Swords of the Steppes

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Swords of the Steppes Page 23

by Harold Lamb


  Gathered beyond pistol shot of the tabor were groups of riders—small men on rough coated ponies, armed with scimitars and long lances. On their arms they carried round shields, most of them painted red. Their heads were covered with furs—bearskin and wolf. Ayub was so near one of the bands that he could have thrown a knife among them.

  But many wore under their sheepskins fine link armor and carried Turkish pistols in their girdles. Their dark, square faces were beardless.

  "Nogais," the Cossack muttered.

  The story of what had happened was clearly written in the snow. The tribesmen had come down on the tabor from the neighboring heights, had taken it by surprise because only the leading sledges had drawn up together to resist the attack, and the circle was not completed. At least once—and Ayub remembered the volley he had heard—the Nogais had charged the tabor and had been driven off. Four or five bodies lay in the space near the sledges.

  What had happened to the men in the rearmost sledges he could not tell. Perhaps they had reached the half circle, perhaps they had been cut down. The Tartars were looting the sledges beyond musket shot. They had gathered into three bands, on different sides, and were watching the dark mass of the Poles' barricade, like wolves sitting on their haunches beyond the horns of angered cattle. They had made their first attack and had been beaten off—Ayub wondered who had thought to close up the sledges in time—and were taking what loot they could while they pondered what to do next.

  More of the Poles appeared in armor. The hussars were taking advantage of the lull to don the heavy steel that had given them the name of "iron men." But Ayub thought that some were missing. He could only make out about forty men in all within the tabor. The Nogais outnumbered them some three to one, but the better firearms and fine armor of the Poles made the issue an even one.

  "If the Tartars are looting," the Cossack reflected, "they may ride off at sunset."

  He lay in the snow without moving, and Ahmak was silent as a shadow at his side. The slightest stirring of the bushes would draw a dozen eyes upon them, and they knew the folly of trying to ride between the bands into the tabor. The shaggy ponies were as quick-footed as hunting dogs in the hard snow, where Ayub and his charger might break through to the horse's knees. Ayub was in no haste to move.

  At intervals harquebuses were discharged from the sledges, and smoke rolled over the ground toward the riders, who scattered at the flash of powder and moved back a little. Some of them went off to join their comrades who were breaking open the loads on the captured vehicles and cutting the horses loose from the traces.

  A Moslem on a white horse circled near the tabor, waving a black velvet cloak, taken from the Poles. A flash and a flurry of smoke greeted him, but he flung the cloak over his shoulders and rode off, shouting triumphantly.

  And then a trumpet blared from the barricade. The mounted Poles began to stir, the horse's heads shifted, and long lances uprose.

  Ayub muttered under his breath and rose on his elbows. The lances began to move, and presently the hussars appeared, out of the open space, and formed in two ranks, nearly thirty of them. The first line half wheeled and began to trot toward the nearest group of Tartars, while the second followed at ten yards.

  "Devil take them!" groaned the Cossack.

  This was no trick to draw in the tribesmen; the hussars meant to charge. Their heavy chargers moved more swiftly, floundering here and there; the long lances came down to the level. Above the shoulders of the iron men flapped the great eagle wings, the eagles of Poland and the emblem of the cavalry.

  Ahead of them, his sword at his shoulder, trotted Prince Paul. He wore no helmet, and his dark head was lifted with all the pride of a caste that knows not fear. For several moments the gray cloud of Tartars had watched in utter silence, but now clamor resounded over the plain.

  Bows snapped and arrows flew among the Poles. The Nogais nearest the oncoming hussars wheeled away and scattered, while the tribesmen in front of Ayub charged down the slope in a mass.

  A deep shout of triumph resounded from the iron hussars, as they drove the fugitives of the first band. But most of the Tartars kept beyond the long lances, and their heavy bows made play at short range. For the most part the arrows broke against the armor of the Poles, who drew the pistols from the saddle holsters and fired at the second group of tribesmen.

  Then for a moment the gray figures of the hussars were hidden behind wreathing black smoke. And into this smoke the Tartars rushed like wolves.

  "Ghar-ghar-ghar!"

  Their war cry rose, shrill and exultant, and horses screamed in agony.

  When the smoke thinned, the hussars were hemmed in, nearly half their horses down. The heavy chargers, plunging through deep snow, could not keep pace with the darting ponies of the clansmen, and they were marks for the flying arrows. The hussars had no time to reload their pistols. They fought furiously with lance or sword.

  Ayub watched with both horror and anger.

  "May the saints guard them! They went into deep snow in armor."

  He had expected the Poles to make good the barricade, standing in the sledges, until darkness, when the Tartars would have withdrawn. More horses went down, and the remaining hussars would not desert their dismounted comrades. Led by the swiftly flashing sword of Prince Paul, the knot of them began to move back slowly toward the tabor. And then they were hidden by fresh throngs of gray riders.

  Ahmak tugged at his arm, muttering to him to mount and ride away. The Dobrudja Tartars were afraid of the Nogais and Ahmak thought that the iron men were doomed:

  "Na kdn!" the Cossack assented. "To horse."

  They ran back down the slope and leaped into their saddles. Ayub delayed long enough to toss Ahmak his bow and short sword, then he urged his stallion up the rise.

  "Nay," he cried, "I must find the little father."

  The Tartar's face twisted ruefully and he clucked his tongue, but he followed Ayub, who galloped toward the tabor. They were a pistol shot away when they saw Stuart. For a few moments the Nogais had left the tabor to its own devices and the colonel had rallied a small party to aid the hussars. Three of Chort's Cossacks and a half dozen heydukes followed him. He saw Ayub and Ahmak, and waved at them to come on.

  The struggling mass of horsemen around the hussars was no more than a stone's throw away. Ayub drew a pistol, looked at the priming in the pan.

  "U-ha!" he roared. "Do we lack powder and steel, lads? Make way for a Cossack!"

  But slant eyes had seen the advance of the little party, and fifty stocky riders turned in their saddles to ply their bows. Arrows hissed among the Christians. A horse reared with a shaking scream and one of Chort's men dropped like a stone into the snow. Ayub and several others fired their pistols. Then a group of Nogais bore down on them.

  This was too much for the heydukes, who had been hanging back. But Ayub did not see them flee. Out of the haze of smoke a gray figure, crouching in the saddle of a white horse, made for him, a steel lance point gleaming above a red fringe of hair. The old Cossack felt for his other pistol, and changed his mind, grasping his sword hilt instead.

  He jerked his horse to the right, and the Nogai swerved toward him. When the lance point was darting at his head, Ayub shifted his heavy body with surprising swiftness to the left, his weight on that stirrup. The lance passed over his shoulder, and he thrust the blade of his yataghan into the Nogai's side.

  He looked for Stuart, and saw two tribesmen rushing at the Scot, who parried the scimitar stroke of the first man with his long straight blade. The Tartar slipped to one side, dodging the officer's slash, and Stuart turned in the saddle to meet the other rider. The first Tartar checked his pony in its tracks and lifted his scimitar to strike the Scot in the back.

  As he did so Ayub heard Ahmak's bow resound at his side. An arrow thudded into the head of the tribesman, who slipped from the saddle with a snarling scream.

  "Well done!" Ayub roared, and the little archer shouted triumphantly.

  T
he man he had brought down was the owner of the black velvet cloak— the one flourished at the Poles—and the cloak had a gold buckle set with gleaming stones. Ayub remembered it vaguely, but Ahmak seemed to covet it, for he sprang down from his saddle and wrenched it from the fingers of the dying man. His greed made him forget all caution.

  A pony whirled past Ahmak, a lance thrust down, and the Tartar was pulled over—dragged through the snow, with the steel point of the lance fast in his throat.

  Ayub gained Stuart's side in time to see the Scot's adversary turn and flee.

  "Eh, Little Father," he cried, "where are your men?"

  Stuart's followers and the Tartars alike had left them. The flight of the heydukes had stirred the Nogais to pursue them, and a score of riders were scattering down the valley. The three who had come against Ayub and Stuart were accounted for, and for these few seconds the Scot and his follower were left unnoticed.

  Ayub looked around swiftly. The tabor was deserted, and on the other side of him, the Nogais were closing in upon the last hussars. Not one of the Poles remained in the saddle, and during this moment of triumph the tribesmen were intent on striking down the living and stripping the dead. The old Cossack made up his mind at once.

  A glance at Stuart's set face, and he leaned forward, wrenching the rein of the piebald horse from the Scot's left hand. Then he struck the horse with the flat of his blade, urged on his own beast, and turned back toward the knoll from which he had first seen the conflict.

  He heard a swift oath and the Scot's deep cry—

  "Loose the horse, or I'll cut you down!"

  "Slash, Little Father," Ayub shouted, "and you'll soon follow me down. Only look in back of you!"

  Stuart turned in the saddle. A dozen Nogais were detaching themselves from the throng that had made an end of Prince Paul and his hussars. Only a faint clash of steel could be heard, where the exultant tribesmen were tearing plunder from each other's hands. The heydukes were being overtaken and killed, one by one.

  "The Poles have all—" Ayub panted—"turned up their toes. No good going back to be stretched out like a dog."

  For a moment the Scot was silent. Then he shook his shoulders and reached out calmly for the rein, and Ayub, after a glance at him, gave it up. They had passed over the ridge and were galloping along the trail that the Cossack had made earlier in the afternoon—to the south. Behind them, a long musket shot away, the Nogai riders appeared.

  They fell into single file, pushing rapidly along the narrow trail, but for the time being the longer limbed horses of the fugitives increased the distance between them. Stuart's piebald was fairly fresh, and carried less weight than the Cossack's stallion, yet the powerful black charger galloped steadily through the heavy going, the snow flying up like spray under its hoofs.

  The light failed steadily, the gray sky darkened and the Nogais became a blur against the snow. But Ayub knew that night would not hide the trail from the keen eyes of the Tartars. Evidently their ponies were tired and the tribes were content to follow, certain that they would come up with the fugitives when the swifter horses lagged. The Cossack pulled his charger back to a fast trot, and pondered.

  "No cover, no place to hide—can't hide our tracks," he muttered to Stuart.

  "They will stick like burrs to a dog's tail, because they want our horses."

  The Nogais did not seem to be any nearer; by now they were lost to sight in the murk. The two riders felt as if they were speeding through a lifeless plain. The horses' hoofs were muffled in the snow, and no stars were to be seen.

  "Were the Poles mad," Ayub asked presently, "to ride out from the tabor? Where was his Mightiness?"

  "The Tartars cut him off, with his escort," Stuart said grimly. "They brought his head to the tabor and threw it among our men."

  He had been riding near the center of the sledge train when the tribesmen came over the crests. Chort, at the head of the train, had brought the first sledges into a half circle, and Stuart had taken command here, ordering the hussars to dismount and use their firearms. Most of the men had reached the barricade safely, bringing in the sledges with the gold. The first charge of the Nogais had been broken.

  Some of the Cossacks had shouted to the Nogais that they were envoys, on their way to the great khan, and a rider on a white horse with a green saddle cloth had come up as if to talk to them. Instead he had drawn the head of the under-chancellor from beneath his arm, and had swung it by the beard into the nearest sledge, riding off unhurt in the confusion among the Poles. Prince Paul, maddened by the insult, had called to the hussars to arm themselves and go out to the Nogais.

  "They followed him," the colonel said quietly, "against my order."

  "Well," Ayub grunted, "they were brave and now they are dead, and we are like to share their bed this night. I said, Sir Colonel, that the omen was not good."

  "More like," Stuart pointed out, "the Nogais had sacked those cabins and camped nearby—"

  "Aya tak! 'Tis so, by God!" The old Cossack struck the saddle horn with his hand. "And those weasels, our Tartars, sniffed blood in the air and went off." He shook his head sadly. "Eh, the blame is not yours!"

  "Two nobles and forty—two Christian souls slain, and the gold lost— the mission destroyed." Stuart laughed harshly. "It is on my head, the blame—and I live."

  The attack on the column, the savage fighting and the swift flight had given him no moment for thought, but now the massacre burned in his memory. He had been in command of the escort, and it had been wiped out by tribesmen.

  "Nay, Sir Colonel," Ayub said gravely, "you are young and this is not your country. The Poles gave orders, not you. If I had a good head to think with, I would have spied out the tracks of the Nogais in the cabins. Or maybe I would have searched Ahmak's toes this dawn to make him talk. But I have no more than an empty keg on my shoulders, and now I am running like a dog with a panther hissing at his tail. Tfu! You are wise, Little Father. Do you see any way to escape?"

  He bent his huge body to stare into Stuart's face. The Scot looked around at the bleak expanse of white and at the curtain of darkness that hemmed them in, and behind which followed the riders of the steppe.

  "Not I!" he laughed.

  As if it had been an echo of his voice, the high-pitched shout of a Nogai came down the wind—a shout to announce the picking up of the trail, or a taunt—

  "Ahai, caphar—ho, unbelievers!"

  Ayub tightened his knees, and the black charger flung up its head and trotted faster. Hearing the men's voices, the horses had lagged, and the pursuers had come closer.

  Chapter V Enemy's Shelter

  Stuart, on the fresher horse, had taken the lead. The Cossack's big charger had been trotting through snow for the greater part of a day and the half of a night, and its strength was failing. It stumbled frequently, pulling up with a snort and a quick heaving of flanks. If the two men had been mounted on ordinary cavalry beasts they would have been overtaken by the ponies of the Nogais before now.

  From time to time Ayub glanced over his shoulder, trying to pierce the pitlike gloom. The tribesmen, he knew, would not loose their arrows until they were certain of striking down the men without injuring the horses. They were too wise to scatter in pursuit, and they would not give the fugitives a chance to use their swords. The Cossack and the officer had a pistol each, but in the darkness they were worse than useless—the flash would reveal them to their adversaries and the dense smoke would hide the ensuing rush of the tribesmen. Avub had seen the Nogais charge the Poles through such smoke.

  The piebald wolf-chaser neighed suddenly, and then again, thrusting down its head.

  "That is a good omen, Little Father," the Cossack called.

  He stared around him, then down at the ground. Bending over, he looked again, and jumped off without slowing up the black horse. Rein in hand he ran beside it for awhile. Then, gripping the saddle horn, the rein over his arm, he swung himself up again, grunting with the effort.

  "Turn to
the right, Little Father," he urged, and Stuart obeyed in silence.

  After a few minutes, his eyes still bent on the snow, the Cossack spoke again.

  "Now to the left a little."

  "What is it?" Stuart asked.

  "Many horse tracks, all around. A whole herd—wild, maybe, or a Tartar's herd. By day I could know."

  "Will yonder devils lose our tracks here?"

  "Nay, they will not lose the trail. But they will have to dismount and stick their snouts down, and so they will fall behind."

  Ayub uttered an exclamation and turned his head. For some time the air had been growing colder; now it seemed warmer, and the black sky lighter. Something stung his face and beat against his eyes.

  "Faith," Stuart said, "nothing is wanted. We are already marked for dead men, and here is the snow to bury us."

  The snow was dry and hard, and it whirled around them, shutting them in so that soon they could not see beyond their horses' heads. And presently it rose from the ground, swirling around them.

  "Eh," the Cossack observed, "the Nogais won't look for us any more.

  They'll ride for shelter, if they know any place near; if not, they'll let the horses pick the way." He pondered for a moment. "Drop the rein, Little Father; urge on the spotted horse, and let him lead. That's the best thing to do."

  The two horses drew together until the stirrups rubbed, and the piebald seemed to turn down the wind, after Stuart tossed the rein on his neck. But he trotted slowly and then fell of his own accord into a walk.

  So far the cold had not troubled the men, but now the icy breath of the storm chilled their backs. Stuart dismounted and walked for a while, to stir the blood in his numbed feet.

  "Don't do that, Sir Colonel," the Cossack remarked. "If you walk, the horse will follow you. If he is left to himself he'll go to a wood, or perhaps a ravine, and then we may be able to gather a fire."

  There was no sign of any break in the plain. At times they went down long slopes, or circled around a knoll, but the dense veil of drifting snow made it seem as if they were still walking over the level steppe. Both of them knew what the storm meant—the cold steadily increasing until morning. By then the horses would be exhausted. And the wind came in such gusts that they could not tell whether they were wandering in a circle or not.

 

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