Swords of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  Chapter XIX The End of the Road

  "Gregory Otrepiev," Nada mused, "would have gone down to that city. He would like to see what the ruins are and what people live there."

  "Eagles live there," Kirdy made answer, "and vipers—not men."

  "We will soon know. At least someone has gone down the trail."

  That much the Cossack had already ascertained. He had seen tracks in a cascade of soft earth, where one horse had rubbed against the slope and another had trampled the fresh dirt. They were halfway down the traverse road, and the worst of it was before them. That slide of earth told a story of frightened horses rearing back, and riders hovering over eternity.

  But Otrepiev had gone on, and Kirdy meant to follow. He bade Nada dismount, and took the rein of the bay stallion. The hardy Tartar ponies kept their footing wisely, but the charger was all nerves. The Cossack talked to him, and Nada coaxed, and it was one of the ponies that missed a short jump and hurtled, screaming, down the face of the cliff, with a thunder of rock and loosened dirt.

  The charger took the jump with a yard to spare, and it needed all Na-da's weight on the rein to keep him from plunging ahead with the sudden spurt of a high-strung horse that thinks danger lurks behind him.

  "Well done!" Kirdy cried, as the girl quieted the bay stallion. "Here Otrepiev lost one of his mounts." A speck on the valley bed had caught his eye—a cluster of vultures that had dined on something.

  Obviously something a day or more old, because a score of the flapping creatures rose into the air to investigate the Tartar pony that had finally stopped, an inert huddle, not so far away. The distance was too great to make out whether they had been feeding on a horse or a man, but Kirdy prayed that it was a horse and that Otrepiev, who had led him across the Earth Girdle, still lived on the plateau, now near at hand.

  And Nada read his mind with a single glance.

  "What will you do, White Falcon, when you meet with Otrepiev?"

  "Bid him to sabers."

  Both had jumped to the same conclusion at once. If Otrepiev and his companion were living and on the plateau, they might well have noticed the fall of the pony and the miniature avalanche that set a hundred echoes flying. If they happened to be on the cliff side of the city, they might have seen the two pursuers.

  "So the Cossack says." Nada tossed her head. "And what, O my hero, if both fools die—and I am left alive with the tsar's dog, who has been trained since birth to torture, and who carries a sword as long as himself? Take heed! If you must fight Otrepiev, agree with him as to that. But first do you and he and the other band together to journey safely back across the Earth Girdle."

  Kirdy frowned and shook his head. The sun was well up by now and the glare of it against the white limestone had made him throw off the tattered sable coat, so that he walked in a worn red shirt, slashed and stained where he had been wounded. His lean head was dark as the long hair that fell over one shoulder—Nada, considering him, thought that he did look like a falcon, swift and merciless.

  "If Otrepiev were a true Cossack, or even a boyarin of honor, I would do that," he made response curtly. "But he has betrayed men too often."

  "And if he comes to you sick, asking aid?"

  Kirdy laughed grimly.

  "Let him first do it."

  "He has another with him, and he himself is a match for you. What if the other draws and strikes when your blade is turned against Otrepiev?"

  Again the Cossack laughed shortly, touching the splendid hilt of his curved sword.

  "God gives. I desire only that."

  Under veiling lashes, the girl looked at him steadily, and a sudden purpose made her tingle.

  "Nada," Kirdy said gravely, "whatever happens, you must not draw that plaything, the yataghan."

  "Could I draw against the man in black with the sword that is longer than I?" she demanded reasonably. "And would you suffer me to stand against Otrepiev?"

  She sighed and fell silent—unwontedly silent. Kirdy became grimly intent on their surroundings. They had reached the foot of the ramp, and here a shelving ledge allowed them to walk opposite the plateau.

  They discovered what had been concealed from sight until now. Somewhere in the mountains a river had its source, a river that foamed down in flood when Winter loosened its hold on the heights, but that now was no more than a bed of round stones far below them.

  This river ran, in season, between the mountainside and the mass of the plateau where the city stood. During countless ages it had eaten through the soft stone and clay until it formed a chasm. The chasm was thirty yards or so across—its depth unguessable.

  And now there was no doubt at all that the city on the plateau had been built by men. The ruin of a wall ran along the rim across the defile. The wall had been built of hewn stone blocks, and the Cossack knew that this city of the Golden Horde had been invulnerable to attack. No enemy, advancing down the ramp and forming, shelterless, along the ledge, could have stormed the city wall.

  The other three sides of the plateau looked unclimbable. Probably there was—or had been—a way down from the city to the lower valley. But this other road, being hung on the face of a cliff, could not be stormed. The

  city, then, could not have been taken by an enemy from without. Why had

  it been abandoned? Kirdy was too busy finding a way across the chasm to wonder.

  His search for a while was fruitless. The river that had cut the plateau from the mountain a thousand centuries ago, had done its work well— except at one spot. Here he had noticed twin gate towers rising on the other side. Since these towers must have defended the entrance, he led the way along the ledge toward them, praying that the bridge, or whatever it might be, was still standing.

  So at midday they reached the gate and found not a bridge man-made, but an arch of limestone that spanned the chasm.

  Once the river must have plunged underground here—or dipped below a broad shelf of rock to thunder over a fall. The rock bridge had been worn by the elements until at the middle a tall man's arms might have spanned it. Also, it had been eaten down to the center.

  In the white dust atop the limestone were the tracks of a horse and two men, leading fairly through the opening between the towers—where a barrier of wood and iron must have stood in other years.

  "Go last, Nada!" Kirdy swept the ruined wall, the expanse between the towers, with a swift glance and started down the natural bridge, leading the charger. If his enemies were hidden in the ruins with so much as a pistol or a bow between them, he would fare badly; but he felt no fear, and the proof of it was that the charger followed him willingly, with only a pricking of ears and shortening of strides. The ponies ambled across indifferently, and Nada brought up the rear, laughing.

  A blazing sun, beating on the white dust of streets and the gray and red ruins, half blinded them, and a vagrant wind clutched at them. They stood within sight of what had been the registan, the open square of the city.

  Here a gray scum of tamarisk impeded progress, and the crumbling stone was covered with thorn and creepers. A sluggish gray snake with mottled red back crept past their feet. Remembering that little water remained in the goatskins, Kirdy investigated a pool of water that lay between two houses. It was bordered with sparkling salt incrustations, and small plants covered with brilliant orange and red berries. A glance convinced the Cossack that the water was undrinkable, the berries inedible.

  Then his head jerked up, and the horses moved restlessly.

  "O—ho—o! O—HO—O! O—ho!"

  Someone had laughed and started up the echoes again. It was a mad, exulting laugh that seemed anything but human. It might mean that they were both watched and mocked, or their presence entirely unsuspected. Nada shivered and drew closer to Kirdy.

  "Let us go to the palace. I think it is yonder on the height. From there we can see."

  Taking the horses, which were as precious as life itself, the Cossack wound through vine-cumbered alleys and over fallen walls to an edifi
ce that was marked by several stone columns, still standing. He avoided the registan and the wider streets, and only paused when in a bed of clay or sand he saw scattered bones that had fallen away from the skeleton of a man.

  Not long before, he had come upon rows of tombs—square chambers of granite sunk into the earth and surmounted by stone pyramids. Several of these tombs stood open, and he had gone into one.

  "An evil fate came upon this place," he muttered to Nada. "Here be many bodies lying in the houses, and few in the tombs. How did it happen that the men of the Horde died in dwellings and were not buried?"

  Nada only shook her head. But when they had climbed out of the alleys to a brick roadway that led up to a granite-flagged courtyard, she gasped. The place was large enough for the tents of a whole tribe.

  Slender aspens and twisted oaks, thrusting through the stones, had grown to full stature in the years since the city had been deserted. And from the courtyard a stairway of veined marble ascended to the pillars.

  At the summit of the stair Kirdy pushed aside a mesh of undergrowth and stepped through to what had been an anteroom of the palace. From here other stairs led up to the central hall, marked by the columns still standing and by others like prone giants, fallen across the ruins.

  He was hidden from the sight of anyone in the city below by the fringe of tamarisks and trees around the knoll. But by climbing to the dais at the far end he had a view of the more distant portion of the city, and the first thing he saw was a line of smoke rising from an open spot. A horse was picketed near the smoke, and the horse was not saddled.

  "Hai," he cried, "there is the camp of Otrepiev." Although he watched

  attentively for some moments, he could see no men moving among the ruins. Nada sat down, chin on hand, to gaze up at the Earth Girdle they had left that morning—the bulwarks of mighty mountains, rising into wisps of clouds, through which appeared at times the snow of the summits. The sun shone out of a blazing sky, and eagles, floating against the gray veil of mist, were sharply etched as black jewels sewn upon silk.

  So Nada mused. But Kirdy, striding up and down the dais, was burning with impatience.

  "It is the end of the road," he laughed. "I shall seek the false Dmitri, and you—"

  "I shall stay here with the horses."

  He turned in his stride to frown and think. He did not want to part from the girl, but to take her and the horses—no, the danger was below.

  "Abide here, then," he advised her, "and if God sends misfortune to me and I come not by the next dawn, take the stallion and go up the pass without halting."

  "God and His holy angels keep you, White Falcon."

  So she responded, without looking at him, her lips close pressed and her eyes shut. She heard the grating of steel as he tried his sword in its scabbard, and his steps moving away, down the hall of the columns.

  He left the palace at a spot where he could not be seen, and struck through the hollows until he reached the edge of the registan again. Here he sighted the thin line of smoke and ran, crouching, from ruin to ruin, stopping at times to listen with his head close to the ground.

  But Nada remained without moving, chin on hand, gazing up at the Earth Girdle, listening to the horses that were grazing upon the bushes and scattered grass. So she sat, wondering why she had determined to stay where she was, in spite of the grief that chilled her veins and heart, until a voice near at hand aroused her.

  "So, little Nada, you have kept your promise. Behold, I have kept mine!"

  Blinking—for the sun was full in her eyes—she turned and saw Gregory Otrepiev sitting on a block of marble upon the dais and smiling at her.

  His powerful arms rested on his knees, and the woman in her took note of the rents and tears in the long coat that covered his rusted armor. A scruff of beard had grown over his chin, and his long blue eyes gleamed from his dark skin.

  "My court," he said, "is small, yet when you sit at my feet I am more honored than any emperor."

  Her lips parted to cry out, when she remembered that the Cossack was far beyond hearing. Then, too, she saw Otrepiev's courtier. A man taller than Kirdy leaned on a five-foot sword, holding in the crook of his arm the silvered casque with the eagle crest of the false Dmitri. His black satin garments were gray with dust, and his drawn, sun-blackened face was expressionless as a mask. His lips smiled.

  "My armorer, my counselor, my equerry and executioner!" Otrepiev waved a scarred hand at the torturer. "Faith, lass, he stands upon the edge of madness. 'Twas his laugh enriched this silence a while ago and spurred your Cossack on to stalk my camp. I love him like a brother." His restless eyes roamed the ruins. "By the Horned One, here are five good horses!"

  "Have you ever kept a promise, False Dmitri?"

  "Rarely—only when it suited me. The weak promise when they have no other surety. Nay, I said to you—'I will make myself master of that city beyond the Earth Girdle.' Have you forgotten? I think not. So I sit on what is left of the throne."

  "Yet you are not master here."

  Otrepiev considered her.

  "I could find fault in you for telling me of this place—Satan's playground! What a city! Majestic it may be, but empty—too empty."

  "Have you not seen, or heard, its people?"

  "If you mean the wild Cossack—I saw him climbing up the pass with you. It was a goodly sight, but it puzzled me. In the battle of the tribes I saw him riding at me, and how was I to know whether the pair of you came to render allegiance or put me in my grave? Which was it?"

  Nada's dark eyes surveyed him steadily, and she did not speak.

  "Well," Otrepiev mused aloud, "if the fellow is your lover, you must have lost your wit. When I found your city to be an empty shell, I occupied myself with preparing a reception for my pursuers, watching you descend that accursed path. I sent my faithful servitor to set up a camp within plain sight—a smoking fire and a foundered horse. By now your Cossack is squatting on his haunches near it—we saw him circle it. But I was here, behind this dais, before you came. When he returns to you we will be waiting."

  "The people of this city are the dead. We heard them ride upon the Earth Girdle."

  "Doubtless. They did not trouble my dreams. But we shall strike east from here. The valley below has a pleasant look."

  "You are not master of this place, Otrepiev, because it is peopled with the dead!"

  The man on the marble throne slab smiled.

  "I remember now, little Nada, you said that peace was to be found here. A beautiful girl may be pardoned a bad jest—"

  "But you are not dead, Otrepiev—how can you be lord of this Horde?"

  "Ah, you are grinding wheat to look for chaff. What matter, if you have come to sit at my feet?"

  The close-set blue eyes blazed upon her restlessly.

  Whenever Otrepiev spoke, neither eyes nor hands were still, and yet his voice was full and deep. A man of great physical strength, acting impulsively, he made no secret of his delight in Nada's beauty and youth. He addressed her as a child to be humored—a woman to be desired.

  He glanced down at the ruined hall of columns.

  "Eh, little Nada, the weeds and lizards keep the court of ancient kings. Was this place built by an emperor of Cathay, or by the Macedonian, Alexander, who made himself master of the world? I might have aroused the Muscovites as he did the Macedonians, except for one thing—supersti-tion. The beast would not come out of its stall! I showed them the path of glory, and they hearkened to the chants of bald priests. I brought to Moscow a Polish bride, and they cringed. Fools!"

  He shrugged and smiled wryly.

  "How fared the lady of Sandomir? She was a painted stick beside you, Nada, lass. Eh—eh!"

  The girl stood up, tossing back the mass of gleaming hair from her shoulders. The heat of the day had been so great she had thrown off her svitza and was clad only in white linen shirt and slender embroidered vest, over the loose Turkish trousers.

  "A handsome Cossack—hi, Feodor!" Otrepi
ev looked up at the silent headsman.

  "I am here," Nada said, "at your feet. But if you would so much as touch me with your hand, you must first overpower me with the sword."

  Otrepiev frowned, and then his brow cleared.

  "Why, so you said in the steppes. I will do it at once, my lass."

  "And will you wear mail, my lord, in facing a woman's sword?"

  For an instant Otrepiev hesitated, and Nada laughed at him.

  "Do you fear the Cossack, then, O my emperor?"

  "Not I—nor shall you mock me."

  Otrepiev cast loose his cloak, and the tall Feodor assisted him out of the rusty mail shirt.

  Otrepiev turned to the brief bit of weapon play with the relish that he felt in anything that diverted his thoughts. His restlessness covered black brooding, and he dreaded to be left to himself; when another was with him he talked constantly, and until his flight from the Tartars he drank heavily of the spirits among his stores. He had been morose since the defeat of the Turkomans, whom he had expected to sweep over Tevakel Khan, but Nada's coming had restored his good humor. It was a good omen— the girl and fresh horses.

  "To one, death," Nada breathed, "to the other, life!"

  Otrepiev lowered his blade and glanced at her keenly. Her face was ashen, and her lips trembled as she spoke the Cossack salutation before a duel.

  "Answer me one question!" he demanded. "Do you love this Cossack?"

  Nada flushed and met his eyes fairly.

  "Aye—the White Falcon has my love. When we met in Moscow he was master of my heart, and it was to follow him that I joined you in the steppe. You—the traitor that played at kingship. In the steppes he took leadership among the Tartars, and it was he who overthrew you and the Turkomans. But he has thought that I serve you, and he has no faith in me."

  "The devil!" said Otrepiev thoughtfully.

  The next instant, with eye and foot and hand, he was fighting for his life.

  Nada had sprung at him as a Cossack rushes, recklessly, raining cut upon cut. Surprised, Otrepiev gave ground a little, and settled himself to parry the flashing blade that darted at his throat and slashed at his side.