by Harold Lamb
He spoke without forethought, and Vasstan took instant offense.
"What I say, I have seen happen. Now again I come to tell of it—a revenant. Those others who were my adversaries, where are they? Lawrence of the Arab nada is dead; Gertrude Bell lives only on a plaque over the door of the Baghdad museum she founded. Yes, Mr. Ide, I have been there to look at it. No, I have only memories. I would go down to enjoy the comforts of the hotels in Baghdad but the British, who never understand and never forget, they would send me with a young CICI leutnant to Rhodesia where Zulus would bring me my meals."
He did not look at Jacob; he flung out his words like an actor always conscious of the stage. But underneath his wordplay Jacob sensed his satisfaction. He was vain.
"Tonight, at Riyat," he shouted, "Arab and Shammar tribal troops, British-trained and British-advised, are fighting their way toward these mountains. And if those British fox hunters keep their promises sometimes, the good American missionaries do not. Your idealistic Woodrow Wilson promised at Versailles that all these Middle East peoples—all of them cut from the Turkish Empire—might have unmolested opportunity for self-government. Have they? No. But your American industrialists have unmolested percentage of the oil of Iraq, with the French and the Dutch."
The violence of his words left discomfort in the air, and Michal laughed, saying that Jacob was Dutch too. Vasstan seemed to remember that he was host at the dinner, because he said it was now time for the surprise entertainment, and disappeared behind the curtained partition.
Although confused sounds came from behind the curtain, it was some moments before Vasstan emerged. The notes of the flute heralded his coming, and he walked in with two of the younger children of the village following. One was a girl about seven, and she held to the boy as if frightened.
"The floor show." Vasstan waved his flute, and drew discordant dance strains from it. The native children clasped each other and moved their feet in clumsy time. Their lips had been rouged and their skin powdered. Their small bodies swayed and staggered as if they had difficulty standing up. The flute coaxed them to greater exertions as the musician watched them, amused.
Suddenly Michal rose and snatched away his flute. Going to the children, she separated them. Taking their hands, she led them to the door curtain and pushed them through.
When she came back to the table her color was high. She handed their host his flute. "If you give those young things any more brandy to drink, Herr Vasstan," she cried, "I'll——" She caught herself. "I'm sorry. I liked your shepherd's song, I don't like one bit of this floor show."
Vasstan lisped as he answered, "They take no harm. It was to amuse my guests."
Michal looked lovely in her anger, and Matejko apologized out of an instinct of courtesy, because he saw the girl offended by the grotesquerie of the dancing children.
With her eyes Michal questioned Jacob: should she leave them now? Imperceptibly he shook his head. He was sure that Vasstan's vanity had been hurt, and nothing was more certain than that the German would react by asserting himself.
Fleetingly it crossed Jacob's mind that two years before, when he had been tied to his desk in the Sharia Lazoghli and Vasstan had been occupied with his own kind of sabotage in these hills,, they had been enemies by the rules of warfare. It seemed a long time ago. Now if the four of them were to exist together on this hilltop, he must somehow earn the respect of the veteran German secret agent.
Putting aside the flute as if no longer interested in it, Vasstan said something mildly in German.
Michal interpreted readily. "Our host apologizes for offending me, whom he calls a gracious lady; he did not know that the dance of the children would not please you, because he thought that Americans now enjoyed a spice of nastiness—something like perversion or licking up to brutishness. . ."
Her voice trailed off uncertainly. Jacob realized that Vasstan had actually been indifferent to the obscenity of innocent children imitating a sexual dance—he had wanted his American guests to sit through it, even to applaud. Probably Vasstan had seen German illustrations of hysteria in the miasma of sensation-seeking in centers like New York and Chicago—the stripped Negro bodies, the awkward jitter bugging, the perverted minds and abused bodies, the lengthy recitals of the craving of adolescent girls.
Michal laughed. "He says he does not think the missionary mask that Americans wear when they face the world is kept on at home."
Jacob nodded. They were drinking brandy after the meal, and Matejko's mind had drifted away to his lost Lwow. Vasstan showed not the least effect of the drinking, but he had absorbed too much brandy to be satisfied with any slight victory of words.
"Herr Vasstan"—Jacob turned to him with decision—"why did you come to Araman?"
Indifferently the other shrugged, speaking to Michal.
"He says you know well enough, Jacob. It is his hiding place."
"This one hilltop, of all the others in a thousand square miles? I'm not that much of a fool!"
Jacob knew the answer—that on the Araman summit there were food and shelter, even obedient servitors. But he wanted to draw the German out, and he succeeded.
"Never did I think you a fool, Mr. Ide. Simply, you are ignorant." He hesitated. "Why Araman? In one way this berg is like no other. It has been a sacred place. About it the Kurdish tribes have superstition. It is their Lhassa, their Benares. From it they think deliverance will come." A gleam of satisfaction came into his dulled eyes. "I could hide in a hole somewhere, no doubt. Not that do I choose." His heavy shoulders straightened. "I do not seek asyl. This is the stage upon which a last act of the great wars will be played. You understand that? And here stay I, to watch—I who have never surrendered. Es geht bei gedæmpftem Trommelklang. I do not trouble your lovely wife to translate that for you. It means I am of the folk who march always to the beat of muffled drums. To life or death we march so."
Then, as if aware that he had spoken too freely, he added, smiling, "Also, there is the Christian British knight, Clement Bigsby, who nurses himself in a hospital with medicines and Indian servants to make invalid's tea. How many years has he tried to find Araman? He has failed, and I have won."
Jacob shook his head. Of this nice speechmaking some of it was true enough. But he wanted to draw out the German's mind and meet it fairly.
"I only asked why you came here, Vasstan. You've told a good story without answering my question. I want to know."
Vasstan kept silence, digesting the words which surprised him.
"During the war," Jacob added, "I held a captain's commission in the American Military Intelligence, headquarters Cairo. Naturally I learned quite a bit about you. That war's over, I hope. We came here, Michal and I, to find Araman, not to find you. Then you arrived on the scene, prepared to stay. I don't for a minute believe your never-surrender-last-stand-last-stage talk any more than I believe the few Germans I've known hanker for a Götterdämmerung death in a nice twilight of the gods. You're much too intelligent. I'm simply asking why you came back and what you plan to do. That is necessary, if we're going to get along at all."
Over her glass, at which she pretended to sip, Michal held her breath. Matejko, oblivious, hummed the shepherd's song.
Vasstan sat motionless, then he smiled.
"I also can be frank, Captain Ide. If you have hope to turn me over to the British or to inform of me, you will fail."
He spoke quietly, thinking out his words in English.
"I don't intend to give out any information about you," Jacob assured him impatiently. "You still haven't answered my question."
Vasstan put down his glass. "I have still a force to command. I speak of military force. My Landsknecht—my soldiery. You know nothing about them. You do not understand the German spirit, at least of my generation, Captain Ide. You have heard, perhaps, the music of Richard Strauss and his tone poem Ein Heldenleben. How would you say that in English? A hero's life? A warrior's life? The words are not right. It is our life of the sword which
ends by the sword and not in a nursing home. So lived Von Luckner, and so Von Mackensen, who could lead cavalry. I am only Vasstan, but my name shall be with theirs."
He caught himself quickly. "That is not a lie. You are right in one respect, Captain Ide. I am here to act, not to watch. I shall not saw wood in a Dutch resort in my last year. I shall make the English feel my strength, and if you are here and alive, you will be witness. But do not interfere with me." He bowed slightly, leaning forward toward Michal. "Again I make my apologies to the gracious lady for speaking so much of myself that I bore her."
"You haven't bored me, Herr Vasstan."
Jacob felt an involuntary respect for this man who with grime in his flesh, with broken fingernails and tortured eyes, could assert himself with such human dignity. Something vital had been touched in this unkempt body, heavy with meat and alcohol, hardened beyond enjoyment of ordinary sensations. Vasstan, he thought, existed only for his legend. No other recognition would be his than the spoken word where men gathered in the bars and verandas.
"Yes," he said, "I understand."
He had challenged Vasstan and had been answered in his own language and worsted. The German had told his purpose but not his plan; he admitted that he could bring an armed force into the field still, but what men were his Landsknecht? Did he actually have influence over the Kurdish leaders like Mullah Ismail? Did he hope to lead them when he emerged from Araman in the coming crisis, perhaps with some token—a banner or emblem sacred to the Kurds? Nothing of the kind seemed to exist in Araman. What then?
He waited, aware that Vasstan was mustering his thoughts to thrust back at him.
"And you, Captain Ide, you would not bring your wife through the chasms merely to look for bronzes such as these." The German pointed at his own accumulation in the heap of valuables. "What else did you hope to find on this berg?"
"We knew it had never been explored. It sounds foolish, but we hoped to find some trace here of our first ancestors, the people who made the bronzes."
"To find the people of many thousand years before?"
"Yes."
"But even much later peoples, the Greeks and Macedonians who penetrated Mittelasia, have intermarried and their traces have disappeared in the native stock!"
"Araman is no ordinary mountain."
"No? There is not one high and lonely mountain in Asia that has not a legend. Demavend above Tehran is sacred to Zoroastrians. Araman also has its legend." Vasstan smiled. "Should not I know, who gave it first the name of Araman to Europeans? Have you seen anything that is unusual here, Captain Ide?"
Impassive as a surgeon questioning a patient about symptoms, the old adventurer pressed his visitor. Jacob thought of the aeolian harp and the wall paintings. Any ingenious person could have been responsible for those.
"The rock sculpture certainly isn't ordinary," he suggested.
"Das Felsrelief—der besiegte Kaiser Valerian vor König Sapor?" Vasstan shrugged. This monument, he said, would have been executed by the Persians at the time of their emperor, Sapor, who took the Roman Emperor Valerian captive about the year a.d. 200. There were others like it scattered through the hills of Iran.
It was a natural place for such a monument, and for inscriptions, graffiti, paintings. People scratched their names on cliffs or mountaintops everywhere. At different times passersby had left their mark on Araman.
Seeing Jacob silenced, he grew cordial at once. "No, my young explorer, you have too much enthusiasm and too little experience—you have discovered no secret." Briefly he hesitated, and then hoisted himself up. "The secret I have found. It is more valuable than these toys"—he waved at his collection. "It will prove to you that the marvel of Araman is European, not Asiatic. Come, I will show you, and you will have no more doubt."
Once he had made up his mind Vasstan rose promptly, advising them to take the lamps with them, and led the way out to the plaza to the locked wooden door that had stirred Jacob's interest.
Vasstan inspected the heavy padlock and drew a key from his pocket. "Let the lovely lady have no fear," he said over his shoulder, studying their faces.
He carried no lamp himself, and he swung the heavy door back as if accustomed to its weight. "Follow," he ordered.
Going in after him, Jacob became aware of blind walls and then of rock surfaces. The room, unfurnished and windowless, formed the antechamber of a long cavern where the air was dry and stale.
As they hurried after the German, the flames sank in the lamps. Jacob drew a quick breath of astonishment. He had been prepared for anything but what he saw. Steel gleamed on either side of him; the muzzles of guns took shape from the shadows.
They were passing down a natural corridor populated with skeletons of metal, shapes of chain armor. Sword blades hung on the stone, shining with oil. Dust stirred around their feet. The dried silk of a banner swayed gently in the air current from the open door.
Gold gleamed from dark recesses. This was no museum or ordinary armory. At the end of the cavern Vasstan wheeled on them, amused. "Well, Captain Ide, what is it?"
As if expecting no answer, he pointed to a niche in the rock beside him. "Here is the beginning—the bronzes. But can you identify these?"
Jacob picked up one of a pair of bronze swords as long as his hand and forearm, swelling slightly in mid-blade then tapering to a sharp point. Rude goldwork was inlaid on the small hilts.
The green metal, badly corroded, had been cleaned. Feeling the surprising weight of the blade, he shook his head. Vasstan seemed pleased.
"No, you have never seen one like. This is a long leaf sword of bronze. It is a cutting blade, superior to the light daggers of primitive times. Yes, this would be the first effective sword, made for killing men, along the Danube River, more than three millenniums ago."
"The Danube?" questioned Jacob, surprised.
"Yes. That is known to your archaeologists. Now, be pleased to let me explain. After, you may comment, Captain Ide."
There was a faint contempt in the way Vasstan pronounced the word "captain." He was in his element now as he handled and discussed the gleaming bronze and iron and steel. He must have spent many hours studying the strange weapons that he called his Waffe.
"It may be," he conceded, "that these leaf swords were carried into Asia. It may be so—at the siege of Troy, or elsewhere, by Greeks who had found them on the Danube. For here also you see a Greek helm that might perhaps have been Spartan. A king of Sparta served in Asia as Landsknecht—you would say as a mercenary."
He showed them a heavy iron helm of the type used by hop-lites with the hair crest vanished from it. There were deep dents in it, and Jacob thought it looked much like the pot-shaped German head armor of World War I. He was still trying to believe that these things might be real, for Vasstan knew what he was talking about.
Beside the Spartan's helm lay a long pike point of polished iron.
"You see?" Vasstan peered at them amiably. "The helm and the spear—they are together. They are the arms of the phalanx"—he pronounced it falanges. "The trained spearmen of the phalanx prevailed over the undisciplined barbarians who used the leaf swords."
He pointed to a strange metal skeleton. It looked like an iron platform, heavily ornamented, perched on ribs and bars of corroded metal. "Only once have I seen the like," Vasstan commented. "It is a war chariot of the early Romans. The woodwork has disappeared. By it there is the eagle standard of a Roman legion. I need not tell you how the mobile Roman legions became masters of the ancient phalanx. The phalanx was like a hedgehog. It could defend itself, but it could not move easily. The soldiers of the legions could move around and destroy a phalanx."
Glancing at the German, Jacob satisfied himself that Vasstan was perfectly serious. But as far as Jacob knew almost no weapons of Roman times had survived. Lightly he touched the surface of the next object, a slender helmet looking curiously like a jockey's cap, with a fine gold lion's head upon it. The thin iron, dark with age, had been cleaned and oiled.
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br /> "You recognize it?" Vasstan asked sharply.
Jacob shook his head. The faint outline of a Greek inscription showed under the protective coating of oil.
"Only an expert would identify that," Vasstan acknowledged. "It is Byzantine—also the helmet of a king. I cannot read the Greek," he added regretfully. "The Byzantines were clever—they made war with their minds; they abandoned the heavy arms of the old legions—they survived the downfall of Rome in their city of Constantinople." He smiled at Michal. "In their ivory tower, my gracious lady. They plotted and contrived to survive."
"Is that one of their crowns?" Michal pointed promptly at a slender band from which small screws projected at the sides.
"A crown, no. It is perhaps called a diadem. Yet you would not enjoy wearing it. You will see." Picking up the headband, Vasstan placed it over her brows. Gently he began to turn the screws, and Michal gave a sudden exclamation.
Two tiny points touched her forehead, pressing in deeper. Vasstan loosened the screws and removed the band, which he said was a simple instrument of torture. The points, breaking through the tissue into the brain, would cause extreme agony.
Matejko had picked up a great sword, so heavy that he had to use both hands to lift it. These weapons had interested him and brought him out of his brooding.
Pointing to a cross traced on the ball of the hilt, he said "Croise"
It might have been a crusader's sword, Vasstan admitted. But it had steel in it along the edges. This heavy sword, in the hand of a rider, a knight, had established superiority over foot soldiery, no matter how well armored or shielded. With such swords a military order like the Teutonic Knights had become masters of the Baltic and its peoples.
"But not the Poles," Matejko protested suddenly.
Beyond the crusader's blade hung what seemed to be an iron or steel man without flesh or blood. From heavy casque and shirt of link mail to steel-link shoes it formed a complete suit of armor, without the man inside. Gold inlay shone from it.