Swords of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  "That's a lie, girl," Yarak growled. Certainly these things could not have come from her museum, because they could only have been put into his roll in one way—by the broken-toothed Yussuf, when he, Yarak had traded last night with a master of the caravan.

  Defiantly, Praska tossed her head. Who, she asked, had seen anything of the night-prowling caravan, except Yarak? And where had the bracelet and the Korans been, but in the Cossack's pack?

  Yarak nodded. That was true enough. The night-riding devils had branded him a thief. Then he remembered the bank notes and produced them.

  "They were here, all right, girl. Look what they gave me."

  Michael examined one of the notes curiously. "For what," he wondered, "did they give it to you?"

  Yarak considered, not wishing to explain all that he had been looting. "Het," he growled. "For an old yataghan, soldier—and the paper money isn't good, even for a glass of vodka."

  "It was more than a yataghan you sold." Michael nodded reflectively. "And these traders, they are invisible."

  "How invisible?"

  "Gold finders. They keep behind the front lines. They show up when we're someplace else."

  "Looters?" demanded Yarak.

  "Buyers. The war bred 'em, uncle."

  This Michael had been through two Summer campaigns and a Winter in the Caucasus, where he had smelled out the black markets. But the Zafaraks, the gold finders, were no ordinary black market dealers. They stacked up cheap paper money, bought for a few kopeks on the ruble, and they searched for valuables like silverware, weapons, good boots, quinine, and especially the old gold coins that still trickled through the bazaars, along with the new American bills. They bought up good land, where the owners had been killed, and even valuable manuscripts, postage stamps, fine paintings.

  Such things they carted from one place to another, to sell later in good markets, where rising prices rose still higher in inflated paper. They thrived on the destruction of the wars because the authorities could spare neither time nor men to investigate their network.

  "Like wolves," Yarak nodded, "they feed well on the battlefield. And who will ride off to hunt wolves?"

  "That's how it is, brother. These wolves who lifted Praska's collection, they may travel as merchants or tribesmen or whatever, to Baghdad or Kandahar to sell the things—"

  "But it's that Tartaristan Historical Museum collection of the Tamerlane relics," cried Praska.

  "And who knows that in Baghdad or Kandahar?" asked the red-haired soldier. His arm squeezed her waist. "Don't run after the water in the river, my sweet."

  Shoving him away, Praska wiped her eyes. Michael, she said indignantly, clearly did not understand how her pride was broken because she had lost the priceless things entrusted to her. They meant little to him.

  Yarak looked at her and saw that she had a conviction. A dushenka like Praska, with a young warm body, ought to be thinking about kisses and children. Instead, she grieved for a vanished collection.

  "Listen," Michael argued reasonably, "it isn't as if you'd had guards for this dumb museum. You aren't to blame. How can you keep out a dozen men with rifles—unless you'd had a booby trap over the door, and a mine—"

  "You think you know everything. I'm not dumb. I'm only—" she flung up her head, in a temper. "I'm going after the sons of dogs and bring back the collection."

  Michael shook his red head. "You are dumb. Supposing you could ever find them, will you charm their rifles by smiling at them? Look here, Praska, you just report it at the station."

  Of all things, the one thing Praska would not do was report her loss. The Cossack, she said, could find her a horse. As for Michael, he could not ride on account of his leg.

  "I suppose," Michael growled, "you'd like me to sit here alone with the door locked, to keep people away until you get back with the curios?"

  "Certainly," she cried.

  "Find your own gatekeeper, Curator Praska." The soldier's lips grinned at her. "There are plenty of other girls over in the city."

  Yarak pondered. He had his own ax to grind with the gold finders, and something Michael had said made him thoughtful. "Eh, brother, easy enough to follow wolves. If you could make me a trap to take along."

  Going into the ravaged display room, he contemplated the empty carved and gilded chest, the only thing left there. He, like Michael, had had experience with booby traps, and he began to vision the discomfiture of the broken-toothed Yussuf and Moon-face. Moreover, in this way he could escape beyond reach of Praska's tongue.

  Behind him he heard the girl's voice, low and coaxing. "Can you really trail those horses, Uncle Yarak?"

  The Cossack snorted. Could he follow more than a score of unshod Turkoman ponies, weighted down with packs, along dust-padded roads? "Go back to your kitchen, girl," he muttered. "I am not yet blind. I will find them."

  Praska's eyes blinked. "That I must go with you, to identify the stolen articles," she announced calmly. "Otherwise you would not know them."

  So two days later Yarak found himself questing along the Samarkand desert road, leading another horse with the chest lashed to it. The silent Michael had worked for a day and a half over the chest. From time to time Yarak glanced back uneasily at it as it jolted. He distrusted machines.

  Heartily he regretted his rash promise to Praska. She had begged a good horse from the soldiers at the railroad, and now she rode as if possessed, without stopping to rest the horses or let them roll.

  At first the tracks of the trader's caravan had been clear enough. Then the trail turned away from the railroad onto an old caravan track that skirted the edge of the desert where a haze lay over the baked ground. "The Red Sands," Yarak muttered, shaking his head. "Not good, Praska. At the first wind the tracks will be blotted out."

  As Yarak had prophesied, all tracks were swept off the dry ground by the wind. At the next village nothing had been seen of the trader or his men.

  "But we are close to Bokhara now," the girl insisted. "And if they have come to Bokhara, they will be seen."

  Yarak was not so sure of that. The Turkomans and Moon-face, their master, managed to keep out of sight . . . And when the road led to the flat roofs of the desert city of Bokhara, the military guard at the old towered gate informed Praska that no such caravan had entered. "For a couple of years, sweet," the section leader assured Praska tranquilly.

  "Ei, girl," barked Yarak cheerfully. "Now they're gone, like water down the river—as Michael said."

  Praska looked at him and her lips moved soundlessly. Then, when they had ridden out of hearing of the soldiers, she turned in the saddle, her little chin thrust out. "Cossack," she demanded, "who has seen this caravan of yours—except you?"

  "No one," Yarak admitted.

  "Then if you do not find it, everyone will say that you lied about it, and if you lied, it will appear as if you were the thief. Think, old wolf. If the caravan didn't sit down by the road, and it did not go into the city, where is it now? Think quickly."

  Yarak understood clearly. There would be no silencing this girl's tongue until the traders were found. And no one could find them except himself.

  Savagely he smacked the flank of his horse and the beast stumbled as it broke into a trot. A bad omen, that. Jerking up its head, he reined up a rise by the road. Here he could see the outskirts of Bokhara, the olive groves and the wandering goatherds, the black tents of some Turkomans. Horses grazed near the tents, but no European like Moon-face would take up his quarters here.

  "What is that stink?" asked Praska, who have followed him close.

  "Bones," Yarak muttered instantly. "Bones of the dead."

  "What?"

  Yarak pointed over to the left, where the high clay walls of an abandoned mosque crowned a rise. Around it the barren rocky clay was strewn with stone slabs. Once, as the Cossack knew, Bokhara had been esteemed a holy city of the Usbek Muslims and its suburbs were filled with shallow graves, so thickly that old graves had been dug up to make room for the new. Clo
se against the mosque clustered the beehive tombs of the richer or more celebrated dead, their names now forgotten.

  Certainly the mosque was abandoned now. But the Cossack observed horse tracks crossing the road to it and leaving it. In the soft dust the tracks were clear and must be recent.

  "Look," said Praska suddenly, "at Samarkand your gold finders kept out of sight in a ruin."

  Yarak grunted. The caravan must have disappeared by breaking up around here. The horses might be over in the Turkoman kibitka, and the men—

  "Stay where you are, child," he urged. "Talk to yourself."

  He turned down to the road, and picked up the tracks crossing it, unshod pony tracks. Near the courtyard gate he lifted his glance and saw fresh dung inside. In the courtyard there was no trace of anything living. There was water, however, in the well. The Turkoman horses might have come here to drink.

  His beast thrust forward to drink thirstily. Then it flung up its head, ears pointing toward the doorway of the mosque building where no curtain hung. The burning afternoon sunlight laid a square of light within it and in the obscurity beyond Yarak could see no movement, nor did he hear a sound. But something in there had disturbed his horse.

  Dismounting, Yarak strode toward the door. Simultaneously a man appeared, coming out. A short man in a long padded khalat, his face shadowed by a voluminous turban wound in the Bokhara fashion.

  "Wayfarer," he asked, "what you seek in the house of Allah?"

  The familiar phrase, "bait-ullah," was muttered crisply, not in the rapid mummering of an Usbek mullah such as Yarak had known in years gone by. Under the turban was a young face with broad cheek bones and thin lips. It might be Malay, it might be Japanese, but it could hardly be the face of an aged, bent caretaker in an abandoned house of Allah. Yarak stopped with a snort.

  He carried no war weapon of any kind, owing to the law in Usbekistan. But he noticed the ivory hilt of a knife in the mullah's girdle.

  Then he heard the trend of horses behind him, and Praska's musical voice.

  She had come after Yarak, and now she was driving the pack horse away from the well while the man in the mosque stared up from slant eyes at the tawny mane of her hair.

  The skin at the back of Yarak's neck grew cold. He remembered how his horse had stumbled a while back. "Go on, girl," he said sharply. "Don't dismount here."

  While Praska looked at him, surprised, the mullah took the rein of her horse. "Nay, rest here, woman," he said. "Stop and rest, out of the sun."

  Pulling at her rein and drawing the pack horse after him, the mullah started into the mosque. Yarak followed swiftly.

  For a moment, coming out of the glare, he could see nothing in the halfdarkness. The mullah was drawing the horses toward the dais where the kiblah should be, and where a pair of indistinct figures showed.

  Yarak, peering through the dimness, recognized the two figures, Moon-face, in his dark European clothes, and pock-marked Yussuf, of the broken-toothed grin. So also did Praska recognize them from Yarak's description and before he could stop her, she gave tongue.

  "Hey! Aren't those the ones who looted the museum?"

  "What museum, girl?" Moon-face asked. His name, he explained, was Nabi, and anyone could tell her that he was the head of the importing firm of Nabi and Mitsui, now closed by the war. There was no museum in Bokhara, and for months he had not left the city. That afternoon he had taken a walk out to the old mosque with his servant—he nodded to Yussuf.

  Praska's small face was puzzled but determined. "You have my collection! You gave the paper money to the Cossack."

  Smiling, the gentleman-importer Nabi shook his head. He had nothing of hers.

  "Kahnim," observed Yussuf respectfully, his hands crossed over his big stomach, "Lady, someone has been lying to you." He nodded at Yarak. "Do you trust that Cossack?"

  Praska hesitated. These men seemed to be what they said, yet their words sounded false. Their eyes were too watchful. "Yes," she cried, "and I'm going to search until I've found what I lost."

  "Dismount, and we will help the young lady," Nabi replied respectfully, and ordered Yussuf to unload their visitor's chest.

  "Take your hands off that," Yarak growled at Yussuf. "There's a mine packed in that chest: we're taking it to the military. Don't interfere with us."

  Yussuf lifted down the chest. "A dog bays at the moon," he said.

  Yarak kept his eyes on the chest. He and Praska had meant to set a trap for the traders, and now they were caught themselves because of Praska's stubbornness. No help for it now. He had to get Praska away from that chest and the men. Suddenly he reached for the mullah, who held her rein.

  Even as the mullah turned, Yarak's hand came away with the ivory-hilted knife. Stepping back, the Cossack howled like a wolf and jabbed the point of the knife deep into the flank of Praska's horse. The pony jumped, whirled, and plunged toward the sunlit doorway with the startled Praska clinging to the saddle. The rein ripped from the hand of the mullah, who was thrown off balance.

  Nobi pulled a revolver from under his coat. Watching Praska's pony bolt across the courtyard, he laughed. "Now, Cossack, the lady will not find you when she comes back. And no one will find you." He lifted the revolver. Then, "What's in that thing?" he barked at Yussuf.

  Yarak swallowed hard and hung onto the knife, watching the lid of the chest as Yussuf lifted it. Within the chest women's clothes were packed neatly around a large metal box that looked like a jewel box.

  "Here's what the old dog had hidden," Yussuf muttered, pulling at it. Instantly Yarak flung himself down. And Yussuf felt the box catch on something. He heard a click in the depths of the chest—

  Yarak felt the blast of the explosion. Metal fragments crackled around him on the tiles of the floor. The frightened packhorse, over by the wall, plunged toward the door. Yarak's head sang, but he could move his limbs. Raising his head, he made out the three men who had been standing over the chest lying sprawled among its fragments, badly injured.

  "Het," he coughed, and got up. Michael's booby trap had worked.

  He had started to investigate, when he heard rapid footsteps, echoing under the dome of the mosque, but he could see no other person moving, until the figure of a man hurried out of a narrow door in the darkness back of the dais. This man, like Moon-face, wore European clothes, and carried a rifle. He stopped dead when he beheld the floor behind the dais. Then, swearing, he shot at Yarak.

  Yarak dove down beside the prostate Nobi, and caught up the revolver. He rolled over, using Nabi for a shield, and fired up through the murk, emptying the cylinder. The man on the dais, reloading as he ran, stumbled and fell.

  For a moment Yarak watched him but he did not move. Thoughtfully the old Cossack felt in Nabi's pockets. He found, as he expected, some loose cartridges. With these he reloaded the revolver, cautiously watching the shadows of the mosque around him.

  A half hour later Praska returned with her pony and three soldiers and the section leader of the gate guard. They found four wounded men lying among fragments of splintered wood and clothing, with a loaded revolver and rifle on the floor by them, and the Cossack sitting on the dais, smoking as he contemplated the scene.

  Yarak's gaunt face was tranquil and around him hung an elusive odor of spirits. The section leader later identified the silent Nabi as a well-known Laventine importer who had quartered two foreigners in his home in Bokhara. The three had been known to take sightseeing trips on horseback out into the country.

  "It looks like a battle," the section leader observed, puzzled, "but these firearms are loaded." He looked at Yarak. "What is the truth of it, uncle?"

  Out of the corner of his eye, Yarak watched Praska. For once, seeing the four men laid out, the girl held her tongue. Yarak grinned cheerfully. Vodka warmed his veins and his mind was clear and easy at last. "Not a battle, brother," he said shaking his head and pulled at his white mustache.

  "Nothing like that. We were passing by because as you know, Praska, this little love, w
as looking for a collection she lost. Isn't it so, Praska?"

  The girl nodded.

  "Well, these good people invited us in, out of the sun," Yarak explained. "Eh, they were examining a German booby trap of a mine and it went off. You can see for yourself. As God lives, that's the truth."

  "Where did they get the mine?"

  "Where?" Yarak's gaze wandered around the empty mosque, to the ki-blah platform and to the narrow door, almost invisible behind it. "Out of that," he pointed.

  Beyond the door lay a passage, lighted only by openings in the brick roof, and a row of heavy wooden doors set in the outer wall at intervals of a dozen feet. All the doors were dust coated, banked up with the accumulated rubble of years—except one, that looked as if it had been opened recently.

  "Tombs," grunted the section leader who had been there before. "Nothing inside but stiffs."

  Then he sniffed curiously. Through the dry, moldy odor of the place cut the fragrance of vodka. The section leader bent closer to the door and thrust it open.

  Within that tomb lay no shrouded bodies. The soldiers gazed incredulous, at paintings stacked against the side of the tomb, and piles of rugs, boxes that held jewelry, shining ivory and jade, and sacks of gold.

  "Like a bank vault," muttered the section leader, peering into the boxes. By the door stood several bottles of brandy and vodka, one of the latter half empty.

  "The Tamerlane collection!" shrilled Praska, and, diving into the piles, she began to pull out gold-inlaid scimitars, old Korans, silver and turquoise jewelry. It did not seem to Yarak that this collection of the girl's was so valuable after all.

  "Now you've found your collection—" the Cossack spoke up.

  "Not mine," said Praska, "Michael's." She nodded brightly. "His leg is so hurt, Cossack, that he will want something to do with his hands. Isn't the war nearly over? He can't go on finding mines now, or putting them together. He must have work to do, in our izba, or he will wander off."