Warriors of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

“A scant battle will it be,” remarked the chivalrous raja, who had all the Rajput distaste of facing an inferior foe. “Yet some tidings have come to me of horsemen riding hither from Mongolia. What say you, Alacha?”

  The Turkoman smiled ironically.

  “One horseman might come, but not an army. Even the raja's men would not face the Autumn cold of the upper passes, where snow will soon cover the ground.”

  “Nor,” nodded Raja Man Singh, “can even the fiends of the air find sufficient food to feed a clan on yonder rock ravines and desolate forests.”

  “Aye,” growled Paluwan Khan impatiently, “it is said that demons and the likeness of foul creatures infest the spaces of the Roof of the World, who prey upon travelers. What manner of men would follow a leader through such-like? Khosh. It may not be.”

  He turned to Alacha with reawakened curiosity.

  “Ho, lord, what did you with the Persian wench—send her to -or the Mogul?”

  Boisterously he laughed, but Alacha, whose face was somewhat strained, did not smile.

  “Not to the Mogul,” he said.

  Now, following upon this council of the chiefs, the bulk of the imperial army pressed onward toward the upper limits of Badakshan, moving in an orderly mass—artillery and musket-men with the baggage in the center and the cavalry upon the outskirts.

  And the chiefs of many villages of the North came to Abdul Dost, crying, “We have seen the flames of our homes and the slaughter of our cattle. Will ye not give battle before all Badak-shan is lost?”

  To each of these the Afghan leader made the same response.

  “It is not yet time.”

  And the Afghans saw that he looked much to the dark lines in the distant hills that were the passes to the North, and steadfastly watched the sky for signs of storm.

  “It is not yet time,” he said again.

  X

  Through the gate in the mountain comes the buran, the wind that destroys. Shepherds and the flocks of shepherds die at the cold touch of the buran.

  From the iron gate of the winds in the sky comes the buran, and where it breathes is desolation.

  Before the time of our fathers and their fathers and the memory of the oldest men there came through the gate of the mountain the Destroyer.

  Genghis Khan, the Destroyer, rode through the gateway of Mongolia and in his path there was desolation.

  “Aye, before the memory of man there came the sea of ice, and the mountains of ice, and no life was in Sungaria.

  “Aye, khans of the Horde, the ice moved down from the North, sweeping across the plains of the Mongols as the waves of sand now move across the plains; but when the ice came to the mountains of the Roof of the World it went no farther. Yet here, lords of Mongolia, are the traces of the ice to be seen, graven upon broad, flat stones.

  “And before the ice fled the great elephants with tusks as long as a bent tree, and hide heavy-coated—like yonder yak, lords of the Horde.”

  A minstrel who rode with the Mongols pointed to a herd of the shaggy, clumsy yaks grazing by the shore of the lake. Already hunters had circled from the Horde to slay the beasts and bring their meat to the next camp.

  “That was the age of the hero-spirits, lords,” he recited. “The tengri-bogdo dwelt upon the heights, and many were the battles they waged. Aye, many the palaces they built of mountain rock that reached to the heavens.

  “Upon the winds they rode, leaping from hilltop to plain at a single bound, pouf—like the blast of the wind. The arrows they shot were fashioned of the shafts of pine trees, and still you may see the marks where the arrows pierced the mountain slopes.”

  Whereupon he pointed to gullies and giant crevices in the range of hills they were approaching to the South.

  “After the spirit heroes came the yellow-haired men from the West, my lords. With long swords they drove the servants of Berkhan before them, driving the Mongols east. They died, and then through the gate came Genghis the Mighty. Aye, his banners moved before the winds to the West, and many were the lands he conquered.”1

  With a shout of approval the khans greeted the song of the minstrel, pressing their horses forward eagerly. They did not know that Khlit, who rode at their head, had asked the minstrel to repeat his song as they rode, thus driving fatigue from the minds of his followers.

  The Horde had passed through the lake region of Sungaria, splashing along the flooded shores, finding game abundant. They had slept little, covering some seventy miles a day.

  Khlit had not wished to urge his horsemen to their speed until the Sungarian Gate should be passed, knowing that it is not well to start too hastily upon a forced march.

  He knew well the great task that had confronted them—the journey from the southern limit of the Mongolian plain to the northern tip of Afghanistan. And he calculated that this was to be done in three weeks if he was to aid Abdul Dost as he had promised. By that time, even allowing for a late season, the passes of the Hindu Kush would be ice-coated and impenetrable.

  They had followed the horse track that led to the South beside the lake of Ebi Nor—the Wind Lake—and Sairam Nor, instead of the broader, more passable caravan route that made a detour to the West.

  Some of the Tatars had brought yurts—heavy, felt tents, erected upon poles—on the backs of pack horses. Seeing this, Khlit had said nothing to the warriors in question. Yet at their first camp and their second, he made these men fetch the water and collect dried camel-dung for fires.

  When he repeated this performance at the third camp, within the entrance of the Sungarian Gate, and it became clear that his selection of the men was no longer a matter of mere chance, the offending Tatars left their yurts standing and rode on, baggageless like the rest.

  “In the Gate,” they grumbled, being aggrieved, “we will meet the spirits of the buran, and the icy wind will bar our passage. Aye, the spirits of the heights will be angry. By what right does this warrior make himself our lord?”

  Khlit heard, and remembered, and said nothing.

  He mounted before daylight, nor did he call a halt that day or night. The Tatars shifted from time to time to their spare horses, and ate strips of smoke-cured meat in the saddle. Many slept as they rode.

  To the West appeared a wide level of steppe, dotted with lakes, stretching to the horizon—a vast expanse of blue. Far before them the snow peaks of the Ala tau loomed in the veils of mist.

  “This is the limit of our land,” said some within hearing of Khlit. “And this is the last of the steppe. Before us are the spirit mountains where we have never gone. Upon their summits the Ghils call to men, unseen, plaintively, and the men follow and die—”

  “Once through the Sungarian Gate, how may we win back to our Sungarian land?” assented others, feeling perhaps the first irking of fatigue, or being desirous of their homes.

  These were the younger warriors, with some of the shamans.

  At noon that day, midway through the pass, Khlit rode back into the gatherings of the grumblers.

  “Aye,” he said to the younger men, “this is the end of your land. If you would return to the karaul of your people, do so now. Because from this point you must go forward with me.”

  He had halted the long ranks of riders that stretched the length of the pass like an endless caravan, the sunlight glittering on lines of spear points.

  “The Horde will wait,” he said grimly, “while you ride past.” The Tatars who had been talking of the Gate looked at each other, and no one moved. It was their fashion to grumble, and they knew that never before in the annals of their armies had men forsaken the standard during a campaign.

  “Ha!” Chagan, the sword-bearer, pulled at his long mustache that hung down on the sides of his massive chin, blackened to the eyes by exposure to the sun. “That is well. The first warrior to move would have died at my hand,”

  He surveyed the cloaked forms of the shamans, the priests who had scented spoil in the expedition.

  “It is fitting,” he added, “that
the masters of magic should abide in this accursed place of spirits, so that the tengri of the air will send no evil magic upon the heels of our passage.”

  In speaking thus he followed carefully the words of Khlit, who had reason to know the treacherous greed of the conjurers. The Tatar warriors, those who had spoken too freely, seized this occasion to wax mirthful at the expense of the shamans, who were forced—perhaps not unwillingly—to remain in the Gate.

  All but one did so, and returned to the karaul by the lakes. This one, Gutchluk by name, brooded much over the words of Chagan, and suspected Khlit to be the author thereof.

  This Gutchluk, having traveled to the holy city of Lhasa, and learned many secrets of religion and priesthood from the disciples of the arch-priest, the Dalai Lama, bethought him of the Turkomans, whom he had once visited, and the wealth that was reputed to be in the coffers of the ameers of the Mogul—especially of Alacha, who was known to him.

  And so that night he rode south and west, circling the moving lines of horsemen, carrying with him a small pack upon the back of his pony.

  And in this manner in the course of a few days word began to drift through the passes to the adherents of Alacha, the Slayer, that the Horde was riding south.

  That night there was a moon and the Tatars gazed down upon the troubled waters of the lakes below the pass, seeing their ruffled, wind-tossed surface and the white lines of breakers on the shore—although at the altitude of the pass no air was stirring.

  “Lo,” muttered a broad-faced warrior, “the pent winds have escaped; they have come to the Gate.”

  “Yet,” responded Chagan readily, “the spirits of the air be friendly to us, for they smite not at us. They ride with us, against our foes.”

  This remark was passed from mouth to mouth, and worked the leaven of courage.

  The next day, when dawn struck into the gray sky overhead, Khlit, glancing back, saw the loom of heavy clouds above the pass and the darkness of hail. He shook his head and glanced before the moving ranks of the Horde, to the gray mists and the hidden ravines of the mountains.

  Now within the hour the riders in the van came upon the skull of a wolf resting in the branches of a tree and below it the weather-smoothed skull of a man.

  “An evil omen,” cried some.

  Others, noting the fresh track of a pony leading south, were puzzled, not knowing of the flight of Gutchluk.

  After watching the last of his men file from the Alau ravines, Khlit halted Berang, khan of the Torgot clan and commander of the rear guard.

  The youthful chieftain, keen-eyed and quiet, had been a close companion of Khlit in the days when the Cossack had been Kha Khan of the Horde.

  “Yield your banner to another,” ordered Khlit, “and prepare to ride ahead, seizing what guides you may—but in no case a Turkoman.”

  Riding bridle to bridle with the gaily dressed Tatar—for Be-rang, unlike his companions, rejoiced in green and red leathers, in silver accouterments, chased mail and a purple Chinese cap with peacock feather—Khlit explained that the khan was to seek out Abdul Dost in the northern limits of Badakshan, “striking equally south and west, by the course of the sun, past the eastern end of Issyuk Kul, the Lake of the Clouds, and so up into the passes of the Hindu Kush—”

  “Say to the leader of the Afghans that the Horde will join him within ten days. Before then he must not give battle. Return then up the course of the upper Oxus until you meet with us.”

  The brown eyes of the young leader flashed. “It shall be done. A swift journey to the Horde!”

  “Ahatou khan, temou chou!”—Brother khan, dwell in peace! Khlit watched the erect form of the warrior speed past the marching groups. Berang, he knew, could be relied on. And by now the followers of Abdul Dost must be in sore need.

  Swiftly the black mass of the Horde, like the swarm of so many giant bees, spread over the green levels of the Ili Valley, where the sun was yet warm, and flowers were in the grass. Nor did they pause in crossing the river, for each warrior swam his horse into the bosom of the slow stream, tugging behind him the spare mount. And here were found herds of gazelle, to be shot down by youthful archers; likewise sheep, to be taken at will—the fattailed sheep of the Kirghiz.

  By the Ili, Khlit halted for a day and a night to rest the horses, and the impatient Tatars grumbled thereat. Many khans who had not before this experienced the weight of Khlit's hand talked among themselves of seizing the leadership—for it was the Tatar nature to be restless under a strange leader, or under any leader at all.

  Being restless, they drank overmuch—the fare being rich for the day—of kumiss, and so lay drunk in their coats about the camp.

  Khlit had slept long that day, and on awaking at sunset mounted and made the rounds of the camp. Groups of warriors followed him idly to where the drunken men lay, to see how he would deal with this happening.

  If the Cossack should ignore the conduct of the revelers it would countenance feasting and drunkenness on the march. And this would have pleased the warriors—all but the wiser heads.

  So, many hard eyes followed the Kha Khan as he reined in his horse by the empty kumiss casks and the prone figures. No one was with him.

  Noting this, the old Cossack signed for the watchers to approach, as they did, afoot and unarmed.

  “These be thirsty dogs.”

  He pointed at the befuddled forms clustered about the casks.

  “Give them to drink. Strip them and cast them into the river.”

  For a space warrior looked at warrior appraisingly. They were in an idle mood, not altogether harmless—an idleness bred of the sun's warmth and the long sleep on the grass. Some swore, others scowled. Khlit watched them silently.

  “Blood of Natagai!” bellowed a reeling khan. “I and my brothers will die, for we cannot swim—thus.”

  “Die then,” said Khlit coldly. “Those who have their wits will live.”

  He swung savagely on the watchers.

  “Ye heard me?”

  They moved uncertainly. Then a broad-faced, flat-backed youngster laughed aloud.

  “Ho—we will see if they can swim!”

  Whereupon the mood of the crowd changed. They grinned and sought out the offenders. A struggle began, and as it waxed the good humor of the crowd increased. Clothing and armor were torn from the drunkards. Naked forms were carried to the river-bank and cast into the stream.

  It became a game—a game such as the blunt natures of these men could understand. Many more ran up, and of the newcomers the kumiss-drinkers were singled out and plunged into the cold current.

  Some sank to their death, but the majority were revived sufficiently to swim and made their way ashore, more or less sobered.

  Word of the jest spread through the camp, and the kumiss casks were shunned perforce.

  And another word was passed from clan to clan.

  “Khlit, the Kha Khan, has spoken an order. The Horde is on the march, and while it is so, and he is our leader, death will be the lot of the man who drinks fermented spirits. Our leader was once ataman of the Kazak horde, and this was the law he learned.”

  From this time forth the iron authority of the old Cossack was felt. Not for nothing had Khlit lived the greater number of years of his life in the war encampment of the Cossacks, where harsh discipline was visited upon the few for the welfare of the many.

  Other things than this he had learned. When the Horde swarmed across the divide north of Issyuk Kul and the leather shoes of many ponies gave out on the rocks and the grit of sandstone, Khlit ordered rough shoes fashioned of the hides of slain yaks. And on leaving the shores of the lake he had the men cut grass, chop it fine with their swords and put it into the capacious saddlebags with the rations of barley for the horses—rations gleaned from the Kirghiz and Turkoman villages by the lake.

  “For when the ponies suffer from thirst in the mountain ravines, they will not eat of the barley without the grass,” he said.

  And when in the passes of the upper H
indu Kush the Autumn hailstorms swept down upon their backs, and snow swirled about the giant peaks overhead, he cried to the minstrels to sing and would not halt.

  “Sleep here is evil,” he warned.

  The Tatars dozed as they rode. This time there were no complaints. When Chagan carried the choice hind quarter of a slain sheep to Khlit, he had it divided among the nearest followers, saying that the barley which sufficed his horse would do for him.

  He was silent at these times, and thoughtful. While the Horde was making speed over almost continuous obstacles—torrents that must be bridged, slippery slopes that must be climbed, in the growing cold that numbed men and horses inexorably—Khlit knew that as yet the warriors were not a whole, were not knit together.

  But the Tatars themselves were now content. Endurance was bred in their natures, and they laughed from cracked lips at their sufferings.

  “The Kha Khan is worthy,” they said. “We will follow him.”

  “He is a wise leader,” they said. “He has lost none of his old cunning.”

  Their confidence soared, for they believed they were invincible as the host of Genghis Khan, of which the minstrels sang.

  But Khlit knew that he was leading a mass of undisciplined horsemen, splendid fighters individually, yet armed only with bows and their heavy, curved swords against the coordinated whole of the Mogul's array—elephants, cannon, foot and horse.

  He looked back down the dark defiles where the ranks of horsemen trotted, heedless of suffering, intent only on winning forward under his guidance.

  “O my brothers,” he muttered in his beard, “God grant I keep faith with you.”

  Now as the Horde moved through the Hindu Kush, through the rock gates of the place that is called the Roof of the World, certain wandering Kirghiz huntsmen saw them from a distance and fled away, bearing a message of fear.

  “In the mists of the passes spirits ride,” they said in the hill villages. “Their faces are black and they move with the speed of demons of the higher world. Crows and kites follow their course.”

  “If birds follow,” observed villagers who had not seen the Horde, “they must be men.”