The Wolf Master/Chapter 10

OR two days it snowed. The paths indeed were closed to caravans or travelers, yet through the drifting curtain of the storm, riders passed from yurta to yurta. They were neither shadows nor ghosts; they were living men and Tatar messengers.

And as soon as the stars came out, during the second night, black masses of warriors moved out of the encampments.

It was noticed by the sentries of the Muscovite frontier posts that a star fell before the long hours of darkness were at an end. There was heard, too, the distant howling of wolves in every quarter. After the storm the great packs of the steppe were afoot.

In the Wolky Gorlo long before dawn Kirdy was roused by the stamping of the ponies in the lean-to. He went to the door and looked out. Clouds were drifting across the face of the old moon, almost overhead, but the white surface of the glen and the dark, timbered sides could be made out easily. Satisfied that the far-off howling came from wolves and not from the dreaded specters of men that ride at times upon the steppe about the places where they gave up their lives, he quieted Karai and stretched his arms. The frost had gone from the air and the night was almost warm. Out of the darkness behind him Omelko spoke.

“The gray friends are hunting. The pack has come down out of the heights.”

Among the Cossacks, wolves were called gray brothers, yet these words stirred the interest of the young warrior.

“They hunt, aye,” he said. “But one pack is like another.”

“But that is the great one, from the heights. Often it passes through the Wolky Gorlo. Its leader is of large size with part of his tail torn off.”

Kirdy knew now how the gorge had been named, probably by Tatars who had reason to fear the hunger-maddened packs of the steppe, especially in winter. He wondered why Toghrul and Karabek slept on quietly in their felt tent by the lean-to. If the pack were approaching the gorge it would be best to light fires—

For a while he listened. The quavering note of the pack had changed, had dwindled and risen again savagely, and now seemed to come from a new quarter and to resemble the high-pitched shouts of men.

“The gray friends,” Omelko's voice proclaimed, “have met riders—many men. They will not pass through the gorge.”

But Kirdy, who had been putting on his boots and belt, had closed the door, thrusting Karai inside. Seeking out the bay stallion, he saddled him in the darkness and was ready to mount when he noticed a man peering in at the shed entrance. After a moment he recognized Toghrul.

“O Kazak,” the old Tatar complained, “is the night so long that thou must even groom thy horse before the stars have set?”

He grunted when Kirdy mounted, and he saw the youth was fully clad and armed.

“Take heed!” he muttered. “The Nogais are on the move.”

“Whither?”

“Am I an eagle to look down from heights, or a dog to smell the trails? One of their paths runs to the right of the gorge as far distant as two arrow flights. I will go with thee.”

“Stay with the horses—thou!”

Leaving Toghrul muttering, the Cossack rode up the gorge, avoiding the drifts. The going was heavy, but the high wind had swept stretches almost clear and the light was good. Half an hour later he came out on higher ground and reined in to search the neighboring knolls with his eyes.

Presently he saw what he expected to find—a tiny figure on a distant rise, no more than a dark speck that might have been a sitting wolf or a stone except for the glint of light when the moon's gleam struck a polished spear-tip slung on the Tatar's back.

Avoiding the watcher, Kirdy trotted down into a nest of gullies where the charger labored through drifts. He judged that he was well behind the sentry when he came on a broad trail stamped down by a score of ponies. The warrior with the spear still sat on his eminence and Kirdy refrained from stalking him, knowing that more Tatars would come along the trail presently —if the sentry had not been withdrawn.

As soon as he heard hoofs, he wheeled the stallion and began to trot toward the river. Men approached from behind and a deep voice spoke at his elbow.

“Is the horse lame, that thou hast fallen behind the trail breakers?”

“Yok,” Kirdy made answer. “No, I have word for the tï-soultan. Where rides he?”

In the depths of the gully the darkness was impenetrable, except for the shimmer of starlight on the heights above them. Kirdy heard a pony trotting beside him.

“The lord,” the same voice made answer, “rides with us. What word dost thou bring?”

“I have steel,” Kirdy promised grimly, “to crop ears that be over-long.”

The invisible rider snarled, a saddle creaked, and Kirdy reined a little to the side. But the tribesman swallowed his anger.

“Bil ma'ida! Surely thou art a servant of the Khaghan?”

Kirdy left it to the other's imagination whether or not he might be a servant of the Tsar. And he drew aside to wait for the leader of the clan. It would not do to ride on, out of the protecting gully. The Tatars, having encountered him going in the same direction, had no reason to suspect him.

It could hardly enter their minds that a stranger would appear at that hour between their advance and the main body—a stranger who spoke their language and asked for their leader. The sheer daring of Kirdy's action protected him, so far.

Ponies trotted past, and occasional riders came close to peer at him, and to hear him ask again for the tï-soultan. His nostrils filled with the odor of sheepskins, of mutton grease and sweat-soaked leather. These men had come far that night and, judging by the scattered words that reached him, were bound for the river.

“Here is the tï-soultan,” a Nogai called presently, out of the darkness.

Kirdy wondered fleetingly why the leader was not one of the tribe, and why another answered for him. A white horse and a rider in loose, light garments took form in the obscurity, and a mellow voice grumbled—

“What dog is this?”

Kirdy's pulse throbbed in his temples, and he ceased wondering. The man had spoken in fluent Persian, to himself, as if hopeless of gaining understanding from those around him.

“Tourkät,” grunted the Cossack, “One who speaks Turki.”

“By the Ninety and Nine Holy Names, that is good hearing!” cried the rider of the white horse. “O the smells unmentionable, the pains past bearing, the fear clinging like a shadow! O the woe of these times—”

The breath left his lips in a gasp. Kirdy had reined the stallion around until the two horses touched shoulders, and during the outburst of the stranger had drawn his sword silently. Now a quarter inch of a steel tip had pierced the small of the man's back.

“Dogs there be, beyond doubt,” the Cossack said grimly, “and fools likewise; but the greatest of fools is he who wags a loose tongue. Hold thine, therefore, or feel the length of this blade!”

The stranger said no more, nor did he move. Kirdy waited until the body of Nogais had passed, making astonishingly little noise, like men intent on what lay before them.

“Nent-en!” Kirdy commanded sharply. “Forward thou!”

And the pair who had lingered to accompany the stranger, or to satisfy curiosity, went on again. Still Kirdy waited, moving the sword-tip a little, to keep his captive from thinking too much, until the rear guard had trotted past, with a long shout—to warn the watcher on the height that he should come down. It was a similar shout, much fainter, that Kirdy had heard an hour ago from the door of Omelko's cabin. He was grateful to the superstition that made the tribesmen cast a wide circle around the Wolky Gorlo. And he was just as well pleased that the riders of the rear had not seen him and the stranger. Reaching swiftly behind the other, he pulled a scimitar from its scabbard and thrust it through his belt. Then he felt for knives, finding three of different shapes in as many places. These he cast to the snow.

“Ahoun!” he said to his captive. “Forward!”

But he turned the head of the white horse, keeping the rein in his left hand and guiding the stallion by his knees. They walked back to the other gully through which the Cossack had entered, and down this they trotted—Kirdy removing the sword-tip generously.

In the east the stars were fading, and a kind of gray obscurity spread through the network of hollows and ridges around the Wolky Gorlo. When trees were visible against the snow, Kirdy peered at his captive, and saw enough to convince him that the man was neither a Muscovite officer of the false Dmitri—as he had hoped—nor a Nogai chieftain.

At the narrow pass between the two boulders that formed the Wolf's Throat, he reined in and waited until full daylight. The Nogais, when they missed their leader, would have turned back long before this.

“Eh,” he thought, “it is true, then, they will not enter this place.” Aloud, he added, “What man art thou?”

The prisoner salaamed, bending almost to the Cossack's stirrup.

“Prince of swordsmen, Lion of the Steppe, I am thy slave—the interpreter of dreams. Thus they call me, Al-Tâbir.”

He was a broad, round man, wrapped up in a half-dozen khalats and vests, all gorgeous purples and blacks, with embroidered slippers and a sash that must have aroused the instant envy of all the Nogais. A small turban was knotted jauntily over one ear, and the face under the turban was pale and round as the full moon. Kirdy had seen cows with just the mild brown eyes of Al-Tâbir. He laughed, thinking that he had just risked torture to fetch this Persian—because the interpreter of dreams, smelling strongly of musk and civet, was as Persian as the gold-inlaid scimitar he had worn—from the tribesmen.

“May the dogs bite thee, Al-Tâbir!—what makest thou in this place?”

Taking heart from the laugh, the interpreter of dreams raised his head.

“Nay, I am truly Jahia ibn Muhammad al-Nisapur, cup-companion of the Shah, whom may Allah exalt. Out of his courtesy the Shah sent me to the great emperor of the Urusses. It was written that I should find this emperor dead and another seated upon the throne. This other, being pleased with my conversation, commanded me to attend him upon his exile. I heard—I obeyed.”

“Thou wert a man of Dmitri's?”

“Truly, his sahab, his companion. He revels well, but rides too much.”

Kirdy tapped the sword blade that rested on his saddle peak.

“Al-Tâbir, in times past I have hearkened to Persians. I heard many lies and little truth. But thou, O my captive, shalt tell me truly what has happened. Or thy head will cease from thinking and thy tongue from lying. Where is thy master?”

“By the face of the Prophet, I know not. Yesterday he drank wine in the tent of the khan of the Nogais. He laid a command upon me to go with a warrior to another clan. I went.”

“Wherefore?”

“It is my thought that he sent one of his companions to different tribes, as hostages, perhaps.”

“The Nogais called you leader.”

“Allah! Not a word of their talk is known to me. It is my thought that the Tsar sent commands to them, and they looked upon us as ameers, greatly to be feared. They fear the Tsar. So do I!”

Kirdy smiled.

“That I believe. Now think again, Al-Tâbir—what orders were sent?”

“Surely the command was to rise and arm against the Muscovites. The Tsar makes war against his ameers. The Nogais will cross the river. I am content to be rid of them.”

The lips of the Cossack hardened under the mustache and his eyes narrowed. He had not expected that Otrèpiev would dare loose the tribes against the frontier posts. The man seemed able to breed chaos even in the steppe.

“Then the Nogais believe he is the Tsar? Why?”

“W'allah! Why not? He showed them jewels from the chests—even the gold apple, and the scepter that bears a ruby as large as my thumb. Their khan had seen the jewels before. Besides, they were ready enough to make raids.”

Kirdy nodded. All this was possible. The border would be fire- and fury-ridden, and the very ice of the Volga stained with blood. So, pursuit from Moscow would be checked.

“But,” he said thoughtfully, “after a while the Tatars will know that he has no power, that only six men ride at his back—then they will plunder him.”

Again Al-Tâbir salaamed.

“O youth, and scion of battles—in thee there is wisdom even sufficient unto thy courage! This thing the Tsar has foreseen. Within a week he will ride from these pagans—may their graves be dug up!”

“Whither?”

“To the east.”

“To what place?”

Al-Tâbir searched his memory, with an eye on the Cossack's sword, and decided not to lie. The young warrior knew a deal too much to make lying either safe or profitable.

“To the place where the sun rises. It lies behind the Mountains of the Eagles, and it is the country of the Golden Horde.”

OR the second time Otrèpiev had hidden his trail. Only, the first time he had slain a friend so that he might leave the body in his own bed; now he had slain hundreds, and the dead and dying along the river had concealed all trace of him.

No longer could the Muscovites follow him. Months must pass before the Nogais would be driven across the river again, and the caravan paths opened.

And now the way of pursuit was closed to Kirdy. Although the storm had ended, although the fresh snow on the steppe would reveal the tracks of a fleeing man—although Omelko had promised him horses, hay and meat, he could not ride forth.

From the east, from unexpected places, the more distant clans of the Nogais would be coming in, as vultures flock to a feast. No craft or skill would serve to avoid them. On the white waste of the steppe a rider would be seen by the keen eyes of the nomads even on the horizon; the Cossack's trail would be picked up inevitably. Moreover, it was extremely probable that the Nogais had left men to watch the two openings of the Wolf's Throat into which Al-Tâbir had disappeared so unexpectedly.

Meanwhile Otrèpiev might do any one of a number of things. At any day, with his fast horses and his sledge with narrow runners, he could start on his journey into the unknown part of the steppe. Who could say what he would do?

Nature itself would hide him in another fortnight, because already the thaw had set in and presently the plain along the Volga would be a morass, the earth soft to its marrow, after the melting of seven months' snow; no rider then could cross the steppe near the flooded rivers.

All this Nada told Kirdy, quite aware that he already knew it, but moved by curiosity to learn what he meant to do.

“God gives!” she said. “And here, surely, is the end of your road.”

Kirdy, who had been sitting against the sunny side of the cabin, looked up at the clear sky, the fir-topped walls of the valley. Where the snow had melted from boulders the rock showed black and moist. From the low-hanging branches of the birches came a steady drip-drip of water. A pony neighed in the shed.

“By the grave of Otrèpiev I will know the end of the road, Nada.”

“But he is far away! Only our brother, the eagle, flying low, sees him. Only the wolf noses about his fire.”

Kirdy smiled, and when he did so, his dark eyes glowed.

“In such fashion the road ended at the City of the White Walls. And yet—we followed it hither.”

“And is this not a better place than that town?”

“Aye, so.”

Kirdy made response in his slow fashion, looking up at the girl frankly.

“Would you be alive outside, in the steppe—anywhere but here in the Wolf's Throat where the Nogais dare not come?”

“God gives, little Nada!”

“How did you capture the Persian? Tell me!”

“Eh, it was in darkness. I spoke to him, and he was so glad to hear his own speech he came with me.”

A slender, booted foot stamped impatiently near Kirdy's knee.

“It was not like that at all. I can understand him, a little. He is afraid of you, and he called me a shal-i-begum—that's a Flower Princess, isn't it? Are you going to kill him? His sword is too light and curved but the mare is splendid—dobra koniaka!”

Kirdy looked up quickly.

“Don't let the Tatars harm him. I want him alive.”

“Why? What good is he?”

“He can tell you the meaning of a dream. The science of the tabir is much esteemed by Moslems. They glean prophecies out of dreams, and no doubt the prophets glean gold. Jahia, or Al-Tâbir is well born.”

Upon this Nada went off to ply the captive with questions and Kirdy continued to sit by the hut, drawing lines in the trodden snow with the butt of his riding-whip. He had gone among Nogais to try to get tidings of the man he sought; but he had satisfied himself that the entrances of the Wolf's Throat were watched and he knew the uselessness of trying to escape when his trail would be clear to such keen eyes. Only by an effort did he restrain his impatience, and settle down to watch for the chance that might open the way into the steppe.

That evening Nada held the entire attention of the three men. First she sang—the half barbaric and wholly plaintive songs of the Cossacks that quickened Kirdy's blood and made her father call for more gorilka. Then she teased Omelko to tell the young warrior stories of the past, and the lame man took fire at her persuasion.

“Eh, sir brother,” he cried. “Once I followed the little Mother Volga. What is there to say? You know the way of a Cossack youth—to revel in the tavern, to mount when there is war. That was my blade.”

He nodded at the yataghan with the ivory hilt, and the wolf's mask—that filled Al-Tâbir with fascinated dread—nodded likewise.

“A gray stallion I stole from the khan himself, from the stables of Bagche-Serai. I rode to Kazan, which was then a Tatar city. In the bazaars were Greeks and Tcheremises and God knows how many else. I drank, for days, until I saw not one but several suns in the sky. I drank down the gray stallion—everything but my trousers and that blade. Why not? Other horses were to be had, and I was young. But then began a great firing of cannon and the Greeks said the city was besieged.”

He stroked his beard and pushed aside the parchment book that was his companion of evenings.

“Eh, Falcon, what shall I tell you? I went on the wall, and many foemen felt the edge of my sword. After a time when I could see the real sun, I heard that these foemen were Muscovites led by Ivan the Terrible. What matter?

“The walls of Kazan were stormed after much fighting and the Tatar dead filled the alleys. Some of the tribesmen broke through, I with them. The armored boyare were all around—thick as flies in the slaughter yard. We tried to swim the Volga, but there were boats, and I was taken up by warriors of the Tsar who thought at first I was a Muscovite. In time men saw me who knew me for the Cossack who had fought on the wall. They should have cut me down, or blown me from a cannon.

“Instead they put my legs in the rack and broke all the bones. Then they carried me across the river and flung me out on the plain. Eh, that was an evil thing. Wolves came and sat by me but did not tear me. I could not crawl. Toghrul rode up—he was then a hunter of stags. He tied the ends of two saplings across his saddle-horn, and wove branches to make a drag. So he brought me to this valley, where he had his tent.

“Ekh ma'a! Why should a man want to live, when he can no longer ride? Yet I lived and in time could walk with a staff, as you see. He it was, my brother, who carried to the valley for refuge a Cossack maiden, a captive of the Tatars.”

Omelko's grim head sank on his breast and he sighed.

“Nay, I was no longer a hero, no longer a Cossack! Of what avail my life? She would not leave me, when the way was open. She was the daughter of an ataman, and Nada was her child—she dying at that time.”

From the sunken eyes of the old Cossack tears crept down his cheeks and he clasped his staff in gaunt fingers that still were powerful.

“How shall I tell this tale, sir brother? She was in all things like Nada, with a temper like a sword edge and a heart that was like a very flame of love. She knew many legends of my people that brought me joy in the hearing, and before Nada was born she wrote them down in that book, and taught me the letters. Now I—who am no priest—can trace out the legends and many a time have I read them over to Nada.”

For a while he was silent, his eyes traveling from the sword to the picture of the saint on the wall. To Kirdy there was nothing strange in the life of this girl, who had grown up tended by Tatars, who had hunted stag, and had dared to journey alone to Moscow to listen to the talk of Christians and bring back to Omelko tidings of the world across the river.

“God provided for Nada,” Omelko said finally, “or she would have been lost to me. This was the way of it. I dreamed one night that an old man came into my choutar and sat by the fire, saying, 'Omelko, my son, your suffering has been great.'

“Then, in the dream, my guest rose up, saying, 'I give you power over my children the gray friends, the wolves. They will hunt for you, and you shall be koshevoi of the wolves.' ”

Omelko nodded at the gilded picture upon the wall.

“Surely that was Saint Ulass! Now, hearken, my brother—I woke up, and went to the door. It stood open, and all about the choutar wolves were sitting, like dogs.

“I saw, in the clear moonlight, the leader of the pack, a gray wolf with a part of his tail torn away. Often since then the great pack has come down from the heights, passing through the Wolky Gorlo. And then I say, 'A merry chase to you, brothers!'”

Kirdy pondered this in silence, and Nada met his eyes.

“It is true, my Falcon,” she said," that the wolves have not harmed this choutar. At times, when I have hunted, I have seen the pack running about me. The Tatars believe that my father has power over the wolves, and they will not enter this place.”

At this Omelko shook his head, and reached for his glass.

“Nay, it is the good Saint Ulass who has protected you, my daughter. It is—” he added to Kirdy with a smile—“to keep the tribesmen in awe that I wear that wolf's muzzle. Now, my Falcon, let us drink. Glory to God!”

“For the ages of ages!”