Warriors of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  Sheer surprise kept Jahangir silent.

  “Abdul Dost served you well,” went on the warrior gruffly, for he chose his words with difficulty. “Have you forgotten? Nay, it was to ask you this and to require your aid for him and his people that I rode hither.”

  Ameer glanced at ameer mockingly. Paluwan Khan lay back on his cushions well-pleased. The vizier sighed in sheer relief. His task of spying upon Khlit was done.

  With a single sentence the warrior had cast into the balance the favor he had earned from Jahangir.

  “The quarrel of Abdul Dost is just,” explained Khlit earnestly. “Consider it in wise council among your captains. His quarrel is with Alacha, who is both evildoer and tyrant. Behead Alacha and place Abdul Dost in his stead.”

  A courtier laughed impulsively at this, and the sound broke the gathering wrath of Jahangir, who reflected that Khlit was after all a common soldier and an uncouth man, knowing nought of affairs of state.

  “Set an Afghan to rule Afghans?” he cried. “A wolf to lead wolves? Nay, Alacha at my bidding has had the heads of the leading men in Badakshan carried around on poles. As fast as he does so these dark ones set up another leader. So long as there is any trace of the people of Badakshan they will keep up this disturbance.”

  His brow darkened again at this, and a flush rose in his cheeks. That morning during the hunt two beaters had unluckily come upon the scene when Jahangir had been about to shoot down a

  fine nilgau and the incident still rankled, although the monarch had had the feet cut from under the two.

  “Ho, warrior, by Allah and all his saints!”

  Jahangir bethought him of the Hindus present.

  “And by Vishnu and Siva! You presume upon our goodwill mightily. Yet you may atone for your mistake—”

  Twice within the hour had the voice of Chan interrupted his imperial master. The notes of a song in a strong youthful voice wafted through the open embrasures that gave on the river, where the guardhouse stood.

  False as Hell is the Mogul’s word,

  Tarnished and broken the Mogul sword!

  Several of the courtiers moved toward the windows to draw the screens.

  Evil fruit from the Mogul’s seed,

  And the faith of the Mogul is lost indeed—

  Came the echo of a distant struggle, a single short cry of pain. And then silence.

  “Unlike that unfortunate,” resumed Jahangir impassively, “you may yet win honor at our behest. Ride with the ameers against Abdul Dost. You have knowledge of the country and the Afghan wiles. Defeat him, and claim greater favors at our all-forgiving hand.”

  “And if the ungrateful warrior refuses?” put in the vizier swiftly.

  “Death of the gods!” The Mogul's slender patience gave way. “Has he not our robe of honor on his poverty-stricken back? Will

  he choose the cistern of--, rather than my service?”

  Uncomprehending and no little troubled, Khlit stood his ground, trying to grasp what was passing. He had hoped to speak a word to Jahangir for his friend. To aid Abdul Dost he had come to Lahore, and had been gratified by his reception. Now he saw his plans scattered as dust before the wind. He turned to the

  vizier, whom he thought to be his friend. That shrewd councilor straightaway looked at the floor.

  “Take the boor hence,” cried Jahangir, “and learn his answer. Raja Man Singh, Paluwan Khan, attend me!”

  Khlit looked up as the vizier and others approached him.

  “I must think,” he responded to their inquiries. “Come to my tent, and you will learn what I have decided.”

  With that he turned and stalked from the chamber. Those who clustered about him hung back, unwilling to leave the important council that was under way, and appreciating the fact that Khlit could not quit the Mogul's camp without being observed by the guards.

  So it happened that because of their anxiety to learn what was passing in the hall where the Afghan campaign was being discussed, it was some moments before the vizier and others went to the warrior's tent by the posts of the outer guard, never doubting that his decision would be favorable. They judged him by their own standard, and thus were startled as well as genuinely surprised at what they found.

  Khlit's tent was empty, his couch and scimitar—the gift of Jahangir—lying on the carpet. Both horses were gone, likewise the robe of honor. As to this last, they had an inkling from the palace sentinels.

  “A warrior in an imperial khilat we passed out, verily, for we could not gainsay one of such a rank. A servant followed him, riding unsteadily upon a horse of the royal stable. They drew their reins to the North.”

  Puzzled, the men of the court searched the vicinity with torches and found the servant, who had been in the pay of the vizier, bound and gagged behind the satin tent.

  It was not long before they came to understand the truth—that Khlit had substituted the maimed Chan for his servant, carrying him from the guard tent, saying that he would care for the minstrel's hurt.

  “Said the Mongol aught when he bound you?” they demanded of the trembling native.

  “Aye, my lords. He said, 'Beware the tulughma.' ”

  VII

  Word to Abdul Dost

  Far above the Shyr Pass stood a round hut of woven cypress and pine branches, its entrance overlooking a grassy glade, around which the pine forest pressed on three sides. Up the mountain, open tracts of grass were revealed, rising to the region of barren shale rock.

  By climbing a giant fir a view could be gained of the whole Shyr Pass, through which the Amu Daria threaded its ribbon-like length.

  Beside the river almost directly under the fir—so steep were the sides of the gorge—appeared the trail through the pass, looking for all the world from that height like a yellow ant road. And like ants were the moving black specks, coming and going busily along the trail. Sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, they passed under the hut—sometimes the long cavalcade of a caravan was visible.

  For many days a girl—she who had put together the hut with her own hands—had climbed the sticky branches of the fir to spend hours in scanning the trail with keen eyes, oblivious of the movements of her cattle, which grazed at will on the upper pastures.

  Now she was standing in the hut entrance, nibbling at a round bread-cake and frowning at the mist that drove down from the summits overhead. She was slender and very erect of figure, this Afghan girl, with a ragged woolen coat, plainly designed for a man, about her boyish shoulders.

  She braced herself against the bad-i-purwan, the Wind of Purwan—the northern wind—that moaned daily through the pass, harbinger of the Autumn season. Behind the hut, like some gigantic field of ripened grain, the pine trees bent and rocked.

  Branch rubbed against branch; massive treetops lifted, to bend low with a crackling protest the next moment.

  Feeling the chill of the blast—for the upper slopes of the Afghan hills, the Koh-i-Baba, were many degrees colder than the valley below, where the yellow grain of late Summer was still visible—the solitary maiden rubbed one bare foot tentatively against her leg, drawing the hood of the cloak over her streaming black hair. Her attitude was wary, even defiant. And suddenly she ceased munching the bread, to draw a startled breath.

  Within, or rather against, the rush of the wind the note of a high voice reached her ears.

  No more I watch at the noble’s gate.

  For I gaze at the world from the mountain peak—

  The roving glance of the hill girl, keen as it was, failed to discern any human being nearby.

  “Now the sweet Ghilani saint aid me!” she murmured, dreading the approach of the invisible singer.

  Had not tales been told in the hill villages of Ghils and other terrifying spirits of the heights that rode on the breast of the wind and carried off the souls of men to eternal damnation?

  No vulture I, to hover over carrion.

  An eagle I, to strike down my prey!

  At this, a horse burst through the und
erbrush in front of the hut, and the song halted abruptly as the rider sighted watching girl and hut.

  He sat a wearied Arab in curious fashion, and he was weaponless. A very tarnished red velvet cloak was wrapped about his slender shoulders, a fur cap pulled over his ears. His face was dark with cold, and his cheeks hollowed by privation. Chan, despite his lusty singing, had lost somewhat of his debonair manner during a hard journey.

  But he swept off his cap with a flourish.

  “Allah the generous be thanked,” he murmured to himself. “Food, shelter, woman—a fair maid of my own people and one that I have seen before, methinks. Peace be with you!” he greeted her, his eyes dwelling upon her face, which seemed strangely familiar.

  “And upon you also be peace,” she replied gravely, scanning him with the determined interest of those who must distinguish between friend and foe.

  Chan walked the horse to her side, and she noted seriously that the beast was of excellent breed, its saddle costly with silver mountings and cloth-of-gold trappings.

  The horse was plainly of better quality than the rider—stolen without doubt, she guessed at once. This somewhat lulled her suspicions, for Chan was undoubtedly an Afghan.

  “Who are you?” she demanded, returning to her bread. “What are you doing here? Whither do you ride?”

  “One thing at a time, magpie,” smiled Chan. “At present I hunger, and for the present I ride no farther than yonder hut. As for my name, have you never heard of Chan of the Hills, the minstrel of the chieftains? Verily it is my ill-fortune to lack my guitar, which was reft from me by certain ill-omened slaves of the World-Gripper. Allah grant that—

  Every fool who made me bow my head,

  His head will be bowed by my sword.

  “Of course,” he meditated, “I lack a sword; yet I have a horse, see you—a notable horse, given me by a thrice-exalted warrior. Help me down from my horse.”

  Chan's smile vanished as he felt of a limp leg that hung useless.

  “A mark of the benevolence of the River of Mercy and Fountain of Forgiveness, in other words, the Mogul. By the mercy of God was it ordained that my warrior friend should grasp the executioner by the scruff of his dirty neck when he swung scimitar to hamstring my other leg. So I can yet stand on one foot, but I cannot climb down from this noble steed.”

  With an exclamation the girl helped the youth to a bench in the hut and busied herself with lighting from flint and tinder a fire of brushwood on the flat stones that served for a hearth. Then she offered him milk and began to heat a bowl of rice—after she had unsaddled the Arab and left it to graze.

  Food and warmth brightened the eyes of the minstrel.

  “Aie, kichik gul—Oh, little flower—scarce did I think to find a woman of my people so close to the Shyr. What is your name? Why are you alone?”

  “I am called Tala-i-Nur. My brother was sent as jighit, or mounted messenger, to look for our leader some time since and was slain by Alacha—and also was my sister slain. Because of this my father with all of our family joined the Afghan standard.”

  Curiously Chan looked from the girl to the ill-made hut.

  “Then must you love the smell of danger, Tala, for Alacha and his men hold the Shyr beneath us—wherefore came I climbing over the mountain.”

  “Aye—I have seen.”

  Chin on hands, the Afghan maid smiled somberly, gazing into the crackling fire. At this Chan was silent, thinking that the girl had chosen her lofty pasturage in order to watch what went on in the pass.

  “Verily,” he mused, “it is cold and windy here for the yailak— the Summer pasture. Perchance you watch other things than cows.”

  “Who can know what Allah has ordained?”

  Suspicion smoldered half-hidden in Tala's dark eyes. An Afghan does not like to be questioned. And the spies of Alacha were thick on the countryside.

  “That horse of yours bears the Mogul's brand on its flank.”

  Chan nodded.

  “Aye, little sharp-eyes. Well for me he was the pick of the imperial stables. Never were men so pressed as I and my warrior lord. We rode like the fiends of the wind up the Jhilam bank to the North, where we parted—he for the mountains of the Roof of the World, and I for Kabul and the Shyr. I rode at night along goat-path and sheep-track and ate what I could pluck by the way—for dismount I could not.”

  He grimaced ruefully and glanced up as a patter of rain struck against the felt roof of the hut. Through the many gaps in the woven walls, wind whistled and swept the swirling smoke into Tala's intent face.

  “Tell me what goes on in the land,” asked the minstrel eagerly. “Where lies Abdul Dost? Has he many followers? Has he seized Balkh and Khanjut?”

  The girl seemed not to heed him. She was fingering a bow, stringing it and fitting an arrow to the cord. Presently she glanced at her guest from under the tangle of black hair—dark as a raven's wing, he thought admiringly.

  “Would you know what is in my mind?” she questioned. “Aye.”

  “You are a spy!”

  Springing erect, Tala drew taut the bowstring, leveling the arrow-point at Chan's chest with a steady hand. She breathed deeply, her strong young body rigid with defiance.

  “You are the one who tried to slay Abdul Dost. You ride a horse of the World-Gripper. Claiming to be a minstrel, you lack tambour or guitar—and lie about it clumsily. Now you seek to make me talk of the Afghan army.”

  Chan's mouth opened wide. Then he laughed, a flash of admiration in his brown eyes.

  “Clever little magpie! Yet you know the Afghan code. Even a foe is safe under Afghan roof.”

  “But you are—a spy of the World-Gripper.”

  The arrow-point drew back to the haft of the bow as the girl deftly pulled bowstring to ear. The boy's eyes did not waver, nor did the smile fade from his lips.

  “Tala,” he said slowly, “your brother was sent as a messenger—and slain.”

  “Aye, and my sister also, at the hand of Alacha.”

  “Yet am I sent as a messenger from my warrior friend to Abdul Dost, your leader. The word I bear means much to the Afghans. Would you slay me?”

  “I do not believe you.”

  “But you must believe.”

  Chan's smile had vanished. Earnestness shone from his tired face. Stretching forth his crippled leg, he began to unwind the bandages. Stiff with dust and blood, they came off slowly, finally revealing the purple line of a fresh wound behind the knee.

  Turning, with an involuntary twitch of agony the boy pulled up his torn cotton trouser, and Tala saw the raw ends of the severed ligaments. Her arms dropped a little and the bowstring slacked.

  Chan stared at his crippled limb dumbly. Gone was all the merriment that the boy assumed so bravely, nourishing his own courage thereby.

  “I shall never walk as a man again. Ever I must crawl with a crutch. Ai—at a word from the Mogul did they this thing. And he called it mercy.”

  Now a flush overspread the girl's cheeks—a flush that changed swiftly to a nerveless pallor. Arrow and bow fell to her feet. Chan raised his clenched hands toward the roof of the hut.

  “I cannot walk, Tala. But I can ride—and loose arrow from bow. Aye, I shall sew the arrow-stitch of vengeance. It will heal my wound.”

  He turned on the girl savagely.

  “Think you this is a disguise? Would the wise Alacha, the shrewd, fox-like Alacha, choose a cripple for a spy? Ha—think you so?”

  Tala's hands flew to her face and covered her eyes. Tears dripped from between her fingers to the earth that was the only floor of the hut. Then she ran to Chan and fell on her knees.

  “Forgive me!” she cried. “I doubted, but now your words ring true. Oh, it was the poison of Alacha that made me doubt. I deemed you the one that had caused my sister's death.”

  Uncertainly, for she still wept, Tala cleansed the bandages in fresh water and bound them about Chan's knee, because she had no other linen. As she did so, she released long pent-up emotion in swift
speech.

  “I never doubted you were Chan. Often have I heard you sing under the trees of our orchard in the village before I came here. But Alacha spoke of you, and I believed, because I could not know it was but a trick of the Slayer.”

  “Alacha—you?” The Afghan youth stared, bewildered.

  “Aye. You remember the woman to whom you sang love songs in the evening, and who listened behind the lattice of her window. The window looking out upon the orchard.”

  “But she is dead.”

  “My sister, older than I. Chan, I listened too, for I was envious of your singing, knowing that you had seen the form of my sister who was more fair than I. Aye, Chan, I sat by her knee in the evening after sunset prayers and saw her splendid face grow lovelier at your song. At such times the poison of jealousy was in my heart.

  “Then came Alacha, riding by from a hunt. He saw the face of my sister unveiled and seized her, beating me to earth when I struggled to aid her.”

  Tala, the labor of her dressing finished, sat up, the tears still bright on her cheeks.

  “I heard Alacha whisper to his men that here was a means to make the low-born Afghans draw the sword of open revolt. Chan, Alacha had been ordered by the Mogul to stir up the Afghans to rebel—so Badakshan could be despoiled, and the strength of the Afghan tribes scattered to the winds. Seeing that I had heard what was said, the man to whom he spoke would have seized me also, but Alacha stayed him, smiling slowly after his fashion.

  “ 'Chan, our spy,' he said so that I could hear, 'has shown us a fair flower to be our victim.' ”

  “But,” observed the minstrel, “I did not see you when I rode to the hut that night.”

  “Nay, I tried to follow the Slayer and his men. I was soon tired and fell by the road. Then I heard that you had carried the body of my sister through Badakshan to arouse the tribes, and so I believed all the more what the Slayer had said. When my father, mourning for my sister, said that you had gone to the Mogul camp I felt in my heart that you were a traitor. But now I see the truth. Forgive me!”

  The boy laid his hand on her shoulder, sighing.

  “We are but children, Tala, before the craft of the Mogul and his agents. See how he turns Afghan against Afghan. What have I to forgive? So you came here to watch the movements of the Slayer?”