appeared as tranquil as in the morning, although Khlit’s bones—accustomed as he was to the saddle—ached from the toil.
Watchful and curious he followed the chief, noting that speculative glances were cast their way from the throngs around the multitude of fires that blazoned the valleys, as fireflies lighted the steppe of the Ukraine.
Kefar Choga spoke no word until they had passed beyond the camp proper and through the quarters of the outposts where regiments of horsemen nursed their arms beside their mounts or slept from weariness.
It was not until they came to the edge of a cliff that Kefar Choga paused and motioned out into the night. They were standing at the brink of the cliff, but Khlit had concluded that it would not do to show any fear of his surroundings under any circumstances. He was fully aware that in the camp of Tal Taulai Khan the lives of men hung tenderly to their bodies, and a stranger who slept with his back exposed was gambling with perdition if he had anything of value on his person that might tempt the Kallmarks. Stepping to the edge of the cliff, Khlit shaded his eyes from the glare of the torches and looked out. A new moon cast a faint light over the valley below them, which Khlit recognized as one up which the horde of Kallmarks had passed that afternoon.
A curious moaning, snarling sound drifted up to him from the depression, and as he listened a chorus of howls welled up and died down. Hardened as he was to the sights and sounds of the mountains, Khlit drew in his breath sharply.
“Your brethren,” growled Kefar Choga. “Look!”
His eyes being now accustomed to the semi-gloom, Khlit made out the bed of the valley, which stretched as far as be could see. Hundreds of carcasses of dead horses littered the snow and lay piled in the groups of firs, half-trodden into the ground by the passage of the multitude over them, victim of the cold and labor of the merciless hunt. But the horses were not alone. Dozens of dead Kallmarks spotted the valley, frozen or crippled during the ride and left by their comrades, who were hardened to such mishaps.
Again the wave of howls uprose on the wind and Khlit noted that the valley seemed alive with moving forms. He understood the meaning of the howls now. A multitude of wolves and jackals was following the Kallmark horde, too numerous to be counted. The valley swarmed with them, as if with vermin.
“It will not be long, Cossack,” observed Kefar Choga pleasantly, “before you lie yonder.”
Khlit swept a quick glance at the Tatar. Kefar Choga was regarding him curiously, his narrow eyes gleaming in the torchlight.
“Be it long or soon,” responded Khlit, “there will be many to keep me company. Aye, the wolves feast high when Khlit of the Curved Saber strikes his last enemy to the earth.
Kefar Choga grunted. His eyes did not move from the Cossack. Khlit thought to himself that something was upon the mind of the other, but he said nothing, preferring to let the Tatar speak.
“In the camp of Tal Taulai Khan, when the hunt is on, a man is slain more often than a bonze can count. The wolves know this, wherefore they follow.”
Kefar Choga swept his hand toward the valley. Khlit took out his pipe and tobacco pouch, preparing to fill the one from the other. He did not lose sight of the Tatar. It was probable, he thought, that Tal Taulai Khan had expressed a wish that he be thrown to the jackals. Still, Kefar Choga seemed in no hurry to move.
“Harken, Khlit,” said the Tatar leader, “know you a man who calls himself Mirai Mirza, chief of the Krim folk?”
“Aye,” Khlit responded casually,” “I know his face.”
“He has no love for you. When you were brought before Tal Taulai Khan this morning I head him say to another that it would not be long before you had a knife in your back.”
Khlit paused in the act of lighting his pipe at one of the torches. “Mirai Khan is here?” he muttered. “In the camp Of the Kallmarks?”
His face did not show how important be considered the news. That Mirai Khan would come without escort to the Kallmarks he had not anticipated, although he expected that the Krim leader would try eventually to unite his forces with those of the Grand Khan.
“He seeks an alliance,” explained Kefar Choga, “Since he has promised your death it will not be long before you lie yonder. The thought came to me to tell you.”
Khlit meditated. Kefar Choga was not one to waste his time in an act of kindness. Rather, he must anticipate something from his trip to the edge of the camp. If Mirai Khan had been long with the Kallmark horde, he would hardly have neglected to buy or barter the friendship of Tal Taulai’s right-hand man. It was more than possible that Kefar Choga and Mirai Khan had an understanding.
If so, his situation was doubly precarious. Mirai Khan would like nothing better than to separate Khlit’s head from his body. If the two were acting together, Kefar Choga’s warning would only be accounted for on either of the grounds. Either he deemed Khlit a
s good as dead already, or he hoped to work on the fears of the Cossack.
Thus Khlit meditated, and a reply to Kefar Choga came into his mind.
“Say to Mirai Mirza that when he tires of waiting, Khlit’s saber is ready to meet him.”
Kefar Choga threw back his squat head and laughed harshly.
“To see the jackal fight the wolf—by the god Fo, they would be well matched!”
“Bring us face to face,” continued Khlit calmly, “and you will see the wolf fight the jackal. It will be a good fight.”
He threw out the remark as a gambler casts his dice. If Mirai Khan was actually planning to take his life—and there was no reason to doubt it—it would be better for Khlit to meet the Krim Tatar in personal combat. And Kefar Choga was a man who would be pleased to see the two slay each other. So much Khlit had read in his eyes, with the wisdom of years.
And at the same instant he understood the reason for their coming to the spot. And that Kefar Choga was indeed banded with Mirai Khan.
He had stepped forward to light his pipe at the torch held by one of the Kallmarks. Still, he watched Kefar Choga. For the first time he saw the Tatar’s gaze fall from his, and go, involuntarily, behind him. Just a little, the slit eyes narrowed, and the broad mouth opened. Khlit did not stop to think. He acted, with instinctive caution.
He stepped quickly, not backward, but toward Kefar Choga, past the direction of the Tatar’s gaze.
As he did so, he heard a cough behind him, and the figure of Kefar Choga darkened. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the torch behind him whirl over the cliff. Turning, he saw the torchbearer stagger and throw up his am. With a gasping cry the man’s knees gave under him and he toppled forward over the cliff. Not to quickly, however, that Khlit did not see the tuft of an arrow sticking out between his shoulder blades.
Shading his eyes with his hand, his glance flitted over the camp, the groups around the fires and the shadows. Some were staring at him. But of the man who had aimed the arrow at him and sent the torchbearer to death by mistake there was no sign.
“It is useless to look,” snarled Kefar Choga irritably. “The man who shot the arrow is gone. He was a servant of Mirai Mirza, and if he is wise he will not return to his master.”
In his speech there was the anger of the man who has wasted his time vainly.
VI
Many times as the Kallmark horde gained nearer to the slope of Uskun Luk Tugra—which they could now see rising before them, above its circling forests of fir—Khlit, surnamed the Wolf, tried to count on his fingers the thousands of warriors that formed the hunters of Tal Taulai Khan, and as many times gave up the task as hopeless.
There were more Kallmarks than he had seen in the Krim encampment, more than the trees in the woods of Muscovy, almost as many, he thought, as grains of salt in the sea that is made of white salt in the land of the Usbeks. All the Cossacks of the Siech army would equal no more than a third part of the Black Kallmarks who followed the road of Kefar Choga with their thousand ensigns.
Before he came to the Kallmark camp, Khlit had heard of the horde, but now he marveled at the human river of horsemen that flowed up the passes toward Uskun Luk Tugra.
Left to himself, Khlit found time to meditate. Since that first day Tal Taulai Khan had not noticed him, and Kefar Choga had said no word. Mirai Khan he saw at a distance, near the person of the Khan.
He himself was free to go where he chose in the camp, but he found that the outposts turned him back when he ventured near the limits of the army. At night fires were kept going to warm the guards, and no chance was offered to slip between them, owing to the snow, which outlined the figures of moving men.
The cold had taken a firmer grip on the hunters. Rivers that they bridged were coated with ice. Winds buffeted down from the mountain heights and searched under their fur tunics. Khlit was glad of his warm svitza, heavy boots, and sheepskin hat.
The court, Khlit among them, had taken refuge one night from the icy air in the pavilion of Tal Taulai Khan. The interior of the building was warmed by torches and fires in brazen kettles. On heaps of furs the chieftains sat on the floor drinking arack and swallowing clouds of tobacco smoke from their long pipes.
On the side usually reserved for the women the bonzes sat, whispering among themselves, with an eye to Tal Taulai Khan, who was playing chess in the center of the pavilion with Kefar Choga. The bonzes were favored, as servants of the god Fo, but even favorites were not anxious to risk the cloud of displeasure which darkened the Khan’s handsome face—displeasure at the poor success of the last few days’ hunt.
Few stags and no horned sheep had been met with and Tal Taulai Khan had withdrawn that afternoon from the chase in anger, leaving the slaughter of wild swine and deer to his attendants.
These things Khlit considered as his glance wandered from the Khan to Mirai, leader of the Krim folk, whose bald head glittered in the torchlight at Kefar Choga’s elbow. Recently, thanks to the influence of Kefar Choga, the Krim leader had enjoyed more favor at the hands of the Grand Khan.
He knew the enmity of Mirai Khan against the Cossacks was such that he would risk much to lead an overpowering horde across the water of the Dnieper. Khlit drew his pipe from his mouth and watched closely, for the chess game had ended and Tal Taulai Khan sat back in his armchair, while Kefar Choga with a low bow acknowledged at once his own defeat, his sovereign’s victory, and the celestial goodness of the Chief of Chiefs to engage in the mimic battle of chess with him.
“Great is your skill, O Chief of Chiefs,” he said quickly, “beyond that of other mortals. Honored am I to help display your potency. Yet, if it please you, there is one who has more skill than I—”
Tal Taulai Khan drank of a bowl of mare’s milk, which is headier than the strongest wine of Cyprus.
“Another?” he said indifferently. “Let him play—we will see if your words are truth.”
Kefar Choga arose and stepped back. The eyes of the assembly searched for the new player, and rested on the bald head and scarred face of the Krim leader, who occupied the defeated general’s seat.
To Khlit the mimic warfare of the chessboard with its jeweled effigies of warrior and castle was a sport for weak minds. Yet he studied the players with intent interest. Tal Taulai Khan, who towered upright in his chair in white furs and silks flaming with gems, held in his hand the war or peace of three nations. Mirai Khan, crouching over the board, swaddled in a gray cloak, was the spirit urging the Tatar hordes toward the Dnieper and Cossackdom.
Outcast from the Siech, Khlit felt a wave of homesickness for the islands in the Dnieper, the familiar kurens of his jovial comrades, and the sight of the wide steppe. Homesickness was strange to him, and he shook himself angrily. Yet, if he had reasoned the matter, he would have found that his old anger against hetman and Cossack bad been replaced by the lifelong enmity for Tatar and Mirai Khan.
It did not escape him that at the end of the game, Mirai Khan did not immediately leave the board, but leaned forward to whisper something to the Kallmark chief. When Mirai Khan arose, the Tatar was stroking his mustache with the air of a man well content.
At risk of incurring notice and displeasure, Khlit arose from his seat in a corner of the pavilion and swaggered through the throng, pushing his way among the seated groups until he was beside a Kirghiz warrior who reclined, yawning and picking his teeth, a half-dozen paces from the chessboard. The Kirghiz chieftain looked up warily as Khlit squatted beside him, and scowled.
“Harken, Eagle of the Steppe,” observed Khlit, using the favorite Kirghiz salutation, “did not Mirai Khan say to Tal Taulai that his skill was great beyond understanding?”
The reclining fighter closed one eye lazily, as if meditating whether to reply or no.
“Nay,” he muttered, “Mirai Khan said that the hunt of Tal Taulai was not worthy—that it were better to seek honor beyond the Dnieper where murderous Cossacks were to be found—a tribe that attacks all peoples, as a mad dog bites all he
meets—such were worth the attention of Tatars and much spoil was to be got.”
A glance convinced Khlit that the tribesman was too indifferent and too ignorant to make game of him.
“It is the truth,” added the Kirghiz, to vindicate himself of all charge of politeness. “Cossacks are good only to be strung on a spear.”
Khlit ignored the challenge.
“And what did Tal Taulai reply?” he asked in a low tone, for he had not heard.
“Nought,” said the Kirghiz indifferently, seeing that his challenge was not to be taken up.
VII
So drew near its end the great hunt of Tal Taulai Khan on the foothills of Uskun Luk Tugra, when the frozen rivers that came down from the mountains were red, and the annals of Abulghazi Bahadur Sultan told of a hundred camels’ loads of human ears borne away from the spot where the hunt ended—the hunt that was to make memorable the year of the ape.
The sun warmed the snow on the slope of Uskun Luk Tugra and flickered on the doorway of Khlit’s pavilion, when he awakened on the last day but one of the hunt ad found four men with spears, under the leadership of a Kirghiz horseman, at the entrance.
This was in keeping with many changes Khlit had observed in the camp. The morning hunt did not start as usual. There was much bustle and talking among the Kallmarks. Much arack and mare’s milk was drunk. Upon inquiry Khlit learned that it was not permissible for him to leave the pavilion. Kefar Choga had said so.
When the sun was high Kefar Choga came and escorted Khlit to the entrance to Tal Taulai’s pavilion. Groups of Kallmarks stared at him as he went by. Khlit realized that he was attracting more attention than usual.
He found the court of the Khan standing in the open air, Tal Taulai on horseback, attended by Mirai Khan. The Cossack’s pulse quickened as he understood that he was to be taken before the Kallmark leader.