by Harold Lamb
The volley of arrows from the bowmen went wide, falling behind the bent figure that seemed to skim the ground on its shaggy pony. The Chinese bows were longer than the Tatar weapon, but their tension was less. Their shafts at that distance did not carry in a straight line, while they could scarcely see the darts of the Tatar that whirred in the air.
Cha-tsong Chien heard a thud, and saw the skull of a horse beside him shattered as a shaft hit.
“That is Ermecin!” cried his servant. “He is a champion. We must fly.”
“Dog!” roared the aroused official, striking the man with the flat of his sword. “We are four and he is one—a Tatar.”
Lifting his voice Cha-tsong Chien bellowed for his men with the herd to leave the animals and ride up.
“Shoot down his horse!” he instructed his archers.
By an accident his followers made good his wish. The frightened servant turned his mount to flee. Ermecin halted his beast, took time to direct an arrow, and the coolie was knocked sprawling. But the moment’s pause gave the Manchu bowmen their chance, and Ermecin’s horse went down.
“We have him now,” announced Cha-tsong Chien. “Let us await our comrades.”
They waited long. Ermecin trotted off into the dusk in ungainly fashion. He was little used to being on his own feet. Presently he appeared again on another knoll, mounted. Following the herd, he had caught a stray horse and in doing so had met with one of the returning archers and killed him.
The other soldier and the servants remained hidden in the plain, perhaps not hearing the governor’s shout, perhaps unwilling to ride into the danger that lurked in the deepening dusk.
Cha-tsong Chien felt a cold chill steal up the base of his stout neck at sight of the Tatar rider returning. But he made up his mind quickly.
“We must attack him,” he said. “Come, a handful of gold to the one who lets out his life.”
By keeping his distance and harassing the Chinese through the night, Ermecin would have fulfilled the wisdom of his experience. But at sight of them riding toward him, all the cool strategy life had taught him deserted him. Was Ermecin to turn his back on his foes?
So perhaps had Cha-tsong Chien reasoned as he kept prudently behind his men. Ermecin stood his ground. It was nearly dark.
* * * *
Masterless groups of horses galloped by the band of Buriats, who followed cautiously by torchlight the trail of the herd that night.
“That is good,” they said. “Ermecin has scattered the Chinese, and the herd seeks its home pastures. Aye, there are the cattle, going back.”
Some left the torches to carry off beasts from the groups that straggled back. They preferred to steal in the dark because there was no telling when Ermecin might ride up to them. Had not the Chinese left the herd?
They halted at a place where two dead bowmen lay with a coolie stretched out a short distance away. From here they followed horse tracks for the distance of a bowshot.
“Ah, here was a fight for you, good sirs,” they assured each other as they halted a second time.
A Manchu bowman, doubled up, was under their feet, an arrow projecting from his back. A few yards farther on they beard a groan. It came from another of the Chinese soldiers, his clothing torn, his hands dark with dried blood. The man’s chest was cut nearly in two, and the air bubbled from his severed lungs as he struggled, dying, for breath.
Under him lay a Manchu body without a head. And near these two was the tall form of Cha-tsong Chien, the silk robe ripped from his mail, the steel backed and bent. His sword was in his hand. He was quite dead, and the ground here was trampled as if two heavy bodies had churned it with their feet.
The broken halves of Ermecin’s sword was here also, but of the Tatar warrior they saw no trace until they heard a thin cry in the night air. Others of their band who had investigated the plain reported that the Chinese coolies must have fled.
“Then that was a spirit of the sky crying to us,” observed Botogo the witch doctor, who was far from at ease. “They have snatched up Ermecin, for he is not here and he did not ride back to his yurt—”
Botogo spat on the form of the Manchu, and the others stared at him in awe.
Nevertheless Ermecin was there. When they followed the sound they had heard they found him on the ground, his body drooped forward, propped up on one elbow, his head and shoulder on the grass. His bare chest was agape with wounds, and be had bled out his life some time ago.
Under his kneeling form was the plaintive, struggling bundle of his child.
They took the boy back to Cherla, while fires were lighted about the armaci-ralin, the house of the strongest, and the Buriats flocked to eat roasted sheep and drink up the stores of kumiss beside the hut where Ermecin lay. Botogo was there in his role of master of ceremonies, for which he would be well paid.
Cherla sat in the yurt entrance, clad in a new dress, her tresses ordered. She was staring blankly into the fires.
“Only once did she speak,” said the gossip crones to the men who surrounded the fires. “That was when the body of Ermecin was brought in to her. We have not heard her say it before. She said, ‘nimeleu qatvarkin—hail, to my husband.’”
Cherla however spoke again before the night was done. A gleam came into her dark eyes when the baby, hungry, began to pummel at her breasts with its sturdy fists.
“Ah, you, too, will be an ermecin, a strong man.”
And in her voice was tenderness and a great pride.
THE WOLF-CHASER (1922)
THE WOLF-CHASER (1922)
CHAPTER I
ARUK AND THE KRIT
Bouragut, the great golden eagle, was flying high over the snows and rocks of the Altai Mountains. It was a brisk day in Spring, that year 1660—an eventful year for Central Asia. Six feet from wing to wing, the golden eagle soared, alone and calmly bent on his own business.
Rarely indeed was Bouragut to be tamed, to be hooded and shackled into a falcon, used by men to strike down prey. He went as he pleased, for he feared no one. Alone of the feathered folk he would sweep down, to attack with talons and curved beak foxes and even wolves. For that he was called the Wolf-Chaser, and men were proud to have him at their call.
Unlike the vulture, the golden eagle did not wait for others to make his kill. His telescope-like eyes sought for game on the mountain slope, peering down between the cloud-flocks.
He was Bouragut, the Wolf-Chaser; his brown, black-and-white-flecked coat of feathers glistened; his wings, moving lazily, supported him in the vastness where he had his kingdom by right.
Yet it was not a king but an old falconer, a native Mongol and Christian, who had made himself master of Bouragut.
* * * *
From a thicket by the snow of the Urkhogaitu Pass, Aruk the hunter looked up, recognized the golden eagle and waved cheerfully. He was a young Tatar with alert eyes. His hut was in the thicket, nearly two miles above the verdant plains of Tartary, to the north, because he was the keeper of the gate. It was his duty to watch for enemies coming over the pass from the south, where was the land of the Kalmuk and the Turk.
Just now he was stringing his bow with fresh gut, in an excellent humor. That morning the omens on the mountainside had been good. A rainbow had come after dawn. Now the eagles were on the wing, and—yes; he cocked his head attentively—his horse neighed.
All at once Aruk was on his feet, his bow strung. Up the pass another horse had neighed. Now the snow in the pass was still unbroken, for no riders had come over the Urkhogaitu—the Gate of the Winds—that Winter, owing to the severe cold and the storms that swept the gorge between the rocky peaks of the Altai.
Still, a horse had neighed, and where there was a horse in the Urkhogaitu, there was a rider. In a moment Aruk had mounted his shaggy pony—a Mongol of the plains will not move afoot if he can ride—and had drawn an arrow from the quiver at his saddle-peak.
When he broke from a fringe of firs into the trail Aruk found himself facing a tall horseman. In f
act the horse—the Tatar’s eye made swift note of this—was massive and long-bodied—a bay stallion. Aruk had never seen such a beast nor such a rider.
The man who came down the pass had deep-set eyes under shaggy brows, eyes that held a fire of their own. Aruk’s bow was lifted, the shaft taut on the string. A slight easing of the fingers would have sent the arrow into the throat of the stranger, above the fur-tipped cloak that covered his long body.
The rider halted when be reached Aruk, but apparently for the purpose of looking out from the pass over the wide plain of Tartary, visible here for the first time from the pass—the plain speckled with brown herds and adorned with the deep blue of lakes, like jewels upon green cloth.
Here and there below him were the tiny lines of animals that barely seemed to move, camels of the caravans that came from China to Muscovy.
Under a close-trimmed mustache the thin lips of the stranger smiled, as if he made out a curious jest in the aspect of the sparkling plain.
He looked at Aruk, and the hunter lowered his bow.
“This one is a falcon,” thought Aruk, taking counsel with himself. “May the —— eat me though if he isn’t a Frank.”1
In the minute just passed Aruk had seen that another Frank, one of the two servants who rode after the leader, had drawn a long pistol and pointed it at him. The hunter had no great respect for Turkish pistols, but it occurred to him that the rider in front of him must be a personage of importance if others would fight to see that his path was cleared.
Surely the Frank was a chieftain from the west, from the lands of the Christians that lay beyond Muscovy—so Aruk had heard. Being keeper of the pass many tales came to his ears.
“Are you a khan—a chief?” he growled.
The tall stranger seemed to find food for mirth in this. He half-smiled, and when he did so his thin, dark face with its downcurving nose was likable.
“I am not a khan,” he made response tolerantly, and—to Aruk’s surprise—in fair Tatar speech.
Yet his manner was that of one who was accustomed to pass sentries without being challenged, even to having honor shown him.
The stranger was a man in ripe middle age. His heavy boots were of finest morocco and well cleaned. The doublet under the torn cloak was rich blue velvet, and, above all, the hilt of the curiously thin, straight sword was chased with gold.
“Then you are an envoy from God.”
“I?” The Frank raised his brows. “No!”
Now the last traveler from the lands of the Franks, the only one who, to Aruk’s knowledge, had come over the Urkhogaitu Pass, had been a priest. Those few among the Tatars that had been baptized by the priest called him an envoy from God. The lives of envoys were inviolate. So the priest had not been slain. Something in the face of the tall Frank reminded Aruk of the priest.
“If you are not an envoy or a chief what is your business in Tartary, Sir Frank?”
“’Tis the devil’s affair, not yours.”
Aruk blinked reflectively. The stranger might be speaking the truth. There was an eagle’s feather in his hunting-cap. And the lords of Galdan Khan, chief of the Kalmuks who were deadly enemies of the Tatars wore such feathers. Moreover there were Franks among the Turks and Kalmuks of Galdan Khan, mercenaries from Genoa and Greece. This might be one of them, sent as a spy to gather news before a raid on the part of Galdan Khan.
That would be the devil’s business surely. And that was why Aruk had all but shot down the stranger with his bow.
Yet Aruk, whose life hung on his wit, could read the faces of men. He knew that no spy from the Turks would come to the fair fields of Tartary wearing one of the feathers of Galdan Khan. Nor would he come boldly in daylight with blunt words on his lips and a contempt for the keeper of the pass.
Seeing that the stranger was paying no further attention to him, Aruk drew aside and spoke under his breath to the dog-faced Mongol who was the second servant.
The Mongol, a scowling, sheepskin-clad Dungan, answered Aruk’s questions briefly:
“He was a paladin of the Franks. But now he has no tribe to follow him. Still, there is gold in his girdle and costly garments in the packs on the horses. I will tell Cheke Noyon, the khan of the Altai, in the city of Kob, to let out his life, so I will have some of the gold——”
“Hai,” Aruk grunted, “where are you from, dog-face?”
The Mongol’s eyes shifted.
“I was a captive of the Christian Poles. This warrior was fighting under their banner. He freed me, telling me to guide him to Tartary. When I saw first him he lived in a castle with servants. Now he has only one dog to follow him. As he makes his bed, he shall lie in it.”
Aruk’s lined face twisted reflectively.
“You are a jackal, and the skies will spew out your soul when it leaves your body. Kai. It is so.”
“Nay,” the servant grinned surlily, “I will tell my tale to the baksa, the witchdoctors, and they will make a sacrifice for me to the spirits. They have no love for the Krits2 who come here and say that they can work wonders. It is so.”
“What is the name of the Frank?”
“He calls himself Hu-go.”
Impatiently the archer moved to the side of the Frank as the latter gathered up his reins.
“An hour’s ride, Sir Hu-go, will bring you to the hut of Ostrim, the falconer. He is s Krit, like you, and he will not steal. Beware of the baksa, for they will strip you of wealth and skin.”
When the three riders had vanished around a bend in the gorge, Aruk settled himself in his saddle to watch the Urkhogaitu. He wanted to be very sure that no Kalmuks were coming behind the stranger called Hugo.
Although the spot was exposed to the icy winds that made a channel of the pass, the archer did not move for hours. He watched the golden eagle circling over the network of forest, muttering the while a song that was half a prayer chant:
“Oh, bright falcon,
My own brother,
Thou soarest high.
Thou seest far—”
A slight sound on the mountainside behind him caused Aruk at length to wheel and ride swiftly down in the trail left by the three travelers. Other ears might have caught it, as an echo, but Aruk was sure that a shot had been fired near the hut of Ostrim the falconer.
The reason for his haste was soon apparent. Halfway down the mountainside, where the snow lay only in patches in the gullies and the larch thickets, Aruk came upon a brown-faced maiden no larger than he.
From a clump of larches she was peering, bow in hand, her slant eyes intent on the trail, teeth gleaming between full, red lips.
“Ohai, Yulga, daughter of Ostrim,” he hailed her, slowing his pony at once in an effort to appear unconcerned, “was the devil firing off his popgun down here, or did a boulder crash from the cliff? I heard—”
“A splendid protector, you,” the girl mocked him, unstringing her bow.
The sight of the hunter had relieved her fear and now she teased him.
“You come nimbly after the fight is finished, like a jackal instead of a wolf. Our heads might have been hanging to the saddle-peak of the robber band who just passed this way, for all the aid we had from you!”
Aruk grew red and muttered beneath his breath.
Under Yulga’s laughter the hunter waxed clumsy as a bear cub. He despaired of ever gathering together the horses and furs necessary to buy Yulga for his wife from the old Ostrim. In like degree he had small hope that the fair child of the falconer would ever look upon him and smile without mockery.
“Perhaps,” pursued Yulga, tossing her long black hair back from her eyes, “it is because you are so tiny that you dare sit up yonder to watch the pass. You think that anybody will take you for a ferret, or a fox looking out of its hole—”
“Peace little woodpecker,” growled the hunter.
His lined cheeks grew red, for he was acutely conscious of his small figure. Although no man might belie Aruk’s boldness, or hope to outdo his ready tongue, he was
at a loss for words before Yulga.
“Did the Frank draw sword on Ostrim?” he demanded. “I will let the life out of him for that——”
“Ohai!”
Yulga threw back her head and laughed delightedly.
“The big Frank would swallow you, pony and arrows, and only swear that his gullet tickled him,” she cried. “Nay, the robbers were black-boned Mongols with faces like dogs. Here they are—”
They had come to a clearing where a thatched hut stood among the larches. At the door sat a white-haired Tatar, a small bouragut perched on his shoulder. On the rooftree of the dwelling a hawk screamed gutturally, flapping its wings so that the bells on its throat jangled.
On the grass of the clearing lay five bodies, distorted and sprawling. Aruk went from one to another, turning them over with his foot.
“Dead,” he commented. “Hai-here is that dog-brother who led the Frank. Well, the evil spirits from below will be the gainer by a dung-picker. No one need kill a horse for him to ride in the other world. He turned his back to the scimitar, it is clear. Hum—this black beetle was shot in the face.”
“By the servant of the Frank.”
Ostrim lifted his venerable head and spoke quietly.
“The robbers were four. They sought to pick my poor hearth. As they came up the party of the Frank rode into the clearing. So the black-souled ones scented gold and attacked with their swords, slaying the follower and striking down the old servant who had no more strength than a sick woman.”
“And the Frank—he let out the lives of three?”
“With the point of his sword that is long as a spear. He warded their cuts and thrust, once each time. The Frank wiped his sword in the grass and picked up the servant, who was cut in the belly, and rode off, saying that he sought a hut for the sick man and a doctor to close up his wound.”
“He is an old buck, that one,” admitted Aruk grimly. “He has a horned soul in him. Three dead with three thrusts! I could do no more with my arrows.”
“Aye,” responded Yulga, hanging up her bow; “you might do that, Aruk, among the suckling litter of boars up in the larches—if the old sow were away.”