by Harold Lamb
As she spoke she tore off the voluminous khalat that had been about her shoulders.
“In the name of mercy, you must believe me. My name is Nadesha, and when the order came for Alashan to go to Astrakan, I said I would go instead. I have Persian blood in me, I know the ways of the Russians, and I had wit enough to slip out of any noose they made for me.”
“Agreed to that,” whispered Billings. “Are you the daughter of the Khan Ubaka?”
“Nay, I am Nadesha, the child of Norbo, who is Master of the Herds. Word came to me to escape from Astrakan. God was kind. You aided me. So I made you my anda. Today I came with Norbo to see if that old buzzard Kichinskoi was really ordered to make slaves of the Torgut youths. It is so. You do not think I am a girl?”
Hereupon Nadesha, who had unbuttoned the cotton jacket she had worn under the khalat, began to jerk at the neck of her shirt with anxious fingers.
“You must not give me to the soldiers, who would strip me and take me to Kichinskoi when they find I am not Alashan—”
“Hold on! Enough!” Billings’ ruddy cheeks grew redder, “I believe you.”
“Excellency,” came the summons from without. “Open the door and we will not trouble you more.”
Billings searched the room with his glance. A collection of weapons belonging to Mitrassof had been removed when Nadesha was installed; there was left only the bed, the stool, an ikon on the wall and a miscellaneous mass of fine though soiled garments piled by the skins.
At his whispered order, Nadesha ran through this array of velvet and satin clothes, but no woman’s attire was to be seen among the spoil of Mitrassof’s forays. She looked at Billings, who frowned.
It was bad enough for him to be suspected of conspiring with the Tatars, with out having to deal with a fair young witch. Witch! He could see Kichinskoi and Father Obe burning her, because her presence here certainly savored of magic, and it was more palatable for the official to claim that he had been bewitched than befooled.
Nadesha took matters into her own hands swiftly enough. She thrust her khalat into the pile of garments, took off her boots—too large for her bare feet—and shook down the masses of glossy hair over her shoulders. Then she kicked out the candle.
“Come in,” she called pleasantly, no longer simulating the deeper voice of a boy.
A Cossack sergeant pushed open the door—Billings withdrawing his foot barely in time—and entered, followed by a soldier bearing a stained and smoky lanthorn.
“Come, Alashan,” he growled, holding the dim light high in order to peer at the two occupants of the room.
Nadesha laughed and cracked her fingers. The lanthorn was moved over to her while the soldiers inspected her; then it was thrust about the bare room, finally coming to rest over Billings, who had not stirred.
“Where is the son of the Khan?” demanded the sergeant.
Receiving no answer, he looked under the bed upon which Nadesha kneeled, hugging her toes. Palpably, the room did not contain any one else.
The sergeant went out. Voices ensued. The sentry came in, glanced around, peered at Nadesha, searched under the bed and finally pushed his bayonet into the pile of clothes in the corner. He even lifted the skins on the floor.
Then he faced the sergeant and scratched his hair.
“I saw Alashan go in, but he is not here now.”
The Cossack inspected the hole of a window.
“Large enough for a weasel,” he muttered. He saluted Billings. “Excellency, have you seen Alashan, the Torgut?”
“No.”
“When did this maiden come in?”
“She was here when I arrived.”
This brought more bewilderment to the sheepish sentry. No one, he said, had been in the room when they put Alashan there, not six hours ago. Nor had any one except Captain Billings entered since.
Very angry was the sergeant.
“If Alashan has escaped again, you’ll be eaten by the crows, and I’ll have my nostrils torn.”
More than a little amused, Billings listened to the debate going on between the two. The pristof should be summoned. No, the pristof was asleep and he would consign to the strappado any one who awakened him now. Well, then the officer in command of the watch. A fine thing, that—to put their heads in the noose before it was tied. Colonel Mitrassof? He was out with the patrols.
“Sergeant,” observed Billings, leaning back against the wall with folded arms, “if you have finished with your questions, you might find time to reflect that an officer may sometimes desire to talk to a pretty woman undisturbed.”
“Yes, excellency.” The man drew himself up and saluted.
“Undisturbed.”
“Pardon.”
The Cossack prepared to leave, glaring about him suspiciously.
“Sergeant, for your own sake, make your report to Colonel Mitrassof and no other.”
Billings listened and was sure the two remained outside his door. Although bewildered, the soldiers were not minded to release the prisoners—for Billings would now be watched. He was committed now to getting Nadesha out of this mess. Lighting the candle, he saw that the Tatar girl was curling up in the blankets, preparing to go to sleep.
“Not a bad idea,” thought Billings, and sought the skins on the floor.
Although he dozed, one ear was conscious of the coming and going of feet outside the door. He had fastened the inner bolt. Presently the feet began to run through the passage; he was aware of shouts, the hoof beats of a horse outside the house. A touch on his arm wakened him.
Nadesha had put on the khalat but without binding up her hair. He could see her only vaguely by the glow of sunrise through the window.
“Come, brother,” she whispered.
Billings was alert at once, aroused by the tumult in the castle. Looking from the panes of mica in the window, he whistled softly.
Against the spreading crimson of sunrise in the east there rose numberless columns of smoke. The whole sky was full of these black pillars, so that the very dawn was the hue of blood. Listening to the outcry in the castle he made out fragments: “The Tatars have risen.… The world is burning up.… Where are the Torguts? Their villages are burning.”
Standing tip-toe beside him, Nadesha stared at the conflagration. She uttered a soft cry, of lament or joy, he did not know which. Tugging him after her, she drew back the bolt and pushed open the door.
The sentry faced her, dull with lack of sleep, his musket at the “ready.” Billings halted, but Nadesha knocked up the gun with a quick motion—she moved as swiftly as an animal—and drew from within her cloak a long pistol. Billings recognized it as his.
Thrusting the weapon into the soldier’s beard, she backed him against the wall of the corridor.
“You little vixen!”
Billings caught at her, but she slipped away, running fleetly in her bare feet. The map-maker dashed after her, leaving the sentry fingering his weapon and cursing, not daring to shoot for fear of hitting the officer.
Down the passageway they went, into an empty hall and through a door that gave upon a lighted chamber. This proved to be the office of Kichinskoi and the pristof himself sat at the table.
He wore a purple dressing-gown, and his hair was tousled. He was alone. As Billings ran into the room, the door was swung shut behind him and, wheeling, he saw Nadesha standing against it, flushed with triumph, a pistol in each small fist.
With her bare feet planted wide, her tangled hair falling into her gleaming eyes, the girl was a veritable wildcat. Kichinskoi stared at her with surprized anger, until comprehension came to his alert mind.
“You are Alashan!”
“I am Nadesha, child of Norbo, Master of the Herds. Listen to my word, you, who would chain the Torguts like a bear—who would eat of the fat of the bear and wear his skin to keep you warm.”
She gestured with a pistol, and Kichinskoi pressed back in his chair. Billings could see the pristof’s tongue moving spasmodically. Owing to the tumult in
the castle it would avail the man nothing to shout. Nor, by the discipline he enforced among those under his rule, was there a chance that any one—except Mitrassof—would enter without permission.
Kichinskoi was cornered and he was helpless. Billings had an idea that in her present mood Nadesha would think nothing of pistoling them both.
“Blind!” the girl’s cry went on. “You and your Empress would make slaves of the free born. Fool! You did not see that we will not submit. Many there were who brought the truth for your hearing. You shut your ears. Now, have you seen the smoke in the sky?”
A nod from Kichinskoi, who was gathering his wits about him.
“The Torguts are burning their villages; the bear is throwing off its shackles. We are marching—now—to the east; we are riding to our homeland. The clan of the Torguts will go back to Lake Balkash and beyond to the river Ili, where you cannot follow. The Khan has chosen—yesterday after your word.”
She cast a fleeting glance out of the window that was mellow with sunrise. Kichinskoi started.
“Impossible!” he muttered. “A year’s journey, and—two hundred thousand souls.” His eyes narrowed. “You would be attacked by your enemies, the Baskirs and the Black Kirghiz. Why, the snow—”
He almost laughed, feeling that the girl was deceiving him.
Nadesha smiled tauntingly.
“We have chosen, pristof. This is my word, from the council of the Torguts. If you send your soldiers to turn us back, there will be war, and a river of blood upon the snow from the Volga to Balkash. I have said it.”
With the pistol still in her hand, she raised it to her forehead and then dropped it to her lips in mock salaam.
“I could slay you, my fine boar, but you are already dead. My lord Beketoff already is driving a racing sledge to St. Petersburg with a word for the ear of your Empress that will stretch you out under the snow.”
Jumping up, Kichinskoi stared at her as if Nadesha had been truly a witch.
“You see, pristof,” she said calmly, “I have learned a lot at your school.” To Billings she added, “If you want your pistols, my little anda, come and get them.”
With that she was gone through the door as swiftly as she had come. Billings guessed that the girl would not stay within the building. She must make for the stables and secure a horse—if she could—as her best chance of freedom, before Kichinskoi’s men overtook her.
Knowing better than to try to pursue her, Billings ran out of the other door, through the dining—hall and the courtyard. Behind him Kichinskoi remained pale and rigid as if he had seen his death sentence written on the wall.
Billings found the gray light obscured by mists over the drill ground. Soldiers were running to stations, Cossacks who buckled belts and slid into overcoats as they ran. From the watch-tower a bugle blared. The men paid no heed to him, or to Nadesha.
As he had hoped, the captain sighted the long cloak and flying hair of the girl disappearing into the mist. She was looking back over her shoulder. Somewhat to his surprize she was heading not toward the stables but to a gate through which horse men were coming and going freely, men from the mounted patrols coming in and couriers going forth. The usual strict scrutiny was relaxed owing to the absence of both Mitrassof and Kichinskoi and the general disturbance caused by the conflagration.
In the shreds of mist Nadesha seemed like a floating wraith slipping over the snow. Just within the gate Billings sighted a large sleigh and recognized, by its gilded ornaments and pompons that it was the one used by Kichinskoi himself.
Beside it the young Polish lieutenant sat his horse restlessly. Into the sleigh was climbing the plump woman who was Kichinskoi’s mistress. Her maid, lugging bandboxes and shawls was trying to get in beside her. Not ten feet away stood the stocks, and from the frozen body of the imprisoned Cossack, two blind eyes stared at the tumult around the sleigh. The man had died in the night.
In response to Nadesha’s call three horsemen emerged from the dense shadows of the wall. They wore ragged sheepskin svitzas and nondescript black felt hats.
Billings, however, perceived that they were no peasants. He recognized the harsh features and immense shoulders of Norbo, Master of the Herds. Another was a youth of about Nadesha’s age. The three evidently knew exactly what was expected of them.
Norbo spurred up to the Pole, who drew a pistol from a saddle holster, but not quickly enough to avoid a sweep of the club in Norbo’s hand. The pistol was knocked into the snow, the Pole himself caught up, whirled from his mount and flung to earth.
Meanwhile the other two had frightened off the two grooms with a flourish of bared sabers. Nadesha, as usual, had not been idle. Seizing the maid by the shoulders, the girl pulled her back, screaming like a wounded parrot. The bandboxes flew about, and the horses attached to the sleigh began to rear.
The German woman had risen, and the forward jerk of the sleigh tumbled her back. Nadesha wormed into the vehicle and fell to rolling the frightened fugitive out of it. Norbo rode up impatiently and put an end to this by leaning over and pulling the woman bodily out of rugs and sleigh. Nadesha screamed something up at the Tatar, who turned and looked at Billings.
The captain had come to a halt. One of the Tatars, the young boy, spurred toward him. Billings drew his sword.
“Alashan!” cried Nadesha, her voice shrill with fear.
Men were running toward them. The Pole, having rolled out from under the horses’ feet, was shouting for aid.
The boy who had been called Alashan did not stop. He swung his saber slowly as he galloped. From the direction of the barracks came a ruddy flash and the roar of a musket.
Then Billings heard boots thudding in the snow behind him. He could not turn, for Alashan was almost on him. Something struck against the base of his neck, and a great crackling filled his ears. A red sea formed in front of his eyes. He felt a hand catch his arm; then all was darkness.
Above the roaring in his head persisted the shrill squawking of the fat woman who had been thrown in the snow.
CHAPTER III
THE FIGHT AT UKIM PASS
Only for a moment can you say, “I am the slayer, he the slain.”
The shrill joy-cries of the women at your wedding change to lamentation at your death bed.
—Native proverb.
In the year of the Tiger, by the Mongol calendar, Alashan was seventeen years of age. This was one year older than Nadesha. But the girl of Norbo, born of a Persian mother, grew swiftly to womanhood.
Alashan was still a boy, intent on sports and leader of a gang of Torgut rascals who tended the horse herds, racing the best of the beasts almost into the ground in their pastimes.
These other boys of the Torgut nobles were brawnier than Alashan. True, he could ride with a fiery eagerness that won him races; yet in the goat tamasha he could not hold his own, although he rode until his, lungs labored and his heart rose in his throat. The goat tamasha, in which each rider tries to capture and keep from the others a live goat, is a furious test of an hour or more during which clubs and cracked heads are often the lot of the contenders.
“You are worse than a hair on the eye ball,” Nadesha had assured him spitefully after one defeat. “How do you ever expect to be a man and kill an enemy when you can’t even keep a goat in your hand?”
Life, for the Tatar youths in the age when the great clans were still intact, was an ordeal. In the stag-hunts they had to follow the grown men, often from sunrise to sunrise, without eating and without pause except to rest the horses. The wild-swine hunts by torch and moonlight, where thickets coated the valleys, were less arduous but more hurtful. Many an overbold stripling had the calves of his leg ripped apart by angry tuskers, and some were ham-strung.
Alashan’s body was more delicate, his eyes deeper than usual. He was much given to hanging around the councils of the older men, even listening for hours to the whisperings of the lama—the priest from Tibet, who was very willing to inculcate superstition and fear into the mind o
f the future Khan.
So it was from a two-fold fear that Ubaka, his father, had sent Nadesha in his place, disguised as a boy, to Astrakan. He was afraid the Russians might influence the “queer” mind of his son against him.
“Nadesha is more of a man than Alashan,” he had said bitterly to Norbo, who, being too blunt to lie, said nothing.
The Khan was a broad man, less muscular than Norbo, more ponderous, with the strength of a bull. He was not clever, and care sat upon him heavily.
“Listen, Alashan,” he had said to the boy, “to the words spoken by the All Conquering, the mighty monarch, Genghis, who when he christened our clan, spoke in this fashion: ‘You shall be called the Giants4; from birth your sons will have a sword in their hands, and they will die so; there will be no peace for you that is not won by blood and suffering. In the stars it is written you will be free men, until the hour of your passing; you are the Giants.”
It was the longest speech Alashan had ever heard his silent father make. It lingered in his mind like the after-note of a bell.
“When you have proved yourself a man in the face of your enemies,” the Khan added, “then you shall ride on my left side. Not now.”
Often while he sat by the hearth in the wooden palace of his father on the steppe near Zaritzan, Alashan thought upon these words. So far, he reasoned, the words of Genghis Khan had proved true. The Torguts had migrated westward from China to keep their freedom. For a hundred and fifty years they had fought the battles of the Russians so that they might hold the steppe upon which their herds grazed.
For a hundred and fifty years the sword had been in their hands. What now? Alashan, while Ubaka was absent on the last campaign against the Turks and Nadesha away in Astrakan, listened to the talk of the women on the other side of the fireplace.
He heard that the levies of cattle and money paid by the Torguts to the Empress were to be increased. He himself had seen the forts going up around the territory of the Torguts.
When Ubaka rode home at the head of his men, Alashan waited in vain for a word of praise or reward from the Russians, and his anger grew. Ubaka became more silent.