Swords of the Steppes

Home > Other > Swords of the Steppes > Page 44
Swords of the Steppes Page 44

by Harold Lamb


  Mark went up to the nearest sentry who was leaning over the parapet, listening with all his ears. He ordered the man to fire off his gun, and the sentry jumped as if someone had stuck a knife in him—jumped and ran off, dropping his firelock. This Mark picked up, pulling the trigger. It only sparked and clicked, as the powder had fallen out of the pan.

  Then Mark said something softly and called the sergeant who acted as interpreter, and the man ran up at once, although he had been off duty.

  "Bring a slow match!" Mark ordered, and the Muscovite bawled out loud for a light.

  None came, and it appeared that the cannoneers had let the matches go out. Then my kunak drew his sword and spoke very quietly to the sergeant, and the man began to bow as if had been frightened to the soul, which was indeed the case. He went off to fetch embers from the nearest fire, and Mark went among the groups of cannoneers, lashing them with his tongue in slave galley Turkish that many of them understood. Eh, he said things! Those who did not understand, saw his sword, and by degrees they began to take their stations.

  The thought came to me of my firelock in the hut within the governor's palisade. It was time that I had a weapon.

  "Eh, Mark," I whispered when I could get his attention, "these sons of jackals are not to be trusted. Leave them and come with me."

  But he would not. And still no trumpet had blared the alarm. As I ran down the steps on the wall I heard steel clashing faintly over toward the Vosnasinski gate. Mark had told me to warn the governor's people that Cossacks were afoot on the island. Of this, however, there was no need because I had not gone halfway to the hut when one of his cannon went off with a roar, and I knew that the sergeant had brought the fire.

  Other cannon began to talk, and I thought that now the Muscovites would show fight if their officers knew how to handle them.

  "Matier Boga molis zanas!" I cried. "Holy Lady, pray for us!"

  Why did I pray that the Cossacks be driven away? Well, I was alive and Mark was alive; yet if the men of Stenka Razin found us fighting among the Muscovites, we would be cut open like rabbits in a wolfpack. I knew this as well as I knew that I was standing in my own boots. Because then I had seen the head!

  An old man's head, the forehead bald, the long white hair clotted under the chin and dripping red. Instead of a body under it, the head had a staff and the staff was a spear, stuck into the ground, and the head had belonged to a Cossack priest—the one Razin had sent as envoy to the governor of the Muscovites. It peered at me, the eyes wide open under the poplar trees.

  Ekh moi! When I had my gun I ran back very fast toward the Motsagol-ski gate toward Mark. As I passed the barracks the white ensign was trying to muster his company in line, first pleading with them, then threatening. The soldiers in their dark coats were shuffling their feet and looking all around at the officer and at the cannon on the wall. They were like cattle in a herd when a solitary wolf is scented near at hand. The beasts toss their heads and move together, not knowing whether to stand their ground with the monarch steer or to flee.

  All at once one of the men levelled his gun and shot the ensign, who fell to his knees. As soon as this happened, a dozen ran up and let off their guns into his body. When I could no longer see the fine white uniform, I ran on until a man in a breastplate stumbled against me within an alley, black as the pit itself.

  He called out, and it was the voice of the Roundhead colonel.

  "Are you hurt?" I asked, because his knees were wavering strangely.

  "Barbakosta!" he groaned.

  A candle flared up in a window above us and his face became visible. He had been badly hacked in the hand and across the forehead. I thought of the ringing of steel I had heard near his post on the wall. He cried out something several times, but how was I to understand?

  Wrenching a long piece of white linen from his shirt at the throat with his good hand, he plucked one of my daggers from my girdle. Dipping the point in his own blood at the wrist he traced two words on the linen and handed it to me. Then he gave me a push toward the wall. What was I to do?

  He was too heavy to carry, and his wounds made him weak very quickly. With a sigh he looked around and went to sit down on the threshold of the house where the candle burned.

  Eh, he did not lack courage, that gray colonel. Again he waved me off and I went, thrusting the strip of cloth into my girdle.

  At the wall Mark's men were serving the cannon, but it was apparent that no other cannon were being fired. And we were not long in learning the reason. Two officers, the Walloon Rudolph and a Muscovite lieutenant, ran up to Mark's place on the wall and urged him to come with them to the governor's house.

  Their men had mutinied, and when Mark would not go, they asked what they should do.

  He said—I asked the sergeant what his words were—that he must stay at his post of command as long as the guns could be served, and, as for them, they had better bring their men to order.

  "The Cossacks have entered the Vosnasinski gate," they said.

  When Mark shrugged his shoulders they started off, but not along the wall. They began to run toward the governor's house when they were clear of the wall, and in the end it did them no good. Just then I heard singing from the streets behind us, and I knew well that song.

  From the White Island On the Mother Volga,

  Stenka Razin's brothers Sail with a merry song.

  Between the reports of Mark's guns laughter came from the darkness in front of us—roaring, drunken laughter. And the song was taken up somewhere to our left in the Tatar town.

  Stenka Razin's the captain,

  The black devil’s the admiral—

  Sing a song princess,

  For we are merry today.

  The sergeant began to tear at his head, crying out that cannon balls and steel could not harm our foes. Aye, it fairly made my skin creep to hear those roaring voices out of the mist almost under the muzzles of our guns. And when the sergeant cried out, the men all stood still and looked at Mark. The guns ceased speaking, and Mark took his sword tip in his left hand, the muscles on his chin standing out, his gray eyes glittering.

  Red wine and jewels,

  Dark blood and fire—

  Hi, Stenka, Razin, our father:

  Sarin na kitchkou!

  This was the rallying cry of the Volga brothers, the children of Stenka Razin, and when they heard it, the Muscovites looked unhappy, scowling at Mark. I moved to stand between him and the outer parapet, slinging my gun over one shoulder to free my hands. Then I pushed him off the inner wall.

  Beneath him were a flight of steps, leading into a tower. He fell, but his feet were under him and he leaped down the steps with me on his shoulders. Before he could gain his balance I had thrust him through the tower door and slammed it shut behind us, setting the bars in place.

  "Kunak moi," I said into the darkness where he was breathing heavily. "No doubt you would like to stick old Uncle Kosta with your sword. Very well, go ahead. My hands are open, but I will not return up yonder to be pulled into pieces by the Muscovite pack."

  He was silent for the time it takes to empty a flagon of brandy. Then he laughed.

  "Shabash!" Which means well done or the work is over. "What now?"

  I explained that at the foot of the tower there was the postern door. This would let us out into the Tatar town, and in the mist we could easily escape notice by the Cossacks until we had gained the shore where we could steal a skiff and go over to the mainland. If we were challenged, I could answer that we were wounded Cossacks going back to the ships. Our horses were lost to us, of course, but at that moment our skins were the things to think about.

  Two soldiers had been posted in the lower tower; I did not hear them, and they had probably run away. Our friends, the cannoneers were pounding on the door beside us before Mark agreed to my plan.

  Cautiously we descended the winding stair until we saw the glow of a lantern below, and then we stopped short like dead men. The two sentries were not ther
e. A young woman was standing holding the lantern, looking up at us wide-eyed, and the long pistol in her other hand was pointed at me.

  "-!" shouted Mark.

  She was in truth a strange girl. She was thinner than the Cossack maids, too young to have reached the years of wisdom. Her whole body was wrapped in a gray cloak, a white collar covering throat and shoulders. The hood of the cloak did not hide bright tresses of hair like sun-bleached grain.

  Aye, she looked like a nun from a holy convent in that strange garment of gray and white. Yet, when Mark cried out, she lowered the pistol and answered him. Now her voice trembled, but her hand had been steady enough. I could not understand their words which came bursting out swiftly. By these very words I knew she must be a woman of Mark's tribe in Frankistan.5 She was a beautiful child, altogether fair and clean.

  Mark went down the remaining steps three at a time and put up the bars on the door that opened into the city street. Then he looked at me, his broad face twisted by a kind of excited grief.

  "Barbakosta," he said. "This is the niece of the Roundhead colonel. She came to seek him and took shelter in this place when she heard the singing in the streets. I am going to find Colonel Bailly."

  "If that is the name of the Roundhead," I answered, remembering the bit of linen that had escaped my mind until then, "you would not find him in this world. Here is what he gave me. Is it meant for you?"

  He took the white strip with its red lettering and turned his back so the girl would not see. I think the writing was about her because Mark only said when he had crumpled it up in his hand—

  "Aye, Uncle Kosta, it was meant for me."

  He spoke quietly to the girl who stood looking at him without a word. The noises around the tower seemed to bewilder her and she took his arm in such a way that I saw she did not mean to let it go in a hurry.

  Then he blew out the lantern and ordered me to open the postern, saying that they would follow me down to the shore. Ekh moi, I had got Mark away from the traitors, his men. But I knew I could not make him leave the blue-eyed lass. Here we had been on the point of escaping without a scratched skin, and now we had a woman to take through Stenka Razin's pirates!

  No time was to be lost, and I merely said to myself—

  "Old Konstantine, you may lose your skin if that is your kismet."

  And I opened the door. It would have availed more if I had said a prayer. A torrent of Cossacks poured in on us, slashing with their swords, crying—

  "Von sabliouky—smiert! Use your blades—death!"

  Aye death was upon us then. I was knocked back upon the steps, and from that place I could see Mark's form against a distant glow of torches. He had pushed the girl behind him and was using his blade in truth. Two of the leaders he put down, and was thrust back against the far wall by others, who howled when they saw their comrades cut open.

  I could hear the cannoneers shouting at them from the wall above the postern, and the thought came to me that the Muscovite sons of dogs had warned the Cossacks that an officer was trying to escape through the postern. If it had not been for the Frankish girl, we might have gone free.

  Drawing two daggers, I ran into the stumbling warriors and slashed them at the girdles. Eh, in the darkness two daggers are worth twice two swords. A big man struck me with his fist, and the darkness became red light before my eyes so that I could no longer see him and expected to be cut down at once.

  A pistol roared behind my ear, and I heard him fall. Aye, the girl in the gray cloak had fired that pistol, but it did us little good. Mark's sword was broken, and three of the Cossacks, heavy men in damp sheepskins, grappled me. We went down in a mass, all of us.

  Then someone cried for a torch and, when the light came, we were jerked to our feet and sabers were swung up to make an end of us.

  "By the ascension of Mahomet!" roared one of them. "Here is a lass, such a lass!"

  They began to stare at us, and when they discovered that I was a Cossack and Mark a foreign officer and the girl something altogether strange, they scratched their heads and decided to take us to Stenka Razin.

  Ai-a, have you ever seen the bougay, the great wild steer of the steppes? Have you seen him, the master of the herd, standing on a knoll around which the other cattle are feeding?

  He does not move his massive weight, his red eyes scan you as you approach, and you wonder what is in his mind or if he has a mind and, while you wonder, you feel afraid.

  Just so did Stenka Razin sit among his colonels the next day when we were brought before him in the poplar grove. He was the master, the little father, and the Cossacks were his children and the prisoners were his slaves. I said to myself—

  "Old Konstantine, yesterday the Muscovites were going to skin you alive in this very grove, but God alone knows what will happen to you today!"

  For a Don Cossack, Stenka Razin was sizable, rather heavy. As tall as I—six feet and eight inches—he must have weighed two hundred and twenty pounds. Sprawled in an armchair, he sat in a fine red satin shirt, spotted down the front with spilled wine; his wide green nankeen trousers were stained with tar; the hilt of his sword was Venetian work, set with many shining diamonds. The black lambskin hat on the table beside him gleamed with a solitary Siberian emerald as large as my thumbnail.

  "What sign is that on his arm?" Mark asked me in a whisper.

  "An evil sign," I replied, "for us."

  It was a thing like a diamond, burned into the skin, with one word printed within the diamond—Cain. In this way the Muscovites had branded him when he was a youth and they had taken him prisoner when one of them said he had stolen a horse. I do not know whether he stole the horse, but I know that he was branded and spent the ten years that were the prime of his life in the prison at Kazan. Since then he had sworn an oath that the Muscovites would not take him alive again.

  Now he had rolled up the sleeve on that arm so that all the Muscovites of Astrakhan who were brought before him could see the mark and the word. Truly Cain once slew his brother, who was a mild man, but Stenka Razin had not slain his brother. The Muscovites had done that.

  And when each of the governor's officers were set before the table, Razin looked at them and said whether they were to be thrown into the river or beheaded. None of the officers did he spare, so it was not long before Mark was led forward. Behind Mark was the young girl, Mistress Bailly, and I was last of the three.

  "Batko," cried the Cossack warriors at Mark's side, "Father, this is the dog of a Frank who fired on us with cannon last night."

  Razin had a great, broad head. Even the skin was dark—the eyes black under drooping lids, the long beard black, and likewise the hair on his chest that showed where the shirt was loosened. Aye, it was no easy matter to face him. To see him was enough to yield, to beat to him with the forehead on the ground.

  But Mark did not lower his eves before Razin's stare and, after a moment, the Cossack chief stirred his shoulders and the chair creaked.

  "What more?" he asked.

  Then did Chvedor, the priest, speak in his ringing voice—a stout man who had given up the cassock for svitza and saber, and who sat, tankard on knee, at the side of Razin.

  "Eh, father, this Frank put an end to the torture of Melko, the Zapor-ogian yonder."

  Chvedor was a bold spirit and more than once Razin had been on the point of hanging him, but the priest was merry and the pirate liked to drink with him. Now Razin glanced at the dead Cossack who rested as he had been left by the Kalmuks on the cross.

  "Sit," he said to Mark, and no man could tell how he was minded to deal with my comrade.

  One of the Cossacks ran up with a chair, and Mark seated himself gravely, a little apart from the chieftain.

  The girl was led forward. Her hood had been pulled back on her shoulders, and the sunlight, coming through the poplar branches, gleamed in the tangle of her hair. A slim lass, flushing under the eyes of the drunken warriors. Like a lily she was, shining in rank steppe grass. So she swayed, standing b
efore the bougay, the master of the steppe.

  Aye, in that moment I felt grief and pity for her, the young maiden who had come from afar to the Volga and the children of Razin. I saw that she had taken the chieftain's fancy at once.

  "To my choutar," he said, meaning the governor's house that he called his farm.

  The eyes of the girl flew to Mark and she tried to run to him, but the Cossacks checked her. Then she closed her eyes and moved away without a word. Mark leaned forward, looking at the ground between his feet, and the muscles in his hands became rigid. It was clear to me that he would not let Razin take the girl without an effort to protect her; but at the time he said nothing, and I wondered. Before very long I thought of the reason. Mark had wished Mistress Bailly to be out of sight of the Cossack when he spoke. Eh, she was very fair, and no man seeing her could fail to desire her.

  Meanwhile I was led forward, hanging my head. The Cossacks who had seized us in the tower had taken my gun and coat and a fine pair of boots, and I was barefoot.

  "Father," said someone, "this is Uncle Kosta, an old dog who fought on the side of the Muscovites."

  Though I looked searchingly at the throng, I could not see the man who had spoken, but presently the Muscovite mutineers began to give tongue. They had turned their coats inside out and had come to Razin on their knees, and he had given them the year's pay that was owing to them out of the coffers in the governor's house. They said that I had been the first to bring word of the loss of the flotilla; that I had been a spy of the governor's and had given the alarm the night before.

  Eh, it was the Muscovite halberdier who said that, the one who had accosted me on the beach and had taken my silver for brandy money. He desired to gain the favor of Razin.

  As for me, I spat on the ground toward that father of lies, and Stenka Razin moved impatiently in his chair.

 

‹ Prev