by Harold Lamb
Kirdy pushed the ends of the branches into the fire. He found it difficult to choose words in talking to Nada. It was not easy to tell when she was making fun of him. Besides, he had never seen such a splendid girl before.
After two days on the snow road her cheeks, that had been pallid in the town, glowed softly. A light was in her eyes, and her small lips were dark with pulsing blood. In the glow of the fire and the wan radiance of the full moon that had risen over the tree crest, her head and hair were beautiful.
Even while she spoke to him she seemed to be listening to the sounds of the forest—to the snapping of wood under the growing cold, to the tinkle of ice falling on the snow crust, and the tiny scraping of an animal's claws somewhere in the darkness.
He wondered why she was more lovely in Cossack dress than in the sarafan of a noblewoman.
"When you drove into the street with the horses, Nada, you gave me my life. The boyars had penned me. Until death, I swear gratitude to you."
"Will you serve me?"
"In what way?"
Nada tossed her head scornfully.
"Kai, the Cossack hero is generous! He offers gratitude and then bargains like a Jew."
"It is not so," Kirdy said quietly. "To the sir brothers, I made a pledge. Until that is redeemed, how can I do otherwise than follow the path upon which I set my foot?"
"I have need, White Falcon, of a sword to guard me until I draw rein at my home. Such a sword as yours, for God has sent tumult and trouble upon this road."
Kirdy looked into the fire without answering once. He had meant to ask of Nada one of her ponies. By changing from the charger to this mustang he was sure of overtaking Otrepiev within a week. He knew now that the false Dmitri had escaped from Moscow, and he was glad that the issue between them would be settled in open country where the Cossack was at home. How he would manage to get his enemy within reach of his sword he had not thought. Circumstances would decide that.
"Nada," he said, still pondering, "you wear the svitza and girdle of a warrior of the siech. You speak as one." They had ceased to avail themselves of the Manchu-Tartar, and it was clear that the Cossack speech was native to the girl.
"My father is a Zaporogian."
"Honor to him! What is his name?"
"Come and hear it!"
"I may not."
Kirdy bent forward to look deep into Nada's eyes. He stared so long that the blood darkened the girl's cheeks.
"I will wager my life there is faith in you," he said at last.
A shadow touched her brow, and she seemed to be vexed, for a reason he did not understand. But she listened attentively while he told her how he had to the Cossacks from the southern steppe, how the army of the siech had been betrayed by Otrepiev, and how he had sworn to Khlit, the Koshe-voi Ataman, that Otrepiev should pay with his life for his treachery.
"The brothers are more foolish than wolves," she cried angrily. "For they fall into a trap; then they lick their wounds and begin to think of vengeance. It has always been like that, my father said. Why do you trust me?"
"I do not know."
Flinging herself back on the bearskin, Nada rested her head on her crossed arms and gazed up at the shining sky.
"Kai—give me horses, let me ride until a bullet brings me down! That is what you would say if you could find words. And the Cossack maiden must sit in her sleigh and pray for the young swordsman who has less sense than his charger that cannot get at the grass under the snow! You would never overtake Otrepiev!"
"He may be a fiend, as it is said; but if he is a man I will find him."
"Did ever a hero of the siech," Nada asked of the stars, "swear so many vows or pledge so much in one short hour?"
This time Kirdy flushed, unaware that dark eyes were watching him under long lashes, and Nada hastened to make him more uncomfortable.
"In Holy Mother Moscow of the White Walls, I saw Gregory Otrepiev many times. He rides like a hero and he is handsome, much more so than you are. The wife he took from the Poles is a painted puppet; he left her with little sorrow, nor did she remain at his side. Otrepiev may be a fiend, but surely he is king of all the wanderers and monarch of the daring. I watched him at swordplay with the Frankish officers. He laughed and tossed their blades first to one side, then to the other, and to me he bowed the knee, saying that I was more beautiful than any Muscovite. I wonder who he is?"
"A soul," Kirdy responded in his slow fashion, "that feels neither remorse nor any fear. A man who could have been the greatest of emperors, if he had faith and honor in him. In all things he succeeds himself, yet brings death and torment to others."
A moment of silence followed, while Nada studied Kirdy from the shadow of her arm.
"And yet—alone among men he can play with crowns for stakes. A beggar, he sat on the Eagle Throne of the Kremyl! An exile, he wrote a letter bidding the boyars fear! If I—"
She paused and Kirdy remained grimly silent.
"If I were to meet Gregory Otrepiev wandering in the steppe with his crown and his sword, I would share bread and salt with him."
"And pray for him?" Kirdy asked, smiling.
He had not meant to mock the girl, for he could understand her spirit. But Nada was not inclined to endure a smile.
"Aye, pray to St. Ulass the Good, for him—and for all outcasts."
"Where is your home?"
It occurred to Kirdy that if Nada's house was near at hand, she would not need the extra ponies. They were, in a way, his horses, but since Nada had saved them for him, and since she had two men to mount, he did not mean to claim them.
"In the Wolky Gorlo."
"The Wolf's Throat? Where is that?"
"Beyond the border, across the river where the sun rises."
"That is far."
"Aye, my White Falcon. I sought the aid of your sword upon the way, but since you have sworn an oath—" She glanced at him, with amusement vanished in one of her sudden changes of mood. "You do not know whither Otrepiev draws his reins!"
"Nay, the trail is blind. Yet he must ride further."
"Soon the river turns sharp to the north. If he is for Kazan, which is the trading town of the northern frontier, he will follow it. If he strikes for Astrakhan, on the southern sea, he will turn off. But if he goes on,
into the steppe—that way my road lies, to the eastward. Can you keep a bargain, Cossack?"
She pulled the bear's paws over her face, leaving only dark, grave eyes visible when Kirdy frowned blackly.
"Kai—I think you can, Cossack. You are a fool, but—" she chuckled aloud—"I will wager my life there is honesty in you! Well, we are agreed. If Otrepiev turns north or south, I will give you one of your horses back, with gratitude, and you can ride off and be killed like a dog. If he keeps on, to the tribes, you must come with me. Nay—"
She forestalled a swift objection.
"Kazan and Astrakhan lie many weeks ride distant. But the river Volga he could reach before you can come up with him. I know the trail."
Kirdy nodded. She had spoken the truth. He wondered what course the fugitive would take on the Volga.
"If he crosses," Nada observed, "and he is bold enough to do that, you must go through the Wolky Gorlo to meet him. Now, my White Falcon, you must let me sleep. You have talked so much I am yawning. But is the bargain struck?"
"Agreed."
"Then you will see tomorrow that Nada can fly over the steppe as swiftly as any warrior of the siech."
She snuggled down into the voluminous folds of bearskin, wrapping the head and paws about her, and Kirdy strode away, too restless to sleep, wondering how he had come to talk so much. Usually he said little enough.
Presently Toghrul appeared out of the shadows with an armful of wood and stirred up the fire. And though he did not appear to look at them, his slant eyes took in the silent woman and the angry Cossack pacing from the horses to his blanket, and when old man returned to his sheepskins he kicked Karabek out of slumber.
"The
khanum bids us to saddle when the stars are low, before the moon is out of the sky. By the beard of Azrael, it is as I said! Until now the Cossack has led, and when the khanum takes the rein there will be more than words. Two hands on the rein, and neither will yield to the other."
Nada, it seemed, had guessed Otrepiev's course. They came the next evening to the great bend in the Okka and learned from a caravan of merchants who had just crossed on the ice that the sledge and seven cavaliers had taken the Volga road.
"They are merry—the young gentlemen. Ekh—what horses!"
And Toghrul proved to be right in the matter of horseflesh. For a while he pressed the three blacks with all the skill of the nomad he was. He would rub them down himself at night, water and feed them sparingly, sleep with them, and talk to them at the start before the rising of the sun.
Then he would let them walk for a while before trotting. At a word from him they would work into a light gallop, and the ground would flash past until Toghrul chose to bid his steeds halt. Then they would walk, stretching out their necks, until they breathed. Kirdy noticed that Togh-rul managed by voice and gave little heed to the reins.
By now he was pretty certain of the tracks left by Otrepiev's cavalcade, for the sledge had unusually narrow iron runners, and some of the ponies were unshod. He prayed that there would be no heavy fall of snow and that the ice in the Volga would be going out.
Winter was ending, and at midday the sun made the footing soft, so that mud began to appear on the trail—though everything froze hard at night. The villages were fewer—a scattering of choutars around a log church or fort, in a valley. The timber was thinning except for dense stands on the tablelands.
From passing traders, Finns or Armenians for the most part, who were coming in from the border with furs, he heard that Otrepiev was still two full days in advance of him. It would be quite useless to take even three horses and try to come up with the fugitives before they reached the river.
Toghrul pointed out that they must wait over a day at the next farm until the charger was rested and the other horses had slept their fill.
"Why did you think that Otrepiev would strike for the Volga?" he asked Nada.
"How? Does a stag not start up from the thicket when the wolfpack gives tongue? He would take the boldest course."
"That would be to cross the river. Why?"
"On the far side the Nogai tents are assembled here and there. The Tartars come in at Winter to trade their furs and plunder across the river when the ice is good. He can hide himself among them."
Kirdy knew this very well, but it surprised him a little that Nada should know what went on beyond the border. The Nogais had been driven out of Kazan and Muscovy by Ivan the Terrible generations ago, and they were far from peaceful. But the Tsar Ivan had massacred tens of thousands of their warriors in that day, and this had earned their hearty respect.
The trail brought them to the Volga at last, on a gray day when the sun had disappeared behind clouds. Kirdy searched the bank of the river that was like a dark valley between white hills. Toghrul agreed with him that Otrepiev had crossed at once.
So the horses and the sleigh were led across, and the story that was written in the far bank drew Kirdy for an hour's searching of tracks. What had happened was clear as a minstrel's tale.
Here a Nogai yurta had been, where one of the tribes had Winter quarters. They had penned their cattle behind fences and had eaten the animals that died of starvation—for the Tartars never saved up for the Winter. Otrepiev's party had gone into the yurta, and at least two days ago the whole had moved off—the Nogais loading their felt tents on wagons and driving their cattle.
A storm would hide the trail of the tribe, and once this was lost it would be a long and anxious matter to find trace of Otrepiev again. On three sides of him stretched the steppe, with its treeless expanse of rolling ground, its vast spaces where the blast of the wind was more to be feared than Tartar arrows—its isolated burial mounds where spirits could be heard crying at night. Kirdy knew it well.
Nada, her coat collar turned up over her hair, her slim waist girdled tight, and her hands thrust into the wide sleeves, looked about her and turned to him curiously.
"Would you follow the Nogais, who have followed Otrepiev?"
"Aye," he said.
She pointed to the leaden bank of the sky in the north that seemed to spread darkness over all the world.
"It is coming, the snow. Before morning, perhaps before night, it will end the trail. Look at Toghrul!"
The old man was stamping about by the horses, cursing the Nogai camp that had left not a bit of grazing on this part of the river; his impatience and uneasiness were unmistakable.
"Can I get hay at your Wolf's Throat?" Kirdy asked.
"Aye, and meat."
"Where lies this Wolky Gorlo?"
"Yonder."
Nada pointed inland, diagonally away from the track of the Nogais.
"Is it a Tartar yurta?"
The girl laughed gleefully.
"Ask the black-haired people!" she cried, dropping into the dialect of the tribes. "Ask—if they come near the Wolf's Throat!"
"In the name of Allah the Compassionate!" Toghrul's plaintive cry drifted up to them. "Are the horses to stand until their bones stiffen?"
Kirdy knew that he must go first to the Wolky Gorlo for food and forage for his horse, and then must take his chances at tracking down Otrepiev in the open steppe.
"Come!" Nada called to him.
Toghrul drove as if possessed, swaying on his seat, singing to the three black heads and the manes that tossed like surf under the beat of the wind. The horses sped as if possessed by devils—or as if scenting their stables—over long ridges and the black beds of streams without sign of a road. Kirdy's charger gathered himself together and did his brute best to follow. The other man and the two mustangs were left far behind.
"Come!" Nada's clear voice came back to him "O Cossack, do you fear this road?"
The road, to be sure, was unprepossessing. Winding through barren uplands, it dipped among a nest of rock gullies where the charger stumbled and came up blindly. The gray sky pressed lower, and the sleigh was beyond sight; only the tinkling of the bells was to be heard. This ceased, and when the wind blew from her direction Kirdy caught the girl's voice lifted in song that mocked the oncoming storm.
A somber twilight fell, while Kirdy plied his whip and watched the landmarks on either hand. It seemed to him that they were descending sharply. Soon whirling flakes, heavy and damp, shut out everything except the horse and the trail.
He reined in the charger to listen, and to look for Karai. By the rock walls, rising in pinnacles and mounds on both flanks, he judged they were entering one of the long ravines that break the even surface the steppe.
Yellow eyes glared at him from a bend in the trail, and he snatched at the sword before he was certain from the behavior of the horse that it was Karai and not a wolf that waited his coming. The dog, contrary to his usual custom, pressed the charger's legs, his hair stiff on shoulders and neck, and his fangs a-gleam.
Wind devils whined above his head, the towers of black granite closed in on him, and the drifting flakes stung face and hands. The charger snorted and edged cautiously between two boulders.
The storm had set in, and all trace of the sleigh was lost. Nothing was to be seen, but Kirdy rode on stubbornly, sure that there could be no other way. He had the feeling of coming out into an open valley, when Karai bounded forward, and he beheld two eyes of light in the distance. A few paces more and he saw the glow of windows upon the falling snow, and the black mass of a log cabin.
Kirdy dismounted, and knocked with numb fingers on the door. Then he stepped aside, because he was now across the river, and it is not well to venture out of darkness into sudden light in the steppe, where Asia begins.
"Ai Kazak! Do you fear because you have come to the Wolf's Throat?"
Nada's voice from within challenged him, and he st
rode to the charger, leading him around the cottage to the lean-to that served as stable. When the saddle was off and the horse was blanketed he entered the cottage, stooping under the lintel.
By the white-tiled stove sat an old man, shielding a candle from the blast of air that swept through the open door. He rose, leaning on a staff, and peering at the young warrior.
"Chlieb sol," he said, and bowed. "My bread and salt is yours."
Once he must have been as tall as Kirdy, because he bent over, resting heavily on his stick. He moved stiffly in his Turkish robes, but his boots and shirt were of Cossack make. Though his face was lined and his long hair gray around the forehead, he had the clear and alert eyes of middle age.
What held Kirdy's silent attention was the man's headgear—a white wolf skin, with a great broad head overhanging his brow. The white muzzle with the long fangs surely had belonged to a monarch of the wolf folk.
"Omelko am I," vouchsafed his host, "and it is a day of days that brings to my choutar a hero of the Cossacks."
"Health to you," responded Kirdy. "Rest I would have, and meat and forage for the horse. My road is far to the end."
Omelko hobbled to the stove and filled a long horn with hot brandy, offering it to his guest. Kirdy took it, and spilled a few drops to the four quarters of the winds, and lifted it.
"Hai to the Cossack brothers! To the heroes of other days."
"Glory to God, young warrior."
"For the ages of ages!"
Kirdy emptied the horn—not to do so would have been an insult to his host—and the blood warmed in his chilled limbs. Although he had never heard of a Cossack living beyond the river, he felt sure that this man was Cossack-born. If so, he was safe within the four walls of the choutar as in the barracks of the siech. He unslung his sword, threw off his sable coat, and stretched his boots toward the stove.
"A splendid borzoi," Omelko observed, "and full three-quarters wolf. How did you come by him?"
"Found him three-quarters starved beyond the Jaick and fed him. He has not left me. Down Karai!"
He knew that his host had taken note of his Cathayan garments, but Omelko, rubbing Karai's throat, was too courteous to question his guest before they shared food—or else Nada had already spoken with him. The girl brought them supper—mutton, with barley cakes, cheese and honey, and filled his horn with brandy in utter silence.