Warriors of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  “But we have not seen the like of such men.”

  And in the grass valleys of the upper pamirs—stretches of moss-like meadows above the timberline—shepherds ran in, crying.

  “Surely there is fear and doom afoot. For we heard trumpets at sunrise, and the nacars, the cymbals of the Mongols, even as our fathers heard the trumpets of Genghis Khan. And the tramp of a multitude sounded, where we could see no riders.”

  Word of this passed from mouth to mouth, as such things do, and came at last to the ranks of the Mogul's army.

  XI

  The Eye of the Mountain

  Until daybreak, the night of the slaying of Geron, Hossein rode steadily along the trails that led to the heights of the Hindu Kush above the timberline.

  Nur-Jahan, held across his stout knees, cried that she was the bride-to-be of the Mogul, and Hossein laughed.

  “A pretty song, my Persian nightingale! So have other captives of my master Alacha twittered and wept. You do not weep.”

  “I am Nur-Jahan.”

  The Turk threw back his massive head and roared with mirth. “Aye, the Light of the World. Well, then the world will soon be dark. By Allah, would I had that necklace that lies about your beautiful throat, my khanum.”

  His hairy hand felt appraisingly of the pearls under her veil, but he knew too well the moods of his master to deprive Alacha of such jewels. So Nur-Jahan sank into disturbed silence as they rode under pines and ever upward beside waterfalls.

  With daybreak Hossein dismounted and bound his captive skillfully by the hands and feet, using his own girdle. Then he drank heavily of the water from the freshet they were following, called Ali to witness that his belly yearned, and straightaway fell asleep, sprawled near the prone woman, his mouth open and snores vibrating from his nose.

  Then for the first time Nur-Jahan wept at the disgrace, struggling vainly to undo her bonds. Strangely enough she once fancied that a small, turbaned man drew near the sound of her lament and peered through a tangle of dying junipers. Blinded by her tears, she was not sure, and when she cried out, Hossein wakened with a curse.

  In time came a servant of Alacha, who gave Hossein whispered instructions, with food; and when the sun was high the Turk ate the best of the provender—tossing her an oatmeal cake that she would not touch—and climbed upon his horse, forcing her to walk.

  Slowly they passed onward along the trails, seeing at times fleeing Afghan shepherds and children driving cattle headlong into secret places. The scent of smoke drifted to them, and when at length they came out into a clearing on the mountainside, the Persian could make out on the great plain to their left scattered bodies of Afghan horse wheeling in flight, and dense masses of Rajput cavalry moving through burning villages.

  “What means this?” she cried.

  Hossein pointed to clouds of dust in the distance.

  “The army advances and drives the ill-omened ones, like animals, into the wilds, my Persian lady,” he observed indifferently. “Come, Alacha has a nest just above here where he often spied out what passed on the plain. He bade us wait for him there at the eye of the mountain.”

  Nur-Jahan looked longingly at the steep slope, almost a precipice, stretching down from her feet. She was very tired and Hos-sein had kept her hands bound and the end of the girdle in his own hand.

  The place he spoke of was around a bend in the trail they had been following—a nest of rocks overlooking the narrow ribbon of the upper Oxus. A cave of sorts afforded some protection. Here Hossein turned the horse loose to graze as best it might among ferns and thorns and thrust her into the cave, squatting in front of it sleepily.

  Under the lofty sandstone roof of the cave there was no sun, and the chill of the place, where water dripped unseen down the walls, struck through the thin garments of the Persian. She sat passive upon the cold rock floor, mind and body alike numbed by hunger. As time passed she became conscious of a tumult on the plain below, of distant cries and the occasional clash of steel.

  Anxiously she went to the cave entrance and inquired of Hos-sein what was happening.

  The Turk, irritated by the lack of food and wine in the plentiful measure to which he was accustomed, muttered at her savagely.

  “Back into your darkness, Light of the World! What cares a light-of-love such as you what passes on the field of battle?”

  “A battle!” Nur-Jahan sighed. “Are the armies engaged?” “Aye, yonder fools on both sides cut each other up as a Gulf Arab slices fish for a stinking bazaar. They sprinkle foul carcasses hither and yon, food for the kites. 'Tis but a skirmish in which the accursed Pathans seem to have the upper hand—yet I scent a wile of my master, Alacha. Heaven grant he come soon, with eatables and drinkables.”

  Whereupon he thrust her back and watched suspiciously until the evening, when the tumult below died out as the shadows lengthened from the mountains across the broad valley of Badak-shan, and Alacha came jauntily riding a nimble Kabuli mare and clad in all his elegance.

  He glanced sharply at the prostrate Hossein and ordered him to leave the cave entrance.

  “A bite of food for your slave,” mumbled the Turk, and Alacha impatiently waved him away.

  “There be berries among the thorns, dog, and roots for such as thou.”

  Whereupon Hossein departed, scowling, and Alacha stood at the entrance to the cavern. Nur-Jahan faced him at once.

  “A dog you called yonder cutthroat, yet what word will suffice for you, my lord?” she said softly. “When Jahangir learns that you have laid hand upon his bride?”

  The Turkoman rested a slim hand against the rock and peered at her, smiling, in the gloom.

  “Nur-Jahan? Verily she is at the court for all I know. You name yourself falsely, my beautiful Persian, christening—as do the Christian infidels—yourself with lofty lineage. Ohai, do you think to make me believe that you are the Light of the World?”

  “When you slew Geron basely, you believed.”

  “The slave was a Christian caphar—unbeliever. His death has earned Hossein a niche in the Prophet's paradise, or purgatory—I care not which. Only fools pay obeisance to a god, and death is often the reward of folly. Yet you are wise, my lady. You have learned somewhat of my power—”

  “Have you done this?”

  The woman pointed down at the mist-covered expanse of the valley where campfires, numerous as the stars, sparkled from the hillside under their feet to the distant Hindu Kush.

  “Against my warning and advice have you entered upon battle with the Afghans at this limit of their land?”

  Alacha surveyed her in silence, noting how the shadows dwelt in her dark hair, and how fair her forehead was over the veil. Her voice, he thought, was chill as the sandstone cliff that towered overhead.

  “Evil will come of this, my lord,” she said softly. “Death will walk among your ranks in the valley, for cornered men fight like beasts—”

  “And like beasts will we slay them,” he nodded. “The Afghan blight will be cleansed from the border of the empire; we will wipe clean the blotch of treachery with the blood of punishment—” “So that honor and gold will be paid to you and Paluwan Khan,” she hissed.

  “To me, yes; to the Northern Lord, perhaps. Verily, it was my doing, my lady. A spy of mine, a wretched shaman of the Turkoman race, Gutchluk, who once had the immeasurable distinction of explaining his beggarly faith to me—Gutchluk, I say, rode to my tent full of some tale of a Mongol Horde, hither bound. He mouthed big words, yet I know the northern passes and fear no Tatars.

  “This Gutchluk I used. I sent him, pretending he was envoy from the Mongol chief, Khlit, to Abdul Dost—”

  “And this false priest advised the Afghan to give battle?”

  “Ah, you are clever, my beautiful courtesan.”

  Nur-Jahan stiffened in the insult.

  “Aye, that was his tale. Who may pen the waters when the dam is burst? Abdul Dost's soul—does a man of slow wit possess a soul?—was harassed by continued retreat. Hi
s followers were nagging him to let them cast their bodies against the chained cannon and the musket balls of the Mogul's men. So did he draw up his wild clans for battle, and some few horsemen of his—” “Were permitted to score a false victory?”

  “To smite off a few heads of opium-besotted Rajputs. This, like strong wine, will go to the heads of the Afghans, and on the morrow or the next day—Gutchluk will contrive to steal back to me here this night and report the hour chosen by Abdul Dost for the final assault—these same Afghans will go heedless to their bell, like masterless sheep before the storm.”

  “Most wise Alacha! Have you thought of your fate?”

  “To be beloved by the fairest flower of the Persian garden—a fair fate, and to my liking.”

  His soft voice became musical, and he bent nearer to the woman, who stood like a slender lily, outlined against the face of the rock. Over their heads a moon was rising, and its glow pierced the cavern mouth. The dark eyes of Nur-Jahan were raised to its light.

  Alacha reached forth and tore the veil from her head, drawing a quick breath as he gazed upon the dim features of the Persian girl whose beauty had made a slave of a monarch.

  “Fair, most fair.” he mused. “Soon the moon will be higher, and then will I drink of your loveliness closer, my lady. Ah, the Master Potter to whom men pray under one name or another, never fashioned with greater artistry the clay of a human form. Aye, the Master Weaver who knits the threads of human fate has given you to me. Will you not sit and drink of the rare wine I have carried hither, and the sweetmeats?”

  “Aye,” said the woman suddenly, “I will.”

  So, watched closely by the Turkoman, Nur-Jahan fetched a clean linen cloth and twin gold cups, with a small wine jar and dishes of rice, fruit and sugared dates, from his saddlebags. These she spread before the mouth of the cavern and seated herself upon a stone, partaking a little of the rice and dates and pretending to drink.

  No opportunity offered for her to escape. Down the path up which Alacha had come she perceived the bulk of Hossein, and in the thicket beside the face of the rock she fancied that the form of another watcher was visible. Overhead the cliff rose almost sheer; below there was a gradual slope covered by an impenetrable tangle of thorns.

  True, the upper trail was clear. But Nur-Jahan's dainty feet and slippers were not fashioned for running, nor could she hope to outdistance the Turkoman.

  Alacha poured a slight oblation upon the turf.

  “To kismet, by whatever name suits best.”

  His voice had become gentle. He reminded the woman that no one except Hossein knew of her coming to the camp, and Hossein was his man. Paluwan Khan knew a little, but the Northern Lord might well be slain in the coming battle.

  Victory, thanks to the good offices of Gutchluk, was certain. What tribes could stand against the Mogul's ranks?

  The victory would make Alacha an ameer, a mighty noble. India from the Indus to the Oxus would be under his rule. He would be wealthy as a caliph.

  Nur-Jahan would find her lot as mistress in one of his castles a pleasant one. Willingly or not, this would be her fate. Better willingly. Was it not pleasanter than her lot as a wanderer in Persia?

  “So this,” she replied quietly, “is the way you serve your lord?”

  Alacha found her calmness a trifle disconcerting; nevertheless, her pride satisfied his vanity. He tasted of the sugared fruit and smiled, thin-lipped.

  “Jahangir—he who was to be your potent husband, my khanum—Jahangir has said, 'Kingship knows no kinship.' Thus do I say, 'Service knows no mastery.' Myself alone I serve. I cannot win to greatness save through the Mogul, so—I cannot risk that he should know what has passed here.”

  “And I?”

  “You are a precious pearl, beyond price. You are the fairest woman of two lands. Like the essence of the poppy is your beauty—intoxicating, poisonous, deadly.”

  Nur-Jahan had lifted the cup to her full lips, dissembling to drink there from. Some drops escaping the cup as her hand trembled, fell dark upon the linen.

  As Alacha leaned nearer, seeking words to express the passion that swelled at his heart, she slipped a small hand forward along the cloth. Her fingers rose toward his belt.

  Smiling, Alacha caught her hand away from his dagger-hilt.

  “A dangerous plaything—steel—my fair flower. Was it for this you drank with me?”

  He gripped her other wrist, drawing her toward him, his eyes seeking hers, which flew desperately to cliff and thorn-patch— then riveted to stillness.

  “I would drink the charm of your eyes,” he whispered, breathing quickly through parted lips.

  It was Alacha's moment of triumph, when success and mastery over a matchless woman were his.

  It was but a brief moment. With a sharp exclamation he released her wrists, staring at the thing that Nur-Jahan had been watching over his shoulder. A rider in armor sat a horse at the bend of the trail by the cavern, and neither horse nor rider moved.

  By now the moon had come up into the sky and shed a clear light upon the grassy terrace before the cave. In its dancing glow— for moonlight has the quality of a transparent veil cast over the objects of earth—Alacha saw that the horseman was strange in seeming.

  A squat, erect body appeared to melt into the outlines of a shaggy pony. Where a fur cloak parted over broad shoulders the moonlight glinted on mail. Above a square, dark face as expressionless as an obelisk, a thin feather projected fantastically. To the rider's knee clung a curving sword that was fashioned by no smith of Persia, India, or Khorassan.

  “Who comes?” cried Alacha, stumbling to his feet. “By the heart of Satan—what man are you?”

  Startled, his quick nerves never of the steadiest, Alacha fancied that the uncouth form was truly one of the Ghils of the heights that descended upon humankind. The silence of the rider stirred his fear the more.

  “Hossein!” he cried shrilly. “Hossein! Fat whelp—aid me!” To this cry also there came no answer. But the rider paced his horse forward, and stood, with a single movement, upon the earth within reach of Alacha. No move he made to draw weapon, but stared curiously from the woman to the Turkoman.

  Then Nur-Jahan laughed, although unsteadily. “My lord Alacha,” she cried, “a Mongol has come to Badakshan.”

  “A spirit of evil,” he muttered, drawing back. “Hossein, good Hossein, a hundred gold mohars if you slay me this evil one.” The Mongol warrior had caught but one word of Nur-Jahan's speaking.

  “I am Berang Khan,” his deep voice growled.

  The words rolled gutturally from his chest.

  “In the mists along the river I lost my way. To this height I came, to see the better. Who is this prince?”

  He nodded his broad head at Alacha, and Nur-Jahan, who had picked up some fragments of the Tatar tongue in her early wandering through the northern lands, made quick, albeit broken reply.

  “A noble of Ind.”

  Berang took a step forward to peer with childlike interest at the first foeman who had crossed his path.

  Alacha waited for no more, sensing the menace in the fearless approach of the Khan. Berang in fact would have slain him the next moment had not the Turkoman drawn his knife and struck like a flash, reaching for his scimitar simultaneously.

  The Slayer had moved with feline quickness, but had made no allowance for Berang's mode of fighting. A born swordsman, the khan did not grasp his weapon hurriedly, but stepped back a short pace that brought Alacha's dagger-point down upon his broad chest instead of his throat.

  The slim blade snapped against the heavy mail, and when Alacha's scimitar slashed at his foeman's neck, Berang's short, heavy sword, curved like a crescent moon but square at the end, knocked the stroke aside as a bear sweeps down a deer's horn with a blow of the paw.

  Berang swung his weapon in a glittering circle of steel that knocked Alacha to earth, with crushed ribs and chest cut half in two under the severed Damascus mail. Under impact of such a blow the Slayer rolled
over twice on the grass and lay while air whistled through the cut in his side from the pierced lung.

  Then the khan wheeled alertly, seeing two figures glide into the moonlight. He checked the sweep of his sword as he saw them to be a turbaned cripple bearing a bow without arrows, and at his side a young girl.

  “Hossein,” observed Chan to Nur-Jahan, “will not come. For once the stomach of the Turk is filled—with arrows.”

  He stared at Berang eagerly. “You are from the Horde?” he cried. “What do you seek?”

  “A khan of the Afghans. Abdul Dost.”

  Chan turned to Tala, with whom he had waited for a day and a night, until the coming of Alacha. The Afghan girl was bending over the dying Turkoman, holding his head close to hers by the hair.

  “Now, O Slayer,” cried Chan, “look upon Death!”

  And in very truth it must have seemed to the dying Turkoman that he looked upon one who was dead, for the aspect of Tala's face and dress was like that of the woman who had died under his hand.

  “I swore an oath,” nodded the minstrel, “that Alacha should die, yet it has come to pass at another hand than mine.”

  Abruptly he ceased as Berang caught his shoulder, asking gruffly where he might find Abdul Dost. To the Tatar the death of a foe was a slight thing. But to the three others a tyrant had crumbled into dust, and Tala and Chan stared wide-eyed, even in their triumph.

  The minstrel pointed to the dark blotches of groves beyond the river, and to the distant summits of rolling hillocks half-veiled in the shimmering moonlight.

  “Yonder lie the Afghan lines,” he said. “Stay—I will guide you; two horses have I seized, that I might ride—”

  He had the gift of tongue, and Berang understood readily. He asked the position of the Mogul's lines, but Chan knew little of this. As they talked, Nur-Jahan stepped to the side of the dead noble, wondering slightly at the swift course of fate that had driven the ambitious, the ready-witted Alacha down into the shadows. His handsome face was turned up to the sky, the full mouth twisted in pain.

  “Tamam shud,” she murmured—“that is finished.”

  The thought came to her to escape while the others talked, yet on the instant the Mongol gripped her shoulder.