Swords of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  "Fill Kosta's belly with sand," he said, "and throw him into Mother Volga."

  The Cossacks, who had grasped my arms, were dragging me off when a voice made them stop and look around in surprise.

  "Khaghan," Mark had said in his slow Turkish, "are you drunk?"

  Most of the Cossacks, among them Razin, understood him and some got up from their chairs to stare at him. The chieftain lifted his pitcher of white spirits and drained it to the bottom; then he turned around to face Mark.

  "A devil is in you, Frank. Nay, Stenka Razin is not drunk. Are you weary of carrying your head?"

  "I have eyes, and I can tell you the truth. This man, Uncle Kosta, is not a spy. He came with me, out of the steppe to the river. His home is in the mountains down below among the tribes, and he can tell you much of the Moslems and their doings. Another thing I say to you: The shah of the Persians is gathering his war vessels together and fitting them out to sail up the Volga and make war against you."

  "That is a lie," Razin laughed. "The shah is afraid of my shadow. Did I not put the torch to Baku under his eyes? Did I not take the horses he sent to the white-livered emperor of the Muscovites?"

  "It is the truth," said Mark quietly. "I was a prisoner on a Persian galley."

  Now when my comrade said a thing, as he did then, his scarred hands folded on his knee, his gray eyes unfaltering, it was not possible to doubt him. Stenka Razin did not doubt him, but the words bred anger in the big Cossack. He grew more angry when one of his lieutenants laughed.

  This was a slender man who carried his head on one side and drank only red wine. They called him Filka Tchortyaka, Filka the Devil. It was his habit to goad Razin to do mad things, and for some reason Filka had taken a dislike to Mark.

  "Drunk!" echoed Razin, shaking his great head. "Well, we will see. By ——, you will drink with me, Frank, cup for cup, in equal measure. If at the end you are less steady than I, you will be put in a hogshead of vodka and touched off with a torch, pouff!"

  Even at that time his victories had stirred Razin to a reckless belief in his own powers. He was master of the steppe, but he fancied himself emperor of all that part of the earth. When he was quite sober, he was all that a Cossack should be—open-handed, full of frolic, eager for new doings. When he was drinking, a black devil seized him, and he had been drinking spirits all that morning. Even so, it was clearly to be seen that his Cossacks believed that Mark would be put in the hogshead.

  "Ei sokoly vina Atamanou—hi, falcons, wine for the colonel!" they shouted, and those who had me in hand sat down to smoke their pipes and watch.

  It was a strange duel. At first Chvedor drank with them—drank the spiced varenukha and the white, sweet-smelling corn brandy. Every time two cups would be filled evenly and one taken to Mark, one to Stenka Ra-zin's table.

  By and by Chvedor dropped out to go off into the town and plunder a bit. The prisoners were brought in a steady stream before the ataman, and it is true he showed no mercy to those who had white hands. The fancy struck Stenka Razin to have the prince, the governor, thrown from the clock tower, the highest in the town, and this was done. Then he sent for wines from the governor's house, and the afternoon was not half gone before he had emptied two bottles.

  "Ataman—" Mark had picked up this word from us—"you have said what will happen if I do not keep pace with you in this drinking. But how if I do?"

  "Ask for what you want, Frank," the chieftain made answer carelessly. "It will be yours."

  "Good!" said Mark, and Stenka Razin looked at him for a moment from under drooping lids.

  When the shadows began to stretch along the ground under the poplars, Stenka Razin's broad face grew darker and darker until it was purple. By some blow many of his front teeth had been broken out, and from his loose mouth trinkles of wine ran down on his shirt. Mark looked whiter and no longer said anything.

  The ataman called for a pitcher of gorilka and tossed it down his throat, while Mark quaffed his slowly. Stenka Razin looked at him and grinned. Mark's head was swaying just a little from side to side, while the big Cossack was motionless as always.

  "Ekh, my falcon," he muttered, "that last was bitter, was it not? We will have something sweet."

  Throwing back his head he roared out a verse from one of the songs of Chvedor, and Mark, thinking that this was part of the game, responded at once with his only song:

  Blow high, blow low—what care we,

  On the coast of the high Barbaree.

  "Good!" laughed Razin, pleased because my friend's head seemed to be not altogether clear. "Bring mead, sweetened with honey."

  That seemed to be more than men could endure—the goblets of sweet drink. The skin on my head felt chill, and I did not dare to look at Mark. The veins were standing out on his forehead, and steam was rising from him into the damp air.

  Stenka Razin rose without holding to chair or table just as the sun was setting. He pulled a pistol from his belt and spoke to my comrade.

  "Now we will see who is the steadier."

  The long pistol looked small in his great fist as he levelled it at the tree from which the Zaporogian had been cut down. His shot showed clearly— a white flake where it had ripped the bark from the side of the poplar. The tree was fifty paces away. It was a wonder that he had been able to stand on his own feet, a miracle that he had hit the tree.

  It is one thing to keep a quiet tongue and not to fall down when you are roaring drunk; it is quite another matter to shoot at anything with a pistol and hit what you aim at.

  Mark, too, was drunk, but something within his mind was cold and clear. I think he had forgotten all about himself and me. The thing in his mind was the girl who had held out her arms to him and the bit of the old colonel's shirt inscribed with blood. He moved like a man who has been cut on the head—very slowly, doing one thing at a time.

  He raised the pistol Stenka Razin handed him and fired. And the bullet struck fairly, near the center of the poplar trunk. The Cossacks raised a shout, and for a moment Razin's eyes glowed red. Then he went over and stood in front of Mark, hands on his thighs.

  "Shabash!" he roared. "Well done!"

  "Then give me the Frankish girl," Mark muttered. "She is mine."

  Razin looked at him in astonishment.

  "How, yours?"

  "My betrothed. She is to be my wife."

  Mark lied, yet he said the only thing that would have weight with Ra-zin in such a moment.

  "What is that to me?"

  "Your word!"

  "Well, my word is not smoke. Take the lass. She's fair, but I have a lovelier bit in my bark. By-, you are bold. There is a horned soul in you,

  Mark." Razin turned to the watching Cossacks. "Look here, children. This Frank is Stenka Razin's kunak, his chosen friend! Do you understand?"

  "Aye, father," the Cossacks cried.

  "The whole world knows and the —— in purgatory knows, too, that Stenka Razin is no niggard. Allah! Where is that besotted priest, Chve-dor? Fetch him here, and do you, Filka, run and get the maid. We'll marry

  you, Mark, to the blue-eyed lass, and-take you if you don't know how

  to look out for her after you are her husband."

  Meanwhile my guards, who knew that I was a follower of the Frank, decided to release me.

  We soon saw that Razin was a man of his word. Chvedor came staggering and put a priest's embroidered chasuble over his svitza and took his stand behind the very table where the chieftain had been drinking. Torches were fetched, and the round lantern of the moon peered down at us between the poplars.

  Filka escorted Mistress Bailly from the governor's house and all the Cossacks bowed to the girdle when she entered among them, carrying a candle. Mark went to her and they talked for some moments aside, and I do not know what they said. But the girl put her hand on his arm, and a little color came into her white cheeks.

  Ekh, they had spirit in them—those two. A fine pair, Mark standing straight as a lance staff, looking every on
e full in the eyes, although the liquor must have been boiling in his veins; Mistress Bailly, trembling a little beneath the cloak, but outwardly indifferent to all except Chvedor who began the ritual at once in his fine voice. Her hand was steady when she placed the candle on the table, and the flame burned bright. If it had gone out, it would have meant an evil fate for her and my comrade.

  We Cossacks all watched the candle, and it did not go out.

  "Christ be with you, my children," said the pirate priest at the end.

  He knew the ritual well because he had married Stenka Razin a hundred times or more.

  "The Father and Son be with you!" all the Cossacks shouted, and Filka the Devil, grinning like the fiend he was, fetched the whip with which the bridegroom should beat the bride to show her who is master. But Mark did not do this.

  Razin began to enjoy the spectacle and to be pleased with himself. At such times he showed the princely blood that was in him, for he selected a scimitar and gave it to Mark himself, and the day came when that scimitar served us well in a fashion Razin little suspected.

  In addition to the sword, he made Mark the gift of a boat—one of the Cossack barks that had come down the river. It was as long as five horses and as wide as one, and it had a single mast. There were benches and sweeps for ten rowers. The sides of the boat were splendidly painted with banners and figures of the saints, and the rump of the boat was roofed in like a hut.

  The floor of the cabin was covered with Turkish carpets, and hung with fine colored lanterns and silk tapestries that had come from Ispha-han. It had a divan with many pillows and ivory tabourets and incense burned in jeweled holders.

  To this bark the Cossacks escorted us in their skiffs in the moonlight. When Mark and his bride stood on the roof of the cabin, the warriors raised a shout and let off all their firearms. Then Stenka Razin rose up in his skiff and greeted his new kunak.

  "One thing I ask of you, Mark," he roared. "When I summon you to sit with me and drink a glass, you will come."

  "I will come," said my comrade gravely, and even at the end of all things on the Volga he kept his promise.

  This done, the Cossacks rowed off, singing to hold revelry in Astrakhan, while I sat down in the nose of the boat to smoke a pipe I had borrowed from one of the plunderers, and to think. In the cabin were sugared fruits and cheese cakes and red wine and white wine, and I could see the girl eating and drinking a little.

  Mother Volga was very quiet that night, and no mist hid the stars. On all sides were anchored the boats of the pirates, each with its light, and canoes and skiffs came and went while the feasting in the town went on apace. The lights on the boats moved very gently when little waves came and went and the lantern of the moon cast a white light on the rushes of the shore and the towers of the city.

  Meanwhile Mark had drawn the curtain that shut off the cabin from the belly of the boat and came and sat down by me. He had his short clay pipe, because the warriors had not plundered him, and this he lighted from mine, sitting on the wooden wall that runs around the nose of such a boat, his head propped in his hands.

  "Eh, Mark," I said after a long while, "luck has come your way. If Stenka Razin did not have a whim to marry you, we twain would have been food for the fishes by now. It is altogether a miracle."

  "I am not married, Uncle Kosta," he said shortly.

  "How, not married?"

  He explained that the lass had been weaned in a tribe and a land where the priests were not as ours and the churches different. He called her a Puritan, which is a praying person who has a knack of fighting. Chve-dor and our ceremony, the candle and the wedding feast and all the rest of it, he insisted, was not in the least like the weddings in that tribe of Frankistan.

  "Nay, Mark," I answered when I had thought about this, "a priest is a priest even if he be full of wine. A promise is a promise in Frankistan or on the Volga. Did she not light a candle to set before the Holy Mother?"

  "She was made to do it by Filka."

  "You were not made to take her hand before the priest. It is true that you did not kiss her then, or beat her with the whip and I do not know if you have kissed her now. But you are certainly her husband."

  "Yavash! Uncle Kosta, I have lived all my life among the brethren of the coast—a plunderer, a vagabond, a buccaneer! I have slept many a time in a bloodied shirt and have served no king." He laughed under his breath. "A buccaneer once, always a buccaneer. My wedding, a ribald priest on the heels of a drinking bout."

  "You would have been a galliard among the Cossacks, Mark. Eh; the minstrels must know your name in that far-off sea at the edge of the world."

  But Mark shook his head like a man who sees no use in trying to make a hard situation better with words. He said that Mistress Bailly was a flower, a saint, and how was he to care for her?

  "Mark," said I, "you drove the Tatars out of my hut. You faced down the Muscovite mutineers with nothing at your back but your shadow. You drank, cup for cup, with Razin and the little father himself swore that you had a horned soul in you. But you do not at all understand how to go about consoling a young girl."

  "Perhaps, Uncle Kosta, you might go and talk to her."

  "I? A bear putting his paw into a hive! That would not make her glad! Look here, I have not heard her weeping."

  "She is not. First she made me tell her about the fate of her uncle, then she thanked me and said she would sleep."

  I looked at Mark who was puffing at a cold pipe.

  "Inshallum bak allah! If I were in your boots, I would not sit out here and hold my head. I would sit by her and hold her hand and stroke her yellow hair. Then I would tell her she is beautiful—and as the saints hear me, that is the truth. Then I would not fail to kiss her."

  "The-take you! Uncle Kosta, you know nothing about such a

  1

  The events related by Barbakosta took place in the years 1670-1671 and are preserved in the journal of an unknown officer who visited the Caucasus. The author has attempted to give the narrative as Barbakosta first told it.

  2

  Tobacco.

  3

  Kalmuks and Nogais; Tatar tribes conquered a hundred years previous by Ivan the Terrible, now furnished irregular cavalry to the Muscovites.

  4

  Chinese.

  5

  Europe; the Western world in general.

  girl."

  "They're alike, all of them. If you don't order them around and show them some endearments they think you don't love them. Then they'll plague you like a demon until you take the horsewhip to them."

  Again he shook his head helplessly. Yet that is the truth. When a Cossack maiden is married she fetches a whip to her husband to show that she is ready to serve him. Only if he does not use the whip, she'll get the upper hand, because those young girls are like pasture-bred fillies. They need the bit and spur, otherwise they toss their heads and get out of hand.

  Mark explained again that they had gone through the ceremony because Razin made them, and because they wished Stenka to be free to leave the Volga.

  "Taib. True, Mark. Yet I do not think that this maiden would have done that if she had not loved you."

  He started as if I had flicked him with a whip.

  "Not to be believed, Uncle Kostal"

  "I have eyes, kunak," I said, beginning to be angry with him. "I know. What is the use of talking to you? I am going to sleep."

  Mark had forgotten to bring me any supper. He had forgotten everything except his own uncertainty, and when I curled up on the planks he began to pace up and down in his heavy boots—going on tip-toe at times to listen at the curtain to discover if Mistress Bailly slept in peace, and making more noise in so doing than a buffalo going through underbrush to drink. Eh, he kept us both awake with his rambling and muttering.

  When I dozed off at last, he shook me up to ask why I thought she loved him.

  "Because she watches you when you are not looking and is altogether a different person when you are
with her, you fool."

  Again I dozed and then heard him splashing around in the river. He had gone over the side of the boat to swim like a dog, which is a custom of the Franks, hard to believe. It was nearly sunrise and I was very weary.

  "Listen, Mark," I said angrily, "if you will sit in one place and smoke your pipe or think and not move around in the boat and the water all the time as if the flies were biting you, I will be able to snooze a bit even though I have had nothing to eat."

  After that he was quiet, and I found him propped up against the side wall of the boat when it was light. Mistress Bailly was awake, and without making any fuss at all she brought us a fine breakfast on a tray.

  When Mark had gone off to talk with Stenka Razin, she watched his skiff out of sight, and then, finding out that I knew a little of the Muscovite tongue, she made me tell her everything that he had done—how he had found favor with the dead governor and had saved me from being skinned alive. I told her some handsome tales because there is nothing to be gained by sticking about facts when a beautiful maiden lends her ear, and we got along splendidly.

  She told me that when she and her uncle had been forced to fly from their home, they had dwelt a little among various peoples of Frankistan and had journeyed to Moscow when they heard that the emperor was paying foreign officers to drill his soldiery and sail his boats. They had been ordered to Astrakhan when Stenka Razin took up the torch and the sword. She said that a new army was being sent down the Volga to crush the Cossacks.

  "Will the Cossack chieftain let us go back to Moscow, Uncle Kosta?" she asked.

  "I do not think so. His whim is to keep Mark at his side."

  So it happened. While the Cossacks were feasting in the town and the merchants and citizens of the place doffed their caps and bent the knee to us, Mark was summoned at all hours to drink with Razin. He was made to tell about the buccaneers, and the hunters of Tortuga and the great treasure ships that crossed the seas to Frankistan. Such things Ra-zin had never heard before, and his favorite story was the one in which Mark related how he had taken the galleon of the Spaniard, boring holes in the skiffs of his men when they rowed up to the enemy in the darkness so that his followers would not lose heart and try to draw back, once the swords began to talk.