Swords of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  This time, because he was thirsty, he decided to investigate the village which appeared to be empty. He ambled into the cottages, and stopped, puzzled.

  These houses sprawled an either side of the road, and those nearest the road had one side crushed in. Between their thatched roofs, over the road itself, wires and poles were stretched with a network of pine branches woven through them. But no living person remained in the village, to sit in the shade of the makeshift canopy. Yet the ground around Yarak reeked with fresh oil. He felt that this place had been occupied very recently and then abandoned.

  Before he could investigate, the Cossack sighted a plume of dust down the road, and he headed toward the nearest high grass, which happened to be around the mound where the stone statue stood.

  Three mechanical monsters approached the village and slowed down, turning in under the camouflage. The first, an armored car, was followed by two tank trucks. The Magyar beside the driver of the armored car put away his field glasses.

  "Thought I saw two of them stirring around," he said. "One certainly had a rifle."

  The captain commanding the detachment, a heavy man who had been a factory manager two years before, said nothing. He was standing on the step, to watch the area of the sky for any sign of hostile planes. The two tank trucks behind him contained gasoline.

  "You thought," he muttered presently. The Magyar, commanding the armored car section, seemed to him to be careless. The captain's copy of the Militar-Wochenblatt stated that "The members of the Supply Organization work with unflinching force and unswerving care of detail along the roads which are the arteries of the army structure."

  While the captain was maneuvering, without the loss of a minute, the two gasoline trucks into two ruined houses where they would be screened from the air, the Magyar merely told his section sergeant to search the high grass around the mound. The sergeant and his men came back with Yarak, whom they had found lying in the grass.

  A search of the old Cossack, however, yielded no trace of weapons. He had got rid of his musket, powder horn and bullet punch. For a moment the officer studied his prisoner. "You," he snapped in good Ukrainian, "where is your chum hiding?"

  "Chelom, dobrodiou," Yarak responded instantly. "The forehead to you, master. There's no chum."

  "That's a lie. Where did you hide your rifle?"

  "A rifle? Haven't any such. Not a smell of one."

  "Lie number two." The Magyar spoke to a soldier who snapped the bolt of his carbine. "I saw the rifle with my glasses. Now spit out one more lie and you'll have a bullet through your guts. Understand, Uncle?"

  "Yes," said Yarak moodily, cursing himself silently for not getting into cover quicker.

  "Turn around," ordered the Magyar.

  Yarak did so, flinching inwardly.

  "Where did you get that flag?"

  Starting to ask what the German was talking about, Yarak checked himself, remembering the bullet which would, from that position, go through his kidneys. And he recollected the small streamer of white, red and green silk that he had found and tied to the back of his belt, for convenience. Evidently that was what German officers meant by a flag. Carefully and truthfully, he answered.

  "Captain," the Magyar interpreted, "he swears he found it near the road, and he uses it like any other piece of clean cloth. Clean! Come to think of it, it's a Turkish idea of sanitation. Also, he says he does not know that it is an Italian flag—doesn't know what Italian is. Now—what will the captain do with it?"

  Exasperated, the commander eyed the soiled emblem of Italy. Lacking imagination, he could not think what to do with the flag—especially with his section sergeant and four men looking on. So he snapped at his lieutenant: "Over there—look over there, Sartlov, and you will perceive the second Russian whom you have failed to find." And he pointed with satisfaction at the woman's figure on top of the overgrown mound.

  Now the Magyar's eyes were better than those of his captain, who wore glasses. Moreover, he had been through the campaign in the Ukraine, while the captain was newly arrived in that area. He said briskly: "Right— maybe. Let's have a look at her."

  Escorting Yarak, the two officers walked across a plowed field to the mound, which was smooth and regular in shape. They left the sergeant and the men to other duties. As soon as they were out in the field, the Magyar jerked loose the knot that tied the flag to Yarak's rear, and dropped it between two furrows.

  Meanwhile, as he had hoped, his captain had identified the woman on the mound.

  "So—it is a statue, Sartlov. And still distinctly I remember you said you saw a woman moving."

  "I did . . . something moving. Maybe a boy."

  "Or a woman, let us say." Irritatingly, the captain pricked at him. "But why is this statue sited in a field? Observe, the regular mound makes for it a base."

  "Oh, they're scattered through the steppes hereabouts. Ancient steles—you always find them on a mound." A flicker of interest warmed the young officer's voice: "And always facing due east. Always solitary, like this woman—as far as Manchukuo. Curious things."

  "Russian?"

  "Older—"

  Abruptly Yarak came to a halt at the edge of the high grass. He had been pondering anxiously the hiding place of his musket and powder, there in the mound. "Kurgan plocho—strashno!" he muttered. "Mound haunted—by spirits."

  The Magyar's narrow eyes shifted moodily to his prisoner. "Another lie!"

  "Het!" Yarak spat. "True enough. Doesn't the noble officer know about the stone babas? They watch, here in the steppes. Bad luck to monkey with them. Don't step on the mound. Look—the people here wouldn't plow close to the mound. That's why grass grows over it."

  Out to the east, the shadow of the stone woman stretched. A kind of skullcap covered her rudely shaped head, and her hands were clasped on her girdle. Dust swirled up from the grass around her.

  "I suppose this baba's spirit haunts the mound, of nights?"

  "Certainly. The hours of darkness are not good here at the mound. We Cossacks know that."

  Something vaguely remembered tugged at Sartlov—back in his homeland, a white Schloss standing deserted on a dark mountain ridge: A medieval castle, avoided by the modern villagers simply because it was old and deserted. No, more than that. The girl. That one with the stiff embroidery on her jacket, who used to walk up with him to the Schloss of evenings. She used a kind of balsam oil in her hair and she had strength in her young arms. Perhaps she had really loved him. She had never said much . . . that was it. The hour of darkness, the ruin on the height, and that girl who had been amusing, until she took to crying . . .

  Seeing that he was making an impression, Yarak gave tongue fiercely: "Ekhma! Keep away from these women, noble commander. With human beings you can deal, somehow. But the spirits aren't the same at all. The stone babas don't keep their watch for nothing. Try to move one from her place and see what happens."

  "Well, what happens?" Sartlov's mind was off still in the shadow of that other ruin.

  "Why, with a horse and a rope you can pull a baba to the east, that way. But you couldn't pull her away, to the west, with one of your machines over there. Impossible!"

  "What's he saying?" demanded the captain.

  "He's afraid of this mound. Although, come to think of it, we found him under cover in the grass. The Cossack's right one way—these kur-gans are really burial mounds. Archaeologists have been at work on them and have uncovered ninth-century burials. Local people are always superstitious about burials before their time."

  "You are unusually partial to Slav superstitions, Sartlov."

  The Magyar smiled. "I am partial to women."

  The captain grunted and led the way back to the cottages, as if washing his hands of a bad business.

  "Don't try to escape," Sartlov warned the Cossack.

  Yarak hung back, in the plowed field. Paying no more attention to him, the officers headed for a table under the camouflage. On that table, gray soldiers were breaking out tins and c
uriously shaped bottles. They poured white liquid from these bottles into glasses, and the two gray officers drank quickly from the glasses. Beyond a doubt, Yarak thought, men did not drink water like that. He licked his lips and reflected.

  Somewhere in the red haze the sun was setting. But a sentry at the edge of the field was watching him, and the sentry had a carbine. No two ways about it. Yarak, who had done no harm to these soldiers and who had told only the simple truth, was still a prisoner. Shambling back to the edge of the mound, being careful to keep in sight, he squatted down to think things over.

  From this vantage point, he could dive down into the mound and recover his musket and ammunition. Only, then he would have to emerge again under fire from the carbines of the gray soldiers. That dog wouldn't bite. On the other hand, he could keep quiet where he was, hoping that they might forget about him, until after dark—

  "Ayaa—hi—lahaa!"

  The skin along the back of Yarak's neck moved of its own accord, and his nerves tingled. This soft, whispering herder's cry seemed to come from the ground behind him, and a woman's cry at that. Hastily, he glanced up at the stone baba.

  "Don't move, blind ox!" said the voice.

  Already dusk was obscuring the gray walls of the cottages, and no living being was nearer than the motionless sentry who could not be expected to know a Tatar herder's cry.

  "In here," the voice whispered. "In the grave place."

  If she was down in the mound, Yarak reflected, she must be where his musket was. "Where are you from, girl? How did you get here?"

  "Shut your mouth!" The voice quivered excitedly. "I crawled. If you are faithful to the Russian land, don't come in here!"

  Yarak did not care at the moment about the Russian land. But he was mortally concerned about his musket. If these gray soldiers were going to shoot him through the guts, he intended to plug them instead. If a strange woman, who might or might not have anything to do with the stone baba, was down there with his musket, ordering him to keep out, the matter required careful thinking. "Listen, dushenka, did you see a musket there, by the bones?"

  "No," The voice quickened hopefully: "Is there one, Uncle?"

  Inwardly Yarak swore. It had been a mistake to mention the gun. But how was he to know? Luck certainly had been against him since he sighted the motor trucks.

  "Who are you?" he demanded. "And what the devil are you doing in the grave?"

  "I'm just somebody, old comrade," explained the girl. "And I'm on a mission. Don't gab so loud!"

  "Devil fly away with you!"

  "Wait just for a couple of hours. Then it will be over—"

  The sentry, either because he heard Yarak or because it was getting dark, was moving over to the Cossack. Yarak hesitated and decided that fate was against him. "Shut your noise," he whispered to the ground behind him.

  Stopping by Yarak, the sentry jerked his head toward the cottages. "March!" Slowly Yarak arose and marched.

  No gleam of light showed at the table where the officers sat. The sergeant made Yarak sit against the house wall, and in that position he could smell the fragrance of the bottles. More than vodka—probably rum or kummel. The Germans seemed to be waiting there, with their tank cars put inside the houses, and only once did the younger one speak to Yarak.

  "Is your woman up to anything, Russky?"

  Yarak started, and then realized that the officers apparently had seen only the stone baba. "No, nothing," he muttered. "Only, keep away from the kurgan, or it will be bad for you."

  "Superstition has been the curse of the Slavs. You accept fate, good or bad. It's your kismet—it's been like that ever since the first of your race emerged from the swamps that bred you. Indeed yes, Cossack, the Slavs, your remote forefathers used to run off into their swamps to escape an enemy—"

  "That's a lie!" Yarak yelped.

  His rage seemed to please the young officer. "It's an ethnological truth. How else did the English word slave come to be, unless from Slav? That's why you'll accept the rule of a master. You'll be better off so old wolf."

  Yarak did not agree with the young officer on this point. But he said nothing because, at that moment he heard a confused rumbling down the road. The ground shook under him. Black shapes larger than buffalo appeared, hissing and grinding—a whole line of them. Under the camouflage they stopped close together, and men climbed out of their tops. Yarak, interested, recognized these black monsters as the tanks, which until then he had seen only from afar along the roads.

  Immediately the tanks began to refill with fuel from the waiting gasoline trucks. The Germans who had captured Yarak began to talk with the others who had come from the machines. Although it was full dark by then, with all the stars out, no one lighted even a cigarette.

  Apparently the Cossack did not stir. Actually, he was edging himself closer to the table. Stretching out a long arm, he grasped a bottle, which turned out to be shaped like a dog. From this he drank quickly and silently, and set the bottle back in its place.

  The liquor, more fiery than vodka, warmed Yarak's gullet.

  His thoughts now began to grow urgent. His anger against the young officer who had said that he, Yarak, had been born in a swamp, increased. Into this anger intruded the German tanks, which—as he now understood—had been the cause of his present plight. Obviously the German officers had come to this village to refuel the black monsters.

  "Eh, you are big enough," Yarak muttered, "but you are like the blind steers that have to be led along the roads. A horse is better, because if the road is lost the rider can let go the reins and the horse will find his way, even in a snowstorm. That's the truth—"

  Off in the field the sentry called out something, and the Cossack, glancing that way, became filled with misgiving. A faint light showed along the mound. A glow within the ground fell upon the figure of the stone woman. From beneath her, a spiral of smoke rose.

  This phenomenon, Yarak knew, would lead to fresh trouble. And so it proved. The Germans on the road stopped talking. The sergeant grabbed Yarak's shoulder and hauled him up, striding toward the mound.

  At first they could not find the source of the light. The Magyar officer came up and led them around the base of the kurgan.

  Here, almost covered by the rank waist-high grass, a trench showed, extending into the kurgan. A little way along the trench, a fire of dry grass and sticks burned. The wind whipped the flames up and down.

  Immediately the big sergeant ran into the trench, stamping out the fire. Then the Magyar lieutenant pushed Yarak into the trench. When they reached the smoking embers, the officer switched on an electric torch.

  The Germans saw what Yarak feared they would see, the black opening of a tunnel where the trench ran underground into the kurgan.

  "Old work," said Sartlov to the sergeant. "Looks more like an excavation than a bombproof."

  He had seen such excavations of tumuli before, and he reasoned that if Russian archaeologists had supervised the digging, they would have tunneled in at the grave level rather than open up the whole of the mound. Pushing Yarak ahead of himself and the sergeant, he called down into the tunnel. No one answered.

  "That fire," the sergeant said, "was lighted just about three minutes ago."

  The Magyar considered, his bony face tense. And he smiled. "Old wolf," he said gently, "we'll have a look at your chum who lights a signal flare so promptly when the Panzers arrive."

  Yarak did not understand the officer well. But he caught the word kunak—chum—and he guessed a good bit. His thoughts were shifting very quickly around the musket he had hidden in the grave and the girl somebody who was probably hiding there, as stupid as a fox.

  "Look," he argued, "it's nobody but a woman in the kurgan—"

  "I've heard lies aplenty in my time," said the officer, "but nothing to match yours."

  Shoving the Cossack ahead of them, the Germans entered the tunnel and felt their way down the steps cut in the earth. Ahead of them, the officer flashed his beam. The sergeant d
rew out his pistol.

  They found themselves in a cavern so low that Yarak had to stoop. Around them the earth walls showed no other entrance. A heap of bones lay on one side, and these Sartlov identified with a glance as human. Since they were blackened with fire, he guessed that the bodies laid in this tomb had been burned centuries before. Probably the excavators had removed any objects spared by the funeral pyre. Then he whistled softly, steadying the beam from the torch.

  The light shone full upon Somebody, pressed against the earth wall. She was panting with fright, her slant Tatar eyes gleaming. She wore men's trousers, and her hair had been clipped short. One hand, tight-clenched, held something.

  "What in the name of a thousand devils," demanded the officer, "is this?"

  "The girl in the kurgan," growled Yarak.

  He noticed that she was stiff with fright. When the officer questioned her, the only thing she would say was that her name was Atzai, a Tatar name. They made her open her hand and saw that she held only two matches.

  "Why did you start that fire?" the officer asked for the dozenth time.

  Atzai would not explain.

  "Very well. You do not know, I suppose. Then, why are you sticking here in this grave, which is not exactly a recreation spot?"

  The sergeant, satisfied that only the girl was present in the cavern, put away his pistol and waited indifferently.

  Atzai's eyes half closed and speech bubbled out of her: "Because I was afraid."

  "Of what, pray?"

  "Of you. Of all of them. The Fascists rape and kill."

  The German considered her small face curiously. It was coated with dust and sweat, and yet if washed off, it would be handsome enough. At-zai's slim body did not seem to be more than fifteen years old. "We are not Fascisti," he said thoughtfully.

  Yarak thought that the girl was lying. Yes, she was screening her eyes and playing a part. Scared of something no doubt of that—but not of the officer.

  "Chelorn, dobrodiou," he said to the officer. "The forehead to you, lord. Let her go. She has seen too much killing. Her mind isn't what it ought to be. Yes, that's how it is." He gained inspiration as he harangued. "The little child is afraid of the dark—she lights fires—"