Swords From the Sea

by Harold Lamb

  "Listen, sergeant," said the Provencal, "if you lay that stick over my shoulders I'll make a new buttonhole in your vest with this bayonet."

  Kehl checked the downward swish of the cane and glared at Pierre, who was still smiling, ominously. It took a full moment for the meaning of the recruit's words to dawn upon his understanding. Then his teeth clicked together and his eyes narrowed.

  "Many years ago," went on Pierre, "I vowed to the Holy Mary of the Seas that I would let the life out of the next chap who tried to flog me. Glad it's going to be you."

  Amazement gave place to cunning in the Prussian's thin features. He looked around and saw no officers near. Visibly, he reflected. Pierre waited, sure of his man.

  "Good!" said Kehl ponderously. "You have threatened a sergeant. Tomorrow it shall be reported. Tomorrow-" he hesitated, and his wrin kled face cracked in a smile-"well, the orders are out, and you may as well know. Your battalion goes into a wagon train, to Moscow and the Black Sea."

  Pierre, leaning on his musket, looked at him inquiringly.

  "I will not report you, and you will march with your regiment. Tfu! My bold lad, you'll never see a town again. Of those who go to the Black Sea not one in a hundred comes back. If the Turks do not rip you up, the tribesmen will do the business for you."

  "Tell me," inquired the Provencal, "is it true that Monsieur le Chevalier Jones is going with us, to the fleet?"

  "Aye, he landed at Riga a week ago. What is it to you?" he added curiously.

  "Ah, you do not understand. Ten years ago, I served on Paul Jones's ship, the old Richard. But you have never fought on the deck of a ship-you cannot understand. No other commander is like that chap. When I heard that he was to take over a fleet of the empress, I said, 'Pierre my lad, you also must serve this empress; then you will see Monsieur le Chevalier again, and tell your mates in Toulon all about it."'

  "But you are in the infantry!"

  Pierre shrugged and spread out both hands, hinting at his indifference to such a slight obstacle to his plans. He had the light heart of the southern Gaul, who weeps when most happy, and laughs in the face of black calamity-who fights like a wounded tiger when it is least expected of him.

  And in one thing he prophesied truly. Few lived to tell the story of what happened in the Black Sea in that year 1788, but Pierre Pillon was one of them.

  Chapter II

  The Eyes of Kalil

  Clouds banked low over the line of the forest on the horizon. The spires and windmills of Petersburg faded into the shroud of mist and windrift of snow, tossed up by the gale that swayed the treetops. Black masses moved over the snow, following the ribbon of road, cut through the forest-sledges filled with great bales covered with tarpaulins. The center of each sledge had been left empty and here were crowded twenty or thirty men, protected a little from the bite of the wind.

  Behind the sledges came a supply train, behind this flat sledges, bearing caissons and artillery, behind this a scattering of sutlers' outfits, a few Gypsies, and packs of wild dogs.

  Two thousand men, a battery of field guns, and a consignment of stores were on their way to the Black Sea.

  Pierre Pillon had never seen such a land. Earth and sky met in a long line in the distance. The forests had been left behind. Always the sun rose on the left and set on the right, red in the mist. And at all hours the howling of wolves was heard.

  They camped every night at the watch post stations-log huts scattered around the stables-shrouded by dancing wraiths when the wind whipped up the dry snow. Truly, Pierre thought, this land was akin to the sea. But he had never crossed a sea so vast as this plain that was with him when he rolled out of his blankets before dawn and when he went to sleep.

  In the heart of the frozen sea they halted for a week, with the domes and cupolas and the white walls of a glittering city in the distance.

  "Is this Constantinople, brother?" a man of his squad asked, after gazing a long time at the city.

  "Nay," Pierre laughed.

  He had the ability of some veterans of picking up a strange language quickly, and he could make himself understood in Russian eked out with lingua franca after a fashion. "Constantinople has minarets like spears. It is on the sea, like Toulon. Besides, here is too much snow."

  He noticed that while the infantry remained in camp, the officers spent most of their time in the city, and after a while he learned that it was Moscow.

  It was a month after leaving Moscow that they began to see in the distance a river that was not frozen over. The snow was gray instead of white, and patches of reddish earth showed here and there. The sun was higher in the sky, and its warmth struck through their greatcoats.

  "Surely Pierre," said his squad mate, a stoop-shouldered man with wistful eyes-a fur hunter, Feodor by name-"this is early for the spring thaw. The priests have not yet held the Easter procession."

  "We have been journeying south. The heat of the sun is greater. If we kept on long enough, little brother, we would reach a land where there is no snow."

  The fur hunter shook his head incredulously. But Pierre's prophecy came true. In a few days the caravan was halted while they fitted to the sledges the wheels that had been strapped in the loads. The highway was no more than a line of muddy ruts, and the number of horses to each wagon was doubled. Pierre's battalion was chosen to push ahead of the caravan with some twenty wagons loaded with grain and ammunition. The infantry no longer rode in the vehicles; they marched beside the road and helped haul the wagons that bogged down, and pull the horses out by the tails.

  He worked with a will, feeling sure that now they would come to the end of this empty land and find vineyards and orchards, and perhaps olives and muscat wine. Were they not going to the southland, on the sea? Tiens! There would be taverns and girls to chaff and fresh fish. All this he told to Feodor.

  "But there is a maiden, who wears her hair down," exclaimed Feodor after listening, sorely puzzled, to the Provencal's prophecy of good things to come. "She must belong to a boyar. Only the nobles have fetched women along this weary way." Pierre looked around and shaded his eyes. Sure enough, an officer's carriage was moving past the files of foot soldiers, and in it was no officer but an olive-faced girl wrapped in a colored khalat.

  "Why it's Kalil," he muttered, "that singing girl of the tavern."

  For a moment he cudgeled his brains as to why the woman who had been keen to fly from Petersburg should have lingered with the column; and why her friends had deserted her-then gave up puzzling as a bad job. As the carriage passed he took a sprig of jasmine that he had picked to carry in his musket, and tossed it into her lap.

  She glanced back, searching the faces of Pierre's squad until she picked him out. Then she flashed him a smile, whether for the incident in the tavern or the flowers, he did not know. He watched the carriage out of sight, humming under his breath, and grimaced at a new thought.

  "We're in Asia now-captain said so. Perhaps we'll see some Turks before long. They have curved swords-cut off heads like grass with a sickle. What will you chaps do then?"

  "The batyushna will watch over us."

  "The little mother? Who the deuce-oh, you mean the empress. Nonsense; she's a thousand leagues off by now."

  "Our officers will look out for everything."

  "Feodor," said Pierre out of the depths of his experience, "those officers of yours will hang back when the pas de charge is beaten; they'll stay in a safe place until it's all over. When you come back all cut up, maybe with prisoners, maybe with just wounds, they'll fall you in and march off at your head. Then they'll be given a cross or a ribbon or a sword of honor, and you bullies will have an extra tot of rum-those of you that haven't turned up your toes."

  "As God wills." Feodor frowned, trying to understand. "Nay, Pietr, we have heard there is a batko waiting for us down yonder."

  "A little father?"

  The fur hunter nodded cheerfully.

  "Little Father Suvarof. When it is time to charge he only says-'Come a
head!' Then he marches with us and God gives a victory. That is the way of it."

  Pierre assented without being convinced. He was wondering how Feodor and his mates would act when things warmed up, when they smelled powder. They were as green as sprouts; and Pierre had seen the Moslems fight.

  It was one night after the battalion had crossed the river that the girl of the khalat came and sat at Pierre's fire. For the first time the men noticed that they had found no post station to halt at; they were in the open steppe, and fuel was scanty.

  Near the brush shelter that had been built for the captain they had seen a kind of stone monument. It was a woman's figure, more than life size, the face turned to the east. Feodor was troubled by it.

  "The Tatars in the company know what it means, but we do not know. All over the steppe these stone women sit-like that. It is not good."

  "How, not good?" demanded Pierre, who was filling his clay pipe.

  He had been singing, because his companions liked it. They had an ear for a tune, though the Provencal considered their chants both cheerless and endless.

  Feodor shook his head.

  "When one of the stone women are moved to a village it takes ten strong oxen to pull them to the west, although one can draw them to the east. They were made by men who came out of the east a long time ago and who will come back again someday to where these women are."

  "What of it?"

  "It is not good to see one at night. Ekh, and here we are sleeping under the feet of that one."

  Pierre made himself as comfortable as he could on his blanket. He sniffed the odor of grass, warmed by the sun. The bivouac that evening was on dry ground. Before then they had slept in mud, chilled and restless. He had no fault to find.

  "Eh, didn't I tell you! Look at that."

  Feodor crossed himself and pointed to where a slim form was mov ing toward them from the direction of the stone woman and the captain's hut.

  The girl of the khalat stepped out of the shadows, and Pierre sprang up to offer her his seat. She knelt, holding out her hands to the fire, masses of black hair about a white throat. The Russians drew away from her but Pierre lifted an elbow and twirled his mustache. Her brown eyes flicked up at him; and she made room for him on the blanket.

  "Tiens," muttered the Provencal, sitting, "if this is a new trick, it is at least entertaining."

  "I can speak a little French, monsieur," she said suddenly. "But that pig of a sergeant does not know it. He is asleep in the cart."

  "Good," smiled Pierre. "You are no Tsigani. A Gypsy sits on the ground, a Berber kneels."

  For a moment she searched the faces of the other soldiers, until she was satisfied that they did not understand.

  "True, monsieur, my mother was a Berber of Fez, my father a Levantine, a Jew. With my father I have been to many cities and army camps, because he is a trader. But at Petersburg he disappeared and I am on my way back to my own place. At Otchakof on the Black Sea," she went on, "there is a Turkish army and serais where I will have silver for my songs." Again the Provencal nodded. He had seen such serais-heard the monotonous note of rabeb and gosba, beloved of the Arabs. Once or twice in the alleys of Algiers he had seen women of Fez who were slaves of the Turks. But this was no ordinary woman, who could speak French, whose hands were tapering and delicate. Moreover, she was beautiful.

  "Your name," he asked, "is Kalil?"

  "Kalil, daughter of Mokador. I am frightened." She glanced at the big Provencal beseechingly. "This battalion has lost its way. It will never reach Kherson, where the Russian army is."

  "The deuce! And why not?"

  She leaned her chin on her hands to gaze into the fire for a while without answering.

  "Today," she replied at last, "I saw a rider on the skyline, who turned his horse back into the tall grass. The officers of the Roumis, the white men, did not see him. But he will come back with others."

  "Tribesmen?"

  "Aye, this is their steppe!"

  "Well, they'll get a few bullets to crack their teeth on."

  Pierre was rather amused at the thought of undisciplined riders attacking a strong column well supplied with powder.

  "Go!" She smiled curiously. "Go, and tell your captains that they are being spied upon. They will not listen."

  "You are a Mohammedan, Kalil." He had noticed that the arch of her brows was darkened with kohl and the tips of her fingers tinted with henna stain.

  She flung up her head, startled but not afraid.

  "Then go, 0 brother of the ravens, you who are so shrewd, tell your captain that I am of the Moslem. Why not?"

  But Pierre had no liking for that.

  "It is written in the Book-To-Be-Read, 0 Kalil, that a daughter of Islam should go unveiled before men?"

  She turned on him suddenly, making no effort to conceal her surprise and curiosity.

  "Nay, in the khaysamah it is written in going before eunuchs and Jews and Christians there is no shame. You have been among my folk, Monsieur Pierre, you know our laws. You are a follower of al-Islam!"

  "Nay," Pierre laughed. "I bear scars that your folk put upon me at Algiers. I know that there is a holy war proclaimed and I go to send as many of your warriors to the prophet's paradise as I may."

  "It is well for you," she assented. "If you had been a follower of the true prophet, one who had turned back to the giaours, I would have left my knife in your liver when I ride away this night."

  As Pierre was silent, she went on in a lower voice.

  "In the tavern at Petersburg you did not betray me when the dogs came to nose me out. You overcame them with your bare hands. So, in return, I will take you with me to safety."

  "How?"

  "I have said this column will not be permitted to find its way back to the others. I know where two horses can be stolen from the lines. We can ride to Otchakof."

  "Why, to Otchakof?"

  Kalil glanced at him, a world of flattery in her tawny eyes. In truth, she had seen few men like this one, with the bones of a giant, the yellow hair of a giaour, and the dark skin of her own people. The flattery was art but the admiration was sincere, and it irked her that Pierre took no account of either.

  "It is a great city, held by the Moslems, and the Roumis will never take its forts. The galley of Hassan Pasha is there, and the pigs of Roumis will never take that, either."

  Pierre took his pipe from his lips and thumbed it thoughtfully. "Hassan of Algiers?"

  "Aye." There was pride in her voice. "You have heard of the galley." She pointed to his boots caked with dry mud, and his stained coat. "You did not come hither to serve with these oxen. I know that you would like to be on a ship again. Many giaours aid Hassan Pasha, and their reward is a just share in the spoils."

  "And-"

  "In the cabin of the pasha are chests of gold and fine silks and rubies from Badakshan and strings of pearls that you could wind around both arms. I have seen them. Come to Otchakof and see for yourself. Hassan of Algiers is a just man."

  In silence Pierre listened; the soft gutturals of the woman's voice mingled with the hissing of the fire. Her long hair gave out a scent that was not musk or aloes, but more like jasmine when the sun is warm upon it. Why not go with her? She must know her way out of this infernal steppe. Aye, she could lead him down to the sea.

  And then, a few mumbled words, a shaving of the head, other garments and he could turn Moslem-renegade. Life would be easier than this.

  "Fly away, little Kalil," he said slowly, "I'll bide here."

  Anger darkened her cheeks and narrowed the full line of her lips. When she realized that he meant what he said, she rose and went away, her slender back and the poise of her head expressive of utter scorn. When she had disappeared into the shadows he listened until he heard the tramp of the squads going the rounds to change guard.

  "Eh?" he muttered, bending down.

  Blue-eyed Feodor stared up at him anxiously.

  "Did she put a spell on you, brother? I saw her stop and look
at that stone woman, just like a sister-"

  Pierre nudged him and held up a hand for silence. They could hear a bustle in the horse lines, a trampling and shouted questions that no one answered. Then hoofs thudded off into the darkness and lanterns winked into being, wandering around aimlessly. Before long he saw his captain, who had gone to investigate the disturbance, walking back to the hut and went to intercept him.

  "Tribesmen around? Danger of attack?"

  The officer, who had a liking for the Provencal, was more than a little irritated. The guides had wandered off the trail that day and now horses had broken loose from the picket lines. His quarters were highly unsatisfactory and he was sleepy. One of the horse tenders had sworn that he saw a witch ride off on a pony, as if it were a broomstick. He wondered what had got into the men. He was new to field service, but the moujiks of his estate had been just as prone to restlessness on a warm spring night.

  "Back to your place! And stay away from vodka if you can't keep your tongue between your teeth."

  The next day Pierre was sure that they had lost their way. Men were sent to a hillock to study the lie of the land, and they changed direction more than once before noon. All around them the stiff grass, brilliant with poppies and the purple cornflowers, swelled over dunes that were like waves.

  And over one of these ridges rode a thousand horsemen in skullcaps and fluttering caftans, brandishing long muskets and scimitars.

  They charged down on the column, firing as they came. Only one company of Russians was in time to loose a volley before the horsemen were on them, slashing with the deadly curved swords.

  Pierre was in his squad with the advance-half a company under his captain. They had pushed on ahead and three hundred yards separated them from the wagons and the main body. In the brilliant sunlight Pierre could see clearly all that took place. The raiders got home with the first charge, something that should never have happened if the infantry had been properly drilled, and accustomed to their muskets.

  As it was, with the bayonets they beat off the horsemen, who circled around the rear, wiping out the detachment in that place.