Rusudan/Chapter 12

ND what,” asked Arslan, “shall I say to Subotai Bahadur?”

The little Mongol looked more like a Turk than ever, because he had managed to plunder a Bokharian's horse caravan and had taken for himself a red-and-green-striped khalat, shagreen boots, and a turban of sheer blue silk sewn with pearls. Moreover the lot of a patrol leader suited him well. He had killed a sheep every day and had dined off the fat of the tails until his broad cheeks were puffed out like puddings. He had worn the turban because he fancied himself in it, and had thrown away his peaked cap with the sable edge, but since the mysteries of turban winding as done by an orthodox Muhammadan horse thief were quite beyond his understanding, the blue silk headgear looked more like a pavilion wrecked by a storm than anything else.

“What order was given?” Hugh inquired.

Arslan counted off on his fingers that were rank of grease and mutton.

“One—to watch for pursuit and bring word of it. Two—not to lose any horses. I have three times the number given me. Three—not to get drunk. There were wineskins in that karwan, and after we had emptied all the skins we rode through the forest with torches and shouted, but took no harm. Four—to look steadfastly for you and bring you direct to the Eagle.”

“Then you have obeyed all of the order but one part. I saw the light of the torches the night you were—” Hugh smiled—“drinking.”

“But without harm, O Swooping Hawk. We all woke up in the yurta, and groomed the ponies the next day.”

“Still, the order was not to get drunk.”

“Aya tak. Thus it was. And yet he who gave the order did not know there would be wineskins.”

“It would be better not to mention the wine.”

“Much better. But Subotai Bahadur will be glad because I am bringing you. He thought you were vanished, like a stone cast into deep water. It may be in his mind to bind your arms and set you on a stake or wind you with straw and light you as a torch at night. How should I know?”

Hugh still smiled, but his eyes were thoughtful.

“Tell to Subotai Bahadur the truth—that I sought your camp and came back to the Horde of my own will.”

“That is truth.”

Although the trail of the Mongols was broad and clear it was by no means easy to follow. Arslan and the crusader had to descend deep gullies that the cavalry had crossed by bridges of timber that were taken up and carried in sleds, to be used over again. For days they skirted the mighty shoulders of Kasbek, working up into higher altitudes where the vultures flapped away from the carcasses of cattle that had died by the way.

And before they were abreast the summit of Kasbek, hidden in its mists, they were forced to leave the trail and take shelter up the slope. Here in a broad valley the wild tribes of Circassians of Kasbek and the Alans had beset the Horde and had been driven off. But bands of horsemen were combing over the field, as hornets buzz around a broken hive.

If Arslan and Hugh had been seen they would have been hunted down without mercy. They hid in the timber. Arslan could not resist bringing in some stray horses that wandered too near their covert. It seemed to Hugh as if the Mongol could never get horses enough.

Still, the growing herd served a doubly useful purpose. They mounted after nightfall and rode boldly along the valley floor. More than once they were hailed by the hillmen, and Arslan answered readily.

The dispatch rider of the Kha Khan  had the gift of tongues and he knew many of the strange dialects which were spoken between the Khaukesh and Samarkand. In whatever speech he was hailed he made shift to answer with oaths that made his companions chuckle. To one who shouted from a fire, he cried:

“A sheep stealer is bold after a battle, but we ride Mongol ponies. Come and look!”

A ragged hillman sprang up and stood shading his eyes from the glare of the fire. Evidently he counted the warriors with Arslan, and made out the flaming turban and khalat, for he answered surlily:

“'Tis the dog-born dog from Bokhara, the lifter of horses who sells to the Roumis.”

Though this would have brought a true Bokharian out of his saddle, sword in fist, Arslan contented himself with a parting shot.

“There is loot in the dunghills for such as thee!”

Whoever sat around that fire and heard him must have thought he had other men within call or had other reasons for his boldness. Arslan passed without being attacked, well pleased with himself, though he would have liked a fight better.

“Come,” he said then, “we waste time.”

His idea of a good pace was to go at a free gallop, singing and snapping his whip. Occasionally he would call a halt to change saddles to fresher beasts and to cast around for tracks. Whether he guided himself by the stars or had an animal's instinct for sniffing out the road, Hugh never knew. The crusader's wounds were troubling him in the damp night air, but he did not ask the Mongols to rein in, and by the time the crescent moon was out of sight he saw they were on the track of the Horde again.

When the sun forced its way into the gorges and the steady drip-drip began from the forest growth, Arslan saw no reason to halt. He said he was tired of hiding out and wanted to be able to sleep all day in the saddle and hear the news of the world that reached Subotai's division from the dispatch riders of the Kha Khan.

T THE last of the northern passes they came up with the standard of the Horde. Subotai was kneeling on a tiger-skin in the snow, gazing with satis-satisfaction [sic] on the scene below him. Behind him, his officers were silent. One held the rein of his black charger; an other his sword.

“This is the true Gate,” said Subotai at length, and they assented.

But the voices were barely heard, because on their left hand a swollen river roared over a series of falls, and the spray rising above it formed a deep rainbow that stretched from cliff to cliff of the gorge. Under the arch in the sky could be seen, thousands of feet below, the unbroken green of the northern plain.

But it was the pass itself that filled the Mongols with awe. The red rock walls rose in serried columns, pillars of basalt, shot through with gleaming porphyry.

In all the pass grew no trees or shrubs. From five to eight thousand feet above their heads the tips of the gigantic colonnade seemed to brush the clouds. And the howling of wind in the spaces above mingled with the reverberation of the falls. Beside the river a line of riders was making its way slowly down, following the precarious path from ledge to ledge. And the warriors who were waiting their turn to descend looked about uneasily, believing that this colonnade of stone had been fashioned by giants and that the tumult of the falls was an angry voice threatening them.

“There is a writing on the stone behind the Orluk,” said one.

Subotai had chosen to seat himself in the break of a ruined wall, his curiosity aroused by lines of granite blocks and fallen pillars nearly covered with rubble and the débris of the cliff. He had asked the Cathayan and the Syrian rabbans to read the inscription in the rock, but they had not been able to do so.

“This was once a kurgan,” said Subotai without hesitation, “and the man who built it knew his business. See, it commands the road.”

“Still, there be rakchas in this place,” murmured a noble of Cathay. “Surely there are devils.”

The creaking of the carts, the snapping of whips and the bellowing of the remnants of the cattle—all these were caught up and echoed back and forth between the cliffs. A horse neighed and the rocks screamed and whined again until the sound dwindled away to a whisper among the crags. The Mongols glanced upward and shuddered. Thunder and echoes were the two things they feared on God's earth.

Probably if Subotai had ordered the kettledrums sounded the drummers would have obeyed, but they were praying that the Eagle might not give such an order.

Subotai, impervious to devils, glanced at the throng of prisoners and grunted softly. In front of the ruins the courier Arslan was standing, and by him the crusader.

“Hai!” Subotai's green eyes gleamed. “What word do you bring?”

Arslan advanced, touched his forehead, lips and breast, and pointed to the small herd guarded by his men.

“The Georgians do not stir. I have many horses.”

“They are yours. What of the Swooping Hawk?”

“He came to us with one horse. He was wounded.”

When Subotai nodded for him to approach, Hugh came forward, conscious of the exclamations of the officers.

“Where is the chieftain of Almalyk? Where is Gutchluk?”

“Slain,” Hugh responded briefly, his eyes intent on the broad face of the Mongol, terrible with anger.

“And you live! Hough! You will join them in the shadowland. You will be cast into the rushing water and after this hour you will cease to be.”

“If that is your will.” Hugh was aware of warriors moving toward him from behind, and he knew better than to touch his sword. “But we have poured water on our swords, Subotai.”

Instead of answering, the Mongol ground his teeth and rocked on his hips, the red hairs of his thin mustache bristling over his blue lips.

“Hough! I sent ten thousand Georgians out of the world. They will remember that they cut off the heads of my envoys. We came among them as wolves among sheep. Now—”

Hugh spoke suddenly, pointing his finger at the Mongol, who was working himself into a murderous rage.

“Have you forgotten the order of the Kha Khan?”

Sheer surprize at the interruption kept Subotai silent, though the veins in his temples began to throb.

“The order was that you should go to the western world,” Hugh went on.

“Speak!”

“You have turned your reins to the north.”

“Aye, to avoid the great water, the sea. We can not go upon the sea. I will find the road again, though dust storms rise and magicians make their veils in the air.”

“But you can not find your way to the Golden Chersonese, which is the city of the emperor, because it lies between land and the great water.”

For a moment Subotai pondered this, remembering that the captive tribesmen had been able to tell him nothing of this rich city—at least they had all told him different tales, vainly hoping their lives would be spared. Hugh, watching him with every faculty alert, interrupted his meditation.

“Have you seen the Sign?”

Subotai glanced at the rainbow and at the crusader inquiringly. Hugh was pointing at the block of granite upon which the lettering was carved.

“What says the Sign?” the Orluk asked, moved by irresistible curiosity.

The officers, who had been hanging on the words, sat down to listen the better. Hugh could not read the half-effaced inscription, but he knew it must be Latin by the form of the letters.

“The meaning of the Sign is that a stronghold of Rome stood here in other days.”

Subotai contemplated the débris that nearly covered the ruins and grunted.

“Is there much gold in the Chersonese? How much?”

“A hundred camels could not carry it away, nor a hundred men the precious stones.”

“Kai! I have seen more than that. Some men say the Chersonese is a castle and a garden built at the end of a neck of land running into the sea. Across the neck is a wall. Do they lie?”

“It is so.”

“And in the sea around the castle are yurtas that float on the water and carry men about.”

“Aye, ships.”

“We would break our teeth on the wall and the yurtas of the sea would carry the Greeks away before we entered the castle.”

Hugh smiled, because he knew that Subotai had been questioning captives, that he longed to take the city of the emperor.

“Once,” he said, “Subotai Bahadur told me the strength of a wall is not in the thickness of its stone but in the men that defend it. I know the emperor and his hired soldiery.”

Once more curiosity quenched the anger of the Mongol.

“Speak!”

“There is a way to carry the wall that bars the Chersonese from the land—aye, though the wall be high as four lances—and to ride in among the Greeks before they can flee in their galleys. Not ten men of the Horde would die.”

Subotai, with another Mongol general, had forced his way through the great wall of Cathay by a stratagem. Now his eyes gleamed.

“What is your plan, O Swooping Hawk?”

It was the first time he had addressed the crusader by his Mongol name, and Hugh answered boldly.

“Give me Arslan and a ten of warriors. I will fare to the Chersonese and when the hour comes the gate in the wall will be opened. It would be your part to approach unseen at night with a tuman.”

“How will you seize the gate?”

Hugh folded his arms on the hand-guard of Durandal, outwardly calm enough, though he was strung to feverish tension within.

“If Subotai Bahadur has given command to put me to death, I can do nothing.”

“I have not given the order.” For a moment the Mongol looked at the crusader without blinking, and men heard again the roar of the falls and the overtones of the echoes. “A devil is in you! Before, in the valley of the Khaukesh, you were like a man hesitating between two roads. Now you are like a rider who grips the saddle and looks far ahead.”

“Aye.” Hugh laughed deep in his throat. “The way is clear.”

“Good. Then tell me the plan.”

“Where many listen it is not good to talk.”

Subotai grunted impatiently and motioned his followers away. Hugh squatted down beside him, smoothing a place in the snow and drawing upon it with his dagger-point while he talked. The Mongol rested his hands on his knees and bent his head to see the better. He seemed not to notice that his companion had drawn steel within arm's reach.

When Hugh had done, the dagger still rested in his fingers, and Subotai meditated for the time that water takes to boil.

“You have many foes in the Chersonese,” he muttered, pulling at his mustache.

“So may you be certain that the gate will be opened.”

Again Hugh laughed under his breath. He knew the strength of the Chersonese, where a suspicion-ridden emperor exiled himself to be safe from attack. The Horde might break through such defenses, but it was no light thing to invoke the power of the Horde. The Moslems called it the scourge sent by God. Somewhere in the Chersonese he would find Rusudan.

He knew that Subotai wished him no ill. The fate of the Mongol envoys slain by the Georgians would be fresh in Subotai's mind, and there was no knowing how the Eagle might choose to satisfy his anger upon the crusader. If Subotai refused his advice it would be because the Mongol suspected him, and if so, there was no least doubt what would happen.

Suddenly Subotai struck his gnarled hands together.

“Kai! There is surely a devil in you. Swooping Hawk. I wished to learn your plan so that the way would be open to me. Now I see that, alone among the Horde, you can open the portal of the Chersonese.” And he uttered the phrase that pardoned an offender against Mongol law, “You are without blame.”

Hugh sighed from the depths of his body and slipped the dagger back into its sheath.

“Would you have stabbed me if I had said otherwise?” the old Mongol asked suddenly.

“I would have held the knife to your throat and tried to escape.”

This amused Subotai mightily, because he threw back his head and chuckled, all the wrinkles in his bronze face coming to life.

“Oho-ho-o! The cub would spring at the lion.”

Without the slightest stiffening of muscles or sign of what he was about to do, his left hand shot out and closed Hugh's right forearm. Before the crusader could tighten his muscles against the pressure the iron fingers of the old warrior were grinding the steel rings into his flesh, twisting the sinews and making the bones move in their sockets.

“Thus,” he said, “it would have been.”

The swift action roused him and put him in a pleasant mood.

“We will ride to the Chersonese, you and I. I will see that long sword at its work. We have been sitting too long like women milking camels.” He stood up and roared an order. “Tugh!”

The standard pole with its nine ox-tails was raised, and his horse led forward. The Mongol drummers, with a desperate glance skyward, sounded the long roll that was the summons for the officers to come to their commands.

“But I will give no more than ten men,” Subotai muttered. “They who are sent with you do not come back.”

HE Horde advanced into the northern steppe, leaving the snow and descending into the shallow valleys, scarred and flooded with the freshets. It entered a wilderness of fruit-trees in bloom, of lush grass and abundant game. And the horses, thinned by a winter in the mountains, began to grow round-bellied.

The herders sang once more as they rode around the mass of horses at night; hunters went out from every regiment and came back with bear, deer and even some of the wild buffalo that ranged the fringe of the Khaukesh and seemed to the Mongols to be the cousins of the yak of Tibet.

Here in the open plain the riders were at home. They scattered in groups of two or three thousand so the animals would have good grazing, and they guided themselves by the stars until the advanced scouts rode in to report a multitude of tribes assembling to meet them.

Then couriers were sent to the scattered units of the Horde, and the tumans formed for battle. Subotai learned that the new foes were Alans—he called them Aars—and Kumanians, nomads like themselves who had drifted out of Central Asia in past ages, but softened by the milder life of the southern steppes.

HESE same steppes had grown brown. The fierce winds of midsummer whipped the feather-grass and tumble weed, the black earth was cracked and coated with powder-like dust, before word of this battle reached the outposts of the Greek empire. Then it was whispered that the Mongols had crushed the stalwart Alans and had driven off the wild Kumanians as hawks drive quail apart.

Some of the Kumanians had fled to the Russian dukes, and the host of the Slavs was mustering to stem the Mongol advance with its swords.

On the whole, this news was pleasing to the emperor, who had long been troubled by the raids of the Kumanians and the half-pagan Slavs. And as time went on, with no further word from the steppes, he felt certain that the invaders from Cathay had been hurled back or so decimated by fighting that they had withdrawn into the barrens from which they had come.