by Harold Lamb
“Why did not the ship come into the bay, Uncle Ostak?” the boy asked. “Was it caught in a net from the sky?”
“Aye,” said Ostak, “it was caught.”
So Kam watched that night when the merry dancers came out and the flames rose into the northern sky. He noticed particularly that the purple lights were very bright and he fancied that the three lords from the ship must be dancing very hard to keep out the cold on their long journey without horses or dogs in the kanun-kotan.
When he went into the hut, he found Ostak had added another thing to the ornaments of the hut. There was a rudder, patched up with bits of wood, from a ship, standing by the spear and the walrus head. Kam played with it until he was too sleepy to play any more.
It was not until years later when Ostak had departed to the sky world and Kam was a boy full-grown and master of the hut that he thought to look at the marks on the rudder, the marks of a knife, where by great labor the rudder had been severed from the rudder post.
3 The colored flames that are often seen in the arc of the northern lights.
SANGAR (1922)
Chilogir, the second, rather more than two hundred years ago, resembled very much his paternal ancestor, the hero, the sword-slayer. On a bluff overlooking a ford in the Yenesei under the snow summits of the Syansk, Chilogir sat his pony, his eyes alert and inquisitive, his leathern face puckered with interest. Yet Chilogir was not known by his skill with the sword; he was sangar, a worker of white magic.
He was a gray-haired gnome, an armored dwarf, whose steel-pointed helmet rose scarcely higher than the bare brush of the snow-covered steppe. He was watching the approach of an enemy.
A solitary Cossack was splashing across the ford looking about him like one who had lost his way, as indeed he had. The Cossack regiment that had been sent from Lake Balkash across the Mongolian marches some thousand miles had been freely bled.
It was by then heading back—what remained of it—with a plentitude of wounds to lick and a few captured horses to drive before it.
Borasun had strayed to look for horses. His own mount was badly lamed by an arrow.
Limping across the ford, he scanned the bluff for hostile heads, and searched the snow for hoof marks. Except at the short ravine in front of him the bank rose from the deep water of the Yenesei and Borasun did not see Chilogir until he had mounted the bluff.
“U-ha, Tatar!” he cried. “I want your horse. As for you, old dog face, I’ll drop you in the river like a bird with a broken neck.”
“Alash!” grunted the Tungusi, edging his pony forward for a rush. Borasun also moved forward to put ground between him and the brink of the bank.
Watchfully, they circled. As Borasun had lost his pistols and Chilogir had not his bow with him, both had drawn their swords.
The Tatar saw a slender Cossack with mild brown eyes, hardly more than a boy, but with a long arm and a straight back. Borasun was the most unruly of the atamans of the unfortunate regiment—his regiment that had been ordered to harry the Tatars. Half his childhood had been spent in the forests by the rushing Dneiper, or wandering half-naked in the Volga steppe.
He had learned early in life the use of a dozen weapons, and seen his masters-at-arms shot down or planted on stakes by Turk and Tatar. Danger was as the breath in his nostrils. Men said an elf of madness danced in his brain.
Once Borasun had dragged the carpets from a mosque near Stamboul, at the threshold of Bagche Serai itself, and had used the carpets for his horse to trample on. He had taken the silk and cloth-of-silver garments of a Polish knight and put them on, only to jump into a tar barrel to show how little he cared for such things.
It was said of him that he had drunk himself snorting with vodka, had leaped in, with boots and coat, to swim the Dneiper—a thing no sober man would care to do. His inn chimney was a steppe fire, and his chair a saddle.
And now Borasun had turned back across the Yenesei among the Tatars for a horse.
Chilogir rushed, slashing at head and stomach. His scimitar gritted on Borasun’s saber and he barely avoided the return sweep of the youth’s blade.
“To one of us, death; the other, life,” shouted the Cossack. “Come back, toad, I can’t ride after you—”
The swords clashed, parted and clashed again. Borasun sent the Tatar’s helmet spinning over the bluff into the water. Rendered wary by this, Chilogir circled.
Borasun laughed at him and urged his limping horse forward. This time the old man’s scimitar brushed his cheek.
“A good one, that!” Borasun pressed forward. “U-ha!”
The quick turns of the Tatar had brought him too near the edge of the bank. The earth gave away under the pony’s hind hoofs. Clawing at the bank, warrior and horse disappeared.
Dismounting, the young ataman of the Cossacks went to the edge of the bluff some three spear-lengths above the water. He saw the Tatar pony swim against the swift current toward the ford, an arrow-shot away; but the Tatar gnome with Turkish mail under his sheepskin floundered and sank.
“Well, the horse is gone, no doubt of it,” thought Borasun, “and his master will soon be spitting water in —— unless—”
On an impulse—he seldom acted otherwise—the youth leaped in the pool without bothering to rid himself of coat or boots. Feeling under water for the scalp-lock of his enemy, Borasun gripped Chilogir and swam for shore. No easy matter that. When at last they lay on the rocks Borasun was foredone and Chilogir as limp as a wet sack of meal.
Presently when the young warrior rose to seek his horse the old Tatar rolled over, vomited and stood up.
“Hai,” grunted Borasun in surprise, “you don’t die easily, dog-face.”
As they gazed at each other he burst out laughing, the old man looked so like a besotted grandfather. But the Tatar, after steady scrutiny from his green eyes lifted both hands to his forehead and bent his head to Borasun’s girdle.
“For saving my life, I will call you nephew and give to you two such horses as you have not seen before this.”
Pointing beyond the bluff, he added:
“Come to my yurt in peace. You will eat and drink like a hero, for no man ever goes hungry from the house of Chilogir, the sangar.”
Borasun considered how much of treachery was behind this offer and judged there was little. Once in the Tatar’s hut he knew the inviolate law of hospitality among the high caste Tatars would protect him. Moreover he lacked both food and a serviceable horse, the last a serious matter. He trusted to his wits to make his escape unmolested.
If he refused Chilogir’s offer he departed on a crippled mount with an empty belly and the certainty of swift pursuit at his heels. Borasun could kill the old Tatar easily enough and leave without being followed. But having half-frozen himself to save the old chap’s life he was in no mood to strike his enemy, now unarmed.
“So be it, uncle,” he said. “Let the horses be good ones.”
* * * *
Now Borasun, having left his saber outside the yurt, drank deeply of fermented mare’s milk and sour wine. Seated at the guest’s side of the fire in the hut, he gorged himself until he sweated with rich mutton, brought by the ancient woman who was Chilogir’s wife—and then drank more. But even so he doubted the evidence of his eyes when the Tatar servants of the master of the yurt brought up the two horses for his inspection.
They were little bigger than ponies. They had horns growing in front of their ears, their hoofs were split like an ox’s foot.
“I am bewitched,” he cried. “These have come from the devil’s stable to pay me a visit.”
“They are reindeer, good sir,” explained the Tatar, not adding that they were his two driving reindeer, not to be sold or killed for food.
“Ohai!” The warrior emptied his bowl and rubbed his eyes. “Uncle, ’tis said magicians ride them. I will not.”
“No need. They will draw you on a light sledge. See!” Chilogir pointed out the tent’s doorway. “Snow falls. It will lie heavy in the moun
tain passes. My reindeer will take you where no horse can go—aye, and faster. They run with the wind and the wolves can not catch them. Thus will you go to your own land.”
He bent closer to Borasun, his eyes glittering.
“Remember this. He who lays an evil hand upon my reindeer, who does them harm—he will suffer. He may not escape.”
In the smoke from the fire the broadlined face of the gnome who was Chilogir appeared black and his eyes blazed. They were like the eyes of a cat that sees in the dark.
Borasun crossed himself, then laughed.
“I will do them no harm, uncle. Hai, if they go fast, ’twill suit my taste. I ride with the whirlwind.”
“Upon their ears is the mark of Chilogir, the sangar. If the Tatar folk see them in your keeping, Cossack, they will cut you open like a hare. So will I give you a mark by which it will be known that you are the friend of Chilogir.”
From the tent wall behind him he drew a broad leather belt, ornamented with iron images of various beasts. At a sign from him the woman strapped it about Borasun, who regarded it with amusement.
“The little daughter of the house should do me this honor,” he muttered. “Where is she hiding?”
“Chi-li is my daughter,” said Chilogir. “She is riding over the snow on the steppe toward the setting sun. Aye, she was seized by the fellows of your Kazak regiment. They have taken her away.”
Borasun felt for his sword, remembered that he had left it outside and shrugged. The Tungusi were wont to guard the virtue of their women closely. It was not well to meddle with the families of the Tungusi.
But Chilogir had given his word that no harm should come to Borasun, and the Cossack felt that his person was reasonably safe from retribution for the carrying-off of Chi-li.
All the same, the brooding quiet of the old man who was called a sangar made the youth rather uncomfortable. So he blustered.
“Was she pretty, this Chi-li?”
“Aye, she was a red flower of the steppe. She had not seen fourteen Summers.”
“Well, then, she will not be killed.”
The green eyes of Chilogir glittered.
“Where will they take her?”
“Over the passes of the Altai to the Kazak steppe, to Tabagatai, our town by the waters of Lake Balkash.”
“And will you go there, my nephew?”
“Where else, uncle? Give me some more kumiss. I will take the road tonight, before cock-crow—”
“Chi-li would give the kumiss, if she were here. Tchai, there is nothing but smoke in the place where she sat! On the mare’s skin, the white mare’s skin by the fire. Ha, my woman, give the stranger hero to drink!”
Whether it was the kumiss—the fermented liquids of the Tatars were heady stuff—or his own drowsiness, Borasun did not know. Certainly he heard the old woman lamenting, wailing like a bereaved she wolf.
Deep though he drank, he felt sure that when Chilogir, the old sangar, the white conjurer, made the cry of a falcon a hawk answered, though it was night and snowing. When the Tatar uttered the call of a horse, his own beast whinnied; a wolf howled beside the tent.
“Remember,” he heard Chilogir saying from very far, “no harm to my reindeer.”
The old man stretched his arms out to the west.
“Chi-li, little daughter, I send the reindeer.”
When full consciousness returned to him Borasun was leaning back against the wooden support of the sledge, wedged in with furs over which were placed his saddlebags with a fresh supply of frozen meat. The snow was still falling, making the daylight gray about him. His limbs were numb and his eyes ached.
Ahead of him moved the rump of a reindeer; he could see the antlers of the leader farther on. They were moving over the snow carpet with a long swinging gait that caused the isolated firs to flash past quickly.
Borasun could not see the trail they followed. But at the end of that day when the snow ceased, he could make out the white peaks of the Altai against the gray sky. By the contour of the land he knew he was approaching the pass through which he and his comrades had penetrated into Tatary.
The market-place of Tabagatai was the meeting-place of many races. Wandering Cossack bands rode thither from the Ukraine; the Kirghiz shepherd drove in his flocks to be sold. Solemn lines of camels stalked through the mob, grunting under their burden of trade from the people of the Moguls to the people of the Tsar.
Thin-faced Moslems squatted in their stalls beside weapons and silver-work for sale, wrinkling their noses at the smells from the fish stall and the cloth booths of bearded and odorous merchants of Moscovy.
Over the snow, trodden into mud here, the smell of camel and horse-flesh vied with sweating humanity. The inns were places of Rabelaisian orgies.
Before the hearth of one hostelry Borasun matched dice with a bearded Cossack colonel, whose skin was marred by wounds and who was blind in one eye. A bottle of gorailka stood on the table between them and Borasun had looked long on the bottle. Luck was running against him and the hot blood was rising in his head.
“The devil’s in the dice,” the young warrior grumbled. “Hai, when I crossed the mountain passes from Tartary I heard werewolves howling in the glens and little children vampires flaming in the darkness. Now my luck is bad.”
The Cossack, Balabash, crossed himself and murmured a prayer.
“It is true that unburied children make the worst vampires,” he admitted sagely. “They cry and cry and climb up behind you. Then when you aren’t looking, psst—they are sucking the blood out of your neck! How did you escape?”
Borasun jerked his thumb at the inn yard where a curious crowd was staring at the two reindeer. He had driven his unaccustomed beasts hard, but, being dependent on them for his life, had taken as good care of the animals as was within his power.
They had brought him safely over the Sair Pass where the howling of the Winter wind was indeed much like the cry of wolves and where the phosphorescent wood rotting under the snow resembled a green fire in the shadows.
So, going where a horse could not go, he had outdistanced his fellows, without meeting with them. In fact few of that Cossack kuren rode back alive from the killing Winter journey over the mountain passes. Those few had promptly sold what booty they had to the shrewd merchants of Tabagatai, in order to join in the general revelry, and drink to the memory of their departed comrades.
Rather proud of his driving reindeer—no such animals had appeared in the town before—Borasun drove them about the place in great style, enlarging on their virtues.
“See, good sirs,” he would bellow at the watchers, “here are horses who go before the wind and run away from werewolves. They eat only moss under the snow and bark and such trash. Oh, they are quite a pair, I tell you. I wouldn’t sell them; no, I wouldn’t think of it.”
Now Borasun felt with an unsteady hand in his wallet.
“May I taste a scorpion, Balabash, if you haven’t the last of my gold. Well, here’s my hat and coat. I’ll stake them and win.”
But the goddess was perverse. Borasun’s gold-inlaid scabbard went the way of his other garments. His sword he would not wager.
“Two hundred thalers,” said a voice at his ear, “for your reindeer.”
It was Cherkasi, one of the richest of the merchants, a dealer in slaves. He was from Kiev, and it was said no man could outdo him in a bargain. Moreover, having a great store of goods, he was one of the masters of Tabagatai. He was a very tall man, in a soiled mink coat, with a broad face marked with the smallpox.
“Go back to your scavenging Cherkasi,” grunted Borasun; “this is a place for warriors.”
The eyes of the merchant puckered. It was said that he got his start as a camp follower who robbed the dead after a battle.
Instead of answering angrily he smiled.
“Two hundred gold thalers,” he repeated, “and when you win from the colonel you can buy back your beasts. Here is the gold.”
Flushed and unsteady, Borasun sta
red at the coins. Then he swept them up and cried to Balabash.
“What say you, good sir, at one throw? Your gold against this?”
The Cossack wiped his mustache and nodded.
“So be it.”
Borasun lost. He caught up the gorailka flask, emptied it, cast it into the fire and straightway went to sleep on the hearth.
“When the war is over, poor chap, when the war is over,
You will find, poor fellow,
Your wife gone away from home,
And your hide full of wounds.”
Thus sang Colonel Balabash, spreading his feet to the fire and sighing deeply, for he was a melancholy man.
Awake and sober once more, Borasun left the inn and borrowed two hundred thalers from various comrades. Then he swaggered off to the serai outside the town wall where Cherkasi kept his pack-animals, his retainers and slaves.
Now reindeer are unusual beasts—peculiar that is, to those who do not understand them. The merchant did not know how to handle the halter-cord that controlled their movements and being unfriendly to animals he did not make any progress with the two deer, who at once became very stupid and obdurate. They would not go where he wanted, nor would they stay when he left them.
Finally, assisted by Kirghiz caravaneers and his henchmen, Cherkasi beat, tugged, and lashed them into the serai, where they stood trembling. He wore heavy boots, and the limbs of a reindeer are frail.
Borasun walked through the entrance in the rock wall and growled under his breath when he saw the evidence of mistreatment on the hides of his two pets.
“Here are your two hundred thalers,” said the warrior. “I will take back my reindeer.”
The merchant sidled forward as Borasun reached for the driving cord.
“Nay, what would you do, Cossack? The reindeer are mine. They are rare beasts, and I will take them to Kiev to sell at a good profit.”
“Hai, but look here. You said if I had two hundred gold pieces I could buy back the reindeer. Here is your money.”
Cherkasi smiled.