Swords of the Steppes

by Harold Lamb

  Over the wine, Sergei heard a voice down the table, "He's scented his beard with musk; he knows what women are." And another muttered that Timofeivitch would be a true protector for Chusavaya. A hard soul, with no soft spot.

  The first clash with Irmak came after the hunting. The Don riders had gone off with plenty of powder, and came back in a snowfall at the end of the day, tired but gleeful.

  "Thirty-six they downed," Irmak told Sergei.

  "I see no deer."

  The son of the Don laughed. "You will not eat this meat, comrade mine. We cleared the skulking Mordvas out of your woods with bullets."

  Stung, Sergei flung words at him, "You-No good will come of

  that!"

  "How, no good?" Irmak watched him, surprised. "Kill a few and the others will bow to you. Otherwise, I have had native arrows in me, boy. Your title to land is better if sealed with blood than with wax." Contemptuously he nodded, when Sergei did not speak. "You are still wet behind the ears."

  Sergei shivered, feeling cold, thinking of the blood that had dried long ago in Stroganoff lands. Thinking himself a coward, while this man at his side with the two-headed eagle on his chest had no fear. This man would survive the frontier, while he, Sergei, would not survive.

  The hunting of humans in the forest had stirred Irmak's blood, because he pounded with the kisten on the table boards that night and called for music with his meat. Some of his men were singing, telling their exploits. Sergei, looking down the row of scarred, openmouthed faces, could not eat. Pop Opanas sighed contentedly over his brandy, as if pleased with what he saw. "So then we'll be joyful," the priest doctor muttered.

  As if the hall of Chusavaya belonged to him, Irmak was calling for music and meat, ignoring Sergei. Irmak knew how to provoke a quarrel, and he had already won one dominion by slaying its master. So thought Pop Opanas, rattling the chains under his cassock.

  Then he gasped over his brandy. Ivga had come up to the table, clapping her hands. At this late feast they had not expected her, and at first the men from the Don paid little attention to her. But she came close to the long table opposite the icon stand, clapping her hands, and they saw that she had changed her shape. This Ivga was not the veiled girl who had kept beyond the candlelight at night.

  Sergei noticed how her face shone white, as if the blood had been drained from it. Her eyes slanting, half closed, avoided his. Pop Opanas saw how she held the cat's skull taken from the plochtyad, and how her woolskin jacket gleamed with the wet of snow, because she had come in from the night. When she stamped on the floor boards, the hair on the priest's skull stirred, because, instead of embroidered slippers, she wore moccasins of deerskin that left wet tracks.

  When Irmak saw her, his eyes creased as if searching for a trick. Her long hair tangled about her throat, her jacket swung open, showing her bare throat and the shape of her body under the thin long skirt. She smiled at him, and she made music by singing, stamping in time on the floor, drawing near him and retreating. "Tell me, Brother Eagle, is it far to your home—far to the skies of the Donetz shore?"

  One by one, the noisy atamans fell silent to listen to a song they knew. Pop Opanas thought, She has changed her shape to a witch woman, to a true lieshy coming out of the night to lure men after her with voice and eyes. Crossing himself he spat three times.

  Irmak stared at her body under the swaying jacket, and thumped the table with his steel staff. "Be quiet, dogs! She sings for me!"

  Then the blood rushed to his head, and he shouted, "To the devil with this! Go up to my room, girl!"

  Still smiling back at him, Ivga ran to the door that led to the stair. Ir-mak poured himself a beaker of brandy and got to his feet. The atamans stirred, grinning, to look at Sergei.

  "She is the guest of Chusavaya," said Sergei.

  Irmak Zark laughed. "She seeks the Eagle of the Don. You heard her, cub. Keep away."

  Carrying the beaker without spilling the brandy, he strode up the stair. When he did that, Sergei felt cold and weak. His hand reached to the wall behind him for the sword that was hanging there, and his fingers trembled as he buckled it on, following after Irmak, while Pop Opanas pattered at his heels. No one at the table came after them.

  Irmak stood within the open door of the great sleeping room, muttering. The room was empty. On the bed, the ermine coverlet lay smooth.

  "Oh, my!" breathed the lord of Sibir.

  Although the fire made the room hot, a cold current of air swayed the candle flames, billowing out the damask hanging on one wall. Instantly big Irmak went to it, pulling aside the hanging, seeing the blackness of a narrow door in the wall—the escape stair.

  Pop Opanas pushed in front of him, babbling, "Lieshy, lieshy beckoning you on! Don't follow her into the night!"

  "Lies!" cried Sergei.

  Irmak scowled at the priest, who was picking up a cat's skull from the floor. "Witch women and vampires don't sing to the Eagle of the Don. She's only a girl."

  But he hesitated long enough for Sergei to push by him down the narrow stair. Jumping clear into the stables, Sergei noticed that the wide door was open—a square of half-light showed—while the horses moved restlessly. One was missing.

  "She makes herself hard to catch, the darling," observed Irmak's voice behind him.

  The man from the Don was moving quickly, jerking a headstall upon a black horse and mounting without a saddle. He rode first, stooping down, through the low doorway, with Sergei close behind on his own horse.

  As the two had guessed, dark hoofprints traced a pattern out toward the forest in the fresh snow. An old moon hung low over the pines, and no snow came now from the clear sky. Sergei felt the bite of the night cold, and kneed his racing horse forward.

  He was passing the Siberian when they came under the trees. Swinging hard against him, Irmak forced him over, and a dead branch lashed his head. The pain stung him and drove the cold from him. From shadow to moonglow to shadow he followed Irmak, who had to pull in at times to watch the tracks in the snow. He thought only of reaching Ivga then, and taking her away with him. He did not think of Chusavaya.

  "Where is the mad girl heading?" muttered the Siberian as they swept under bare birches. Sergei knew she was heading for the river and the huts where she had ventured before. And out of the birches they galloped into the clearing, seeing her still on her shaggy pony in the moonlight by the blackness of the huts. As if held in her place, she waited for them.

  Sergei caught sight of the forest men first, where they crouched around the huts and the trees with their bows. Before he could shout or pull aside, he heard the sough of rope in the air. A loop caught his shoulders, jerking him back from his horse.

  He felt snow under his hands, and sound roared in his ears, changing swiftly to the familiar rush of the river close by. The rope pressed on his arm, and he threw it clear, seeing bent figures running at him. He smelled the grease on the bodies of the Mordva men who had trapped him, and Ivga, and the Siberian, who lay twisting on the ground beside him. At the same time he thought, They are frightened and dangerous because so many were hunted down. If they manage to kill the two of us they will not spare her.

  Because of the urgent need to calm the Mordva men, he rose, stepping toward them and speaking in the same moment, "Stop, animals, or you will be harmed! Stop and listen to me!"

  His voice sounded clear, and his mind assured him that these forest folk could not know yet that they had caught Stroganoff and Timofeivitch Irmak and the girl Ivga; they had caught only three Russians riding as if mad into the forest, and if they listened to him, he knew he could calm them. They were hesitating at his voice, drawing closer together, gripping their bows and spears.

  "If you harm us," he argued with them, "three hundred riders will come with guns to hunt you like wolves. If you help us, you will be rewarded."

  Out of the corner of his eye, he had seen Irmak rising to one knee, feeling at his belt, as if hurt. Suddenly the big man pulled a pistol from his belt, it flashed
and roared, and a man in front of them flopped into the snow.

  "Cut! Slash!" the Siberian shouted, swinging up his steel club. Frightened by the shot and the swirling smoke, the forest men chattered, huddling together.

  The shot rang in Sergei's ears as if it had been directed at him. The powder fumes stung his nostrils, and his mind told him clearly that unless he struck down this man, he would not live again himself. Now he was no longer afraid of himself, and he gripped his sword hilt, slashing at the steel club.

  Irmak turned and struck like a wolf. The spiked ball of the club tore across Sergei's chest, driving the breath out of him. "Now you have earned your death," he heard Irmak say.

  When he cut swiftly with the sword, the blade clanged off the plate where the two-headed eagle showed in the moonlight. Throwing himself forward, Sergei tried for the Siberian's head, feeling his blade parried, hearing Irmak laugh. But it made no difference now, to be laughed at. Heedless, he jumped forward to grip the other man and drive the steel sword into him.

  Without haste, Irmak stepped back to keep clear of Sergei's grasp. Instead of striking again, the Siberian edged back into shadow, keeping Sergei in the light, seeking with a sure instinct for the instant to crush the slight swordsman with a blow.

  Feeling behind him for good footing, he bent his body back from a sweep of the sword. Then, with a crash and a tearing of brush, he vanished. The dark patch of ground on which he had stood showed a black hole of crumbling dirt. Checking himself on the edge of the hole, Sergei peered down at black water rushing below him, thinking that the river bank had caved in here.

  The white blob of Irmak's face showed down there; his hand clawed out and his hoarse voice screamed. The steel that he wore, the powder horn and the bullet punch were pulling him under. When Sergei stretched a hand down mechanically, Irmak drew away under the water, downstream.

  Sergei stared at the black, rushing water, ice-cold to the touch. For a while he waited, hearing the piping voices of the forest folk, "Ai-ai!"

  When he was sure that Irmak would not come out of the water, he walked back into the moonlight and tossed away his sword. The forest men crouched at his coming, wondering at the man who had made the armored warrior spitting fire and thunder walk into the river. But Ivga had gone.

  The clearing showed no sign of her, and hoof tracks crisscrossed the snow carpet in a tangle, although he sought desperately for her tracks.

  "Which way?" he shouted at the tensely watching Mordvas. And they pointed up the knoll behind the huts. Loosening a purse of gold from his belt, he threw it to them, and ran and caught his horse, turning up the knoll.

  No path ran here, and the bare birches closed around him. But dark hoofprints led upward along the ground. The prints circled a nest of boulders and ended where Ivga waited in the gray mesh of the birches with the roar of the river rising behind her. Her eyes fastened on the man, and she pulled back on the reins as if mad. The horse, sensing the edge of the ground behind him, reared, circling. Sergei forced his horse forward and swung his arm around the girl, pulling her across to his knees, holding her tight, although she twisted away from him, staring up at him.

  "Ivga!" he said sharply. "Be quiet!"

  "You are not the same," she whispered "Your eyes and your voice are different."

  "I am the same."

  "No." She ceased straining away from him, and he felt her quick breath against his throat. Putting his arm under her wolf skin jacket, his fingers closed hard upon the soft flesh, and she became quiet, quivering. "I wanted to jump into the river," she said, "if one of you came after. Because he . . . and you were bewitched. And I—"

  "I was not bewitched, Ivga, girl."

  "Ai, you were. Your eyes saw only the runes in the books, your ears heard only the nasty whispering of Pop Opanas, your hands gave away what was yours to scheming men. You called for me to pour wine for your guest, Irmak, who had no such spell upon him. You were afraid."

  "Pop Opanas was afraid because you took the shape of a lieshy tonight."

  "I?" Ivga stared, shaking her head. "I could not go away from you to Moskva. I did not know what to do. Nay, I put on the garments of the road, and went out in the snow to pray at the shrine. I couldn't for the anger in me. Then I think I picked up the cat's skull to throw at you, because of that anger, and when I came in I heard your people calling for music for that beast Irmak. Where is he?"

  Holding Ivga's body close to his, feeling the tangle of her hair against his throat, Sergei no longer cared what had happened to Irmak. He thought that now there would be no more blood in the ground of Chusavaya, because he would see to that.

  "I ran away because I was frightened in the sleeping room." Her head pressed hard against his, and she sighed. "But where is he now?"

  "Drowned."

  Suddenly Ivga began to cry. "Ai, that will be a calamity for you. His men will storm—Pop Opanas will say I am guilty, and I am. The tsar in Moskva—" She wiped at her eyes. "Now you are well, and I will go on the road to Moskva to explain."

  "No," said Sergei. He did not need to think about that, hearing Ivga's voice so close to him. Her hand touched his face, and she tried to wipe the blood away from it with her hair, sobbing. "Listen," he bade her. "That's little to care about. Let Pop Opanas say Irmak was drowned by a marsh witch. His men will say it was the two-headed eagle upon the steel armor that killed him. And when his body is taken to Moskva, the tsar will have Siberia for his own dominion, will he not?"

  Ivga lay quiet under his arm, thinking. "Is all that true, Sergei? You are so wise to think of it. I—I can't read or know such things. I am only a girl."

  Sergei laughed, looking at the old moon over her bowed head. "That is sufficient," he said.

  Sangar

  Chilogir, the second, rather more than two hundred years ago, resembled very much his paternal ancestor, the hero, the sword-slayer. On a bluff overlooking a ford in the Yenesei under the snow summits of the Syansk, Chilogir sat his pony, his eyes alert and inquisitive, his leathern face puckered with interest. Yet Chilogir was not known by his skill with the sword; he was sangar, a worker of white magic.

  He was a gray-haired gnome, an armored dwarf, whose steel-pointed helmet rose scarcely higher than the bare brush of the snow-covered steppe. He was watching the approach of an enemy.

  A solitary Cossack was splashing across the ford looking about him like one who had lost his way, as indeed he had. The Cossack regiment that had been sent from Lake Balkash across the Mongolian marches some thousand miles had been freely bled.

  It was by then heading back—what remained of it—with a plentitude of wounds to lick and a few captured horses to drive before it.

  Borasun had strayed to look for horses. His own mount was badly lamed by an arrow.

  Limping across the ford, he scanned the bluff for hostile heads, and searched the snow for hoof marks. Except at the short ravine in front of him the bank rose from the deep water of the Yenesei and Borasun did not see Chilogir until he had mounted the bluff.

  "U-ha, Tatar!" he cried. "I want your horse. As for you, old dog face, I'll drop you in the river like a bird with a broken neck."

  "Alash!" grunted the Tungusi, edging his pony forward for a rush. Bo-rasun also moved forward to put ground between him and the brink of the bank.

  Watchfully, they circled. As Borasun had lost his pistols and Chilogir had not his bow with him, both had drawn their swords.

  The Tatar saw a slender Cossack with mild brown eyes, hardly more than a boy, but with a long arm and a straight back. Borasun was the most unruly of the atamans of the unfortunate regiment—his regiment that had been ordered to harry the Tatars. Half his childhood had been spent in the forests by the rushing Dnieper, or wandering half naked in the Volga steppe.

  He had learned early in life the use of a dozen weapons, and seen his masters-at-arms shot down or planted on stakes by Turk and Tatar. Danger was as the breath in his nostrils. Men said an elf of madness danced in his brain.

&
nbsp; Once Borasun had dragged the carpets from a mosque near Stamboul, at the threshold of Bagche Serai itself, and had used the carpets for his horse to trample on. He had taken the silk and cloth-of-silver garments of a Polish knight and put them on, only to jump into a tar barrel to show how little he cared for such things.

  It was said of him that he had drunk himself snorting with vodka, had leaped in, with boots and coat, to swim the Dnieper—a thing no sober man would care to do. His inn chimney was a steppe fire, and his chair a saddle.

  And now Borasun had turned back across the Yenesei among the Tatars for a horse.

  Chilogir rushed, slashing at head and stomach. His scimitar gritted on Borasun's saber and he barely avoided the return sweep of the youth's blade.

  "To one of us, death; the other, life," shouted the Cossack. "Come back, toad, I can't ride after you—"

  The swords clashed, parted and clashed again. Borasun sent the Tatar's helmet spinning over the bluff into the water. Rendered wary by this, Chilogir circled.

  Borasun laughed at him and urged his limping horse forward. This time the old man's scimitar brushed his cheek.

  "A good one, that!" Borasun pressed forward. "U-ha!"

  The quick turns of the Tatar had brought him too near the edge of the bank. The earth gave away under the pony's hind hoofs. Clawing at the bank, warrior and horse disappeared.

  Dismounting, the young ataman of the Cossacks went to the edge of the bluff some three spear-lengths above the water. He saw the Tatar pony swim against the swift current toward the ford, an arrow-shot away; but the Tatar gnome with Turkish mail under his sheepskin floundered and sank.

  "Well, the horse is gone, no doubt of it," thought Borasun, "and his master will soon be spitting water in-unless—"