by Harold Lamb
"Nada is a devilkin," Omelko remarked, shaking his head. "When she is off like that, there is always trouble. Last time she came in with her horse nearly dead—and a cavalcade of stag hunters at her heels. Eh, they drew rein at the Wolf's Throat!"
"Why?" asked Kirdy, who desired to know.
"No Tartars will enter the gorge, past the two rocks. When they trade, they leave their gear outside, and Nada takes it in, putting in place of it what we will give them. But for two days the storm will close all the paths."
The hut was built of pine logs, roughly smoothed, the chinks filled with moss and clay. The floor was sand, neatly raked, and there was a pleasant odor of herbs. Above the table Kirdy noticed a long yataghan with a fine ivory hilt, and an icon stand with a painting of the good Saint Ulass.
By the roar of wind in the trees above the gorge and the rattle of hard snow against the horn windows, Kirdy knew that the storm would last, as his host had said.
"That is Nada's sword," nodded Omelko, and his lips twisted under the beard. "Ekh, I would not let her take it, this time, because she is too swift to draw steel and she is no match for a swordsman. The blade of yours—I have seen it before."
"It was Khlit's—the Koshevoi Ataman's."
Omelko was silent for a while, ruminating.
"I am glad of the storm," he said, "because you will tell me of Cossack deeds and the wars of the heroes."
Far into the night the two Cossacks talked over the wine horns, until Nada, who had been sewing in silence on the other side of the stove, slipped away to her room. With the garments of a Cossack maiden, with the kerchief and beshmet, a shyness had come upon her, and Kirdy, glancing covertly from under his brows, wondered at her flushed cheeks and lowered eyes and wondered still more if this were the girl he had followed in that ride through the Wolf's Throat.
When he had stretched out on his coat to sleep, Omelko went to the shelf by the icon stand and took down a parchment-bound book, reading far into the night. At times he closed the book to gaze at the face of the sleeping warrior; and at times he raised his head as if to listen to the note of the wind.
Then Karai would spring up silently and trot back and forth behind the door.
Chapter X Omelko's Dream
For two days it snowed. The paths indeed were closed to caravans or travelers, yet through the drifting curtain of the storm, riders passed from yurta to yurta. They were neither shadows nor ghosts; they were living men and Tartar messengers.
And as soon as the stars came out, during the second night, black masses of warriors moved out of the encampments.
It was noticed by the sentries of the Muscovite frontier posts that a star fell before the long hours of darkness were at an end. There was heard, too, the distant howling of wolves in every quarter. After the storm the great packs of the steppe were afoot.
In the Wolky Gorlo, long before dawn, Kirdy was roused by the stamping of the ponies in the lean-to. He went to the door and looked out. Clouds were drifting across the face of the old moon, almost overhead, but the white surface of the glen and the dark, timbered sides could be made out easily. Satisfied that the far-off howling came from wolves and not from the dreaded specters of men that ride at times upon the steppe about the places where they gave up their lives, he quieted Karai and stretched his arms. The frost had gone from the air, and the night was almost warm. Out of the darkness behind him Omelko, spoke.
"The gray friends are hunting. The pack has come down out of the heights."
Among the Cossacks, wolves were called grey brothers, yet these words stirred the interest of the young warrior.
"They hunt, aye," he said. "But one pack is like another."
"But that is the great one, from the heights. Often it passes through the Wolky Gorlo. It's leader is of large size with part of his tail torn off.
Kirdy knew now how the gorge had probably been named by Tartars who had reason to fear hunger-maddened packs of the steppe, especially in Winter. He wondered why Toghrul and Karabek slept on quietly in their felt tent by the lean-to. If the pack were approaching the gorge it would be best to light fires.
For a while he listened. The quavering note of the pack had changed, had dwindled and risen again savagely, and now seemed to come from a new quarter and to resemble the high-pitched shouts of men.
"The gray friends," Omelko's voice proclaimed, "have met riders— many men. They will not pass through the gorge."
But Kirdy, who had been putting on his boots and belt, had closed the door, thrusting Karai inside. Seeking out the bay stallion, he saddled him in the darkness and was ready to mount when he noticed a man peering in at the shed entrance. After a moment he recognized Toghrul.
"O Cossack," the old Tartar complained, "is the night so long that thou must even groom thy horse before the stars have set?"
He grunted when Kirdy mounted, and he saw the youth was fully clad and armed.
"Take heed!" he muttered. "The Nogais are on the move."
"Whether?"
"Am I an eagle to look down from heights, or a dog to smell the trails? One of their paths runs to the right of the gorge as far distant as two arrow flights. I will go with thee."
"Stay with the horses—thou!"
Leaving Toghrul muttering, the Cossack rode up the gorge, avoiding the drifts. The going was heavy, but the high wind had swept stretches almost clear, and the light was good. Half in hour later he came out on higher ground and reined in to search the neighboring knolls with his eyes.
Presently he saw what he expected to find—a tiny figure on a distant rise, no more than a dark speck that might have been a sitting wolf or a stone except for the glint of light when the moon's gleam struck a polished spear—tip slung on the Tartar's back.
Avoiding the watcher, Kirdy trotted down into a nest of gullies where the charger labored through drifts. He judged that he was well behind the sentry when he came on a broad trail stamped down by a score of ponies. The warrior with the spear still sat on his eminence, and Kirdy refrained from stalking him, knowing that more Tartars would come along the trail presently—if the sentry had not been withdrawn.
As soon as he heard hoofs, he wheeled the stallion and began to trot toward the river. Men approached from behind and a deep voice spoke at his elbow.
"Is the horse lame, that thou hast fallen behind the trail breakers?"
"Yak," Kirdy made answer. "No, I have word for thy leader. Where rides he?"
In the depths of the gully the darkness was impenetrable, except for the shimmer of starlight on the heights above them. Kirdy heard a pony trotting beside him.
"The lord," the same voice made answer, "rides with us. What word dost thou bring?"
"I have steel," Kirdy promised grimly, "to crop ears that be overlong."
The invisible rider snarled, a saddle creaked, and Kirdy reined a little to the side. But the tribesman swallowed his anger.
"Bilma’ida! Surely thou art a servant of the Khaghan?"
Kirdy left it to the other's imagination whether or not he might be a servant of the tsar. And he drew aside to wait for the leader of the clan. It would not do to ride on, out of the protecting gully. The Tartars, having encountered him going in the same direction had no reason to suspect him.
It could hardly enter their minds that a stranger would appear at that hour between their advance and the main body—a stranger who spoke their language and asked for their leader. The sheer daring of Kirdy's action protected him, so far.
Ponies trotted past, and occasional riders came to peer at him, and to hear him ask again for the soultan. His nostrils filled with the odor of sheepskins, of mutton grease and sweat-soaked leather. These men had come far that night and, judging by the scattered words that reached him, were bound for the river.
"Here is the soultan,” a Nogai called presently out of the darkness.
Kirdy wondered fleetingly why the leader was not one of the tribe, and why another answered for him. A white horse and a rider in loose, ligh
t garments took form in the obscurity, and a voice grumbled:
"What dog is this?"
Kirdy's pulse throbbed in his temples, and he ceased wondering. The man had spoken in fluent Persian, to himself, as if hopeless of gaining understanding from those around him.
"Tourkat," grunted the Cossack, "one who speaks Turki."
"By the Ninety and Nine Holy Names, that is good hearing!" cried the rider of the white horse. "Oh, the smells unmentionable, the pains past bearing, the fear clinging like a shadow! Oh, the woe of these times—"
The breath left his lips in a gasp. Kirdy had reined the stallion around until the two horses touched shoulders, and during the outburst had drawn his sword silently. Now a quarter inch of a steel tip had pierced the man's back.
"Dogs there be, beyond doubt," the Cossack said grimly, "and fools likewise; but the greatest of fools is he who wags a loose tongue. Hold thine, therefore or feel the length of this blade."
The stranger said no more, nor did he move. Kirdy waited until the body of Nogais had passed, making astonishingly little noise, like men intent on what lay before them.
"Forward thou!" Kirdy commanded sharply.
And the pair who had lingered to accompany the stranger or to satisfy curiosity, went on again. Still Kirdy waited, moving the sword-tip a little, to keep his captive from thinking too much, until the rearguard had trotted past, with a long shout—to warn the watcher on the height that he should come down. It was a similar shout, much fainter, that Kirdy had heard an hour ago from the door of Omelko's cabin. He was grateful to the superstition that made the tribesmen cast a wide circle around the Wolky Gorlo. And he was just as well pleased that the riders of the rear had not seen him and the stranger. Reaching swiftly behind the other, he pulled a scimitar from its scabbard and thrust it through his belt. Then he felt for knives, finding three of different shapes in as many places. These he cast to the snow.
"Forward!" he said to his captive.
But he turned the head of the white horse, keeping the rein in his left hand and guiding the stallion by his knees. They walked back to the other gully through which the Cossack had entered, and down this they trot-ted—Kirdy removing the sword-tip generously.
In the east the stars were fading, and a kind of gray obscurity spread through the network of hollows and ridges around the Wolky Gorlo. When trees were visible against the snow, Kirdy peered at his captive and saw enough to convince him that the man was neither a Muscovite officer of the false Dmitri—as he had hoped—nor a Nogai chieftain.
At the narrow pass between the two boulders that formed the Wolf's Throat, he reined in and waited until full daylight. The Nogais, when they missed their leader, would have turned back before this.
"Eh," he thought, "it is true, then, they will not enter this place." Aloud, he added, "What man art thou?"
The prisoner salaamed, bending almost to Cossack's stirrup.
"Prince of swordsmen, Lion of the Steppe, I am thy slave—the interpreter of dreams. Thus they call me Al-Tabir."
He was a broad, round man, wrapped up in a half dozen khalats and vests, all gorgeous purples and blacks, with embroidered slippers and a sash that must have aroused the instant envy of all the Nogais. A small turban was knotted jauntily over one ear and the face under the turban was pale and round as the full moon. Kirdy had seen cows with just the same mild brown eyes of Al-Tabir. He laughed, thinking that he had just risked torture to fetch this Persian—because the interpreter of dreams, smelling strongly of musk and civet, was as Persian as the gold-inlaid scimitar he had worn—from the tribesmen.
"May the dogs bite thee, Al-Tabir!—what makest thou in this place?"
Taking heart from the laugh, the interpreter of dreams raised his head.
"Nay. I am truly Jahia ibn Muhammad al-Nisapur, cup-companion of the shah, whom way Allah exalt. Out of his courtesy the shah sent me to the great emperor of the Urusses. It was written that I should find this emperor dead and another seated upon the throne. This other, being pleased with my conversation, command me to attend him upon his exile. I heard—I obeyed."
"Thou wert a man of Dmitri's?"
"Truly, his sahab, his companion. He revels well, but rides too much."
Kirdy tapped the sword blade that rested on his saddle peak.
"Al-Tabir, in times past I have hearkened to Persians. I heard many lies and little truth. But thou, O my captive, shalt tell me truly what has happened. Or thy head will cease from thinking and tongue from lying. Where is thy master?"
"By the face of the Prophet, I know not. Yesterday he drank wine in the tent of the khan of the Nogais. He laid a command upon me to go with a warrior to another clan. I went."
"Wherefore?"
"It is my thought that he sent one of his companions to different tribes, as hostages, perhaps."
"The Nogais called you leader."
"Allah! Not a word of their talk is known to me. It is my thought that the tsar sent commands to them, and they looked upon us as emirs, greatly to be feared. They fear the tsar. So do I!"
Kirdy smiled.
"That I believe. Now think again, Al-Tabir—what orders were sent?"
"Surely the command was to rise and arm against the Muscovites. The tsar makes war against his emirs. The Nogais will cross the river. I am content to be rid of them."
The lips of the Cossack hardened under the moustache, and his eyes narrowed. He had not expected that Otrepiev would dare loose the tribes against the frontier posts. The man seemed able to breed chaos even in the steppe.
"Then the Nogais believe he is the tsar? Why?"
"W’Allah! Why not? He showed them jewels from the chests—even the gold apple, and the scepter that bears a ruby as large as my thumb. Their khan had never seen the jewels before. Besides, they were ready enough to make raids."
Kirdy nodded. All this was possible. The border would be fire- and fury-ridden, and the very ice of the Volga stained with blood. So, pursuit from Moscow would be checked.
"But," he said thoughtfully, "after a while the Tartars will know that he has no power, that only six men ride at his back—then they will plunder him."
Again Al-Tabir salaamed.
"O youth, and scion of battles—in thee there is wisdom even sufficient unto thy courage! This thing the tsar has foreseen. Within a week he will ride from these pagans—may their graves be dug up!"
"Whither?"
"To the east."
"To what place?"
Al-Tabir searched his memory, with an eye on the Cossack's sword, and decided not to lie. The young warrior knew a deal too much to make lying either safe or profitable.
"To the place where the sun rises. It lies behind the Mountains of the Eagles, and it is the country of the Golden Horde."
For the second time Otrepiev had hidden his trail. Only, the first time he had slain a friend so that he might leave the body in his own bed; now he had slain hundreds, and the dead and dying along the river had concealed all trace of him.
No longer could the Muscovites follow him. Months must pass before the Nogais would be driven across the river again, and the caravan paths opened.
And now the way of pursuit was closed to Kirdy. Although the storm had ended, although the fresh snow on the steppe would reveal the tracks of the fleeing man—although Omelko had promised him horses, hay, and meat, he could not ride forth.
From the east, from unexpected places, the more distant clans of the Nogais would be coming in as vultures flock to a feast. No craft or skill would serve to avoid them. On the white waste of the steppe a rider would be seen by the keen eyes of the nomads even on the horizon; the Cossack's trail would be picked up inevitably. Moreover, it was extremely probable that the Nogais had left men to watch at the two openings of the Wolf's Throat into which Al-Tabir had disappeared so unexpectedly.
Meanwhile Otrepiev might do any one of a number of things. At any day, with his fast horses and his sledge with narrow runners, he could start on his journey into the u
nknown part of the steppe. Who could say what he would do?
Nature itself would hide him in another fortnight, because already the thaw had set in and presently the plain along the Volga would be a morass, the earth soft to its marrow, after the melting of seven months' snow; no rider then could cross the steppe near the flooded rivers.
All this Nada told Kirdy, quite aware that he already knew it, but moved by curiosity to learn what he meant to do.
"God gives," she said. "And here, surely, is the end of your road."
Kirdy, who had been sitting against the sunny side of the cabin, looked up at the clear sky, the fir-topped walls of the valley. Where the snow had melted from boulders the rock showed black and moist. From the low-hanging branches of the birches came a steady drip-drip of water. A pony neighed in the shed.
"By the grave of Otrepiev I will know the end of the road, Nada."
"But he is far away! Only our brother the eagle, flying low, sees him. Only the wolf noses about his fire."
Kirdy smiled, and when he did so his dark eyes glowed.
"In such fashion the road ended at the City of the White Walls. And yet—we followed it hither."
"And is this not a better place than that town?"
"Aye, so."
Kirdy made response in his slow fashion, looking up at the girl frankly.
"Would you be alive outside, in the steppe—anywhere but here in the Wolf's Throat where the Nogais dare not come?"
"God gives, little Nada!"
"How did you capture the Persian? Tell me!"
"Eh, it was in darkness. I spoke to him, and was so glad to hear his own speech he came with me."
A slender booted foot stamped impatiently near Kirdy's knee.
"It was not like that at all. I can understand him a little. He is afraid of you, and he called me a gul begam—that's a Flower Princess, isn't it? Are you going to kill him? His sword is too light and curved, but the mare is splendid."