Riders of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  "How much will you pay, for a hundred ponies?" He asked.

  "Pay? Are the Zaporogians Jews—merchants and traffickers with fat wallets?" Ayub snorted. "Hearken, Bottle Face! When my comrades ride into Nitek they will leave their horses with you and take the fresh ones. Such is the custom along the border."

  "Not our custom. What profit would we have in your foundered ponies, galled with arrows, belike? Eh?"

  The mayor came closer, pushing aside a slender Gypsy girl who was holding Ayub's rein with evident pride.

  "A fair, good stallion, this of yours, Cossack," he whispered. "Make him over to me and I'll use every effort to get the hundred remount ponies from the boyar, as God is my witness. A man of my word, am I—ugh!"

  Ayub's stirrup rose in a short arc that ended at the middle button of the mayor's surcoat. The stout Russian stumbled back, gasping for breath. A shout went up.

  "'Way for the owner of Nitek! Make way for the baryshina!"

  Ayub looked up, prepared to face a new adversary, and grunted in surprise. The owner of Nitek was a woman. And not a peasant wench, but a noblewoman—a baryshina. So much was clear to Ayub, even though the mistress of Nitek wore a man's boots, with high, red heels, and a long cloak. The horse she rode was a fine mare, and she sat astride in the Cossack fashion. Yet she was no woman of the steppe.

  "Hail to you, wolfhound," she said in a voice that carried to the loungers at the tavern. "You will make off with no horse of mine, be sure of that!"

  Her chin curled up, from the lace at her throat; her brow was white and the eyes that took stock of the Cossack giant were disdainful. To Ayub, all women were troublemakers; otherwise they served to cultivate the fields, and prepare food for the men. Well, and good! This one might be mistress of two hundred souls, and a thousand head of cattle—aye, and be a black-haired beauty into the bargain. But she was a woman, and so a breeder of strife among men.

  "What is your name?" he asked bluntly.

  Just a little her eyes widened, and they were fine eyes—a fact altogether lost upon Ayub.

  "I am the baryshina, Yaris Lementof."

  "Lady—Miss Yaris," responded the Cossack, with rare patience, as he thought, "you would fetch five hundred gold sequins in the slave market on the Black Sea if Gerai Khan ever turned his horse's head toward Nitek."

  "How—"

  "The Tatars would carry you off, along with your horse herds and cattle and sell you for a slave, Lady-Miss. Perhaps you would bring six hundred gold pieces. I don't know. At any rate it would be better to give my brother knights the horses they need to hunt down the Tatars."

  The mistress of Nitek looked not at Ayub but at Demid who was smoking his pipe near at hand. As Demid said nothing to this, she bit her lip and gripped the whip she carried as if to strike Ayub.

  "Go," she said quickly, "out of Nitek at once. Your brother knights—" her eyes flashed—"were the thieves that fell upon one of my caravans like jackals. If you are not out of the village when the sun is midway in the sky, you will be punished."

  Here the worthy mayor edged forward, carrying himself as if in great pain, and made complaint that Ayub had struck him. But the baryshina looked only at Demid, who came forward and gripped Ayub's arm. Fierce anger was fast overmastering the big Zaporogian.

  Taking the silence of the Cossacks for submission, Yaris shortened the reins in her hand and the brown mare pranced.

  "We need no vagabonds to defend Nitek," she cried. "We have good men and weapons of our own. Now begone!"

  She whirled away, scattering the watching villagers. A tall man in a white coat who accompanied her paused to speak briefly to the captain of musketeers, pointing at the Cossacks the while. Everywhere that Ayub looked he met black scowls and muttered threats. Demid glanced at him inquiringly.

  "-take me if I stir from here," Ayub vouchsafed moodily. "An order's

  an order. My ataman promised to stuff me with hay, if the horses were not ready."

  "Sleep, then," advised the man from the Don.

  After watering and feeding their horses, Ayub sprawled out in the straw of the tavern yard. He began to snore almost at once. Demid surveyed him thoughtfully, placed his long deerskin coat over the sick man, and heaped straw over that. Then, putting away pipe and tobacco in his saddlebags, he tightened his belt and swaggered out of the stable yard, around to the front of the inn.

  There the musketeer was throwing dice, one hand against the other. Seeing Demid, he called out in broken Russian.

  "You go out sloboda, to your post on the river, by the Cross! So the excellencies command."

  Demid squinted up at the sky where the hawks, now reinforced by several vultures, hovered—black specks over the river.

  "Send one of your armored women," he jerked his thumb at a pair of the Brandenburgers, sturdy mercenaries, who in gala attire of stiff ruffles, polished breastplates and colored sashes, were wandering toward the tavern. "Nay, it would avail more to send one of the Gypsies to watch the river in my place."

  The captain of musketeers pulled at his mustache, not sure whether he had been insulted. But presently he shrugged and fell to his dice. Demid passed on, by the wooden church, to the gate that gave entrance to the manor house—a low, rambling affair of heavy beams. With its outbuildings and stables it was surrounded by a breast-high mud wall.

  At the threshold of the house one of the Brandenburgers stood guard with a pike. At mention of the name of Yaris, he admitted Demid to the hall and pointed toward a door from which came the sound of talk and clattering dishes. Demid strode into the dining room.

  Several months ago, on the highway, the man from the Don had first seen Yaris. The Lady-Miss of Nitek had been close on the heels of a wild boar that broke through the grass of the roadside. Demid had watched her spear the beast, and had helped her haul off the hunting dogs that drove in at the dying boar.

  As with Ayub, the young Cossack had never beheld such a woman as Yaris. He said nothing to her, but thereafter he desired Yaris as he had not longed for the rarest weapon of the Turks, or the finest horse of the Nomads.

  He took the Nitek station in the Watch and Post Service. Sometimes he saw Yaris in her swift carriage, passing through the village. Always she had a smile and a wave of the hand for the Cossack. Again, he met her near the river, when Father Dnieper was in flood, and the willows were bending in the swirling water.

  Yaris laughed at the sight, gleefully eyeing the tossing crests of the tide-rips, sniffing the damp wind. She questioned Demid about the lives of the folk beyond the frontier, listening silently thereafter to his tales of hunting and of death in the wilderness.

  "I have never come upon a man like you," she said. "You are from the beyond—" nodding across the gray, brown flood.

  In her eyes was a longing, and a restless thoughtfulness.

  She seemed to have no fear of the tribesmen who raided close to Nitek. Yet she managed her estates well, although she was harsh to the serfs. Nitek prospered under her hand, for she had the gift of making men obey her.

  Demid was troubled by the beauty of the woman. At times there rose within him the craving to carry her off, to the northern forests where there was no Nitek and no manor house.

  True, the house was guarded well enough. Count Ivan, a cousin, had brought as a gift to Yaris the services of the dozen German musketeers that he had hired in Moscow. Yet Demid, watching the lights of the dwelling of nights, on his rounds, took no though of that. Rather, he wondered what lay behind her words;

  "You are from beyond the border."

  So, before this, he had not entered the manor house.

  Now he was going to Yaris because his comrade, Ayub, had need of a hundred horses. Demid meant to ask for them.

  He found the baryshina seated at table with Count Ivan. At the other end of the dining room, below them, the lesser dignitaries of Nitek were ranged on benches—the mayor, the assessor, the overseer of the estates— all doing justice to a side of beef and a flagon of mead.

&n
bsp; Demid, however, strode past the frowns of these worthies and pulled a stool up to the table of the boyars, resting his elbows on the table and gazing admiringly at the silver dishes of fish and sweetbreads and the long glasses filled with red wine.

  Count Ivan, a lean man with a sparse beard and watery eyes, glared at the Cossack, and raised his eyebrows at Yaris.

  "Mort de ma vie!" said he in bad French. "Death of my life!"

  Yaris stiffened in her high-backed chair that was like a throne. She had the whim to attire herself in a silk beshmet, a kind of Tatar smock, and a cloth-of-silver cap from which her long hair fell to her shoulders like a peasant girl's. She was angry with Demid because he had not taken her

  side in the argument with Ayub that morning. Now, she supposed, the young Cossack had come to make amends. But his manners!

  "What do you want? Why didn't you send the soldier with a message?"

  The man from the Don looked at her with frank admiration, his gray eyes gleaming from the dark skin of his face.

  "What soldier, baryshina? The dolt with the pike? Ah, he is not a warrior. The tribesmen from across the river would shoot his life out with arrows—zick—like that!"

  At this Count Ivan prepared to fall into a rage. That is, he pushed back his chair and took snuff ominously. He owned five hundred souls—serfs— and he had once been to Paris and the court of the Grand Monarch. What an indignity, to be forced to sit at meat with a boor of the steppe!

  No one, however, offered Demid so much as a glass of the wine.

  "There are hawks in the sky over the river, baryshina," he observed thoughtfully. "It may be that men are moving on the steppe yonder. Perhaps the Zaporogian Cossacks."

  "Do you presume to threaten me?"

  Demid, who knew little of the moods of women, shook his head.

  "Nay. But you would do well to give Ayub his hundred horses for remounts. The Zaporogians are the only fellows who will rid you of Gerai Khan, who is a fiend. It must be that he has heard of you, so why should he not seek you?"

  "Ha!" Count Ivan snorted. "I see very well—curse me if I don't—that you, Cossack, are afraid of this Tatar khan."

  He tapped his snuff box shut triumphantly.

  "Most men are, boyar. Still, my fear is for the baryshina."

  Stretching out his heavy forearm toward the woman, he upset one of the slender wine glasses. Yaris made up her mind to teach the young warrior a lesson.

  "Go to the other table, Demid," she said coldly. "There my wolfhounds are fed."

  The Cossack looked at her in sheer amazement. Then, as her meaning became clear, he sprang up, flushing. The count chose this instant to laugh.

  "Vastly well put, cousin—roast me if it wasn't well said—"

  A glance at Demid's face sobered him, especially as the Cossack touched the hilt of his sword on the side away from the woman's eyes. Then, bowing to Yaris, the intruder strode not to the lower board but out the door.

  After reflecting hastily, Count Ivan, who knew the temper of the men from the Cossack camps, hurried after him. Yaris, listening, heard low voices in the hall. Thereafter she caught the creak of the door, a scuffle of feet, and the impact of a blow. A heavy body fell to the floor, and for once the loud voices and clink of cups at the mayor's table were quieted.

  It was midafternoon before Ayub wakened. Men were moving in the stable yard near the horses of the Cossacks, and the big Zaporogian tossed off the straw that covered him. The brief sleep had almost rid him of fever; but his knees were weak.

  Startled by his sudden appearance, the mayor and the assessor moved away hastily from the vicinity of the black stallion. Ayub looked after them thoughtfully, and satisfied himself that the horse had not been mishandled.

  He was hungry, and the sight of Demid's coat reminded him that he had a score to settle with the man from the Don. And, emerging from the tavern yard, he saw Demid at once.

  The young Cossack was standing on the platform in the center of the village square, in the stocks. His head and arms were locked in the openings of the wooden beams. His face was muddied and blood had dried on his scalp. A dozen of the Nitek men were amusing themselves casting clods of earth and bits of refuse at him.

  Ayub rubbed his eyes and promptly forgot his intention to cross swords with Demid.

  "U-ha!" he bellowed, running forward. "Rescue for a Cossack!"

  His sword slithered out and those in front of him gave way as if before a maddened bull. The only one who stood his ground was the captain of the mercenaries. Him Ayub smote heartily on the breastplate, denting the iron. The next sweep of the giant Cossack's sword disarmed the slow moving musketeer.

  But then Ayub was gripped from behind. Fists pummeled his eyes and hands caught at his ankles. He smashed in the teeth of one of his foes with the hilt of his sword, knocked down another, and was rolled in the dust himself.

  "It's my cursed knees, Demid," he shouted. "They're weak as a priest's wine—or I'd thresh these sons of pigs!" Five minutes more and Ayub, overcome by numbers, was lifted to the platform and forcibly locked in the second section of the stocks, beside Demid. Then came the mayor, to lean on the edge of the platform and stare up at Ayub, and finger the key of the stocks meaningly.

  "High time vagabonds like you were taught a lesson! Thieves! Master-less men! Runagates! Brawlers! You, of the Watch and Post, would insult our gracious baryshina, eh? Well, we haven't really begun on you, yet."

  An angry murmur from the villagers interrupted him and he turned his attention to Ayub.

  "You heard the command of our lady, eh? But you went and hid yourself in the straw, to be sure. Then you tried to cut down half a dozen of our young fellows."

  He drew closer, and whispered: "Next time you'll deal fairer with an honest man and come off easier. But there won't be any next time for you, old dog. I've a mind to your horse, and when my lads are through with you, after they've licked up a few more measures of mead—"

  Grimacing, he swung away, calling to the villagers who were beginning to cast rocks at the Cossacks, to come to the tavern for a dram.

  "Nay—nay, lads, the sun is overwarm for our sport. Let the thick skulls of the Cossacks sizzle a while in the sun, until the cool of the evening. Then we'll teach them a thing or two."

  He led the way to the tavern, followed by the more belligerent of the Nitek men.

  Clusters of serfs and women came out to stare at the Cossacks, and the Gypsy girl drew close to finger the two swords and the coat that had been cast at the foot of the stocks.

  Demid spoke to the lass in a low tone, using a dialect that was strange to the ears of the listeners. The Gypsy started as if she had been struck, and pattered off, her bare feet stirring up the dust of the square until she was lost to sight.

  Ayub was suffering a good deal from the sun. But he reflected that the evening would bring his tormentors swarming out again, and he had little hope of escaping from the stocks without being crippled for life. His throat ached when he caught the clinking of tankards in the tavern. Presently, however, his mustache bristled in a grin, as he surveyed, sidewise, the swelling on Demid's head.

  "Did one of the Nitek women slipper you on the sconce, comrade?"

  He remembered Demid's greeting to him.

  "Nay."

  Demid's eyes smoldered.

  "It was a pike staff laid me down—by order of Count Ivan. They struck me from behind as I was leaving the manor house."

  The sun sank lower in front of them, until the shadow of the tavern stretched to the foot of the stocks. Meanwhile crowds gathered, to witness the promised baiting of the warriors, and men began to straggle from the inn, none too steadily. But at this moment Yaris and Count Ivan appeared in the square.

  The woman, upon the arm of the Russian, walked past the Cossacks. When her glance fell upon Demid's face she started. Seeing this, Ivan bent his head and spoke smilingly. Ayub caught a phrase or two.

  "Only for a short time—necessary to show your authority—no real h
arm will come to the vagabonds."

  With a shrug, she was about to pass on, when a clamor of dogs started up in one of the streets. From the river side the wagon of the Gypsies came careening through the square, followed by several women on ponies, and men driving before them a handful of cattle. Behind these, in a cloud of dust ran children and dogs, mixed in together.

  The cavalcade charged past the houses, toward the open steppe. Only one swarthy lad halted and raised his arm, shouting in a high voice that carried to the square.

  "Fly, Gentiles; gird yourselves and fly! Tatar raiders have crossed the river near you!"

  As the shadow of a hawk's wing quiets a bevy of quail on the ground underneath, the news that Tatars had crossed the river hushed the merriment of Nitek. Then clamor and confusion broke out. Men cursed under their breath as they ran about; women fled to the houses, or gathered together to lament, high-voiced.

  Doors were barred and unbarred. Presently peasants began to arrive from the outlying farms, driving cattle and horses before them. Dust rose and hung in the still air. Count Ivan bellowed for his musketeers and his horse. The mayor was all for following the Gypsies, but some farmers, who had had experience of border warfare, pointed out that those who fled into the steppe, now, would be seen and cut down by the Tatars.

  The blight of the Dnieper had fallen upon Nitek. And, among the villagers, was no one who could lead a defense. It was a farmer who thought of the Cossacks, and, snatching the key of the stocks from the mayor, released Demid and Ayub.

  And Ayub it was who stretched his long limbs, girded on his sword and, glancing about from the elevation of the platform, let out his voice in a shout:

  "Arm yourselves, dolts! Get horses! Meanwhile send your leaders to me."

  Partly because his bull voice carried to every corner of the square, drowning the arguments of the villagers, partly because they saw Yaris standing near him, the men of Nitek hastened to carry out his instructions. The mayor, that is, and the oldest of the farmers, came to the platform. Count Ivan and Peter were rounding up the soldiers from the dram shop and manor house.