Rusudan/Chapter 2

HE one of whom the stranger spoke was a Mongol. This invader from the far east resembled Shotha Kupri in body, having high shoulders and the barrel of a bear. But there the resemblance ceased. Subotai, the Mongol, was long of body and his short legs curved inward as if the years he had spent in the saddle of a horse had shaped them so. His bony, weather-beaten head was massive, and his greenish eyes gleamed with good humor that changed in an instant to anger.

Earlier that afternoon, before the stranger had appeared to Avak out of the fog, Subotai might have been seen as he talked with his officers in the Mongol camp. Subotai Bahadur, surnamed Orluk and leader of a Horde, sat at ease in his tent, having before his eyes all that he considered pleasant, even luxurious.

On the great teak pole of the pavilion were hung the banners of the princes he had overthrown and put to death in the last two years—eventful years, even for the Orluk, who was the favorite of that scourge of Asia, Genghis Khan. He counted two Persian banners, richly gilded, and the horned standard of the erstwhile Lord of Islam, Muhammad Shah. He had chased Muhammad across half Asia, and it always amused the veteran Mongol that the Lion of Islam had died of fright in a fishing boat and had been buried in his shirt for a shroud.

For Subotai, whose name was whispered in terror by Moslem lips from Delhi to Jerusalem, enjoyed a jest. Born in the bleak Gobi desert, he had herded horses through blizzards and hunted tigers afoot in the barrens; the thews of his body were like steel. He could keep the saddle of a horse for three days without dismounting, save to open a vein in his mount and slake his hunger with warm blood. And he who had hunted in childhood the beasts of the northland now hunted down men with keener zest.

He had learned the craft of war from Genghis Khan; he had reined his horse over the battlefields of Cathay, and had coursed a Gur-khan across the Roof of the World. It did not enter his head to wonder why the Mongols had been able to conquer half the world. God ruled supreme in the sky, he knew, and the Kha Khan of the Mongols upon earth.

No more than twenty thousand Mongols were encamped around Subotai's yurta, but these were veteran cavalry, the survivors of twenty campaigns and a hundred battles. Some of their officers were seated on the benches by the yurta entrance—broad-faced, scarred Mongols, regimental commanders, tall princes of Cathay in wadded silks embroidered with the dragon, hawk-eyed nomad chieftains of the steppes.

To one of these Subotai spoke in his deep drawl—

“Il-khan, what thing upon earth can give the utmost pleasure?”

The officer addressed folded his arms, meditated and replied with a Mongol's brevity—

“A fine horse under you, a strong-winged hawk on the wrist and a clear field for the sport.”

With this a Cathayan disagreed courteously—

“O Khan, that is true; yet it is likewise true that the greatest delight is to gaze upon a conquered foe, choosing the fairest of the girls for slaves and harkening to the lamentation of the women.”

“Not so,” Subotai remarked. “It is best to outwit and break the strength of an enemy, as the wind presses down the high grass.”

The Cathayan, who had been overcome in very much that fashion in his day, made response swiftly and boldly, as he had learned to do since he became a warrior of the Horde.

“Subotai may say that, but I, an unworthy servant, am not a Subotai.”

The Eagle, not ill-pleased, fell silent. Seldom did he indulge in such lengthy conversation. He liked praise, but was savagely impatient of deceit. And in the words spoken by this Mongol Orluk rested the fate of nations and the survival of human races—upon the will of this commander of the advance of Genghis Khan.

Subotai had chosen for winter quarters a wide plain that was sheltered on the west and north by lofty mountain ranges. He had provided his men with cattle, with fodder for the horse herds, with captives to serve them. With the first coming of grass he meant to ride to the west, to invade and crush a place called Europe.

His thoughts took another turn. Arms folded on his knees, he glanced at the man who sat nearest him on the carpet by the yurta fire—a dark and wistful Syrian, a physician and sage.

“Rabban Simeon,” he said, “who is the lord of the Christians that dwell under the setting sun?”

The Syrian's knowledge of the unknown world in the west as much as his skill at healing had won him the respect of the Mongols, and he reflected while he chose words to make the matter clear to the leader of the Horde.

“Mighty Lord,” he vouchsafed at length, “there are two rulers of the Christians. One is the Il-khan of their church who is called Pope and sends his orders to kings by barefoot priests—though he is very rich—”

“Of what use are many precious stones and gold that is hoarded in cellars? Can men become hardier by wearing the jewels or their children sturdier by gold?”

Rabban Simeon waived the question.

“The other ruler is the emperor of the Greeks. His is the throne, of the Cæsars in the great city of Constantinople.”

“Can there be two suns in the sky, or two khans in the same pasture-land? Kai! They must strive, one with the other, for mastery.”

“Indeed it is as your Mightiness says. The one called the Pope has warred with the emperor for many ages of men.”

“Hai! Then there has been a great slaying and a driving forth of cattle and a wailing of women when the flames roar.”

The gentle Syrian pondered, fingering his beard. He dreaded the hour when the invincible Mongols should enter the fertile valleys of Armenia and the ancient cities of the Greeks.

“O Khan,” quoth he, “the custom of these rulers is otherwise. When they make war they buy barbarian soldiery with gold; they seize the ships that go upon the seas; they send spies to learn the secrets of the other, and by fair promises they seek to lead their enemy into a trap. Above all, they strive to draw into their hand the fruits of commerce—grain and rice and oil and wine and the silks of Cathay and the fine weapons of Damascus. For by commerce gold is got, and gold gives to these rulers their power.”

Subotai grunted.

“Athor,” he made answer, “O healer, when fertile earth is overgrown with weeds it bears no good grass, but when hot fire scorches it the grass is good.”

Rabban Simeon shivered, but the Mongol's curiosity had been aroused.

“Tell me this—”he went on. “Are the Pope and emperor Nazarenes—Christians, men of the Cross?”

“Aye, my Lord.”

“How can that be? I have seen a Christian. When he is angry he growls like thunder, he bites like a camel.”

“If your Mightiness speaks of the warrior, the Swooping Hawk, he is a barbarian, a man without learning, bred to the sword.”

“He has kept faith; his word is not smoke.”

“That is to be seen,” observed Rabban Simeon shrewdly. “Is he not captive, though unchained, in the Horde? A captive's word is more often given than kept.”

Subotai considered this in silence.

“The Swooping Hawk has sworn vengeance against this khan of the Greeks, whose empire lies in the path I will follow.”

Wrapping his cloak about him, the troubled Syrian drew closer to the fire of glowing dung and dried moss that filled the pavilion with pungent smoke. Above all things he wished to turn the thoughts of the Mongol chieftain from invasion of the Greek empire, upon the outskirts of which clustered the remnants of his people, and the Hebrews and Armenians who had escaped the terrors of Moslem conquest.

“Ai, my Lord, has the Swooping Hawk blinded you with the beating of his wings? Surely he would lead the Horde to destruction. Already he has drawn the sword—a vassal!—against his emperor. Such treachery is a mortal sin. Now he has sworn obedience to the greatest of emperors, Genghis Khan, and he is making ready a trap for the Horde. Even now he has gone beyond your sight to make the trap—”

Subotai's green eyes gleamed, and the stout sandalwood chair creaked under his weight as he signed to the officer nearest the yurta entrance.

“To the commander of the horse herds, my order is this: Send a ten of riders to track down the Swooping Hawk and bring him to my yurta.”

When he had heard the thud of hoofs on muddy snow, Subotai fixed his eyes on the pallid Syrian. The Mongol was a figure to inspire dread in any captive, looming gigantic in the firelight, his long red hair bound in two braids on his high shoulders, his body clad in soft shagreen, his stubby hands projecting from wide sleeves of black silk.

“Speak,” he commanded, “and forget not that death is the punishment for false testimony as well as treachery.”

And Rabban Simeon spoke of the peril that lay before the Horde. Well he knew that the terrible Orluk weighed every word. First he pointed toward the western wall of the pavilion, hung with woven Persian tapestry.

“Your eyes, O Lord of the East, have beheld yonder ramparts of the mountains. Beyond are still greater ranges whose summits enter the clouds, where snow lies always. Now the higher passes are snow-filled, and in summer the heat and the rush of the torrents makes the way impassible for armies.

“Aye, your cavalry would be stripped of its power in the gorges of the Khaukesh. In other days Arab and Seljuk Turk entered the gorges, and few rode back whence they came. Know, O Khan, that the warlike people of the Khaukesh have keen weapons and stout hearts. They will make a stand on every crag of this valley of the Kur that is the gateway to their city.”

Subotai nodded.

“And beyond the ranges—what?”

“The sea! The Negropont or Black Sea—the heart of the Greek empire. The ships that go upon this sea are the Greeks'. The Horde can not catch the ships with its lariats, or sail them.”

Again Subotai signified assent by silence. His Mongols were neither river-men nor mariners.

“And know, my Lord,” went on the Syrian, raising lean hands over his silk skull-cap, “that the ruling cities of the emperor lie at the far end of this sea—Constantinople and the Golden Chersonese.”

The Mongol looked inquisitive and Rabban Simeon hastened to explain.

“The summer pleasure palace of the emperor that glows like fire upon the sea, being neither island nor mainland, but an edifice of dead kings; shining alabaster and marble, surmounted with gardens wherein the trees are of silver and the very song-birds are fashioned of gold and precious stones.”

“Are its walls high?”

“What need, my Lord?” The Syrian, gaining confidence, smiled in his beard. “Aye, they were built by Mithridates, a monarch who fought with the Roman Cæsars. And the Greeks guard it with their cursed fire that came, assuredly, from Eblis, because it can be made to fly through the air and may not be quenched. But how can the Golden Chersonese be approached save by sea? The Greeks number more thousands than you have hundreds.”

For a moment the destroyer of men and nations gazed into the eyes of the healer.

“It was the yassa,” responded the nomad chieftain, “the order of the Kha Khan, to rein our horses to the west so that we shall return and tell him what manner of people and lands lie under the setting sun.”

Rabban Simeon clutched his beard and moaned, for the yassa of Genghis Khan was the unalterable law of the warriors of the horde.

“Ai! My Khan, you will not return!” He sought inwardly for a reason and found one. “God Himself has raised these barriers against your host—the mountains and the sea.”

“The strength of Heaven,” assented Subotai, “is greater than the largest rocks or the deepest waters. I have seen its fires in the sky .” And he added calmly, “Without this strength how could the Kha Khan have plucked out the Moslem empires like rotting herbs from the ground?”

Into the agile brain of the physician flashed the outcry of stricken Islam.

“Verily,” he made answer, “the sins of the Moslems were many and God sent upon them a scourge.”

Subotai looked down at his sword that lay in its polished ivory sheath upon his broad knees, a blade that could cut through the frail body of Rabban Simeon at a single sweep.

“Upon this side the mountains,” he asked, “or that?”

Not for the first time, the savant was at loss to reply to the nomad. So, as all philosophers had done since the day of Peter the Apostle, he made a distinction.

“Upon the Moslems.”

“And not upon the Christians beyond the mountains?”

“God's will be done!”

The green eyes of the Mongol glowed with anger or inward amusement.

“Athor, your words are foxes that run first one way then another. When the pyramids of the dead are heaped, and they who yet live take the saddles from their ponies, we shall know the will of Heaven.”

And Rabban Simeon shivered, drawing closer to the smoldering dung.

“And of the Swooping Hawk,” Subotai demanded, “what is your word?”

“O Khan, he is a warrior of the Cross. Now he is hooded and chained, but when he finds himself among his Christian folk he will escape and betray the Horde. Why not? Instead of sitting in the yurta of the standards, he goes forth afoot and in secret. Never can you make of him a Mongol; he longs for his own land.”

“He has sworn obedience to the Kha Khan.” Subotai considered. “Kai, we will try his faith! If his word is no more than smoke, he will vanish, like an arrow shot into thick rushes. I have talked enough.”

And Rabban Simeon, touching his fingers to his forehead, lips and breast, withdrew from the pavilion of the Eagle.

HE embers of the yurt fire still glowed, and Subotai slept not when the entrance flap was lifted and the tall warrior of the wolf-skins stood before the Mongol. His deep-throated salutation roused the chieftains who were slumbering on the benches.

“Ahatou!”

His long sword had been left without the pavilion, as the law of the Horde ordained, but when he lifted his arm, the wolf-skin fell away and revealed the chain hauberk, and loose coif of a crusader, and the broad leather belt, set with silver plates, of a knight.

Subotai motioned him to approach, and looked full into the gray eyes of the stranger.

“Hugh,” he said, and spoke the name as if it were the whirring of wings, “you were not at my side. You were not in the orda. What then did you seek?”

“A road.”

Subotai nodded, and waited.

“A road leads,” explained the crusader, “from the Kur to the mountain villages. It was told me that we may go by this road to the summit of the pass.”

“Have you spoken with the men of these hills?”

“Aye, one knew the speech of the Arabs.”

“Good!”

Subotai scanned the lean face of the man called Hugh—the corded throat, the strongly marked jaw and forehead—with appreciation. There was beauty in the dark countenance framed in its mane of tawny hair, and pride in the poise of the head, but the Mongol weighed only the direct glance of the eyes, the strength of mighty arms. He drew from his girdle a tablet a little smaller than his hand, a silver plaque on which was etched a falcon and a few words of Chinese writing.

“The paizah,” he said bluntly, “the tablet of command for an envoy of the Horde.”

“Aye.”

Hugh knew that this falcon tablet would obtain for the bearer fresh horses, guides, an escort or any amount of food from the Khaukesh to Cathay.

“Take it,” went on Subotai. “I have a task for the Swooping Hawk. Go before the Horde as ambassador. Go first to the khan of these mountains. Say to him this, 'Our horses are swift, our arrows sharp, and our hearts hard as yonder mountains. It is ours to command; his to obey. Let him not not molest us when we pass over the roads of his kingdom.'”

“I have heard.” The crusader fixed the words in his mind, and then spoke boldly, “The men of the Khaukesh are not sheep, to be driven; they will stand their ground like watch-dogs. Better to offer them conditions of peace than to lose many warriors, many horses.”

Subotai grunted, a little astonished. The Horde was not in the habit of offering terms to foes with weapons in hand. But he realized the necessity of a clear road over the passes.

“Kai—so be it. Say also this, 'If the khan of the Georgians keeps his sword in its sheath, his arrows in their quivers, we will do likewise.”

Unversed in writing and contemptuous of promises that needed to be traced on paper, the Mongol had made his pledge and would abide by it.

“Go, Hugh, show the tablet of command to the Gurkhan of the Almalyk bowmen; take two hundred warriors for escort, and mounts with filled saddlebags.”

“O Khan,” said Hugh, “that is too many, and too few. Quarrels would come between my men and the Georgians. Better to go with two than two hundred.”

Subotai glanced keenly into the gray eyes of the Christian, and remembered the warning of Rabban Simeon.

“There is peril upon the road,” he growled. “The Georgians may attack thee.”

“It may be so.”

“If so, the Horde will avenge thee, pursuing thy foes whithersoever they flee and lighting the fire of war that will send its sparks high and far.”

Hugh himself had seen the burial of the greatest of the Moslems, who had been foolish enough to put to death Mongol envoys.

“Return then to me, for I have need of thee,” added Subotai. “Alone among the men of the Horde thou hast the tongue of the western peoples. Hai, thou wilt be the voice of the Horde, even to the Greek emperor in his palace of Chersonese.”

The crusader uttered an exclamation and his hands gripped the belt until the stout leather creaked.

“I have loosed thy chains,” the Mongol said calmly, “and the road is open to thee. Remember only—we have sworn brotherhood.”

“Kai, it is so.”

When the knight had lifted his hand in leave-taking and had passed from the yurta, Subotai summoned a warrior from the shadows behind the fire, a short and stalwart Mongol who walked with a swagger and wore about his forehead the leather band that was the mark of a courier.

“Go, Arslan,” Subotai commanded, “with the envoys. Look and listen with the eyes of a ferret and the ears of a fox. The Swooping Hawk speaks plain words; he deals mighty blows. It is said of him that he struck down the Seljuk sultan and defied the emperor of the Greeks. He is a thunderbolt, and I have need of him. Stay at his back, unless he betrays us or harm threatens him. If so, ride hither without dismounting for food or drink.”

And then with a word or two for the officers who still drank mare's milk and listened to the drone of a blind minstrel, Subotai Bahadur went to sleep, simply rolling himself up in a corner of the rug, near the fire. Utterly without fear or repentance or uncertainty, he slept quietly—as few commanders of cavalry divisions could have done in hostile country, a thousand miles from their support and base of supplies.

Nor would it have troubled him in the least if he had known the Horde would be on the move sooner than he or any one expected.

ETTLE-DRUMS rolled, and were answered by cymbals in one guard post and another, up the hill. There was snuffling and stirring in the black mass of the horse herds, and here and there thin smoke began to rise against the stars from the openings at the tops of the yurtas. A mounted patrol moved wraith like across the trodden snow, with only a creaking of stirrup leathers.

It was the dawn hour.

But in the Horde was no stirring-forth to prayer, as with Moslems, no chattering and quarreling of varlets and cooks and serving knaves as in a Christian camp. A faint lowing of oxen and grunting of camels. That was all.

Sir Hugh of Taranto stepped from his small tent, drawing tight the buckle of his belt, glanced at the stars in the north and greeted the two riders and the stocky, fur-wrapped courier who held the rein of his gray war-horse.

“Ahatou noyon! Hail, chieftains!”

The two mounted Mongols lifted their hands, sparing of speech. Mist of the horses' breathing was in the air, and the crusader's charger neighed as he swung into the saddle.

“A good sign, bahadur,” cried Arslan, the dispatch rider, running to his own pony.

“Good!” echoed one of the chieftains.

Hugh picked up his reins and glanced a last time at the familiar outlines of the encampment of the conquerors who had come over the earth from Cathay, at the towering poles of standards topped by horns and by drooping horse and yak tails, at the passing patrol, and the black domes visible under the gray streak of the eastern sky, by the frozen river as far as the eye could reach.

Somewhere at the end of that vast plain rode Genghis Khan and the heart of the Horde—dominant, merciless and fearless.

Hung about his throat by a silver chain, Hugh the crusader bore the tablet of command of the Kha Khan. In mute evidence thereof the two chieftains had come first to his tent. His was the leadership of the embassy.

Sir Hugh of Taranto adjusted the heavy sword at his side, and clasped steel-mittened hands on his saddle horn.

“Fair Lord Jesus,” he whispered, “Thou knowest I bear a pagan talisman of power, and my word is passed to the lord of these men. The road before me is dark. Guide Thou my arm!”

Then he settled his helm on his head and turned to the three silent figures behind him.

“Forward, ye men of the East!”

The gray charger tossed his muzzle at a touch on the rein, and surged ahead, scattering mud and snow with broad hoofs. The three fell in behind, galloping toward the dark rampart of mountains still in visible in the mist.