Swords of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  From the White Island On the Mother Volga,

  Stenka Razin's brothers Sail with a merry song—

  So died Razin, lord of the steppe, our little father.

  As for Mark, he went to the Kremyl and handed to the Muscovites his insignia of rank. Perhaps because he acted swiftly, perhaps because they knew he was planning to leave Muscovy, but surely because they did not know quite how to deal with Mark, the Muscovite lords did not try to make him a prisoner.

  He went to his own quarters and took off the white uniform, putting on his old leather and armor and the scimitar Razin had given him. The young Frankish girl, his wife, was in readiness, and they rode out of the river gate on two good horses.

  By the huts of the Tatars I stopped them, saying that a boat was in readiness for flight and my shack in the mountains by the Caspian was waiting for them.

  "Eh, Uncle Kosta," Mark laughed, "it is as you see. A buccaneer is always a buccaneer and never a lord at court."

  He reached down then to grip my hand and say that here our roads parted, since I was for the Volga and the steppe. He and the girl were going into Frankistan, to the great sea in the west, to seek again the islands that lay at the edge of the world.

  And so it was that I said farewell to my kunak, a man of his word, a man after my heart.

  Today, if you sail upon the Volga in a chayak, the song of the Cossack river-men will repeat the name of Stenka Razin, and if you talk to them, the old Cossacks, many will recall Mark of Astrakhan. He and Razin— where will you find such men today?

  1

  China.

  Red Hands

  Charny came to himself a little at a time. First he was aware that he sat in a saddle. Then he saw the familiar gray steppe grass and felt the wind in his head.

  His head troubled him. It was wet with sweat and it had no lambskin kalpak on it. Inasmuch as most of his skull had been shaved a few days ago, it felt cold. A fiery thirst tormented him.

  Besides, the level steppe behaved strangely. It rose dizzily and then dropped away from him, although his horse paced along steadily enough. Charny knew what this meant.

  "I've been licking the pig," he thought.

  He remembered singing a chorus with some fellow Cossacks in a town tavern. After that—night and the saddle and a rushing wind.

  "Devil take it all," he muttered. "I've come far."

  No town was visible on the swaying steppe. The Cossack bent over and looked down. He had no coat, but his wide leather breeches were there and his prized shagreen boots—he looked on each side to make sure. His shirt appeared torn and stained with tar. What mattered most, he still wore his sword. So, he had not drunk that up.

  But the horse! After awhile he drew rein and dismounted, holding firmly to the saddle horn. Streaked with sweat and dust, with burrs clouding its long tail, this black horse was certainly not his. A good horse, however, a wolf-chaser.

  "How did I get you, kunak?"

  Evidently after the drinking bout he had taken a horse from the stable and then raced off into the plane—naturally enough, after so many cups of brandy. It was afternoon now, the sun almost setting, and Charny saw no sign of a trail. Only the waving grass, clusters of dark oaks, the hazy sky—and the brown sail of a boat moving majestically over the grass, far off. The Cossack closed his eyes and looked again. The brown sail was still there.

  Well, brandy played tricks like that. Worse than the myzga, the mirage. Charny tried to remember whether he had gone north, east, south, or west from the frontier town, but without success.

  Leading the horse into the nearest shade he loosened the saddle girth slowly. He searched for a picket rope and found none. Letting out the rein, he slipped it over his shoulder and laid down, his head on his arms. He would sleep for a while and then let the horse find the way to water . . .

  Instead, he woke with a start. The red glare of sunset filled the sky, and the wind had ceased. Along the ground he had heard the thudding of hooves on the hard clay. Instantly he leaped to his feet, his hand touching the sword hilt at his belt.

  Then he relaxed. Only one rider had come up, a Cossack on a piebald horse—a broad Cossack with long arms, wearing a clean sheepskin coat, a black kalpak with a red crown, and polished boots. His was a brown, lined face, like a Tartar's, with tufted mustaches.

  "Tfu!" grunted the rider. "Draw that curved sword and I'll slap you in the snout."

  Charny's head was clearing. The other man had saddlebags, with a rolled-up bearskin and a jug behind the saddle—evidently a registered Cossack, on service. In that Year of the Lord 1684 it was well to look twice at one who rode alone and armed in the eastern steppe. The towns and the Muscovite merchants lay under the sunset to the west, and the steppe here was at the edge of the frontier.

  "What man are you?" Charny asked.

  "They call me Vash. I patrol from the Zarit stanitza. The others turned back, but I kept your trail like a weasel."

  Zarit, Charny remembered, was the hamlet where he had been drinking at the tavern. He looked at the man called Vash expectantly as the other dismounted.

  "Seventy vests you rode between midnight and now," went on Vash. "Straight over the steppe to the east. Well, I'll take you back."

  "Why take me back?"

  "Don't you know? Last night you licked the pig—you were dancing the hopak in the Cossack's bed1 when His Highness, the lieutenant of the starosta, rode by. He said something, and you pulled him out of the saddle and used the whip on his hide until he danced. Tfu! There was a devil in you—"

  "How did I find the horse?"

  "It's his Highness's charger—a good one. The starosta gave command to all of us on the border patrol to follow and bring you back. They are raging like bulls in a pen, the starosta and his men. Come on, it's late."

  Charny knew well enough what awaited him at Zarit: the stocks; the scourge; or his ears clipped off. They had his horse and his silver, his svitza and his hat, while he had one of their best chargers. So, he had stolen nothing. Moreover, he was tired of the Russian settlements were a man could not even drink without being caged.

  "My road is to the east," he decided. "To the devil take your starosta and his commands."

  Vash considered a moment, his slant eyes measuring the tall fugitive. Then he leaped at Charny, his powerful arms clutching. But Charny was in no mood for a fight. Stepping aside, he drew his curved sword swiftly.

  "Steel to you!" shouted Vash, jerking out his own sword.

  For a moment the two Cossacks circled wearily, Vash half crouched, his muscles tense, while Charny sidestepped softly, waiting. Then Vash leaped again, his saber swinging over his head. Charny parried the slash at his ribs and drew back while the Zarit Cossack pressed him with cut after cut.

  Suddenly the taller man stepped forward, twisting the curved blade of his saber around the other's sword until the hilts locked. Without warning he wrenched the blades toward him, and Vash's sword flashed into the air, falling to the ground behind Charny, who set his foot upon it.

  "The devil's in you still!" Vash muttered, rubbing his hand. "Get into the saddle, and may the dogs bite me if I don't carve your ribs there. To fight on a horse—that's the best way. Only sheep-herders fight on their feet."

  A smile touched Charny's thin lips. With the red glow of sunset on his half-shaven head, his dark eyes seemed on fire.

  "Well, what will you do?" Vash asked irritably. "Don't you see that I'm your prisoner? Do you want me to take grass in my teeth?"

  "Do what you like." Charny picked up the other's sword and sheathed his own. "I'm not going back to Zarit to be strung up on a rope."

  "Well, I can't go off into the steppe without a sword. Now listen, you aren't my captive any longer, that's clear. I won't try to take you back there." Vash's tufted mustache twitched in a grin. "Allah, they say His Highness the lieutenant howled when you kissed his hide with the whip. It's all one to me. Only give me back the sword."

  He held out his hand. "Faith of a Cossack
. I pledge faith by all the Cossack brotherhood, alive or dead, out yonder." And he motioned to the north and east, to south and west.

  He had served, that Vash, in the wars, and his oath was the oath of a Zaporogian—of a free Cossack who had once belonged to the great war encampment of the siech. If he gave his word as a Zaporogian, it would be trusted.

  Charny handed him back his sword.

  "Aya tak," he said, "Aye, so. Now give me water from that jug."

  Vash sheathed his sword and stared.

  "Water! Would I carry water with mother Volga flowing under my snout?"

  And, remembering the brown boat's sail on the steppe, Charny laughed. Truly his head had been bitten. Ten minutes later the Cossacks and the horses were drinking at the bank of the wide gray river that flowed soundlessly between borders of high rushes. Charny thrust in his head, snorting, and wringing the water out of his scalp lock. The burning fire left his brain, and all at once he felt ravenously hungry. He found Vash sitting his horse on a sand mound that rose above the rushes. The Cossack of the patrol had barley cakes in his bags, but both of them felt the need of meat or gruel.

  With experienced eyes Vash studied the river in the deepening twilight. Swallows flitted overhead; out in midstream a log raft drifted without lights, although the deep notes of a boatman's song came from it over the water. On the far side the gray banks were turning black. Upstream he made out the blur of some large islands. But he shook his head.

  "Not a tavern: not a fishing boat. Nothing to eat here."

  "Yonder's a fire," observed Charny. He knew nothing of the Volga, but he had been born in the steppe and he had noticed what the other had missed: the thin glow of firelight against trees upstream near the islands.

  "Gypsies, it may be." Vash nodded. "Well, God gives."

  As they rode north, keeping to the hard ground above the rushes, he explained that this portion of the steppe was deserted except for a few Summer huts of burlaki or river-men. Gypsies sometimes followed the river trail. Farther north bands of river pirates haunted the shore, rowing out from inlets to board and capture cargo boats, killing the crews and setting the vessels afire after carrying off what they wanted. To the south near Astrakhan Tartars raided across the Volga in the Winter, to seize cattle and slaves in the villages. Richly laden merchant vessels sailing down river, or carrying salt and fish and sealskins north again, passed this region without stopping.

  "We only kill flies," grumbled Vash. There was no support for the Cossacks of the Zarit patrol, except to pick quarrels with the governor's militia. "And kiss the cowgirls when there are any along the river."

  It was almost dark by the time they approached the fire, and Vash drew rein with an exclamation. The place seemed to be a large encampment without tents or huts. Along the shore in the firelight some two-score men sat at meat around three smoking pots. Most of them were armed with short sword and pistol, while pikes were stacked in military fashion. A few of them, in fine clothes, looked like Russians. And Vash noticed these had no weapons, although there were two women in their number.

  Among the crowd he made out Kalmuks in white felt hats and a scattering of burlaki.

  "There's no wagon train, no horses," he muttered, spitting out the sunflower seeds he was chewing.

  Charny, who was hungry, urged his horse forward. As they came down to the shore some of the men rose to meet them.

  "Whose men are you?" demanded Vash.

  The strangers made no answer. They stared at the horses, and one went to the top of the rise on which the fire had been built to peer into the darkness behind the Cossacks. Someone else threw a dish of grease on the flames, which soared up, hissing, lighting up the shore.

  Vash noticed a figure in a priest's hat and veil seated by the women, who had bold painted faces and the physique of Amazons. At least three of their companions wore the fur-trimmed garments of boyars—noblemen. But these, although they looked curiously at the patrol rider, had nothing to say. Perhaps they spoke only Russian and did not know the Cossack speech.

  "Well, people," Vash remarked, "is there no one to bid us to sit down to bread and salt?" The odor of mutton and garlic tickled his nostrils.

  A tall man in a red Tartar khalat rose from his place and came over to the Cossacks. He had curly hair the color of wheat, and he bore himself as if accustomed to command. With his hands thrust in his girdle he inspected Vash and Charny without haste.

  "What seek ye?" he asked curtly. He spoke in the fashion of the Muscovites, like a boyar.

  "We are riders of the Zarit patrol—" Vash stretched a pointed to include Charny "and, by Allah, we want to set our fangs in meat."

  "Well," said the tall boyar, "I am Kolmar, the lieutenant of Astrakhan, and I have no meat for you thieving dogs." He spoke to one of his followers and turned back to the fire.

  Vash glanced anxiously at Charny, who had horsewhipped the lieutenant of a smaller town after drinking brandy. It would not do, he thought, to try that game with this Kolmar. Cossacks would not have turned a hungry man away from such an abundance of food: but these chaps seemed to be Muscovites with a following picked up along the river.

  Charny, however, was more interested than angry. Suddenly he reined his horse forward, passing Kolmar and halting to stare at the women and the priest.

  "If you have no food for us of the steppe," he said slowly, "give us at least a blessing, little father."

  Some of the men laughed, and the bearded priest turned his head as if troubled. Hastily he raised his hand and muttered something.

  "Get out!" said the Lord Kolmar softly. "And if you show your head this night you will taste a bullet."

  One of the women cried out shrilly but Charny wheeled his horse and trotted off. He headed straight away from the river, as Vash joined him, and kept on until he was beyond the last of the firelight. Then he halted and sat motionless.

  "The ox tails—the stall cattle!" muttered Vash. "They had white bread and kegs of mead enough for a barrack. But then they're Muscovites, and God made them so they can't see beyond their whiskers."

  "Kegs and chests they had," Charny observed thoughtfully.

  His eyes by now were accustomed to the gloom. A half-moon, low over the river, shed an elusive light. To Vash's surprise, he began to quarter the ground at a hand pace, bending down to inspect the light patches of sand between the clumps of dwarf oak and saxaul.

  "There's no bread here," Vash remarked after he had grown tired of following his champion about.

  "Nothing," Charny agreed. "Only the tracks of men who came out of the wood. No carts, no horses, and no tracks of many people."

  For a moment a chill of dread touched the Cossack of the patrol, who had all the superstition of those who ride the steppe. Kolmar and his people had food chests and cakes with them, and they could not have carried such things on their shoulders. In fact, they did not seem to have passed over the surface of the steppe. And Vash had seen no sign of a boat. They were there on the shore, waiting by that fire, as if they were dead souls who haunted the river in the hours of darkness. He thought of the florid faces of the women, and the silent priest, and glanced over his shoulder uneasily. True, they were not like honest folk of flesh and blood.

  But spirits did not boil mutton over a huge fire, nor did they slake their thirst with honey-mead. Moreover, Kolmar had been a true boyar, ready to blaze away with powder and ball. No, they must have landed from a riv-erboat, although why they should have done so on this deserted stretch of shore Vash did not know.

  "The fire," Charny said softly. "Did you see where it was?"

  Hastily Vash glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to find the fire moving away somewhere. But it still flared and smoked on the rise by the shore.

  "Devil take it!" he grunted. "Haven't you ever seen a fire before?"

  "Not like that."

  Vash reflected that he himself would have built a fire in a hollow out of the wind, where it would not catch the eye of roving Tartars. Or, to coo
k meat, he would have made a small fire between rocks and let it die to embers. But these men made a blaze as if to signal down the river.

  "Well, they're Muscovites," he responded. "And they have women to keep warm. Why shouldn't they kindle up?"

  Then he started. They had been walking the horses slowly down river, when Charny's mount shied away from a clump of saxaul. Something slipped out of the shadowy thicket and sped away soundlessly.

  Charny went after it in a minute, lashing his horse through the brush. By the time Vash caught up with him the Cossack had dismounted and was wrestling with a dark figure. A knife flickered in the moonlight as Charny caught the arm of his antagonist and jerked. Charny had muscles of pliant steel in the hundred and eighty pounds of him, and the figure went down on the sand.

  Jumping from his saddle, Vash was going to kick the stranger in the head—because a knife in the dark is more to be feared that any sword.

  But Charny pulled him back and spoke to the stranger, who made answer in a whisper.

  "It's a woman," muttered the Cossack of the patrol, bending down. "A girl. Eh, she's pretty, too. A dove. Hi—hop!" He began twirl his long mustache.

  "Shut up!" grunted Charny. "She's a Gypsy, and she can take us to some food."

  "But—"

  Charny took the rein of the black horse in one hand, and he twisted his other fist in the end of the Gypsy girl's long, loose hair. She was barefoot, with a sheepskin chaban over her slender shoulders, and she led them swiftly toward the river.

  "But," whispered Vash, coming up, "look out for yourself. These Gypsies are witches. They know how to lay spells. They can cut your heart out of your body."

  The Gypsy girl laughed softly, hearing this. She did not make any effort to escape from Charny until she scrambled down into the gloom of an oak grove, with a warning cry that sounded like a night bird's.

  It was answered from below, and the Cossacks saw that they were at the river's edge, a long musket shot upstream from the fire of the Muscovites. Beneath them, a timber raft was tied to the shore. On the raft whispers sounding faintly and bare feet moved over the logs.