Rusudan/Chapter 3

VEN Arslan, who liked to gossip about omens, was silent as they climbed above the mist and crossed the last open ridges. At first a few venturesome beeches and thorn thickets appeared, and then the gaunt sentinels of the higher timber—young oak and horn beam, followed by the mass of blue fir and towering deodar, interlaced with the dark stems of giant creepers, and broken here and there by the fall of a monster, now buried under a mound of snow.

Squirrels chattered and barked at them, unseen, and somewhere the wind sighed in the forest mesh. A cluster of wild boar broke across the road, grunting and plowing through the drifts.

“Ai!” cried Arslan, “there be no watchers here—only beasts.”

But the Khan of Almalyk, a handsome man, with the thin nose and square chin of an eastern Turk, slapped the curved saber at his hip and pointed to the side of the road.

A rough cross-piece of wood projected from a mound and beside it other objects peered out of the snow—a miniature shield, a tiny wooden horse. Arslan bent down to look at it.

“A grave. They have given him a shield to bear and a horse to ride in the world of the dead.”

The crusader held up his hand for silence. Sounds carried far in that frosty air, and above the monotone of the wind he had heard the tinkle of a silver bell, or so it seemed. But when he had listened he knew that it was a woman's song.

The three others—their ears were keen—heard, and looked at him inquiringly. It was Hugh's task to lead them; theirs to follow. And the crusader had no wish to leave an outpost behind him when he climbed toward Nakha.

So he reined his gray stallion past the grave and bent his helmed head under the laden branches of the evergreens. When the wind blew toward him he caught the note of the song more clearly, and with it a whiff of damp wood smoke. The words of the song he could not understand, but it was swift as the rush of a brook under ice.

Arslan muttered something about the tengri, the spirits of high and distant places that rode from peak to peak on the wind. Presently the song ended abruptly and the crusader reined his charger into a trot. The Mongol horses moved silently as ghosts over the forest bed, but the big gray trampled down hidden branches and Hugh knew the mountain folk were not to be taken by surprize. He trotted into a grove of giant deodars where smoke curled up through patches of sunlight.

A score of men, springing up around the fire, were running toward him, drawing knives and axes and poising short javelins.

“Weapons in sheath,” he cautioned the Mongols, who had drawn up beside him, and called out in Arabic—

“Ho—the leader of this pack!”

“Hai!” answered the twenty promptly, and a spear whistled past his ear. They seemed to be hunters, stalwart fellows in bear-skin burkas and ragged leg-wrapping; but among them gleamed bronze helmets and a shield or two. They came forward snarling like wolves and with no hesitation at all.

Hugh singled out the best armed of the lot, a handsome giant with the straight nose of a Greek and the deep, piercing eyes of a mountain-bred, a man whose close-cropped head bore no helmet, but whose long limbs were clad in full Turkish mail covered with a white linen cloak embroidered with tiny crosses.

“Back,” he cried, “if you would live!”

The tall warrior only growled and made at Hugh, when a cry, a single word clear-pitched as the note of a silver bell halted all twenty in their tracks. Hugh looked past them and saw a woman perched on the shaft of an up-tilted cart—the woman whose song had been arrested by his coming.

“Hail, pagan Lord!” Her fresh young voice greeted him in liquid Arabic. “Yield thee, and thy men! Cast down that great sword!”

“Yah bint—” responded the knight. “O girl—”

The singer stamped a slender booted foot upon the wagon shaft.

“O boy, these men obey me, and if you do not, they will roll your golden hair in the snow.”

To gain a clearer sight of him she stood up on the shaft, swaying, a guitar poised against her hip. Over slim shoulders fell gleaming brown hair, unbound, and her eyes were surely blue.

“Tzigan,” whispered Arslan who understood Arabic, and knew most of the by-ways of Asia. Had he not carried the post to Kambalu? “Gipsy.”

So much was apparent from the red velvet vest close-bound over her breast, the white buckram skirt that came no lower than her knees, and the soft ornate morocco boots.

“Aye so,” she nodded, admiring the knight's gray stallion. Then she sprang down from the wagon and pushed through the men, who objected instantly and noisily, until she stood at Hugh's stirrup and searched his face with keen eyes. “Am I not queen of my people? Dismount, if you would speak to me.”

Weapons were lowered and Arslan ceased to look like a cat watching a ferret's hole. The mountaineers had seen that the three warriors were followed by no more.

“Bayadere,” said the crusader calmly, “O singing girl, do you always set upon envoys like dogs in an alley?”

“Envoys?” she caught at the word, and glanced at the skin-and lacquer-clad Mongols scornfully. “Whence and whither?”

“From the chieftain of yonder Horde.”

“By what token?”

Smiling at her insistence, the crusader drew the falcon tablet from the breast of his fur surtout.

“A-ah!” She drew nearer to ponder it. “That is a strange thing. What says the writing?”

The Khan of Almalyk, who was a veteran of the Horde, an Uighur and something of a scholar, had explained this to the crusader.

“'By the strength of Heaven, whoso fails to render instant obedience to the bearer shall be slain!'”

To Hugh's surprize the singing girl flushed, though her eyes still lingered on his face—eyes that were puzzled and more than angry. And she spoke quietly:

“That is a poor jest. Though a pagan, I had thought you a lord of Cathay.”

A smile touched the wide lips of the crusader.

“Not one or the other am I.”

“What message bear you—if you are an envoy?”

“Bayadere, the message is for the king of the Georgians, and to him will I render it when I have reached his court.” Hugh motioned toward the warrior in Turkish mail. “Ask him if he will lead the way.”

The singing girl considered a moment, and addressed her followers in a swift rush of words that might have been so many sparks, to stir their restlessness. They thronged around her, arms and voices uplifted, until she silenced them by walking to the fire and beckoning Hugh.

“My Lord Ambassador,” she said, “I have told my men that you have yielded captive to us. And still Rupen—” she nodded at the giant—“has sworn that he will cut you to your knees, for that you spoke to me from the saddle. Do not anger him again, and be thankful that he can not understand your words.”

Hugh swung down from the stirrup beside the man called Rupen, and there was not an inch of height to choose between them. The crop-headed mountaineer glared at him, fingering his wide leather girdle from which hung a short ax and a curved yataghan.

“No quarrel seek I,” said the crusader. “In this I serve another. But warn your wolf pack, girl, to keep their distance from my men or they will have wounds to lick.”

“Rupen is no guide for you,” responded the Tzigan. “I have sent for Shotha Kupri, a Georgian prince. Abide here until his coming, for the shepherds and the villagers would not suffer three pagans to pass far up the road.”

Remembering his first visit, Hugh could well believe this, and he advised the Mongols to dismount and sit by him at the fire. The singing girl vanished into the forest, but Arslan came to gossip.

“Noyon,” quoth he, “it is true that some of this band are like to horse-lifting Gipsies; it is also true that others wear costly mail and are armed with heavy weapons. Look! Here are huts and a cart, but where are horses, goats, brats, crones and dogs? Ekh! It is too clean, this place.”

Hugh had noticed that the man Rupen assuredly was no Gipsy. He sat on a log near at hand and glowered, tapping the iron-braced shaft of his ax whenever he thought he was noticed. But when the sun left the grove and the air grew chill he ordered the fire stirred up, and brought to the four envoys bowls of broth and bread with an air of remembering that dogs need not go hungry.

Darkness closed in on the band, and Hugh sat in thought, pondering the task before him—the lack of a written mes sage, the ignorance of the men of the Khaukesh as to the Mongols and the difficulty of conversing in Arabic. When he looked up, the girl of the red boots was kneeling beside him.

“I have brought you hot spiced wine from the village,” she said, lifting a jar and pouring steaming liquid into a great copper bowl. “After the saddle, a cup.”

Hugh raised the bowl in both hands and uttered a deep-throated “Hail!” And he pretended not to notice that two of the Gipsies came and squatted behind him in the shadows. He did not think he would be attacked before the coming of the other Georgians, and in any case Arslan, who seemed to be dozing in the wagon, was watching what went on at his back. In the Khaukesh, he meditated, anything was better than to show fear.

“Your servant,” remarked the Tzigan, “says you are called the Swooping Hawk. Why do you wear your hair long? It is more beautiful than mine!”

Gravely the eyes of the crusader dwelt on her, the first woman he had seen unveiled in many years, since he had turned his back upon Constantinople to fight his way to Jerusalem.

“God gave you beauty,” he said.

“And a voice,” she assented, shaking back the dark mass of loose hair, “that makes the warriors draw silver and gold coins from their wallets. Akh, but it is dull when snow closes the roads.”

“The way to Tphilis is open.”

She glanced at him fleetingly.

“Why go to Tphilis? Many go and few ride back.”

“Is it not the city of the Khaukesh?”

“Aye—of the mountains. But it is our city, and pagans and infidels find no welcome.”

“How long is the way?”

“For a Gipsy, a day and a night and a day. But a stranger will find his grave more easily than our city.” And, as Rupen had done, she touched the ivory hilt of a slender knife in her girdle and nodded emphatically. “You are not like the other Mongols. Why do they call you the Swooping Hawk?”

“That is my name—Hugh. ”

She repeated the name and it seemed to puzzle her.

“Nay, once I saw a lion in Sarai. It was big and sleepy. You are like that lion. But it is foolish to go toward Tphilis. It would be much better to tell me your message, and I would send it swiftly. The winds bear my messages.” And, chin on hand, she chuckled at him, like a child with a delightful secret. “Do the Mongols bring war or peace?” she asked idly.

“Your king shall hear.”

“You are as stupid as the lion, that only roused when it was hungry or angry. The Ermeni merchants say the Mongols are evil spirits who see in the dark and ride their horses through the air; the dogs of Persians say the Horde is a scourge sent by God. I think all that is a lie.”

“Neither angels nor demons are they.”

“Perhaps they are magicians. Do they seek cattle or tribute?”

Hugh laughed under his breath.

“Bayadere, come to Tphilis and you shall hear.”

“Akh, you will grieve that you did not tell me.”

“What manner of man is your king?”

The singing girl smiled at him suddenly.

“Come to Tphilis and you shall know.”

Nor would she speak to him again, sitting tranquilly on the bear-skin beside him, head cradled in her fists, her eyes roving from man to man, not so much a Gipsy queen holding her court as a girl child with a plenitude of playmates. And when Shotha Kupri came swinging into the firelight, followed by a line of short and shaggy warriors, her eyes sparkled with anticipation of merriment to come.

“Make the salaam of obedience, O Thawad,” she called to the grizzled prince, “before this envoy of the mighty Khan. Not to do so is to die. So it is written on the tablet.”

The grim Georgian planted his legs before Hugh and breathed heavily.

“By, that spy!”

“Nay,” cried the girl at once, “he bears a message to the king of the Georgians.”

Before Hugh could be more than puzzled by the casual way in which the Gipsy spoke of the reigning monarch, Shotha Kupri growled at him again.

“War or peace?”

The crusader stood up, gripping hands in his belt.

“Prince of these people, will you tell me the armed strength of your bands? The roads by which they cross the mountains?”

“God forbid!”

“Nor will I tell to you the words of the Khan.”

The singing girl wriggled with delight at the Georgian's chagrin. But the old warrior was a man of expedients.

“Write it, then, my Lord Envoy.”

“In what language?” Hugh could converse in Arabic, but write it he could not, and he suspected that these mountain nobles were not great hands at reading. So it proved. Shotha Kupri frowned and pulled at his mustache.

“What would you?” he asked.

“Go to Tphilis.”

“By the Horned One, no pagan spy shall go to our city!”

Hugh shook his tawny head quietly.

“No pagan spy. For ten years I have fought the paynim, under the standard of the Cross.”

“Hai!” Shotha Kupri raised his shoulders and held out gnarled hands. “You come out of the East, with accursed Mongols at your back; you speak the tongue of the thrice-accursed Arabs. Shall we trust you?”

“And yet,” mused the singing girl, glancing from the mighty crusader to the old chieftain, “his hair and eyes be unlike the Muslimin. Nay, his sword is a strange weapon.”

“Proof!” demanded Shotha Kupri.

“Who are you, my Lord Hugh?” asked the Tzigan.

Hugh looked around at the circle of bearded faces that hemmed in the three, and seated himself, his sword across his knees.

“I will tell ye, O men of the Khaukesh, as best I may.”

It was no easy matter in Arabic eked out with a little Turki that seemed more familiar to the listeners, but Hugh said that beyond the sea that lay at the back of their mountains—they nodded assent to that—there was the Greek empire, and beyond that, toward the setting sun, Frankistan, the land of the Franks. From an island called England he had come, when the warriors had been summoned to free the city of Christ from infidel dominion. The priests had preached a crusade—Shotha Kupri grunted, having heard of this—and the warriors of Frankland had sewn the Cross on their garments and had taken a vow that they would never turn back from their quest of Jerusalem.

He described the mighty camps of the crusaders, their passage to Constantinople in the ships of the Venetians and their betrayal by the Greek emperor. He told of the battle of Antioch where eight hundred of his comrades had given up their lives; how others had been persuaded to turn their swords against the pagan Slavs and Bulgars, and how he had finally reached Jerusalem alone, a captive of the Arabs.

Years he had dwelt among the black tents of the Bedouins, until he had sought for a way to return to his home, and this quest had led him across the path of the onrushing Mongols, who had saved his life. He had found no road to his home, and in time he had sworn obedience to the khan of the Mongols, who meant to invade the west.

“And then, O ye men of the Khaukesh,” he said gravely, “the story came to me that through this valley ran the road that led to the Black Sea and to Constantinople. It was good hearing, and, God willing it, some day I shall see my home again.”

Then he faced Shortha Kupri squarely.

“O Khawand, the message I bring is the choice between peace and war. I must go to Tphilis.”

Hereupon the warriors began to argue among themselves in their harsh voices, and Rupen made no secret of his enmity, while Shotha Kupri seemed dubious, until the singing girl silenced them and answered swiftly and musically, so that Hugh wondered at the quietude that came upon them.

“We have never seen a Frank before,” she assured him simply, and added eagerly. “Now I will let you tell me of the wars in all the world, and the lords of men and how they bore themselves in battle, because it is clear to me that you have served long, as you say. And,” she shook her dark head sagely, “you are both foolish and arrogant—and such men do not lie.”

“The tale is not easy to believe,” put in Shotha Kupri. “These men of Cathay are magicians. Perhaps they have altered one of their number to the semblance of a Christian.”

Rupen thrust forward and uttered a curt word, and the old prince smote his thigh.

“True! In Tphilis there are Greeks who will know whether this man lies.”

Hugh smiled a little.

“My Lord, have I not said that the Greeks are my sworn enemies?”

“Ha! It will not save you from the test. Come!”

UT when Hugh left his hut the next morning he found Arslan squatting in the snow holding the reins of his charger in readiness for the road. The good humored little Mongol had spent the remainder of the night with the wine cup among the Georgians.

“Noyon,” he whispered, pretending to adjust a girth buckle, “the Tzigan girl is ill-pleased because you go to the city. She scolded all her men, and now she is gone again, taking a swift-footed pony from the tabun. She has a whim.”

And he shook his dark head soberly, while Hugh suffered the gray stallion to thrust its soft muzzle into his palm.

“Aye, she sniffs out secrets,” Arslan added. “Her whim is to hear tales of war. Her name is Rusudan, and when she sings these Georgians come and stand guard over her. They are dogs, but they are her dogs.”

Hugh peered through the mist and smiled.

“Shortha Kupri is a prince of this realm.”

“So are the sheep-herders and the tenders of cattle. They are all her slaves. You can sleep in the saddle beside Shotha Kupri, but watch for the coming of Rusudan, for that will be the hour of the commencement of happenings.”

It was a strange country, this of the Khaukesh. They rode that day, thirty Georgians and three envoys and Arslan, past Nakha in the forest and by other villages perched on crags and girdled by rude stone walls. And the men and the dogs of these hamlets streamed down to stare at them, and shout encouragement to the captors, defiance to the Mongols.

But when they reached the summit of the wind-swept pass, Hugh saw that the trail wound down to a broad valley. In the valley the sun gleamed again on the frozen Kur, and when they left the last of the timber behind them Shotha Kupri led them to two waiting sledges.

Four horses were harnessed to each, and two Georgians sat astride the horses. And here Shotha Kupri bade them leave their own mounts and sit in the sledges. In this way faster time would be made, and the chargers would be spared. So said Shotha Kupri.

But Hugh noticed that he was to ride with the Georgian in the first sledge, Arslan perching behind on the runners. The horses, likewise, were to be taken from them. So he sought out the Khan of Almalyk and the other gaunt and silent Mongol, who had uttered never a word and had roused only at the prospect of a fight in the deodar grove.

“My brothers,” he said in their own speech, choosing the words with care, “we go henceforth upon two kibitkas without wheels. I say to you: Draw not your weapons, lift not your hands against the Georgians. This is the yassa, the order.”

“It is the order,” nodded the Khan, but the other Mongol looked up the valley, so wide that the ranges on either hand seemed like low hills.

“Kai!” he grunted. “The road is wide; there is no barrier. The Horde will race up the valley like a wolf scenting a sick stag.”

And, with the indifference of his race, he climbed into the sledge beside Rupen. The veteran Mongol did not think he would come out of the Khaukesh alive, but he would obey the order. If he or the Frank or the Khan of Amalyk were cut down there, there were boys in the Gobi learning to tend herd who would take their places in not so many winters. All that mattered was that the Horde would be able to pass over the road through the mountains.