The Wolf Master/Chapter 15

ITH the determination of a weasel, Al-Tâbir sought through the Tatar lines the next night for Kirdy. During the day Tevakel Khan had moved up with his clans to a ridge overlooking a long, shallow valley. On the opposite rise Ilbars Sultan was encamped, and Al-Tâbir felt uneasy.

To interpret dreams, to make verses at the courts of kings—that was his work. He was convinced that a prophet had no honor, outside his own country. Because, at every fire he approached, the broad, dark faces of the wild Tatars peered at him suspiciously, and swords and javelins were flourished at his stocky legs. He blundered into a herd of restless cattle and fled to escape the prodding of the long horns. Dogs barked at sight of his kaftan and turban.

So Al-Tâbir was profoundly grateful when he saw one of the Cossack's kabardas, saddled by a fire where an ugly warrior in rusty chain-mail squatted, working with whetstone and cloth upon the shining steel head of a battle-ax. This, Al-Tâbir knew, was the man who had taken prisoner the first Turkoman. But Al-Tâbir saw no prisoner, and the skin of his back prickled uncomfortably when he looked at the ax head. This was a fellow of violence, a dealer of blows—an unlearned soul, no fit companion for Jahria ibn Muhammad A1 Nisapur, who had written down six hundred true dreams in a book.

When the Tatar—Arslan by name—merely lifted the corner of a thin lip at sight of the Persian, Al-Tâbir decided it would be safe for him to stay by the fire.

When Kirdy strode up Arslan raised a knotted hand to his forehead and lips, but Al-Tâbir gave tongue joyously.

“Ai-ee, young hero—prince of swordsmen—my deliverer! Let us sit upon the carpet of counsel and take thought for the morrow.”

“How, take thought?” demanded Kirdy, whose mind was on other matters.

“Where shall I place myself in order—in order to see all that passes without molestation? I will make a song of thy deeds. But, to see everything clearly I should be as a disembodied spirit, remote from these savages. When I seek the outer lines these unclean dogs drive me back. When the battle begins shall I go to the standard?”

“Aye—a good place. The sword strokes will fall heavily there!”

Al-Tbir squirmed, and caressed his ample girdle.

“That is not what I want. To see the battle as a whole, perhaps the horse lines would be the best.”

“Nay,” Kirdy pointed out indifferently. “The herds are behind the ridge. Besides, the Turkomans usually sweep around an enemy—you would be trampled.”

“Ah, the Turkomans. They be worse than these snouted pagans, because they cut innocent people open, just to see them quiver. O the sons of nameless fathers! O that I were again in the hill gardens of Rudbar, where men have ears to listen and hearts to feel!”

But Kirdy was listening to guttural monosyllables from Arslan, and now he sprang to his feet and seized the rein of the kabarda.

“Eh—what has come to pass? Whither goest thou? We have made no plans—” Al-Tâbir was alarmed by this activity.

“The Turkomans have thrown a head into our lines. It was the head of Sorgai, a grandson of the khan, who rode out recklessly beyond his men, before our coming. Now Tevakel Khan is raging like a devil.”

“Let him rage. Why should we go near him—”

But Kirdy was in the saddle, and Al-Tâbir, intent on keeping his only friend within call, clung to the stirrup, heedless of the kabarda's snorting as he trotted through the groups of warriors up to the mound where the patriarch sat surrounded by his officers.

The mound was in darkness because Tevakel Khan did not wish his foes to see his anger. A musket-shot away the camp of the raiders was in plain sight, for the Turkomans were enjoying themselves after their fashion.

They had set up lofty stakes to the top of which they hung captives—women as well as men by the feet. Warriors with torches were lighting the heads of the unfortunates. Archers were shooting shafts into the strugling and smoking bodies and the hoarse shouting of the wild tribesmen could be clearly heard. It was answered by a groan from Al-Tâbir.

Stacked by the Turkoman tents were piles of plunder—rugs, weapons and shining silver. Lean warriors, wrapped in grotesque finery, nankeens and furs and silk taken from the Tatars, stalked about in full view, while others roasted whole sides of mutton and beef over fires fed by broken tent furniture and wagons.

At times other men were visible, dripping red from head to boots, with stained knives in their hands—and Al-Tâbir wondered whether these had come from the butchery of beasts or captives. Wild cries and the roaring of flames, drifting smoke and the flash of bright blades in the sword dance—all this filled him with a dread of the morrow.

He looked at Tevakel Khan and shivered. The old man was grinding his teeth and clutching at his head, muttering.

“Tzaktyr—kiari. Burn—slay!”

Tevakel Khan had seen the blood of his grandson and the torture of his people, and for him there was neither rest nor sleep until he could take his sword in his hand and go against the invaders. But Kirdy, squatting at his side and paying no heed to the nudging of Al-Tâbir, scanned the extent of the Turkoman camp with experienced eyes and weighed chances. Before long the fires would die out and then nothing could be seen.

The Cossack frowned. By dawn the Turkomans would be in the saddle, their best mounted men on the wings; they would circle the smaller array of the Tatars, making play with their long firelocks—Kirdy knew well how they fought, leaping in and slashing like wolves.

“Attack now!” he said under his breath.

The old man turned to peer into his eyes.

“What was thy word?”

“Attack now.”

“Kai—it is dark. Yonder jackals snarl over their meat. That was the word of a traitor!”

“I have been asleep. Now my eyes are open. I see a way into the camp of the Turkomans.” Kirdy spoke with utter assurance, knowing that, for a moment, life and death weighed in the balance. “After I drank the fire I slept, and the spirits of high and distant places came before me.”

The Cossack was certain of three things: In darkness the crude firelocks of the Turkomans would be of less service than the Tatars' bows; also, for a reason he had never fathomed, the Moslems of the south were reluctant to give battle at night. Also, if Tevakel Khan waited for dawn and the onset of the sultan, he would fare badly.

Tevakel Khan breathed deeply and ceased to snarl. He was aged and far from timid, and he was thinking that in the hours of night the power of the fanga increased greatly.

“Then, say!” he urged.

Kirdy was already shaping a plan in his mind.

“By fire, by the cattle herd, and by fear the Turkoman can be broken like a dry reed.”

“I will make a whip from his hide—I will make a drinking cup from his skull.”

“Aye, so. Now hearken, Tevakel Khan, to the plan.”

Mindful of possible listeners, the Cossack leaned close to the chieftain and whispered. When he had done, the Tatar sat like a graven image, blinking at the distant camp fires. The shadowy figures of his men crept closer, to hear what he would say.

“God is just and merciful!” he ejaculated at last. “Yalou boumbi—mount your horses. Bring my shield and my horse. We shall go against the long-haired dogs.”

“What has happened?” Al-Tâbir caught the flash of exultation in the Cossack's dark face. “Will we fly? That is good!”

“Nay, we draw the saber and cast away the scabbard. And that is best of all.”

Now the interpreter of dreams did not lack cleverness. The set lips and blazing eyes of the young Cossack told him that it would be useless to protest; and he had found out that it was worse than useless to try to sneak out of the camp. So he pretended to be pleased and asked for a weapon, saying that he would ride between Kirdy and Arslan. It seemed to him that in the company of such redoubtable warriors a man of peace and learning would be safer than elsewhere.

“Good!” cried Kirdy. “Then wilt thou point out to me the traitor Otrèpiev; but I myself shall find Nada.”

T SEEMED to the agitated Al-Tâbir  that every one went mad that night, including himself. Dour Arslan gave him a javelin and a short bow with a wooden quiver of arrows and watched the Persian's efforts to string the powerful bow with quiet amusement. Then they mounted and the night was full of sound.

A fitful wind had sprung up in the last hours, whipping through the tall grass, and muffling the thudding hoofs of unseen horses, the creaking of leather, the rattle of arrows in quivers. Masses of riders moved past Al-Tâbir, and the Persian tried to keep his teeth from chattering as he rode after the Cossack. He followed Kirdy back at last to the cattle herd—that had been picked up on the last day's march, and hurried in by Tatars who sought refuge from the sultan's pillagers. There were more than a thousand of the beasts.

And Al-Tâbir rubbed his eyes. Behind the restless herd he could make out dozens of new camp-fires, and beyond them a solid mass of warriors drawn up around the oxtail standard of Tevakel Khan. He had left such a mass, out on the left of the herd, and from riders that came and went past the fires, he judged that there was another third on the right.

Only the front of the herd was cleared of horsemen. Here was the black mass of the slope that hid the Turkoman camp from view.

“What is that?” Al-Tâbir started and gripped his javelin, bow and reins all at once. His gray pony pricked up its ears.

“The Turkomans are loosing off their matchlocks,” Kirdy grunted. “It is the end of the sword-dance.”

But Al-Tâbir was staring, fascinated, at the herd. Scores of gnome-like Tatars were at work there, and he heard a strange clattering and stamping that grew louder. Warriors ran up with bundles of reeds and brush and others fashioned torches at the fires behind the mass of cattle. Then the torches began to flicker in and out of the herd.

“Ai-eel” he cried. “The horns of the beasts are burning!”

It did not occur to him that the Tatars had been binding brush on the horns of a great part of the steers. He saw several of the Tatars trampled underfoot, and the blaze caught from one beast to another in the close packed, milling mass.

Then, to Al-Tâbir's thinking, all the devils of the night swooped down. The herd started to run away from the camp-fires, and the Tatars around Kirdy howled and roared at it on their wing, so that the leaders plunged down the wind, over the knoll and toward the Turkoman camp.

The bellowing of the beasts, the snorting of the frantic horses, the whining of the wind—all this swept Al-Tâbir along, close at Kirdy's stirrup. In the depression between the camps, the steers spread out, but ceased not their maddened rush as hot embers fell on them.

Rushing to the summit of their slope, the Turkomans beheld the herd with its blazing horns. Their patrols tried to turn it, but that herd could not be turned. Then the Turkomans ran for their horses.

Thundering across the depression and up the slight slope, the cattle burst past the watch-fires and scattered among the tents, the carts, the piles of plunder of the raiders. Firelocks barked at them, and arrows began to flicker into them, but the mass of them surged over the tents—crashed head-on into wagons, rubbed blazing horns against flimsy felt. And in another moment flames fanned by the rushing wind began to spring up all over the encampment.

To the best of Al-Tâbir's belief madness had given way to chaos, and he wondered into which of the seven hells of Moslem purgatory he had been plunged.

The “Ghar—ghar—ghar!” of the eager Tatars mingled with the “Allah-hai!” of the rallying Turkomans. Al-Tâbir was still between Kirdy and Arslan, galloping through lines of tents and dodging frantic steers. He saw two warriors on shaggy ponies—two men with gleaming swords and bare, shaven heads. Prudently he pulled in his horse, and watched the Cossack spur forward, parrying a slash of a Turkoman simitar and slipping his blade into the throat of the shouting warrior as he passed.

Arslan rose in his short stirrups, swinging the long battle-ax. The Turkoman who opposed him threw up his sword to guard his head. But the heavy ax smote through the guard and split open the man's forehead.

“Nent-en!” Kirdy cried. “Forward!”

They turned aside, bending low in the saddle to keep under the whistling shafts that flew from the shadows where men gathered. Their ponies leaped a tangle of bodies and flew up a clear slope toward the green standard of the sultan. Here the wind howled at them and eddies of smoke twined around them, as if to draw them onward.

A firelock roared and flashed, and Arslan's pony sank, head down, at the crest of the knoll. But Kirdy, who had caught sight of Nada, rode on at a free gallop, his sword arm swinging at his knee.

The girl still wore her Cossack dress and hat—for despite Otrèpiev's authority—no woman of such beauty would have been safe in that camp. She was in the saddle of the bay stallion, without her yataghan, and the stallion's rein was held by two men, also mounted—companions of Otrèpiev.

One let fall the rein and rode at Kirdy. He was a young warrior, with thin, cold features, and his apparel was that of a Polish noble, a black velvet kontash thrown over silvered breastplate, a gilded eagle on his light shield. His horse was a splendid gray mare.

Kirdy tightened his rein and swerved to bring the Pole to his right side; but the other—a skilled horseman—darted in and slashed at his head.

The sabers clashed and parted, and before the young noble could turn his mare the Cossack had whirled his black kabarda and crashed into him. The Pole kept his seat in the saddle by a miracle, but his sword wrist was gripped by steel fingers. “Yield!” Kirdy demanded.

At the same instant both heard the flurry of hoofs behind them. The man who had remained at Nada's side was a Circassian, a follower of Otrèpiev, and not inclined to let slip an opportunity to use his weapon. Swinging his yataghan over his head, he darted at the Cossack's back.

“Guard yourself—White Falcon!” Nada shouted, her clear voice cutting through the uproar as a bell pierces the mutter of a throng.

Kirdy had no time to do that. He caught a glimpse of the lean Moslem, and the gleam of steel—and he swung himself out of the saddle.

“Hai!” The Circassian shouted once in triumph and again in anger, because his sweeping slash had met only air. The impetus of his rush carried him past and before he could wheel Kirdy, who had kept his left foot in the stirrup, had thrust the Pole away and was in the saddle again.

But—though his grip had numbed the young noble's right wrist—the Pole had plucked a dagger from his belt with his free hand, and the short blade slashed the Cossack's ribs. Feeling the bite of the steel, Kirdy smashed the hilt of his saber into the Pole's face. Both men reeled, but it was the Pole who fell, the Cossack who tightened his knees and groped for his rein with a numbed arm. And upon him all the fury of the Circassian descended.

The Moslem came on warily this time, and once his twisted blade cut Kirdy's forearm. Squatting in short stirrups, his long teeth bared, his dark eyes gleaming, he edged his horse closer, seeking to thrust under his foeman's guard with the shorter weapon.

And now Kirdy swayed in the saddle, his saber sliding off the yataghan.

“Hai!” cried the Circassian, and thrust.

But the Cossack, who had been watching for this, was not as weak as he seemed. The curved saber slashed down, and before the Moslem could recover, Kirdy had cut him through the temple so that the steel grated on bone and he had to strain to draw it free. So convulsively had the man gripped with rein and knees when he was struck, he remained for a moment crouching in the saddle—until his frantic horse, rearing, flung him to earth, a lifeless body.

Then Kirdy turned to look for the other. Instead, he saw Arslan climbing into the saddle of the mare, and a glance at the splendid figure in breastplate and kontash showed him that Arslan had slain the owner before catching the horse.

“Dismount!” he heard Nada's voice. “Let me see your hurt.”

Kirdy shook his head.

“It was a trick. I can ride.”

The girl, in her dark svitka and hat, looked slender and pale as if she had been wasted by sickness, and in the glare of the flames Kirdy wondered if this were indeed the Nada he had left at the Wolf's Throat, or some apparition that had taken form out of the steppe. He leaned forward to peer into her eyes, and the sight of her beauty warmed his blood like the rarest of wines.

“My yataghan,” she begged at once. “The dog of a Circassian took it.”

Kirdy bade Arslan retrieve the weapon and its sheath, but when Nada took it in her hand, she shivered.

“There is blood—your blood upon it.”

“Wipe the blade,” Kirdy ordered the Tatar harshly, and Arslan did so, on the end of the slain Moslem's turban.

“Nay,” cried the girl. “It is an omen of death.”

And she looked at the young warrior steadfastly, as if she feared some power might, even at that moment, carry him from her side.

“Then take me to Otrèpiev!” he responded gruffly, because of the pain of the wound in his side.

And at that she flung up her head, her eyes blazing.

“Am I a spy? Nay, seek him among the hordes!”

But Kirdy, leaning on his saddle horn, looked down into the tumult of battle. In that eddying of horsemen and maddened cattle and fire, no one could be found. He thought that if Otrèpiev lived he would return to the knoll where the standard had been, to seek Nada.

Only Arslan—diligently stripping the slain of weapons—was near them. The Turkomans who had held the knoll had ridden off when the main body of Tatars came up—in fact the standard of Ilbars Sultan was nowhere to be seen. Kirdy noticed a long cart near one of the tents and rode over to it, Nada trotting beside him.

It was not a Tatar wagon, and narrow iron runners were strapped to the sides. Perched on the fur packs that burdened it was a Muscovite saddle.

“Aye,” laughed Nada, reading his face. “That is the kibitka of Otrèpiev. In it he keeps his treasure. Look and see!”

But Kirdy summoned Arslan and bade him take stand by the wagon and allow no one to carry off what was in it.

“I give thee this as a duty.”

And the Tatar came, swinging his ax, looking like a bear girdled with steel. He had everything from knives to breastplates hung to his belt.

“If this be truly the wagon of the Fanga nialma,” he grunted, “he himself will have a word to say in the matter because he is riding like a devil to this place—now.”

Before he had finished speaking Kirdy was off and Nada with him. At the crest of the knoll the girl drew in her breath sharply.

“You are wounded. Do not go against him!”

Four horsemen were approaching the mound at full gallop. Two were Muscovite boyare in armor, wearing rich cloaks, fur-edged. The man who rode in advance of the pair drew Kirdy's eyes instantly.

Beneath a silvered casque with a crest of eagle feathers, a broad, dark face was visible. High cheek bones, thin, restless eyes, and a sure seat in the saddle—all these bespoke power. And there was power in the body of Otrèpiev, and tranquillity in his spirit, because he rode through chaos as if he were a king reviewing a host. Even his horse, a big-boned black, swept on with an easy gait. And, seeing Nada, Otrèpiev turned to fling a jest at his followers. Rising in his stirrups, he saluted her with a blood-stained sword.

Then he peered at Kirdy, who was urging his kabarda down the slope.

At this instant, as quail dart from a thicket, a bevy of dwarf Tatars came out of the shadows and bore down on Otrèpiev, who turned his horse to meet them.

“Yarou manda!” Kirdy shouted at them, fearing that they might reach his foe before he did. But the Muscovites fired two pistols, and when one of the Tatars fell from the saddle, the others cried out in anger and closed in upon the four riders.

Horses reared, and blades flashed up. The shrill cry of the nomads mingled with the screamed oaths of the Muscovites. Steel clattered. One of Otrèpiev's followers went down, and Kirdy, plunging into the mêlée, saw the false Dmitri split the skull of a warrior. With all the impetus of the rush down the slope the Cossack's horse struck one of the Tatar ponies, and was jarred back to his haunches, Kirdy keeping his seat with an effort.

When he looked up, Otrèpiev had wheeled away, followed by only one man. The Tatars were springing from their saddles to snatch plunder from the two others, who were struggling weakly on the ground. Kirdy set his teeth and made after Otrèpiev, who had a bow-shot's start. Through a deserted part of the camp they galloped, beyond the glow of fire into the darkness of the plain.

“Stay!” Kirdy called angrily. “Will you fly from one?”

Out of the murk the voice of Otrèpiev answered him:

“'Tis my hour for the road—for the long road to Satan. Follow if you will!”

Glancing over his shoulder Kirdy made out another rider at his heels, and, outlined against the distant glow of fire, the gnome-like figures of Tatars, casting about for the fleeing. Follow he did, with the kabarda going lame.

For the first time he lashed the black racer madly, and the horse gathered himself together to plunge ahead into the rush of wind. The wind had a chill bite to it; the stars were hidden and rain pelted down as Kirdy, following the distant hoof beats, swerved into a gully.

His horse stumbled and recovered with a long stagger and clatter of hoofs. Again Kirdy lashed him, but again he stumbled heavily. They dipped down into a nest of boulders, and when Kirdy reined in the done-up horse he could hear nothing of the men in front of him—only the rider coming up behind, who proved to be Nada.

Mustering what strength was left him after sleepless days and loss of blood, the Cossack caught her rein and spoke hoarsely.

“Unharmed he goes upon the road to Satan. And what road will you follow?”

“I will stay with you.”

Kirdy could see nothing at all, and the beat of the rain was like sword strokes on his bare head. With the rein of the kabarda over his arm, he staggered toward the rocky side of the gully, to seek for shelter. Once he felt Nada catch his arm.

Stumbling forward, he tried to feel out the way. Though his legs still carried him, he was half unconscious. Then he became aware that he was in a dry place—a shallow cavern, he thought. He heard the heavy breathing of the horses, the light step of Nada. Flinging himself down, he fell asleep at once.

The girl had taken the warrior's head in her lap, and with the long tresses of hair that had been kept dry under the sheepskin hat she rubbed the water and blood from his face. Because she also was weary and—for the first time in months—happy, she wept.