Swords of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

"And we will pull you out by the hair," the boyarin roared.

  "Once you were whipped, but now you want a taste of the sword."

  An ax thudded into the stout logs of the door, and Kirdy heard the Muscovite cursing steadily. He thought no more of explanations, because he believed Tatikof had come to seize Nada in the general looting. The boya-rin did not look like a man who would forgive a lash of the whip.

  It was true that Kirdy could have opened the door and allowed the house to be searched. But he knew that he could give no good account of

  himself, and Tatikof would torture the tribesmen to find where the girl had gone.

  "The Urusses are angry," Toghrul observed at his elbow.

  "Aye—blood is to be shed. Have ye bows? Arrows? Then go with thy comrade to the openings. Send the first shaft at the bearded mirza with the steel hat. In a little, come down and watch the window at the side."

  The house was in utter darkness, and Kirdy himself in the dining hall where he could listen to all that went on. Karai stalked from front to rear, his eyes glowing yellow. In a moment a bow snapped, then another. A man cried out. Muskets roared, but still the sharp snap of the bowstrings was to be heard.

  "Down with the torches!" Tatikof's deep voice ordered.

  Kirdy knew that the lights were being quenched in the snow—knew too that the moon was over the housetops and Toghrul had eyes like a cat. The firelocks barked at the house, but the thick walls stopped the bullets, and the Muscovites must have found the arrows too much for them, because the axes ceased work, and silence fell. Presently the two warriors emerged out of blackness.

  "O Cossack," Toghrul proclaimed moodily, "the bearded chieftain wears too much iron. We hurt him but did not slay. Three are down, and the other Urusses be very angry."

  "They are at the back."

  The axes began anew on the lighter door, and Kirdy posted the other servitor at the side window, while he sought out logs from the hearth to prop up the rear door. Toghrul experimented with his arrows at the nearby window and discovered that he could do little damage, while the bullets from the pistols of the Muscovites drew blood from him.

  "The Urusses will not enter by the windows," Kirdy said to him. "The door will not stand for long. It is better to run out than to be hunted from room to room. Go thou and count how many are at the front."

  He went himself and lifted down two of the three bars at the street door, and ran back when he heard boards splintering on the stable side. It seemed to him that the greater part of the assailants were at this point where no arrows could reach them. From the window he could make out a mass of forms in the haze of moonlight—Tatikof, his long sword drawn, urging them on.

  Then he felt Karai stiffen against his leg. A wolf howled faintly, not far away. Again the sound drifted through the open window, nearer. Then the door began to fly apart.

  Footsteps pattered over the floor behind him, and he turned with bare saber outflung. Toghrul panted at him.

  "Down the street the khanum comes. She cried out to me. Come now, Cossack!"

  Together they leaped through the hall, calling to the other man to follow, and Karai, wild with excitement, jumped upon the door when Kirdy threw off the last bar. They heard the boots of the Muscovites thudding behind them.

  "Follow!" Kirdy cried.

  He kicked the door back and ran down the steps that Karai leaped without effort. Several halberdiers, leaning on their long weapons, started up, and two horsemen gathered up their reins. Kirdy knocked down the first spear thrust at him, jumped aside from a second, cutting the man deep in the shoulder as he did so.

  Wrenching his blade clear, he parried a slash from one of the mounted boyars—a heavy man, too clumsy to wheel his horse for a second cut. He saw Karai leap silently at a third Muscovite—heard the fellow scream and a pistol roar.

  Toghrul was before him now, speeding like a shadow through the gateposts. Down the street in a smother of snow the light sleigh of Nada was coming, a rider on one of the three black horses holding in the others. This, Kirdy thought, must be Karabek, and he had found Nada. It was brave of the girl to come back for Toghrul.

  But he could not see Nada in the sleigh. Standing up, waving at him, was a young Cossack in a long black coat and a glittering girdle. Gloved, booted, and armed, the Cossack might have ridden thus out of the siech, the mother of warriors. Behind the sleigh, their reins caught in one of the youth's hands, Kirdy's two ponies reared and plunged, frightened by the clash of steel and roar of firelocks.

  The sleigh came abreast the gate as Kirdy ran up, and the strange Cossack laughed at him. By that laugh he knew Nada, though her long gleaming hair was hidden under the kalpak and the upturned collar of her coat.

  "Come," she cried, drawing back to make room for him. A second the sleigh halted, and Toghrul scrambled to the back of one of the ponies, jerking the rein free as he did so. A bullet whistled past Kirdy's head, and over his shoulder he saw Tatikof whipping through the gate, his feet feeling for the stirrups that he had failed to grip when he leaped into the saddle.

  Kirdy acted almost without thought. He turned on his heel, ran at the Muscovite's big stallion, while Tatikof snatched at the sword on his far side. He did not draw the sword.

  The flat of Kirdy's saber smote him across the eyes—his leg was gripped by a powerful arm, and he was off-balance, half-dazed by the blow. Tatikof fell on his back beside the stallion, and Kirdy, who had caught the saddle-horn, leaped up, finding stirrups before he gripped the rein.

  Then he wheeled the powerful charger against the boyarin who had first fired at him, and who followed Tatikof through the gate. Two blades flashed and clanged in the moonlight—the shoulder of the black stallion took the flank of the other horse and the boyarin reeled, groaning. Calling off the raging Karai, the young warrior wheeled the stallion again, gripped firm with knees and rein, and raced beside the sleigh.

  "Nay, come with me, Nada! I go to the river gate."

  He saw some of the men-at-arms run out, and a bullet or two whistled past without harm. The other servant must have gone down at the door because he was not to be seen. Nada clapped her gloved hands and sank down on the seat.

  "With the flat of the blade!" she cried gleefully. "In his beard Tatikof took it, and he went down like—like a speared boar. It was good to see!"

  The rider of the off-horse whipped on his three steeds; the bells of the arched collars chimed faster and faster. They began to gallop, and then to race through the silent streets, as leaves whirl before the breath of the storm.

  "It was so," the men of the guard at the river gate reported to their captain, Margeret, the Frenchman, next morning. "No vodka had been given us. But we saw them—three horses black as the pit, and the Cathayan standing up in his stirrups, with his hat gone and his eyes gleaming, and a Cossack in the sleigh singing like one of the angels from Heaven, and a wolf following them. It was so!"

  No one had challenged them.

  Throughout Mother Moscow the tale grew and passed from lip to lip. It was whispered at first then said openly that Dmitri who had been tsar had escaped the weapons of the nobles.

  Warriors who had gone into the Kremyl remembered that a man had been seen to jump from the lower windows of the Terem into the courtyard. A groom of the imperial stables repeated that three Turkish horses had been saddled by order of the tsar and held in readiness. No one knew what had become of the horses—though the groom was put to the torture.

  Then there came a rumor from Kolumna, the nearest town in the east, that Dmitri had been seen there the night of his downfall.

  The elder princes of the council debated and gave out that this must be a lie. The body that had lain in the public square during these three days of bloodshed was solemnly burned, and the ashes fired from the mouth of a cannon. Tatikof was sent with a hundred riders to Kolumna, and there peasants pointed out the keeper of the road tavern as the one who had spoken with the false Dmitri.

  "Bring him to me," the great boyarin said,
and added sternly, "The traitor is dead, so you could not have seen him."

  The tavern-keeper came, fear-ridden, and told his tale. In that evening four travelers had drawn up at his dram shop. They were escorting a sledge. They had loosed the girths of their horses but had not unsaddled. This was at milking time. During the night they played chess and did not get drunk or go to sleep.

  Along in the cold hours—so said the innkeeper—other horses had galloped up. These were dobra koniaka—fine horses. From one, his great mightiness the tsar had dismounted, and called for veal and white wine. He had been served, while the first four riders were harnessing the ponies to the sledge; evidently they had been waiting for the coming of his serene mightiness. They all talked together, and then the tsar called for parchment and a goose quill and ink.

  The others—fine young gentlemen—had remonstrated with him. They seemed to be impatient to get on. But the tsar laughed and wrote some words on the parchment, folded it and directed that it be kept until called for—

  "By whom?" demanded Tatikof.

  "By the serene, great elder princes or by Michael Tatikof, so it please ye."

  The agent of the boyars started and frowned, and frowned still more when the master of the tavern produced the letter as evidence of his honesty.

  "A hundred devils!" cried Tatikof, who was to read it. "Has anyone seen this?"

  "Aye, your nobility! A batko, a priest it were. He read it to the travelers who came after the illustrious prince."

  "May dogs tear you! Why was it read to others?"

  "Because, when I told them the tale, they said I lied. I showed them the letter, and still they said I lied, because none could read. So they summoned the priest from the church, and he came and read it aloud, and then they knew I was telling the truth. There was no harm?"

  "Harm!" Tatikof's red face grew darker. "Who were these people that had the letter read?"

  The worthy taverner scratched his head and began to bow, because fear was growing upon him.

  "Eh, they were fine folk. They were two young princes from over the border, only God knows where. One had long eyes like a girl, and a gold girdle—"

  "And a dog?"

  "Oh, aye, a borzoi it were, like a wolf."

  "Dolt! It was a girl dressed as a Cossack, and a Cathayan."

  The purple scar on the forehead of the boyarin flamed as he thought of Nada and Kirdy.

  "What way did they go?"

  "May it please your nobility, they bought meat and wine and forage for the horses and departed along the snow road, yesterday morning, eastward."

  "Have any others seen this paper?"

  "Not a soul! Only listen, I swear—"

  The master of the tavern fell on his knees, and his mouth opened in dull horror. He had seen Tatikof draw and prime a pistol. The boyarin stepped forward and lowered the muzzle quickly, and the weapon roared in the man's ear.

  "Devil take him!" Tatikof muttered, when his companions ran up at the shot, "I had not thought there were brains in his skull."

  A second time he read the missive, though it was short:

  Veliki boyare domnui [mighty nobles of the council]—greeting! We are grievously angered by the rebellion of our servants in the city of our governance, Moscow. The time is not distant when your insolence will be chastened by our just anger!

  It was signed simply Dmitri Ivanovitch—Dmitri, Son of Ivan.

  And before he left Kolumna, Tatikof was careful to see that the priest who had been unfortunate enough to set eyes on this letter disappeared

  from human sight. This accomplished, he hastened on with his escort, eastward, to the frontier.

  From time to time they heard of the sledge and the seven riders led by the daring impostor, and once they halted where the fugitives had camped. From this point on, there was only the one road leading to the Volga.

  But they never saw the Volga. They approached near enough to see the smoke of a burning frontier post, and to pick up several fugitives who told them the Tartar tribes across the Volga had risen only a few days before. Muscovite officials along the frontier had been slain, and isolated garrisons massacred.

  Clouds of fur-clad Nogai Tartars were visible on the skyline, restless and merciless as hungering eagles. By night, farms burned like torches along the river. Further pursuit of the false Dmitri was not to be thought of, when fire and sword gutted the border.

  Bewildered, encumbered by the fleeing, driven by fear of the Tartar arrows, the boyars reined back to Kolumna, and it was weeks before Nogai prisoners were brought in by a patrol of Muscovite cavalry. The elder princes put the captives to the torture at once.

  The Nogais swore that Dmitri himself had appeared among them and had shown them an apple and an imperial baton set with jewels. Surely he had been the great Khaghan, the Nogais said! He had summoned them to arms, they who lived by the sword and desired nothing more than raiding. For the rest, they knew nothing.

  The captives were put on stakes and left to wriggle away their lives, and the council of the nobles met in solemn session. There was no longer the slightest doubt that the false Dmitri lived and had taken with him many of the crown jewels.

  He had foreseen the conspiracy against him—and had fled before the boyars could seize him. He had slain the unfortunate Bouthinski in his own bed and had leaped from the window of the sleeping chamber. On fast horses, with his intimate followers, he had raced on to where the sledge with his plunder and stores awaited him.

  Had he intended the Muscovites to believe him or had he tricked them daringly only to gain a few days' start? They did not know.

  This strange being had valued a jest more than his own head because he had made a last gesture of defiance, at Kolumna—the letter to the boyars. And yet—these gray-haired princes cherished grave doubts—was not this letter a new scheme? The career of the false tsar had not ended. He had wealth, followers and allies of a sort among the tribes. What new evil would he bring forth to add blood to that already shed?

  "As for Gregory Otrepiev," Tatikof counseled them—the impostor's true name was known by now—"we cannot slay him. He, who has blasphemed against God, will fall by the hand of the Almighty. Yet the rumors that he lives must be answered. Already factions are forming against us, and soon brother may draw weapon against brother. Great seigneurs, let us say to the world that this Otrepiev was a fiend. Though we slew his body he has appeared as a spirit."1

  And Monsieur Bertrand, who was preparing to leave Moscow and its savages, coined one of his bons mots upon hearing this:

  "If ever a fiend," he pronounced, "deserved to immortal, Otrepiev, the False Dmitri, is he."

  More than once Tatikof pondered the fate of Nada and the strange Ca-thayan, but they had disappeared as if the steppe had swallowed them with their horses and wolfhound.

  1

  Rumors that the false Dmitri still lived were succeeded by a tale that he was a vurdalak, a vampire in human form. Captain Margeret has left in his memoirs a picture of the chaos wrought by the impostor—"The council, the people, the country divided one against another, beginning new treasons. The provinces, unable to know for a long time what had happened, revolted."

  Chapter IX Black Smoke Ahead

  When there is a black smoke ahead, the fool rides on the trail rejoicing; the coward turns back, but the wise man leaves the road and watches all things attentively.

  Mongol proverb

  The first day out of Kolumna, Kirdy and Nada covered seventy miles, for the horses were fresh and were shod against frost with cleats. The light sleigh slipped over the hard snow like a feather, and the big stallion kept up gamely. He was a Podolian breed, up to the Turkish racers in speed, and indifferent to cold.

  Toghrul—who had plastered his cuts with mud and thought no more of them—observed the brown charger shrewdly when they halted that evening, off the trail, and remarked to Kirdy that they could not take the Pod-olian after the forage had given out. In the open steppe, only native-breds, trained
to dig under the snow for grass and moss, could survive.

  "Why do you say the open steppe?" Kirdy asked, looking up from grooming down the charger. "God grant that we overtake Otrepiev before leaving the river!"

  The trail for that day had followed the frozen bed of the little Okka, running through forests for the most part. They had passed two or three small villages where they had been told that Otrepiev's party had passed on, to the east.

  "A falcon is swifter in its stoop than the great golden eagle," responded the old man after a moment, "but the eagle is not easily tired. Bak Allah! We have six ponies; they have twenty. By changing saddles they can avoid pursuit."

  "Canst thou follow the slot of their sledge?"

  "Not here. There be too many tracks that come and go. Out on the steppe it is different."

  Kirdy was silent while the two men cooked the supper and not until the fire had been replenished, and Nada had settled herself by it in a skin, did he speak.

  "There must be talk between us. What road do you take?"

  "'Whither goest thou?' the kite asks of the wind. Nay, ouchar, since you ran from my house with halberdiers tumbling all over you, like marionettes, you have given orders to my men. You lingered with the taverner at Kolumna—aye, and the priest, and it is no fault of yours that the boyars did not ride up then and take us." She laughed softly, pulling the paws of the bearskin over her slender shoulders. "And now after two days and two nights, you frown and ask the road of me!"

  Kirdy kneeled beside her on his saddle cloth. Until now he had asked no questions of Nada—why she wore the garments of a Cossack—why she was fleeing to the east.

  "I am no longer an ouchar—a fledgling," he responded in his slow drawl. "Once the Cossack brothers gave me a name. They gave me also work to do, and that is why I issued commands to your men."

  "Did the sir brothers bid you go to my house when it was surrounded by foes?"

  "Nay, my horses were there—I had thought so. Besides you might have been there, and Tatikof sought you with no gentle hand."

  "Oh, it is clear to me now." Nada smiled, unseen. "You are a true Cossack, White Falcon. First you think of horses, then of the divchina, the maiden."