by Harold Lamb
“That is death. Come, it is time—time.”
They mounted, Billings stiffly, Alashan with a spring. The boy glanced over his shoulder.
“Which way?”
Surveying the sea of dunes, Billings noted the position of the purple finger of basalt. Away from this he turned his horse’s head, and Alashan followed without comment. The boy rode like one possessed, pointing out the strips of clay that offered firmer footing than the sand on the tops of the ridges. He changed from horse to horse without halting.
At first Billings glanced at the boy, expecting him to halt, to eat. But Alashan pulled some of the dried meat from under a saddle and went on.
Billings removed his tattered coat and tied it behind his saddle, and then his waistcoat followed suit. He felt little relief. Then he tried chewing some of the meat, but that increased his thirst. Presently Alashan pulled down into the soft bottom of a gully. A line of tracks were visible.
“Two camels with riders,” muttered Alashan.
He took the lead, following the tracks. They led slightly across the course Billings had been on. Before long other traces joined the camel tracks. Alashan studied them, dismounting in order to see the better.
“What can you say of this, my giaour captain?”
Utilizing the pause to fill his pipe, Billings shook his head good-humoredly.
“Nothing, except that they be horses.”
“Horses of the Black Kirghiz. They are shod with yaks’ hide, fastened by wooden plugs that leave traces in the sand.”
“Hm,” said Billings.
He had heard Nadesha say that the Kara Kirghiz were mountaineers, the most powerful tribe of Central Asia. Also, they were occasionally in league with the Baskirs from the steppe, the most bitter foes of the Torguts.
Alashan’s green eyes were triumphant at the knowledge that he had divested the older man of leadership. Not Billings’ fault, for the maker of maps had been unable to bring his compass and the sky had been clouded.
“There is another trail!” he exclaimed, pointing ahead.
This proved to be other horses, again two. Before an hour had passed a fourth trail turned into the main track. Billings reflected and turned to the boy.
“The Kara Kirghiz live in the hills to the south and east, the Hindu Kush. Four pairs, or at least three, are riding swiftly back, through the desert. Do you see the meaning in that?”
For answer Alashan’s lip curled. It meant that each man of the Black Kirghiz had a spare horse—and so was equipped for fast travel. It meant, too, that four riders outside their own lands were meeting at a rendezvous in the heart of the Kangar.
“The Black Kirghiz are dogs and thieves. They have sent men to spy on the Horde. They are returning with news of what they have seen.”
“Kai—it is so.” Billings nodded. “But what was their meeting place in this purgatory of God?”
The boy was indifferent. Nor did he take the precaution of riding below the ridges they had been following. Billings, however, was interested in the question of a landmark. How could four riders have met—or at least turned into a common path—within six miles? He studied the horizon and presently touched Alashan’s leg with his stirrup.
Ahead of them was smoke, rising from a clump of dead trees. Alashan declared that tents were visible in the thickets under the gnarled willows.
He would have gone ahead, into the encampment, thinking only of finding his way at once to Sonkor and Nadesha, but Billings persuaded him to circle the spot, keeping behind the sand ridges.
“If they watch, it would be toward the north,” he explained, and the boy reluctantly consented.
They found the place to be a village, some wretched shepherd’s huts and a herdsman’s tent, by a pool of muddy water. The peasants were away in the willow clumps along the dried river bed in which the pool stood. The women and children ran and hid at their approach.
But on a bench outside a clay hut, Alashan found a Baskir man, dead drunk. A dromedary knelt by the desert rider, and under his sprawling feet was a sack of varied spoil.
“The Baskir fell in with the mountain men by chance,” observed Alashan. “They gave him a skinful of drink to loosen his tongue and find out what he knew. Then they rode away to the south, as the traces show, in haste—because they did not lift his plunder. We will do so.”
He sorted over the contents of the bag and found a soiled Cossack svitza or woolen coat, together with a fine red sash and green silk neckcloth. Rummaging further, he drew out a greasy lambskin cap. These things he gave to Billings.
“When we are outside the village you must put them on, my comrade,” he pointed out. “The Baskir son of a dog has been robbing the dead in the path of the Horde.”
He stared moodily at the snoring raider, and proceeded to strip him of khalat, pantaloons, leather leg wraps and turban. When it was too dark to follow the tracks of the Kirghiz they halted and gathered some of the dried tamarisk branches for a fire, lighting it in a deep hollow screened by bushes. While the flame was bright Alashan trimmed Billings’ beard with his knife and shaved off the long hair back of the forehead. Then the maker of maps stripped to his shirt and boots and pulled on the rough nankeen breeches, the silk sash and the heavy svitza.
The garments were rich in material and, though slashed and stained, were nearly new. Billings wrapped the green cloth about his neck and thrust the hat on the back of his head as he had seen Mitrassof do. He had the erect carriage of a soldier, and so the Cossack garments did not look amiss on him. Moreover the sun had burned his skin to the hue of leather.
Meanwhile Alashan had done likewise with the Baskir’s outfit, screening his long black hair with the loose folds of the turban that came down to his shoulders. The boy’s chin was lean, his nose thin and down curved, so that he fitted into the part of a desert man.
Alashan looked up and his eyes narrowed. He had not known Billings would be so striking a figure in Cossack dress. “A real gallant,” he told himself, and his eye fell on the belt with the wolf’s head that Billings had cast carelessly into the sand.
“Would you part with that?” he cried.
“With what?” Billings glanced down and whistled reflectively.
If they were to go into Loosang’s temple—and he had given up hope of overtaking the lama before then—he could not well wear the emblem of a Tatar clan. Alashan himself had suggested the disguises as necessary when he saw that the Kara Kirghiz were afoot.
“Look here, Alashan,” he suggested, “why don’t you keep the thing, under your girdle? Nadesha is your girl.”
The boy flushed angrily. He would not receive a gift from Billings. The map-maker could never understand the boy’s nature. Nevertheless, he did not bury the wolf’s head in the sand with his other worn-out garments but left it lying by the fire. In the morning he saw that it was gone, and judged that Alashan had it about him.
As they were lying down on their saddle cloths to sleep, Billings turned to the boy.
“Do you think Nadesha went with Loosang of her own will?”
Silence. Billings felt that he had said something harmful.
“Alashan, it looks as if the Kirghiz, whoever they are, were gathering around Sonkor. What does that mean?”
It was so long before the son of the Khan answered that Billings lay back and was settling his shoulders in the sand when, a jackal snarled from beyond the hollow.
“The wild dogs are sitting on their haunches,” said Alashan in a low voice. “The jackals have come from afar; the vultures are in the air.”
“Here?”
“Nay, around the Horde.”
Billings, as he pictured the road-weary clans crossing the desert steppe, a hundred and fifty miles in three days, thought this was more than likely.
* * * *
Sonkor would not have been found by Billings alone for the reason that it was hidden from any searcher who should come over the steppe. Alone, the captain might have combed the plateau for months and seen
only the occasional aul of a shepherd, or the basalt shafts that might have been tombstones of giants.
But Alashan followed the Kirghiz tracks with the nose of a ferret until hostile tribesmen, appearing ahead of them on the trail, forced them to turn aside. Then it was Billings who used an old trick of the explorers and ascended a height from which the ground in front of them could be surveyed as clearly as if drawn on a map.
“By Jove!” he said.
Even Alashan drew in his breath quickly. The red clay sloped away sharply in front, evidently to the edge of a precipice. Beyond and below this was a great, green valley topped on the farther side by mountains of immense extent. In the center of the valley they could see a sluggish river winding, and on the nearer bank of the river a camp of more than a thousand tents, with ranks of camels and horse herds grazing near the water.
“The Chu,” Billings decided.
“And the camp of the Black Kirghiz,” assented Alashan gravely.
They looked for signs of the horsemen they had seen along the trail, but the riders had vanished. It was late afternoon and darkness would set in before they could pick up the tracks again and follow them down to the river.
Alashan pointed out the high, black hats on some of the soldiers in the nearest tents, the stacked arms, and the standards topped by huge elk antlers. He judged there were at least eight thousand of the tribesmen. The distance was too great for Billings to see these particulars, but it struck him that the number of horses was more than that.
“True,” agreed Alashan after a pause; “the Kirghiz have been raiding. No Kirghiz women are in the camp. The horses have been lifted from the Baskirs, when most of the Moslem tribesmen were riding against us.”
“Then it is well we did not follow the riders down to the Chu,” Billings pointed out. “You wear the garb of a Baskir.”
Alashan seemed indifferent. He was squinting into the distance, trying to read the answer to the question as to what brought the power of the Kirghiz so near the steppe. His face was drawn. From the aul where they had obtained their disguise, they had wandered for two days, being forced to camp at night in order to keep the trail in view. It had been a test of endurance, and both were still fit. They had drawn on their reserve strength, Billings more than the Tatar, and their eyes were overbright, their hands restless.
“What are the Kirghiz doing here?” asked the map-maker.
The tents seemed to him to be arrayed in a sort of semicircle, facing the height on which they stood.
Said Alashan, bitterly: “The wild dogs are sitting on their haunches, waiting; the jackals have come from afar. The Kirghiz live by raiding down from the mountains, but this is greater than a raid. They ride to a slaying.”
“Hope it’s not us,” thought Billings. “I am going to look at the edge of that precipice,” he added aloud. “That sandstone rock might be a watch-tower.”
They had not much fear of being seen from below because numberless masses of sandstone made the summit of the slope jagged, as if it were a crenelated battlement. Billings climbed from his saddle and slipped down the slope, holding to the points of the rocks. He was careful not to dislodge any of the soft fragments of stone. Coming to the edge, he ducked down and, lying on his belly, stared over the brink. He was looking at Sonkor.
The precipice was nearly sheer, a wall of red and purple stone, beneath which stood a black temple. It was black from the top of its twin towers to the crude wall of flat rocks that surrounded its courtyard. Its lines were curiously deceptive.
“The walls slope in markedly, and so do the towers,” he thought. “Let me see, two, five, seven rows of windows. Arrow slits, rather. Must be seven stories high. The slope inward must make it look gigantic from the Chu.”
The peculiar black appearance was due to the stone used—granite and basalt, evidently brought by boat from the upper gorges of the Chu. (Billings was observing for the first time some of the devices used by the Tibetan lamas to make their temples formidable, in looks as well as strength. In Lhassa there were monastery halls with pillars of chenars that did not grow within a thousand miles.)
He saw too that more tents of the Kirghiz were clustered just outside the courtyard wall and that the court and the roofs of the temple were quite deserted.
Returning to Alashan, he reported what he had seen. The boy was all for searching out a way down the cliff. Billings nodded, but their exhausted horses stood with heads close to the ground, and legs quivering.
“Done for,” Billings reflected. “Food’s gone. Sunset—dark in half an hour.” He glanced at Alashan. “Can we enter the Kirghiz camp? It surrounds the temple on three sides, and on the other side is the cliff.”
“Nadesha is there, in the lamasery.”
“True. And Loosang is there. Alashan, to-night is the sixth of his nine nights away from the Horde. It is in my mind that tomorrow he must mount again to ride to the northwest. If we are to reach Nadesha before he goes it must be this night.”
“True.” Alashan gnawed his lip. “In the dark we can slip through the camp, keeping away from the watch fires. Within the lamasery we would find the going harder. No one is allowed within the temple gate except the guests of the lamas, and they are watched by armed guards—”
“I saw no guards.”
“They watch from the embrasures. If the sons of the devil are all within the temple it means they are preparing a ceremonial for the night. If so the doors of the lamasery will be closed.”
Billings tethered his horse reflectively to a dead oak and shrugged. Even the moon had been obscured for three nights, as if to make their efforts useless. To get down the cliff in the dark would be hard work. For a pseudo-Baskir and a Cossack bravo to penetrate into the temple of Bon would be a problem. To find Nadesha and speak with her under the nose of Loosang would be a miracle—if, indeed, Nadesha had actually reached Sonkor.
But Alashan was convinced that she was there. So far the instinct of the boy of the steppe had proved true.
“Have you a plan?” Billings asked the son of the Khan.
Alashan laughed, for the first time since the map-maker had known him.
“I have no plan, captain. But I feel that a way will be opened. Look, there are vultures in the sky over the camp; and the sunset is red—the gate in the sky is red. There will be blood under our feet this night. Kai—I know it.”
“He’s a fool of a pagan, and a savage,” thought Billings. “But, may the black pest take me, I can’t let him go down into that cesspool of Satan alone. I’ll stand by him until Nadesha is found, or the boy gets his throat slit; then I’ll look after myself.”
A brazen thunder shook their eardrums. It seemed as if the very clouds overhead had trumpeted down a challenge. Billings swore and clutched at his sword hilt. Alashan glanced up from narrowed eyes.
Again came the note of the trumpets, repeated three times, fainter and more mellow. An echo came back from the mountains across the river.
By a common impulse the man and the boy turned and ran back toward the summit of the slope leading to the cliff. Looking over the rise cautiously they beheld four black figures below them on the edge of the cliff. Four bronze trumpets, longer than the tall musicians, were leveled out across the valley.
Then the horns were lowered over the precipice and the three notes repeated. This done, the four lamas turned to one side, in single file and disappeared among the nest of rocks that Billings had called a pulpit.
Billings chuckled under his breath. He could see thousands of ant-like figures running out of the Kirghiz tents to stare up at the cliff.
“The way is opened,” whispered Alashan. “There must be a passage down to the temple from the spot.”
They crept after the four from boulder to boulder until they came to a sandstone ridge halved by a wide crack. Alashan pointed to the print of feet in the dust here. Entering the shadow between the rocks, they left daylight behind them at once.
Shelving downward, the path turned aside into wh
at seemed solid rock. But here Billings saw the gleam of a candle far down and ahead of them. Quickening their pace, they hurried on and at the next turn made out the trumpeters, in single file, the leader with the candle.
The immense horns delayed the progress of the lamas so that Billings and Alashan kept up with them easily. The cleft had changed to a kind of wide tunnel, twisting and irregular. Only in the steepest descents were steps cut into the soft stone. Limestone, Billings believed, and judged that water had cut this channel down into the valley of the Chu hundreds of years ago, when the river was still eating its way down to its present course.
More than once they passed along the floor of a lofty cavern, their steps muffled by the inch-deep carpet of white, powdered rock. And once they edged warily across a natural bridge over such a cavern, almost losing sight of the candle as they did so.
The air grew much warmer. They were forced to stoop now, to work down a low passage. Billings judged that the air, here, was heated by the rays of the afternoon sun on the cliff outside, and that they must be close to the entrance. Nor was he wrong.
“—” he muttered.
He had seen the lama in the lead pause at a heavy, wooden door, and knock. The portal swung open. Stooping, the four trailed out with their horns. The door swung shut. Billings and the boy were in total darkness. Both knew that they could not find their way back. True, they had flint and steel and some powder, but there was nothing in the cavern to ignite.
They made their way down to the door, knocking their heads more than once. Feeling the stout boards cautiously and pressing against them, Billings decided the portal was barred on the outside. Wiping the sweat out of his eyes, he considered.
“Alashan,” he whispered, “the lamas have stationed a guard at this end of the passage. The men with the horns did not open the door themselves. There was a sentry on the other side. Good. We will knock and get ourselves admitted to the presence of Bon before the guard goes elsewhere.”
He did so, rather hastily. It had occurred to him suddenly that the lama on watch might have gone away after the others, being posted at the door to let them in. But it was likely, if anything unusual was in the wind that evening, that a man would be stationed to watch the door.