Swords of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  "Shut up!" The officer was frowning, piecing things together in his mind. "When I believe you, Cossack, my platoon will walk on water." He thrust the torch closer to Atzai's eyes. "So. You knew she was here. And you gave us that tale about the haunted kurgan. The spirits that come out after dark—"

  For a second, a memory touched the Magyar . . . of the twilight hour and the castle of his homeland. Then he heard the planes.

  It was the faintest droning sound, far off. But Atzai heard it and she gasped. She jumped from the wall, between the men, out of the beam of light, before the officer could get in her way. Toward the entrance she scurried.

  The sergeant shouted after her, reaching for her. The sudden rush touched off Yarak's nerves. Things were warming up. He hooked out his foot, tripping the sergeant.

  When he moved, the lank Cossack moved quickly. He dived down behind the bones and came up with his musket. Lurching up, the sergeant found the barrel of the long weapon pointed at his stomach.

  Hearing the hammer of the strange weapon click back, he peered at it in the half-glow. The beam of the officer's torch had followed the flying girl.

  "Het!" yelped Yarak, his gray mustache bristling.

  The Magyar took several seconds to study what was happening. He decided quickly enough not to move from where he was. Holding the torch motionless, he spoke sharply:

  "Cossack, put that antique down. If it goes off, it will fire one bullet and it might hurt one of us. I grant you that. Whereupon our pistols would fill your carcass with holes. Can you understand that?"

  His words came curt and crisp. As he talked, behind the light, his left hand was freeing the flap of his automatic pistol.

  "Tfu!" Yarak spat and shouted, "you talk too much!"

  The officer's hand closed on the butt of his pistol. "Besides," his voice went on, "there are two hundred men outside, who would cut the hide off you—"

  Hot rage gripped Yarak and he swung the muzzle of the musket, jerking the trigger. The cap flashed, the gun thundered into Sartlov's face.

  Heavy smoke rolled around the sergeant. The torch dropped, rolling along the dirt, and the sergeant could see nothing. Nor could he hear the Cossack.

  He heard, however, strange sounds. A snapping and crackling outside the grave chamber, and men shouting, far off. Also, through the drifting smoke, a red glow lighted the entrance of the chamber. Freeing his pistol, he moved his head, to catch the Cossack's outline against the glow. The dense powder smoke stung his eyes.

  Then something smashed against his jaw. Loose powder filled his nostrils and eyes. He swore, crouching, to wipe at his face.

  Yarak, having thrown his loaded powder horn, felt that the grave chamber was becoming unsafe for him. Too much was happening for him to understand clearly. The grass was burning outside, and he ran back to the trench with his musket. Sheets of flame and smoke, twisted by the wind gusts, whipped over the trench, and he scrambled through on all fours.

  He plunged out into the smoke and found men running up to the fire which crackled over the mound, from the trench. Waving his musket, his scalp smarting from sparks, he leaped away, running.

  The Germans seemed to be too busy to pay any attention to him. With blankets and rifle butts they were beating at the fire. As Yarak ran, the glare of the fire grew brighter. In that wind, the dry grass went up with a roar. Yarak ran on to the first cover he could find, a pile of rocks. Here he flung himself down.

  "Come on, Uncle," Atzai's voice called in his ear. "Come away, you blind ox."

  "Not yet," panted Yarak, who wanted to see what was happening among the houses.

  The Tatar girl pulled at his arm. She was lying there behind the rocks, biting her lips, pressing one fist against her chest. In that hand she still held one match.

  "Don't you see? They aren't following," he explained to her.

  The girl moaned with excitement. "Look up, Uncle," she gasped.

  Up there, black shapes were passing across the stars. A whining came out of the air over the roaring of the planes. And then it happened.

  Explosions ripped the village, flashing like lightning, sending dirt flying skyward. Yarak flattened down, stunned. Another line of bursts struck full over the blazing mound.

  The Germans vanished from around the mound in a mighty dust cloud. "Eh!" Yarak yelped. "The sky is shooting down."

  The sky was exploding down on the village, where the stone walls melted, and dead branches and human bodies shot away like wisps of straw. The sky was tearing at the earth, around the lighted mound. And the girl, shivering beside him, was crying out. "It's our planes . . . they kept coming over the road at night . . . now they have a light to see the tanks. I thought they would come down if only they could see. I waited . . . "

  Yarak remembered the lair where this schoolgirl had watched, hiding herself. From the black monsters crowded close together along the road, guns belched up at the shapes circling across the stars. Some of the tanks were moving away.

  A bomb struck into a housetop, and flaming gasoline shot up. Bombs struck among the tanks, jerking them across the road so that they ground together. Then lines of tracer bullets flowed down from above, on the tangled clusters of mechanical monsters. The dust cloud, rising from the road, was lighted by the fiercely burning gasoline.

  The Cossack was awed by this insensate fury of the sky. "The whole herd is trapped," he grunted.

  Atzai was looking up at him, crying with excitement. He patted her shoulder. Had she not set the trap for the herd? "And they said we ran away to hide in swamps."

  In the first lull in the bombing he made the girl run off toward her lair. He headed through the dust clouds into the village.

  The captain, hugging the ground beside a rubble of stones, lifted his head in the interval of quiet. It was unbelievably bad luck, this attack, which had been provided against with such care. Where had his lieutenant disappeared? How had the ancient grave mound become a lighted beacon at the time of the passing of the planes?

  Over at that mound, smoke rose around the stone woman, like incense at the end of a ritual of burial. It was fantastic.

  By the glare of the burning gasoline, the captain saw a wild figure flourishing a musket rush at the table. This figure grasped two bottles and vanished with a yell into the curtain of dust.

  The captain did not know how he was going to put all this into his report.

  City Under the Sea

  Uncle Yarak sat on a sandbank overlooking a river that flowed into the Black Sea. Trouble lay heavily upon his Cossack spirit and he did not know what to do about it.

  He had to think of something to do. A plan—that was it. But how could he think of a plan without lighting his pipe? To strike a match in that clear, starlit night, might be to draw a shot from a German patrol along the opposite bank. A drink of brandy would be helpful in making a plan, but brandy had not refreshed his throat in the ten days he had spent wandering to this jumping-off place.

  "Ekh ma," he sighed. "There's nothing to help."

  A shadow appeared on the surface of the water, and he heard a humming sound above the rush of the current over the shoals. Abruptly he sat up, the wiry steppe grass cutting through his shirt sleeves. Something was coming up from the depths of the narrow river.

  "The city—" he muttered.

  Never before now had the old Cossack laid eyes on the long line of the sea, or the ships that plied the waters thereof. Yet he knew the legend of the city. In bygone days, on an island in this same Black Sea, good people had lived in a city that was attacked by pagan Turks. The people of the city prayed to the Lord for deliverance from their peril. And when the Turks swarmed over the island, it settled and vanished beneath the sea with all its people. Even now, on holy days, the bells of that city could be heard ringing beneath the waters.

  Yarak watched the shadow in mid-channel hopefully for a moment, and then spat. "Tfu! There are no bells."

  Luck, undoubtedly, had deserted him for these last ten days. All because he h
ad spoken to a strange woman. The next time he would cross himself and spit three times before speaking to a strange woman. And he peered morosely at the woman curled up asleep in the sand beside him.

  Her tawny hair stretched over her arm, her smart chamois jacket was wrapped tight about her small body. She breathed evenly, as if unconscious of hunger and danger.

  "Shepheardsismailiahaleptaganrog," Yarak repeated softly to himself. That was where she said she had come from. It didn't make sense. She couldn't speak intelligently—not a bit of Ukrainian, the Cossack speech, and only enough Russian to ask for things like water and watermelons and the sea. She had been able to make Uncle Yarak understand that she wanted to go down to the sea.

  Be-ty she called herself, when the sergeant of the guerrilla patrol had turned her over to Yarak, explaining that she was dumb, being a foreign woman. She had lost her way, getting around the Kharkov lines, and she said her car had broken down. The sergeant, who had other matters to attend to, had made Yarak promise to take her where she wanted to go.

  Well, he had done that. He had brought her to the sea, because she wanted to go to the sea. It had not been easy, because German forces happened to occupy that section of the coast through which the Cossack had had to make his way at night, scavenging food where he could, with the foreign woman following obediently behind.

  And when, at last, he had shown her the dark line of the sea above the sand hillocks, she had sat down suddenly, not smiling any more. She had wiped at her eyes. Something had gone wrong. Be-ty would not follow him any more. Probably she was sick, and possibly she might be dying. Yarak did not want that to happen. The dumb woman was young, and lovely when she smiled.

  But what was he going to do with her here in this sandy waste, without food, with only German patrols watching the empty river?

  Yarak chewed his cold pipe, peering into the haze of starlight. He heard a splash upstream that might have been a fish. Up there something moved, looking like a pair of tree trunks, drifting. It did not, however, swing out with the current when it approached the sand bar. Yarak's eyes, accustomed to darkness, were keen.

  "Ghar," he whispered at the blond woman. Then, remembering that ordinary speech meant nothing to her, he laid his fingers against her throat, waking her quietly.

  "Whatstheshow?" she whispered, her eyes opening. With his hand on her mouth, he pressed her head back into the sand. Then he started down to the water's edge.

  Bending his six-foot-three of height to keep himself below the skyline, he made his way out to some rocks in a clump of rushes, without a sound. For a moment he studied the drifting logs which had navigated the point upstream. Two and perhaps three men lay stretched on the raft, and the starlight above picked out a rifle barrel.

  "U-u-haa!" he called softly, close to the water, watching the rifle. The logs hesitated and turned in, with a faint splashing. "Eh, rivermen." Yarak grinned at the clumsy way they handled their raft. "Eh, say."

  "You say," a voice grumbled.

  The men on the logs were investigating the river. They wanted to know where the German posts were. Yarak explained that a field hospital had been set up three versts away at Chovno village, and that the Germans patrolled the vicinity on foot. "Where are you heading?" he asked, hopefully.

  "None of your business, Cossack."

  The men on the raft would only say that they had holed up along the river. They were trying to observe what the Germans were doing. Earlier that night they had found a foreigner.

  Yarak pricked up his ears. "What kind of a foreigner?"

  "How do we know what kind? A foreigner."

  "I thought you were burlaki—rivermen."

  "Sure we're from the river. The Amur, brother."

  "Where's that?"

  "District of Siberia."

  Yarak swore. He did find out where the stray Siberians had their quarters—in a ravine behind the third point, upstream. There they had left the foreigner.

  When they had floated on, Yarak started upstream along the bank. He thought: If these Siberian soldiers had a foreign man, and he, Yarak, had a foreign woman on his hands, he could lead the man to the woman. The man would know what to do for her. Then the blonde woman would get over her sickness, and what was more to the point, Yarak would be relieved of his responsibility . . . At the edge of the upstream ravine, he went slowly, calling "U-u-haal!" No answer came.

  At once Yarak stopped, pulling out the Turkish knife that he had acquired in his wandering. Carefully he listened to the faint humming that was made up of the murmur of the river, the buzz and chirping of insects. He caught a swish of the air, and ducked. Something rattled against the slope above him, and he heard the sharp thud of feet.

  The Cossack rolled over on his back, kicking up and slashing with the knife. His booted foot jammed against the hurtling body, but his knife blade cut only air.

  Rolling to his feet, Yarak prepared to strike again. Something harder than a fist smashed against his cheekbone.

  Flashes of light spurted before his eyes, which watered, blinding him. "Dog's tail!" he yelped, startled.

  Nothing more hit him. Instead, after a moment's silence a voice spoke curtly:

  "You're Russian?"

  "No—Cossack!"

  By now Yarak could make out his assailant—a shorter, slender man holding a cudgel. This foreigner spoke Russian quick enough, but with an accent. He kept his distance from Yarak's long arm.

  "Who are you and where are you from, brother?" Yarak asked, quieting down.

  "Did you see the sun set, Cossack?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, that's where I'm from. Part of my name is Jan."

  Evidently this foreigner did not want to say much about himself. So Yarak explained how he was in trouble with a woman. "She's a foreigner like you. Maybe she's dying. How can I tell?" And he added craftily, "She's pretty as a sunflower—a regular girl!"

  The stranger listened without any emotion. "Sounds fishy. What's she carrying?"

  "Carrying? A handbag. And a handkerchief."

  "What color's her hair?"

  "Like ripe wheat."

  "All right. Hand over that butcher's knife."

  And the foreigner would not move until Yarak laid down the curved knife. Picking it up, he reached under a bush and pulled something out. Yarak caught the clink of glass. "Vodka?" he cried.

  "Cognac." Jan put a bottle in each pocket of his tunic without offering the Cossack a swallow. "Good French cognac, fresh from Chovno. Take off!" He picked up something else, resembling a sledge hammer. "And if you're taking me anywhere except to that dushenka you describe, Cossack, you'll feed the birds."

  Yarak felt both thirsty and angry. "Het! I'm not lying, Jan. I'm Yarak— in the last war essaul of the Terek Division. The Savage Division."

  For the first time the stranger laughed. "The Savage Division of the last war would be the school children of this one."

  Morosely, Yarak stepped out. He recognized what Jan was carrying in hand. A German stick grenade, undoubtedly looted with the good liquor from the stores at Chovno. Jan had a hard soul—he had a devil in him.

  To his great relief he found Be-ty sitting alone in the waste of sand, waiting patiently.

  At sight of her Jan stopped instantly. "Marya!" he breathed. He said something Yarak did not understand while the girl only stared up, puzzled.

  Certainly these foreigners had a strange way of greeting each other, Jan trembling as if he were stepping a grave, and the girl as silent as a stone. Presently they began to talk, but not Russian.

  "What is she?" Yarak asked curiously.

  Jan kept staring at her hair, until she brushed it back with her hands unthinkingly. "A nurse," he said. "An English nurse, named Betty. But she can speak some German." He had ceased to the think about Yarak. "She came from Shepheard's in Cairo, through Ismialia Halep to Taganrog, last Winter—or so she says."

  "What kind of sickness has she?"

  "No kind. You've walked her for a week, with only
black bread and barley to chew, down to this wilderness."

  "It's the sea, where she wanted to go."

  "Not much it isn't. There's more than one sea, Cossack. She wanted to go around the Kavkaz, to the Caspian."

  The muscles twitched in Jan's face, as if he were frightened. The girl watched him quietly. When she spoke and touched his arm, he pulled away.

  Be-ty smiled and drew a cup from her handbag. And Jan uncorked one of the bottles to pour into the cup. The sharp odor of strong cognac struck

  Yarak's nostrils, and he moved over. Jan pushed him away. "Not for you, stiepnik. The lady needs it."

  He called her lady, now, and not dushenka. "But there are two bottles." Yarak's throat felt dry.

  And plainly Jan thirsted for the good drink as much as Yarak.

  The girl seemed to know that, because after she sipped at the cognac she held out the white cup to Jan. He took it, hesitating. "Captain Jan Slowycky," he muttered, "escaped from Czersk prison. The forehead to you, lady."

  Giving up hope of the bottles, Yarak wandered off toward the river. This Jan, he reflected, who was no older than Be-ty, had a black devil in him. It happened that way with men who had been in prison. Jan's mind was sick, and Yarak did not know what he could do about that.

  Suddenly, he stopped and spat. The river beyond the sand bar had changed. The shadow along the surface was rising, coming up.

  Something like a house took shape, with a cannon on top of it. Then out of this house the figures of men climbed.

  "Ekh!" Yarak muttered, the back of his neck feeling cold. Mirrored above the gleam of the water, the monster of the unknown, vasty deep drifted closer to the steep bank opposite, and stopped. The men on it lowered what seemed to be a mattress to the water, and four of them climbed into it, rowing into the loom of the land across from him.

  Fascinated, the Cossack watched, at the end of his sand bar. If these specters rang bells, they must be denizens of the city under the sea. Instead of bells, Yarak heard Jan's voice. Singing.