Swords of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  He watched, with appreciation, the businesslike behavior of the soldiers from the road. Patrols were sent out from the hillocks. Officers scanned the road ahead with glasses. Slowly the truck convoy moved up and swung out into the grazing land on either side.

  The gray-green men placed their prisoners in the center of the truck encampment they were making. They even took time and pains to drive in the herds of half-wild cattle from the neighboring pastures.

  When one of the patrols began working toward his observation post, Yarak headed back toward Kizlyar, five miles away. It was sunset by then and he did not think they would make any farther advance.

  This was no steppe feud, he decided. It was a raid in strength, with machines. It was war. But who were the raiders?

  Hot with his news, he entered Kizlyar by moonrise. And he found that his news had got there before him. No electric lights showed in the streets of Kizlyar. The lines of stalled trucks waited there, stark in the moonlight. Machines, it seemed, no longer stirred there. But Yarak could not find his grandson at the trucks. He traipsed into the square where men were gathered, arguing, and looked around for Kirdy. The big Menelitza was talking loud in front of his cafe. He looked taller and more like a soldier in the moonlight.

  "Nothing to do now," he was saying, "but get away. They didn't send the rifles. You can't hold the road with pitchforks—"

  Ileana's small figure appeared before Menelitza. "Only wait!" she cried at the listening men. "The rifles and cartridges will come."

  The crowd fidgeted. Yarak shoved forward, catching the girl's arm.

  "Where's that cub of a Kirdy?"

  When she didn't answer he pulled her along with him. "Look, sparrow, that vodka chap isn't talking through his shirttail. It's true."

  "He's sabotaging our morale. And Novocherkassk assigned me to keep up the morale here."

  Yarak spat. What words from a girl!

  This, however, was a danger he could deal with. "We'll find Kirdy," he whispered, "and look around for some salt and bread, and track out to my hut."

  "Never!" said Ileana, gulping, She swallowed hard. "Kirdy isn't here."

  "Where is he?"

  "He took a rifle and went down the road with the others."

  "Then he's captured!" Yarak wouldn't think that Kirdy, the little devil, could be killed. A Cossack wasn't dead until his head was cut off. Certainly, he would be a prisoner.

  "It's all the same." Ileana tossed her head. "Maybe they will keep the Cossack boys for hostages for a while. Only they'll stand them up and shoot them afterward, for being guerrillas—no uniforms."

  And quite suddenly Ileana began to sob, digging her fists into her cheeks. Leaning against Yarak's greasy sheepskin, she cried away like an ordinary uneducated girl. For a moment Yarak considered. It would be necessary, he saw at once, to get Kirdy out of the lines of the gray-green men. Immediately. Pulling at his mustache, he pondered ways and means. A horse was the first thing. No plan could be made without a horse—

  "He didn't speak to me," Ileana wept "when he went away. Aia-a!"

  Women, Yarak understood, had to cry at a time like this. Gently he shook her. "Listen dearest girl. Pay attention now. Tell me—are those raiders Turks?"

  "No—o," she gulped.

  "Austrians?"

  Ileana shook her head, miserably. "Worse than that. They are Germans."

  Rapidly Yarak reviewed what he knew about Germans in that late war. They couldn't be bought. They wouldn't be caught napping. They were educated soldiers. With Germans there was only one thing to do.

  "Wait here," he told the girl.

  Germans, he reflected, knew so much that if they saw something that puzzled them they would forget everything else until they found out what it was. They were just like sheep—mountain sheep—in that respect. What he could do after he had caught their attention Yarak didn't know. He muttered, "God gives." But he would need a horse to get near Kirdy. A Cossack needed a horse above everything.

  Heading for the nearest carts, he searched in vain for any sign of a horse.

  Then, half wrapped in a blanket in one of the carts, Yarak sighted a jug. It had a cork in it. Instinctively he glanced around, and pulled the cork. And, as if a miracle had come to pass, he smelled the rich fragrance of corn brandy. "Tfu!" he said, and in a second was back in the shadow of a house with the jug. Here in his hand was comfort in the cold of the night, and inspiration. Yarak tilted the jug and drank deep and long.

  Immediately inspiration came to him. If there was a horse in town, it would be Ghirei Khan's. That Tatar would not come in, unless in the saddle. Moreover, no one but Ghirei Khan would be likely to know where that horse was put up.

  Quickly he searched the square for the Tatar and found him sitting at an empty table watching events.

  At sight of the old Cossack, Ghirei Khan reached at his belt for the knife that was not there. Old and enduring as their two lives was the feud between them. Honored now by memory—it had been the high endeavor of their youth and their prime. Yarak chose his words carefully, in the Tatar's speech. "Yok," he said. "No. I come not with steel and fire this time."

  The Tatar turned his head a little, waiting suspiciously.

  "A son of my son," Yarak urged, "and a grandson of a Tatar woman, is captive down the road."

  Ghirei Khan snarled, listening.

  "I have never asked a gift from Ghirei Khan," Yarak went on. "Give me only a horse tonight, now." He laid his musket down on the table, and thought of the right words: "Don't you remember? You would have cut out my heart on account of that woman. Aya tak—ay, so it was. You came across the Terek like a black storm—you set fire to the steppe grass—you drove off our cattle, and left our outriders lying in their blood."

  A grunt came from the Tatar's thin lips. Yarak set the jug down by him, and uncorked it. "Here—drink while you remember. You are full of years and honor now. And why have you such honor with the Urusse? Because of our hatred. By it, you became the Lion of the Terek, the avenger. I have on me the mark of your bullet, and the scar of your knife."

  Gratified, Ghirei Khan lifted the jug, pouring the mellow brandy down his throat. "God gives." He reflected pleasantly thinking of their magnificent hatred. He and the Cossack were indeed made great by that. And to the great in soul, a gift is a small thing. He drank again. "The horse," he said, "is in the little house behind the big talking house."

  One minute after that, Yarak was kicking open the doors of the outhouse behind the museum. Inside, he found a horse tethered—a long-tailed black Kabardian, plump and sleek, with its Arab strain showing in the small, lifted head. In two minutes he had tightened the girth and led the animal outside. This was a horse fit for a Cossack hetman.

  As he was thinking that, he passed the rear door of the museum. It stood open, and there was no evidence of anyone inside. Then the corn brandy glowed and warmed his throat, and the fullness of his inspiration came upon him. Dragging the horse with him, he made his way into the museum, straight to the glass cases, half visible in the moonlight. With his heel he shattered the nearest glass.

  Ten minutes later, the crowd in the square outside was shocked into silence. From the entrance of the museum plunged a rider on an almost unmanageable horse.

  In that moonlight he looked startling enough, on the plunging Tatar stallion and gleaming saddle. He wore the red embroidered svitza of a Cossack Koshevoi Ataman; his belt shone with jewels, his hand raised the staff of the ancient buntchauk with its flying tails and cross.

  "Het!" the apparition shouted, and careened across the square through the staring Cossacks.

  They ran out to look after him, for the black horse went through the streets like a gust of wind. Menelitza, of the free vodka, stopped his talk to stare. Ileana gasped. For here was the very spirit of the free Ukraine. And yet she knew that no spirits could ride this earth.

  "Khmielnitski!" a man shouted.

  And a whisper ran through those people, the incurably superstitious folk o
f the Ukraine. A sign had appeared in their streets. Out of the Ethnological Museum. It pointed down the road toward the enemy.

  Yarak, as soon as he had got the horse in hand, put him into a steady gallop westward. He grudged every minute necessary to get him to the German lines. When he sighted the dark hillocks he lifted the standard pole with an effort. A rifle spat fire in front of him, and he reined in.

  "Hi, fools," he shouted, "come out."

  No one came, but no more rifles barked. Waving his buntchauk, Yarak walked the horse forward, for the time he thought it would take an outpost to summon an officer. Clearly, on that road, they could see he was alone.

  Presently two figures appeared out of the shadow beside him. One, who held an automatic revolver, peered up at him and felt over him for weapons, while the other watched the road. After a moment, they led the horse on to where a car waited without lights.

  An officer got out of the car—an Amrikan, Yarak thought. He was lean and hard and quick. Pulling Yarak's arm, he brought the old Cossack down out of the saddle, and stared at his regalia, which might or might not be a uniform. He stared at the clumsy standard, and grunted when he noticed what a fine horse the Kabardian was.

  He said something to the two soldiers and one fell in behind when the underofficer led Yarak, gripping his arm tight, back along a path through the machines that were parked around the encampment. Yarak held tight to the buntchauk.

  In that clear moonlight the Cossack's eyes missed little. First he spotted the prisoners sitting huddled on the ground. They seemed to be all alive, although hurt. The guards pacing around them carried small automatic rifles, without bayonets. Bad, that. On some of the cars, other soldiers sat at ease behind machine guns. Yarak also recognized an armored car, and small cannon of a type unfamiliar to him (for this was a German Bahnbrecher brigade, with antitank guns). Not a horse in the encampment. Only, up the slope from the machines, he spotted the dark masses of restless cattle.

  A second officer strode out to them, with his tunic unbuttoned, walking like one who gave orders. For a moment in the haze of moonlight he considered Yarak, who looked, with his beard and the flowing animal tails of the standard, like some figure out of the archaic past. The newcomer held out a tobacco pouch. "Tobacco for you," he said in good Ukrainian.

  "No," said Yarak, loud. "Not for me—Colonel Commander."

  This officer sniffed the Cossack's breath. "Drunk!"

  Yarak thought about that, and decided to risk a shout. He did not think he could get closer to the prisoners. "That's a lie!" he yelped. "That dog won't bite—"

  "Shut your noise. Tell me—what's this thing you have brought?"

  He poked his finger at the standard, which puzzled him. The other officer was running his hand over the black horse, admiringly, holding fast to the rein. Off in the haze some of the prisoners turned their heads.

  "It's a buntchauk, Sir Colonel. It's a sign," Yarak said in a loud voice.

  "A flag of truce? From Kizlyar? You bring a message?"

  "Of course I do," Yarak yelled. "Certainly it's a sign, Kirdy. No truce. Not a bit of that. This buntchauk is a sign for the animals. They'll all follow it, even cattle. Eh, they'll jump when it comes. Don't you believe me? I'll show you, Sir Colonel. In just two little minutes Look—"

  "Dyadya!" Kirdy's voice echoed from the men on the ground.

  The officer wasn't napping. His hard fist jolted Yarak's mouth, and he barked a command to the armed soldier. In the same second the Amri-kan started to lead the Kabardian horse away. Yarak thought that these were hard souls, quick as devils.

  As the soldier reached for his collar, Yarak yelped. Reeling away, he pushed the standard pole into the ground as if to steady himself.

  "Drunk as a pig," grunted the officer.

  Two steps away Yarak took, and vaulted, holding to the pole. He smacked hard into the saddle of the black horse, which circled, startled. Somehow, Yarak held on to the pole, and the end of it caught the under-officer in the face. With one foot in a stirrup, Yarak kicked the Kabardian, which jumped between the men. It plunged between two cars, and leaped an antitank gun as Yarak gripped the reins and held himself firm. A shot behind him and the crack of a bullet past his head sounded together, as Yarak turned the frantic horse toward the edge of the dark herd of cattle.

  More shots ripped out. The Cossack, however, was a shadow speeding through the haze, around the herd. Lifting himself in the saddle, he waved the standard with its flying tails, and he howled like a wolf.

  "Het-het!" he wailed, circling behind the plunging steers. Frightened by the shooting and the apparition of the rider, the cattle started stampeding downhill.

  The longhorns jostled together, moving faster. A machine gun flickered at them, and they struck the line of cars like a black flood, pouring through them. They plunged through the encampment, and the German guards and prisoners jumped for their lives. For a moment the Bahnbre-cher brigade, the sleepers rousing, thought of nothing except climbing into the cars, and when fire was opened on the prisoners, they were off in the shadows of the hillocks.

  At the edge of the stampede, Yarak flourished his standard. The black Kabardian kept its feet, drawing away from the cattle.

  Yarak headed in the direction the Germans were firing, where the Cossacks had vanished. As he passed through a patch of moonlight, one of the fugitives turned in front of him, and caught his stirrup. "Hang on, cub," he grunted.

  He felt a jerk as the boy swung himself up behind. "Eh, Kirdy"' he growled. "To be caught by bicycles!"

  After full daylight, when the Bahnbrecher brigade moved cautiously up the road to occupy Kizlyar, they found the town buried under smoke, its streets burning, along with the convoy of stranded trucks.

  Groups of Cossacks were moving, far away, driving their cattle up into the forest at the snow line.

  In one of those groups Menelitza, the vodka distiller, labored under sacks of bread and potatoes. And Ghirei Khan, reeling slightly, clung silently to the rein of his prize black Kabardian, uninjured after the ride of the night.

  The girl Ileana, a bag of salt on her shoulder, helped Kirdy to start the gray buffalo in the hollows and the wandering black goats up toward the highlands. She did not cry now. The rifles had not come from Novocherkassk, and Kizlyar was lost. But she could feel Kirdy's hard arm around her waist and hear his living voice.

  "We've got the cattle," Kirdy was saying, "so we'll live through the Winter well enough."

  He was laughing as he pointed out Yarak, ahead of them. Somehow, Ileana realized, Kirdy didn't seem to be beaten by misfortune. "Look at the father now," Kirdy chuckled. "He has it all planned out. We're going to put up in his hut. Next Summer, when the grass is dry, we're going to burn the steppes and scorch out all those machines."

  Like a patriarch of old time, Yarak stalked ahead of them, his standard on his shoulders. He carried also a jug.

  In one day he had dealt with machines and education. Now he was leading his flock home to his house, as a Cossack should.

  The Stone Woman

  Late that afternoon, Uncle Yarak found the flag. Actually, the wind whirled it along the ground in front of him, and he picked it up, not understanding that it was a flag but thinking that he might make use of that small piece of cloth. He was picking his way along the road to the Dnieper River, heading toward the setting sun. Instead of following the road itself, Yarak kept to the tall grass and the gullies at the side, his blue eyes under shaggy brows questing through the underbrush, his lean, sun-blackened head bent. One hand held a loaded musket, low. A full powder ham weighed down the pocket of his stained breeches, and the rest of his equipment consisted of a steel knife blade, bits of flint, and a bullet punch.

  The steppe grass, that mesh of wild wheat, thornbush and stalks of the Ukraine, rose as high as his chest. Down in the gullies where pine growth screened the sandbanks, Yarak could stand up to his six-feet-three of height. "The sky," he repeated to himself, "is a Cossack's rooftop, the saddle's his
home."

  Yarak, however, had neither horse nor saddle. No horses were to be found here, far from home and behind the German lines. Moreover, a man with a musket on a horse would have been visible a half mile away, over the steppes. And Yarak had discovered by experience that to be sighted from the road was to earn a greeting in the form of a burst of bullets.

  On his part he had a shooting feud with the mechanical monsters that passed along the road; with the tanks and armored cars and supply trucks of every nature that chugged back and forth through the billowing dust, usually in herds. He was trying to hunt down such German machines— so far without any luck. The herds of machines passed by for the most part, he noticed, at night and at speed. If they would venture off the road, he might set fire to the steppe grass to windward of them and damage the machines by the resulting furnace-like flame . . .

  Toward sunset, he saw the grass stirring on a knoll in front of him. It was not a wind gust striking the grass, because the tops did not bend. Cautiously he investigated, to see if it was a pig moving away. On the summit of the knoll he found a small space beaten down.

  "Lopazik," he grunted. Beyond doubt, it was a lair where something quite different from a wild pig had been hiding out. A small sheepskin lay on the ground with a bottle, which Yarak found to contain nothing but water: At the end of that hot day he was thirsty enough, but he wanted more than water.

  There was also a small tin box which had in it a flower-embroidered cap, some printed pages much soiled and illustrated with women's dresses. In the papers, three matches had been tucked away carefully. Yarak decided that the occupant of the lopazik had been a woman, and a small woman. "Hai, dushenka," he called, low. "Hi, darling!" And got no answer.

  He did see, however, that from this lair by the road, a ruined village was visible, and, nearer than the village, a mound upon which stood the gray figure of a woman looking his way. To this, Yarak paid no attention. Such mounds and such gray motionless women were found often enough in the steppes, watching the east. The figures were stone, and Yarak knew them as the stone babas. Usually, he was careful to keep his distance from them.