Swords of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  It was old snow, that, on the roofs and the plain. And stretching in every direction from the cluster of dwellings and stables tracks were to be seen. Tricks of men and horses, of carts, and wide, clumsy tracks that bit deep into the gray coverlet of the steppe.

  A throng of men, a multitude of horses, had left their traces around the village. But the painted doors of the taverns were shut and barred; the horn windows of the cottages showed no gleam of light, though it was the dull twilight of a midwinter's day.

  It was a time of trouble, early in the seventeenth century. And to the good people of this village in the steppe, trouble had come indeed. Their faces pressed against the windows, they listened to the muttering growl of cannon and musketry in the distance.

  The dogs in the stable yards barked half-heartedly at the sound of approaching horses. Three Cossacks, plying their whips on spent ponies,

  galloped up to the post tavern. The youngest, who rode in advance of the others, reined in at the door and pounded on it with a pistol butt.

  "Hi, father of a thousand slaves! Horses—give us fresh horses!"

  A blur of faces was visible at the window overhead, but no answer was returned to the impatient rider. The dogs that had clustered around to yap at him gave back suddenly. Like a shadow drifting over the snow, a gray borzoi, or wolfhound, that had been following the young Cossack in the white coat, turned into the tavern yard. Its ears were pricked toward the man and the horse, and only by a soundless snarl did it acknowledge the growling of the village dogs. Its massive chest and arched ribs were mud-stained, and it moved with the effortless ease of the wolf that had sired it.

  A second Cossack now entered the yard and dismounted from a foundered pony that stood nose to earth, legs planted wide.

  "Aside, Kirdy," he grunted. "I will deal with the dog-souls."

  The slender warrior in the white coat give place to the newcomer who strode to the door and thrust his shoulder against the painted panel. He was little less than a giant, hatless, with a long broadsword strapped to his wide shoulders. Under the impact of weight the door creaked ominously, and the watchers within saw fit to open the window.

  "The forehead to you, master," a heavy voice cried down at the Cossacks. "We have done no harm. We are people who believe in God. What do you seek?"

  "I am Ayub the Zaporogian!" roared the giant, steam rising from his black sweat-soaked coat. "I must have a horse—three horses, for ours."

  "Ekh ma, Master Ayub. By Saint Andrew and the good Saint Thomas, we have not a horse."

  "How, not a horse?"

  A shaggy bearded head was thrust out of the window.

  "We are innocent people, by all that's holy. It is true we had some beasts, for the post service. But first the noble boyars and the splendid Polish knights came and took their pick; then the illustrious Cossack lords came and hitched what was left to their guns. In all the village you will find no more than these dogs."

  "How long have the cannon been speaking?"

  "Since the sun was at the zenith, noble sir. At dawn the army of Za-porogian Cossacks passed through our streets to give battle to the Poles and the boyars."

  "Hark ye, innkeeper!" The warrior called Ayub wrenched his wallet from his girdle and tossed it against the door, so that the jangle of silver coins against it was audible. "That's for the man who finds us three nags, now—at once!"

  The head disappeared, and the impatient Cossacks heard the low growl of voices in argument. When the tavern-keeper looked out again, despair was written on his broad features.

  "Good sir, no horse is to be had."

  The two Cossacks who had ridden four hundred versts in four days to be present at that battle looked at each other without a word and turned by swiftly mutual consent to the third. He was an old man with shrewd gray eyes. His long white mustache fell below his stooped shoulders, and the brown skin seemed stretched and drawn over the bones of his head. Through the tears in his sheepskins a red silk shirt was visible, and his baggy trousers were spotted with tar and mud, quite disregarded by their owner, who was drawing tighter the girth on his sweating pony.

  He was Khlit, called the Curved Saber, and he had been Koshevoi Ataman of all the Zaporogian Cossacks. When he had finished his task he straightened and held up his hand.

  Straining their ears, Kirdy and Ayub made out a change in the reverberation of distant conflict. The cannon had ceased firing, and only the sharper impact of muskets was to be heard.

  Ayub swore under his breath.

  "It is nearly over, out there. Our brothers have whipped the Poles."

  But in the clear eyes of the old warrior there were uncertainty and the shadow of misery.

  It was true that the three had come up from the Cossack steppes in the south, heedless of the fate of the horses they bestrode, as messenger pigeons seek out a spot behind the horizon, untiringly. Khlit had brought his grandson out of the mountains of Tartary, through the empire of the Moghul, past the settlements of the frontier for one purpose.

  He had meant to place Kirdy among his old comrades of the Zaporogian Siech—the war encampment of the Cossack warriors—before he died. They had heard on the Don that the army of the siech had taken the field against foes, and they had turned aside again, seeking it. As they rode, the clouds of war settled lower upon the wilderness of the steppe, and now the clouds had broken. The time of trouble was at hand; the Cossack warriors were in the saddle, the battle was drawing to its end, and they were no nearer than this village of the Muscovites, five miles from the armies, with their horses utterly useless.

  Khlit swallowed his disappointment in silence. Before long he would see his old comrades and learn from them all that had passed. He did not understand why the Cossacks should be fighting the Poles, or why the Muscovite boyars should be in arms. And, beyond weariness and disappointment, a foreboding was in his spirit.

  "Look at Karai!" said Kirdy.

  The gray wolfhound had been sitting in middle of the courtyard, the long tail curved around its feet, eyeing them expectantly. Now it rose, ears pricked, and stalked to the gate.

  "Horses are coming," the young Cossack announced after a moment, and they went to stand beside Karai and peer up the empty street.

  Behind them a level bar of orange light divided earth from sky in the curious twilight of the northern Winter, when the sky seems darker than the earth and the sun is a thing forgotten.

  A black mass passed between the first huts of village and resolved itself into a detachment of horsemen. Weary men on weary beasts they were, some bearing lances, some sabers, some no weapons at all.

  "They are ours," cried Ayub, staring between cupped hands. Then he lifted his deep voice in a shout, "Hai Kosaki! Have you whipped the Poles?"

  The leading riders came abreast the tavern, and an officer reined to one side to look more closely at the three Cossacks. He was hatless, a bloodstained shirt wrapped around his forehead.

  "Are horses to be had in the village?" he asked of Ayub.

  "Nay—not a nag."

  The leader of the detachment sighed and urged his pony on. Some of the chargers, smelling the hay in the tavern yard, neighed, and a man cursed blackly.

  "Look here," demanded Ayub, "aren't you ordered to camp in the village? It's twenty versts to the next houses."

  A bearded lancer, erect as a statue on a fine black Tartar stallion, paused long enough to spit toward the rear and thrust his sheepskin hat on the back of his head. In silence the advance of the Zaporogians moved on through the village and out into the plain toward the south. Other detachments followed, and—when men fell out to light blazing fires along the street— Kirdy saw that these were men as wild as the riders of Asia.

  Many of them were tall as Ayub, giants in sheepskins, their saddles and headbands gleaming with silver. Scarce one but bore some cut or powder stain, and here and there a Cossack walked, holding a badly wounded comrade in the saddle.

  "By the Horned One," Ayub groaned, "they have not whipped the
Poles. Nay, they have been pounded and broken. Yonder are some of the Perieslav company, with red kalpaks, and men of the White Kosh1 itself. Ho, brothers—where is the ataman?"

  A young warrior who had lingered to warm himself at the nearest fire looked up with a wry smile.

  "Our father Netchai died a week agone. Colonel Loboda of the White Kosh had command, until he swallowed bullets the wrong way. God knows who is our ataman."

  "Are the Poles driving you?"

  The young Cossack tightened his belt, slapped his sword hilt, and put a booted foot in the stirrup of his gray Arab.

  "Nay, not the Poles nor the boyars. Satan himself is back there."

  With a sweeping gesture at the black sky and the gray wilderness, he sprang into the saddle trotted off to rejoin his companions.

  By now the streets of the locked-in village were full of light and the roar of voices. Orders were shouted above the snapping of the flaming wood; foragers rode in, to pile hay, grain, and whatnot into the slow-moving carts of the tabor—the wagon train that made up the heart of a Zaporogian army. Black carts, glistening wet, slid and creaked past the watchers. Long sleds, drawn by lowing oxen, appeared with cannon roped fast.

  Other sleds bore loads of wounded, who sat on bearskins, smoking short clay pipes, or lay prone, twisted faces staring up blankly at the cold stars. If the Zaporogians were defeated, they were far from routed. Some ate, as they rode, from saddlebags, and an essaul who had no more than three men at his back lifted his fine voice in one of the mournful songs of the South.

  The tavern yard, trampled into mud, was improvised into a dressing station of the roughest sort. Tar was heated in buckets at the fires, and when a mangled leg or arm was carried in, a saber slashed off the useless member, and the stump was plunged into the bubbling tar. Others stripped off coats or trousers and suffered cuts to be plastered with mud. The slightly wounded were given cups of vodka mixed with gunpowder to quaff.

  No surgeon was to be seen, and the only bandages were shirts or long sashes. When the wounded had been treated they were bundled up in svitzas—long riding coats—taken from the slain, and placed again on the sledges of the wagon train, crossing themselves and breathing a jest if they were able to speak.

  "No, brothers, Satan's claws ripped my hide, but the grass won't grow over me this time."

  "It isn't my sword arm you painted with tar. And the Poles will know it before another harvest."

  More often it was:

  "Dai vodky—Give me vodka!"

  A warrior, stripped to the waist and bleeding freely from the lower ribs, reined his horse into the station and sat staring about, frowning, resisting those who came to lift him to the fires.

  "Here, you devil—take that!" he shouted through set teeth. "Where is the ataman? Brothers, I want to see the ataman and hear his voice again before I die. Nay, you dog-souls, I can still ride! Take me to the commander."

  Although it was clear that his mind was wandering and he was bleeding to death, no one could move him from the saddle until Ayub came and peered into his stained face.

  "It's Pavlenko!" the big Zaporogian shouted. "Many's the time we've dried out a barrel together. Come down, Pavlenko, and let the lads wrap you up. You were always a quarrelsome dolt. Here!"

  Reaching out swiftly, Ayub caught the saber of the delirious warrior close to the hilt and pulled strongly. Pavlenko swayed and tumbled into the arms of his former comrade. Heedless of the blood that spattered his garments, Ayub bore him to one of the groups round the fires, while Pavlenko's charger snorted and pawed at the slush.

  Kirdy, a stranger to these men, tended their fire in silence, followed wherever he went by the wolfhound, Karai.

  At the gate Khlit stood, peering at the passing tabor. For ten years he had been away from the siech, and all these faces were unknown to him. Even the essauls passed the old Cossack by without a glance of recognition. He had outlived his generation and his comrades lay now out on the steppe, bones stripped by vulture and wolf and dried sun.

  He watched silently until a sled halted at the gate and three lancers lifted from it a slender officer in a red svitza heavily sewn with gold. The boots of this man were fine shagreen, though caked with mud, and he gripped firmly an ivory baton with a small gold cross.

  "Way for the father, lads," they cried, and Khlit came to the fire to look keenly into the wasted brown face of the wounded chief.

  "Colonel Loboda," he growled.

  "Don't take my coat off, by-!" The Cossack grunted through set

  lips. "It's of no account, my children. Where are the kuren atamans? Where's Ivashko the One-Eyed? Well, then, summon whoever is leading the Black Kosh."

  Khlit, glancing through the gate, saw that the rearguard had dismounted in the street—some five hundred riders on black horses, wearing mail under their svitzas. Their chargers seemed fresh, and a kept more than a semblance of formation. But the officer who came at Loboda's call was only a youth, flushed and silent.

  And at sight of him the veteran colonel, who had been placed on a bearskin near the blaze, frowned thoughtfully. Loboda had been shot twice through the body and only by an effort of iron will could he keep his thoughts on the Cossack regiments clearly as the need was. He could not outlive the night, he knew, and the fate of six thousand survivors of the army rested on his choice of a new commander. From the young warrior who had taken charge Black Kosh, his eyes went to Khlit, and he passed a quivering hand across his forehead.

  "Hey, are you Ostap? Nay, he went out of his saddle at the second charge. They had too many cannon—"

  He broke off to listen. No longer were reports of muskets heard. The tabor had passed on, and snow was beginning to fall, drifting into the glow of the fires and sinking into the mud of the courtyard. Out of the curtain of drifting flakes a stout priest strode, booted and belted, his long black robe tucked up into his belt, his cape drawn over his head.

  "Nay, Loboda, Ostap gave up his soul in these arms. His squadrons are scattered among the others. Stohari sent me from the tabor. He asks—" the priest hesitated—"that you come with the baton because the brothers are saying up ahead that you were cut down."

  He looked curiously at Khlit, who had stepped forward.

  "Colonel Loboda," the wanderer said again.

  This time the ataman peered at him closely, and his thin lips parted.

  "Nay—ten thousand devils! Are the angels sending couriers from above so swiftly? You are Khlit, you old dog! The Curved Saber—I played with that sword when I was a fledgling."

  He lay back, still frowning.

  "Well, if you have come with a summons—I'll ride with you. You died in Cathay, when I was an essaul."

  The priest crossed himself and laid his hand on Khlit's shoulder. Then he bent over the wounded colonel.

  "Nay, my son—this is a living man, whoever he be."

  "It is true, Loboda, nodded Khlit. "Many winters have gone by since these eyes saw the Mother Siech. Alone among the Cossacks you know my face."

  "Then bring vodka. We'll drink, eh, Khlit? Come lads, a stirrup cup to Loboda."

  The strong spirits cleared his brain for a moment and he motioned for his cup to be filled again. This time Kirdy brought it, and kneeled to hold it to the colonel's lips. Loboda's eye, caught by the glitter of the jewels in the hilt of the young warrior's saber, blinked reflectively.

  "That should be Khlit's blade—I know it well. Who are you, ouchar?"

  "It is the White Falcon, Loboda," Khlit responded moodily. "The Don Cossacks gave him that name, and I brought the lad hither from the Don to show him to the sir brothers in the siech. The sword that was the blade of Kaidu is his because he can use it well—"

  "If it had cut down Satan it would have served us," Loboda whispered. "But that time is past. Not a blade, but the wisdom of a wolf is needed now by the brothers who still live."

  And he turned with an effort, considering Khlit and the red-cheeked priest who held in both hands the icon that hung from the
silver chain at his throat.

  "Will the Poles and the boyars follow the victory?" Khlit muttered, pulling at his mustache. "Have they many squadrons? What kind of leader?"

  The sight of Loboda, who had reveled with him in the Cossack camp, had brought back to the veteran the memory of the times when he had led the army against Turk and Tartar. He spoke to the priest, but it was the colonel who answered.

  "Back yonder they have the Tchortiaka, the Archfiend, for commander."

  "Aya tak," nodded the priest—"Aye, so."

  "He is a Cossack!" Loboda muttered, and spat weakly.

  Khlit started and bent to look into the eyes of the stout priest.

  "A Cossack wars against his brothers? That has never been!"

  "Until now," put in the priest sadly. "But he is also a monk. And he calls himself an emperor."

  If the quiet priest had not added his word to that of Loboda, Khlit would have thought the dying Colonel was out of his mind—it did not occur to the wanderer that Loboda might be finding excuses for the defeat of that day. A Cossack commander is the servant of the siech and his brothers. If he fails—as some must do—he gives up the baton of his own accord, and no voice is raised to blame him.

  Sudden coughing choked Loboda, and when he could breathe freely again, his lips had grown pallid.

  "Thirty thousand free-born Cossacks followed him to the north. Now only six thousand have breath in them—Khlit. He was a traitor. Batko Andriev will tell—Khlit, lead the brothers to the siech!"

  "Nay, Colonel Loboda—I can no longer strike with a sword."

  "Take this! Who is to take it, if you do not?"

  The ataman held out the ivory baton, and for a moment Khlit bent his head in thought. He had no conception of the forces in the field against the Cossacks, of the route to be taken or Loboda's plans. Yet he knew that this night the council of the clans could not be summoned to choose a new ataman. The need was instant, and hesitation was not a part him.

  "I will take it," he said gravely, his eyes on the face of his comrade.

  Loboda put the baton in his gaunt fingers, and Khlit thrust it straightway into his belt, turning to the young officer of the Black Kosh.