Swords of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  "Look!" said the Terek Cossack, ramming his elbow into my ribs.

  The largest of our boats had been hit more than once by the Moslem cannon. And I saw white splinters fly up from its side as it swung slowly, first this way, then that, its mast broken down. The leading shallops circled around it as dogs rush in on a wolf. Now the cannon of our comrades in the disabled boat began to speak, puffs of smoke darting out and drifting down the wind.

  But it availed them little. A black ship with two masts, towering over the rolling chayak, headed toward it and struck it with a dull crashing of wood. The Persian sandal kept on after us, and our boat sank lower and lower until it could not be seen at all.

  Mark had seen, but his face had not changed. The girl had grown pale and her eyes were smoldering. She sat on the deck at his feet where the railing protected her from arrows.

  The roaring of the swell on the shore grew louder, the soughing of the rushes and shrieking of the gulls, and the breath and power of the sea seemed to sweep us into the gut between the islands. We fled. Crowding together, the first boats of the fleet were close upon our heels.

  We passed the flank of Shatiri Bogar where the thickening mist and the rushes hid a thousand men with their cannon. We swept around the bend in the river beyond, Mark steering the boat past rocks and the gray shapes of sandbars. In the farther reach of the river we moved more slowly because the wind did not push as much. What became of the other boat I do not know. Perhaps it stumbled on a sandbar and sat.

  For a space we drifted alone in a shroud of gray mist with our heads close to the water, listening. The Terek Cossack got up and looked over the nose of the boat, listening also. Mark jumped up to the railing, keeping one foot on the pole that steers the boat, attentive to things that were going on behind the gray veil. We heard firelocks booming far behind us, and I thought of the second boat.

  Eh, we had led the dogs of Tourki into the nets, but we ourselves were in the trap. We could not go ahead. There was no longer a path through the nets. We could not go back. The oncoming fleet was at our heels. And now that the wind had ceased the river began to push at us, first this way, then that.

  "To the oars!" cried Mark.

  Four oars were thrust into the water, and Mark turned the guiding pole so that we moved toward the island on the far side of the river from Shatiri Bogar. We felt our way among rocks and shallows until we entered a hole in the side of the island—a cove, the Terek Cossack said. Big black boulders rose on either side and passed behind us. Then the oars were lifted and our boat sat on the ground, although the water still stretched a spear cast to the shore.

  "Barbakosta," Mark ordered, "take one man and go to a high place on the shore. Watch the river! Bring us tidings!"

  I took the tall man from the Terek and waded ashore. We carried our firelocks through the brush and shivered when the wind whipped through our trousers. We heard the shouting of the Moslems, the creaking of wood on the ships and the threshing of oars. We could see perhaps half the river, with black shapes moving up the stream.

  And then the gray curtain was cut by red flashes and rolling white smoke upstream where the Cossack chayaks were in ambush behind the nets. All of the boats had small brass cannon and the balls tore through the close packed Moslems. But I heard no firing from Shatiri Bogar below the bend.

  "Chvedor is not a fool," my companion grunted. "He will not loose his iron dogs until the Tourki begin to flee down the river."

  Then I saw the whole of the trap Stenka Razin had set. It was like the trap the Muscovites made in the water for the sturgeon—easy to get into, but no way out. The cannon on Shatiri Bogar were not to keep the Moslems from ascending the Volga; nay, to sink them when they fled.

  For a time we sat and watched, and it seemed as if the Persians were trying to force their way through the nets, because we heard the clashing of steel and the war shouts—

  "Haura—haa-a!"

  More boats were coming up and these began to drift over toward us, oar galleys and sandals packed with men who were all watching the fighting up the river. They did not look happy. By and by we heard the Cossack cry:

  "Saryn na kitchkou! Up, lads to the bows!"

  The Terek Cossack let his pipe go out and rammed his arm into my ribs.

  "Eh, Barbakosta, the brothers are warming up. They are getting their blood up!"

  I had drawn careful aim at a tall mirza who stood on the rump of the nearest galley, a stone's throw away. He was a fine man in a black khalat with a brass knob on the top of his white turban that was shaped like a lily. Over his head was a canopy of striped stuff, and two black slaves stood behind him with peacock plumes on their noddles. And upon the mast near him dangled two Muscovites, taken from the boats that had fled from As-trakhan—now hanging head down, roped by the ankles.

  From below the bend thundered Chvedor's big cannon—bong, bang, bong! My mirza looked surprised, but he could see nothing, of course. One by one, the ships began to try to go back.

  Bong, bang, bong! Thus spoke Chvedor's guns, and all at once, as a flight of swallows start up from a thicket, the Persians became afraid. A galley broke off its oars against the side of a big ship; a sailing boat ran down a skiff. There was not room enough in the river for them all to turn and go out as they wanted.

  Many of them started toward our shore, the mirza's boat among them. At first a few, then throngs of Moslems began to run up the shore, shouting and holding their heads. That is always the way with the Tourki. When they are attacking or cornered they are brave fighters. But when they flee they rush blindly.

  "It is time to go back to Mark," I said, and the Cossack from the Terek nodded assent. Indeed it was time, because they had seen us on our rock.

  We ran down through the brush until my companion stopped suddenly, putting his hand to his side. Nay, he was not hit by an arrow, he was feeling in his pocket.

  "Stoy bratikou, lioulkou zagoubil!" he cried. "Stop, brother, I have lost my pipe!"

  "May the dogs bite you! If you go back, you'll never smoke labak again."

  But the mad fellow turned and started up into the rocks to look for his pipe. I waited several moments, and then I saw turbans and cloaks on the height where he had vanished. Nay, I never saw him again.

  To Mark I said that the Tourka boats were in a stampede like cattle, leaving the nets. And what was going on by Shatiri Bogar I knew not. Indeed it was not long before our eyes beheld what our ears had long been aware of. First a skiff rowed into our hole in the shore as if the fiends were behind it. Then a gilded sandal with its mast shot away.

  These boats paid no heed to us. They ran on the ground and sat and the men swarmed to shore. Some began to shoot arrows at us, and we more than paid them back. But finally there came the oared galley of the tall mirza, with half its men lying bleeding on the deck. When he saw us, he shouted angrily, and the galley ran in beside us, and forty Moslems poured over the rail of our bark, ululating with blood lust, with steel in their hands and teeth. We shouted once—

  "Hai—Kosaki!"

  And we fired our muskets into them. I picked up a heavy boat hook with a long point and prong, regretting greatly my nine daggers. By breaking the shaft of the boat hook in twain, I had a good weapon. One man I pierced with the point and another I hooked through the ribs.

  I was knocked into the nose of the boat, my boat hook lost. A gun lay here, and I loaded it, being protected for the moment by the mast. Mark was standing on the rump of the vessel alone with the girl, his scimitar flashing up and down—up and down, as he sprang from side to side. An arrow flickered into his thigh and he staggered.

  At the same instant the girl fired a pistol down into the Moslems who were climbing over the dying Cossacks toward the stern. She drew her light sword bravely. But what is a blade in the hand of one unskilled? A giant black slave sprang up beside her and struck the scimitar out of her hand with his heavy sword. Then he hacked deep below her shoulder just as Mark reached him, stumbling, and cut off his head cl
eanly.

  Hai, that was a good stroke! "Shabash!" I cried, and shot down a warrior who had run at Mark's back.

  It seemed to me then that our lives would go out in another moment— Mark with his arm around the bleeding girl, raging back and forth on one leg; I with an empty gun and no other weapon. Then I heard a roaring voice:

  "Steel to them! Strike on all sides!"

  And a man jumped from the galley into our deck. A man with a ring-mail shirt half slashed from his shoulders and the tatters of red sleeves flying when he struck with a long curved blade that sang in the air.

  Eh, the blade dripped red, and the man scattered blood as he crashed into the huddle of the Moslems.

  His blade snapped off, and he thrust out with his fists, sending men flying. His big, bow legs bent and leaped, and he began to lash about with a battle ax he had caught up. No one could stand against him. Shields split and bones snapped under his blows. The Moslems who had been about Mark—among them the shining mirza—flung themselves on him until they all became a knot of arms and heads, twisting among the dead bodies in the belly of the boat.

  For the last moment I had heard other shouts.

  "Aid for the ataman! Slash them brothers, slash!"

  Other Cossacks dropped over the rail and pounced on the knot of men. Pistols barked, and before my gun was loaded the deck was cleared of all Moslems save the dead and the dying.

  That was how Stenka Razin came to seek Mark in the fight on the Volga. He wiped the sweat from his black brows and spat from bleeding lips. When he was certain that Mark was alive and not dangerously hurt he turned on the Cossacks who had followed him across the empty galley from two chayaks that had come up to the far side of the galley.

  "Eh, dogs—fathers of a thousand slaves! You were late, late! The Frank was nearly done for when you came."

  They were ashamed and hung their heads, until one of them looked around at that sepulcher of a boat.

  "Aga tachomek chapar Frankistan," he said. "The Frankish lord is brave."

  Then Stenka Razin saw the Moslems gathering on the heights above him, drawing their bows. Instantly he sprang into the water and waded ashore, leaving a red trail behind him, heaving himself up on the shore as the wild bougay, lord of the steppes, comes up out of a river, shaking his horns and roaring to let other animals know that he is on the shore. So Stenka Razin roared out of an open throat, running toward the uneasy bowmen. And, though they were many and his followers few, they turned and fled.

  That is how Stenka Razin fought—without mercy for himself, his men or his foes. And yet he took thought in that red twilight for Mark, his kunak.

  We carried the girl ashore, Mark and I, as gently as we could, and laid her on the sand, drawing off her cherkeska. I had thought to find her cut half through, the life all gone. But Mark had thought to make her put on a shirt of finely wrought ring mail.

  The blow of the slave's sword had severed this under the armpit and had driven many of the links into her white flesh, yet the steel rings had checked the bite of the blade and the wound was no deeper than my thumb joint. It had not quite reached the wall around the heart.

  "Eh, Mark," I said to hearten him, seeing that his eyes were haggard, "spit on some clay, put it on the cut and give her vodka and she will live to give you more than one son."

  Instead of that, he bade me go to all the fiends, and bathed out the girl's bleeding side with salt water. She whimpered but did not cry out. Then he bound her tightly under the arms with the white cotton turban cloth of the Persian mirza which was the cleanest thing within reach.

  When this was done she made him put her head on his knee and held up her hands. He stroked her hair, but she pulled down his head so that he kissed her many times on the eyes and lips. That was the way of it.

  "See, Mark," I pointed out from where I was sitting at a little distance so that the smoke of my pipe would not make the girl cough, "it is as I said. Although you are a fool where such women are concerned, she wants you for her man, if God gives her life."

  "The saints bless you, Uncle Kosta," he whispered, and tears were shining in his eyes.

  And in the end her life was spared. Mark went as swiftly as a chayak could be rowed to Astrakhan and from there, all the weary way up to Moscow, on the Volga, I accompanying him because I had no wish to leave my kunak. He wanted a Muscovite surgeon to attend her, but she wanted no more than his nursing, though he could not understand that. He had eyes for nothing except this young girl lying on the rug under the canopy, nor would he permit any one else to give orders on the skiff.

  He was no longer a wanderer or a prisoner. In Moscow he held his head high and spoke proudly to the Muscovites who, having heard of his deeds at Astrakhan and in the Volga mouths, offered him a commission as colonel of a fleet. This time he accepted.

  The battle of Shatiri Bogar was much talked about, because the Persians had been badly cut up. Men said that ten thousand of them had departed this life, trapped between Chvedor's guns and the nets, and the Cossack took more spoil than they knew what to do with. Never since then have the Moslems launched a fleet on the Caspian.

  As for Mistress Bailly, she was married again to Mark by a priest of her own faith, a little man in dull garments who read through his nose out of a book. Although she and Mark took pleasure in it, the ceremony was lacking to my mind. No candles were set before the Holy Mother and the drinking was not a cupful to the revelry in Astrakhan when the moon looked down through the poplars and the lover and lass stood between life and death while Stenka Razin frolicked.

  Nay, should a promise be said over again? I thought of the promise Mark had made to Razin—that he would come and sit with the Cossack when he was summoned. For a time it seemed as if Mark and his new fleet would be sent against the Cossacks and the two fighters would exchange sword strokes instead of stories.

  Then we heard that the Cossacks had been cut to pieces by the Muscovite army that had been sent from the north. It was in the north, too, that Prince Boriatinski broke the power of Razin. Eh, the Cossacks had suffered as well as the Moslems in that red evening on the Volga. The survivors scattered, and Razin was hunted from place to place.

  Before long tidings came that he had been taken, in a hut on the Volga. He had killed fourteen of the soldiers that surrounded him. Then he came out of the door, leaving his sword within, saying:

  "Take me, curs! I am ready to be killed."

  It was a day in late Summer when the leaves were dry on the oaks that grew in the promenade before the great church of Saint Vasili the Blessed. Mark was walking with his lady on his arm, accompanied by Frankish and Muscovite officers of the tsar's bodyguards. I, as his servant, followed behind with a stick instead of a gun, to drive away beggars. Mark had on a splendid white kaftan and broad red boots and a wide Frankish hat with plumes, and many officers were the first to bow when they met him. But that evening a crowd came toward the Kremyl gate, escorting a file of halberdiers who surrounded a cart drawn by black oxen.

  In the cart, leaning against the rail, his arms folded, was Razin. Eh, his finery was no more. His shirt was in rags, and his feet were bare; his hair had grown long on his head. The wild bougay of the steppe had been torn by wolves and the flesh of his purple face was sodden, his eyes dull. No longer did his followers crowd around him. Look where he would, he beheld only the eyes of hatred.

  Yet he saw Mark and leaned over to stare at him and his lady.

  "Hai, Mark," he said beseechingly, "my friend, come and sit with me in the prison. Come and talk over the wine cup these few days."

  He had spoken in Turkish and none of the Muscovites understood. Mark looked long at Razin.

  "I will come," he said.

  Afterward, I went to him and said that this thing was not to be thought of. In the tsar's service a colonel could not go and drink with a Cossack pirate. It was known that Mark had had dealings with Razin in Astrakhan, but this had been forgiven him in view of his skill in handling the new ships. If he went t
o Razin like a brother now he would be suspected and treated in evil wise. That is how it is at a tsar's court.

  But the lass, when she understood the matter, said suddenly that he was to go and visit Razin as he had promised.

  And Mark laughed, looking down at her with pride.

  "It is as you see, Uncle Kosta," he cried.

  As for me, knowing that Mark was not to be persuaded from anything, I burned a gold candle before the good Saint Nicholas and went to the river gate where some Nogai Tatars of my acquaintance had a skiff that they were willing to sell. I bought it, and the Tatars too, for we lacked not gold in those days. I made everything ready to flee.

  For three days Mark went to the prison, I carrying a keg of brandy behind him. Because of his rank, Razin's warders could not refuse him. And far into the night the two of them sat drinking, cup for cup, saying little.

  At times Razin would tell of how he frolicked on the Volga and at times Mark would relate how the buccaneers made a kingdom in the islands that lie at the edge of the world. When the candles burned low, Ra-zin would ask if Mark were coming again to sit with him.

  "Well, kunak," he said on the third day, "soon the stirrup cup."

  On the fourth day Mark came, indeed, and so did the priest and the executioners. The crowd around the prison and the open space where he was to die in the Kremyl was very great. The cart and the black oxen were in readiness, and even musicians had been summoned. Razin was given a goblet of mead and, as a last favor, allowed to smoke the pipe for which he asked.

  With it between his teeth he climbed into the cart and leaned down to grasp Mark's hand. He noticed the musicians with pleasure and smiled.

  "Shabash!" he said to Mark. "Well done!"

  He did not think that such words were like to be a noose around Mark's neck. Stenka Razin waved farewell to his kunak with his pipe and called out to the fiddlers—

  "Strike up, lads!"

  The oxen grunted and the cart creaked and he started forward through the crowd, roaring his favorite song—the same the children of Astrakhan had sung when we floated down the river toward the Volga mouths: