The Wolf Master/Chapter 9

HE first day out of Kolumna, Kirdy and Nada covered seventy miles, for the horses were fresh and shod against frost with cleats. The light sleigh slipped over the hard snow like a feather, and Tatikof's big stallion kept up gamely. He was a Podolian breed, up to the Turkish racers in speed, and indifferent to cold.

But Toghrul—who had plastered his cuts with mud and thought no more of them—observed the brown charger shrewdly when they halted that evening, off the trail, and remarked to Kirdy that they could not take the Podolian after the forage had given out. In the open steppe, only native-breds, trained to dig under the snow for grass and moss, could survive.

“Why do you say the open steppe?” Kirdy asked, looking up from grooming down the charger. “God grant that we overtake Otrèpiev before leaving the river!”

The trail for that day had followed the frozen bed of the little Okka, running through forests for the most part. They had passed two or three small villages where they had been told that Otrèpiev's party had passed on, to the east.

“A falcon is swifter in its stoop than the great golden eagle,” responded the old man after a moment, “but the eagle is not easily tired. Bak Allah! We have six ponies; they have twenty. By changing saddles they can avoid pursuit.”

“Canst thou follow the slot of their sledge?”

“Not here. There be too many tracks that come and go. Out on the steppe it is different.”

Kirdy was silent while the two men cooked the supper, and not until the fire had been replenished and Nada had settled herself by it in a white bearskin did he speak.

“There must be talk between us. What road do you take?”

“'Whither goest thou?' the kite asks of the wind. Nay, ouchar, since you ran from my house with halberdiers tumbling all over you, like marionettes, you have given orders to my men. You lingered to play with the taverner at Kolumna—aye and the priest, and it is no fault of yours that the boyare did not ride up then and take us.” She laughed softly, pulling the paws of the bearskin over her slender shoulders. “And now after two days and two nights you frown and ask the road of me!”

Kirdy kneeled beside her on his saddle cloth. Until now he had asked no questions of Nada—why she wore the garments of a Cossack—why she was fleeing to the east.

“I am no longer an ouchar—a fledgling,” he responded, in his slow drawl. “Once the Cossack brothers gave me a name. They gave me also work to do, and that is why I issued commands to your men.”

“Did the sir brothers bid you go to my house, when it was surrounded by foes?”

“Nay, my horses were there—I had thought so. Besides, you might have been there and Tatikof sought you with no gentle hand.”

“Oh, it is clear to me now.” Nada smiled, unseen. “You are a true Cossack, White Falcon. First you think of horses, then of the divchina, the maiden.”

Kirdy pushed the ends of the branches into the fire. He found it difficult to choose words in talking to Nada. It was not easy to tell when she was making fun of him. Besides, he had never seen such a splendid girl before.

After two days on the snow road her cheeks, that had been pallid in the town, glowed softly. A light was in her eyes, and her small lips were dark with pulsing blood. In the glow of the fire and the wan radiance of the full moon that had risen over the tree crest her head and hair were beautiful.

Even while she spoke to him she seemed to be listening to the sounds of the forest—to the snapping of wood under the growing cold, to the tinkle of ice falling on the snow crust, and the tiny scraping of an animal's claws somewhere in the darkness.

He wondered why she was more lovely in Cossack dress than in the sarafan of a boyarenya.

“When you drove into the street with the horses, Nada, you gave me my life. The boyare had penned me. Until death, I swear gratitude to you.”

“Will you serve me?”

“In what way?”

Nada tossed her head scornfully.

“Kai, the Cossack hero is generous! He offers gratitude and then bargains like a Jew.”

“It is not so,” Kirdy said quietly. “To the sir brothers I made a pledge. Until that is redeemed, how can I do otherwise than follow the path upon which I set my foot?”

“I have need, White Falcon, of a sword to guard me until I draw rein at my home. Such a sword as yours, for God has sent tumult and trouble upon this road.”

Kirdy looked into the fire without answering at once. He had meant to ask of Nada one of her ponies. By changing from the charger to this mustang he was sure of overtaking Otrèpiev within a week. He knew now that the false Dmitri had escaped from Moscow, and he was glad that the issue between them would be settled in open country where the Cossack was at home. How he would manage to get his enemy within reach of his sword he had not thought. Circumstances would decide that.

“Nada,” he said, still pondering, “you wear the svitka and girdle of a warrior of the Siech. You speak as one—” they had ceased to avail themselves of the Manchu-Tatar, and it was clear that the Cossack speech was native to the girl.

“My father is a Zaporoghian.”

“Honor to him! What is his name?”

“Come, and hear it!”

“I may not.”

Kirdy bent forward to look deep into Nada's eyes. He stared so long that the blood darkened the girl's cheeks.

“I will wager my life there is faith in you,” he said at last.

A shadow touched her brow, and she seemed to be vexed, for a reason he did not understand. But she listened attentively while he told her how he had come to the Cossacks from the southern steppe, how the army of the Siech had been betrayed by Otrèpiev, and how he had sworn to Khlit, the koshevoi ataman, that Otrèpiev should pay with his life for his treachery.

“The brothers are more foolish than wolves,” she cried angrily. “For they fall into a trap; then they lick their wounds and begin to think of vengeance. It has always been like that, my father said. Why do you trust me?”

“I do not know.”

Flinging herself back on the bearskin, Nada rested her head on her crossed arms and gazed up at the shining sky.

“Kai—give me horses, let me ride until a bullet brings me down! That is what you would say to me if you could find words. And the Cossack maiden must sit in her sleigh and pray for the young swordsman who has less sense than his charger that can not get at the grass under the snow! You would never overtake Otrèpiev!”

“He may be a fiend, as it is said; but if he is a man I will find him.”

“Did ever a bogatyr of the Siech,” Nada asked of the stars, “swear so many vows or pledge so much in one short hour!”

This time Kirdy flushed, unaware that dark eyes were watching him under long lashes, and Nada hastened to make him more uncomfortable.

“In Holy Mother Moscow of the White Walls, I saw Gregory Otrèpiev many times. He rides like a hero, and he is handsome, much more so than you are. The wife he took from the Poles is a painted puppet; he left her with little sorrow, nor did she remain at his side. Otrèpiev may be a fiend, but surely he is king of all the wanderers and monarch of the daring! I watched him at sword play with the Frankish officers. He laughed and tossed their blades first to one side, then the other, and to me he bowed to the knees, saying that I was more beautiful than any Muscovite. I wonder who he is?”

“A soul,” Kirdy responded in his slow fashion, “that feels neither remorse nor any fear. A man who could have been the greatest of emperors, if he had faith and honor in him. In all things he succeeds himself, yet brings death and torment to others.”

A moment of silence followed, while Nada studied Kirdy from the shadow of her arm.

“And yet—alone among men he can play with crowns for stakes. A beggar, he sat on the Eagle Throne of the Kremyl! An exile, he wrote a letter bidding the boyare fear! If I—”

She paused and Kirdy remained grimly silent.

“If I were to meet Gregory Otrèpiev wandering in the steppe with his crown and his sword, I would share bread and salt with him.”

“And pray for him?” Kirdy asked, smiling.

He had not meant to mock the girl, for he could understand her spirit. But Nada was not inclined to endure a smile.

“Aye, pray to St. Ulass, the Good, for him—and for all outcasts.”

“Where is your home?”

It occurred to Kirdy that if Nada's house were near at hand, she would not need the extra ponies. They were, in a way, his horses, but since Nada had saved them for him, and since she had two men to mount, he did not mean to claim them.

“In the Wolky Gorlo.”

“The Wolf's Throat? Where is that?”

“Beyond the border, across the river where the sun rises.”

“That is far.”

“Aye, my White Falcon. I sought the aid of your sword upon the way, but since you have sworn an oath—” she glanced at him, with amusement that vanished in one of her sudden changes of mood. “You do not know whither Otrèpiev draws his reins!”

“Nay, the trail is blind. Yet he must ride farther.”

“Soon the river turns sharp to the north. If he is for Kazan, which is the trading town of the northern frontier, he will follow it. If he strikes for Astrakhan, on the southern sea, he will turn off. But if he goes on, into the steppe—that way my road lies, to the eastward. Can you keep a bargain, Cossack?”

She pulled the bear's paws over her face, leaving only dark, grave eyes visible when Kirdy frowned blackly.

“Kai—I think you can, Cossack. You are a fool, but—” she chuckled aloud—“I will wager my life there is honesty in you! Well, we are agreed. If Otrèpiev turns north or south, I will give you one of your horses back, with gratitude, and you can ride off and be killed like a dog. If he keeps on, to the tribes, you must come with me. Nay—”

She forestalled a swift objection.

“Kazan and Astrakhan lie many weeks' ride distant. But the river Volga he could reach before you can come up with him. I know the trail.”

Kirdy nodded. She had spoken the truth. He wondered what course the fugitive would take on the Volga.

“If he crosses,” Nada observed, “and he is bold enough to do that, you must go through the Wolky Gorlo, to meet him. Now, my White Falcon, you must let me sleep. You have talked so much I am yawning. But is the bargain struck?”

“Agreed!”

“Then you will see tomorrow that Nada can fly over the steppe as swiftly as any bogatyr of the Siech.”

She snuggled down into the voluminous folds of the bearskin, wrapping the head and paws about her, and Kirdy strode away, too restless to sleep, wondering how he had come to talk so much. Usually he said little enough.

Presently Toghrul appeared out of the shadows with an armful of wood and stirred up the fire. Although he did not appear to look at them, his slant eyes took in the silent woman and the angry Cossack, pacing from the horses to his blanket, and when the old man returned to his sheepskins he kicked Karabek out of slumber.

“The khanum bids us to saddle when the stars are low, before the moon is out of the sky. By the beard of Azrael, it is as I said! Until now the Cossack has led, and when the khanum takes the rein there will be more than words. Two hands on the rein and neither will yield to the other.”

ADA, it seemed, had guessed Otrèpiev's course. They came the next evening to the great bend in the Okka and learned from a caravan of merchants that had just crossed on the ice that the sledge and seven cavaliers had taken the Volga road.

“They are merry—the young gentlemen. Ekh, what horses!”

And Toghrul proved to be right in the matter of horse-flesh. For a while he pressed the three blacks with all the skill of the nomad he was. He would rub them down himself at night, water and feed them sparingly, sleep with them, and talk to them at the start before the rising of the sun.

Then he would let them walk for a while before trotting. At a word from him they would work into a light gallop, and the ground would flash past until Toghrul chose to bid his steeds halt. Then they would walk, stretching out their necks, until they were breathed. Kirdy noticed that Toghrul managed them by voice, and gave little heed to the reins.

By now he was pretty certain of the tracks left by Otrèpiev's cavalcade, for the sledge had unusually narrow iron runners and some of the ponies were unshod. He prayed that there would be no heavy fall of snow, and that the ice in the Volga would be going out.

Winter was ending, and at midday the sun made the footing soft, so that mud began to appear on the trail—though everything froze hard at night. The villages were fewer—a scattering of choutars around a log church or fort, in a valley. The timber was thinning, except for dense stands on the tablelands.

From passing traders, Finns or Armenians for the most part, who were coming in from the border with furs, he heard that Otrèpiev was still two full days in advance of him. It would be quite useless to take even three horses and try to come up with the fugitives before they reached the river.

Toghrul pointed out that they must wait over a day at the next farm until the charger was rested and the kabardas had slept their fill.

“Why did you think that Otrèpiev would strike for the Volga?” he asked Nada.

“How? Does a stag not start up from the thicket when the wolf pack gives tongue? He would take the boldest course.”

“That would be to cross the river. Why?”

“On the far side the Nogai tents are assembled here and there. The Tatars come in at winter to trade their furs and plunder across the river when the ice is good. He can hide himself among them.”

Kirdy knew this very well, but it surprized him a little that Nada should know what went on beyond the border. The Nogais had been driven out of Kazan and Muscovy by Ivan the Terrible, not two generations ago, and they were far from peaceful. But the Tsar Ivan had massacred tens of thousands of their warriors in that day, and this had earned their hearty respect.

The trail brought them to the Volga at last, on a gray day when the sun had disappeared behind clouds. Kirdy searched the bank of the river that was like a dark valley between white hills. Toghrul agreed with him that Otrèpiev had crossed at once.

So the horses and the sleigh were led across, and the story that was written in the far bank drew Kirdy for an hour's searching of tracks. What had happened was clear as a minstrel's tale.

Here a Nogai yurta had been, where one of the tribes had winter quarters. They had penned their cattle behind fences, and had eaten the animals that died of starvation—for the Tatars never saved up hay for the winter. Otrèpiev's party had gone into the yurta, and at least two days ago the whole had moved off—the Nogais loading their felt tents on wagons and driving their cattle.

A storm would hide the trail of the tribe, and once this was lost it would be a long and anxious matter to find trace of Otrèpiev again. On three sides of him stretched the steppe, with its treeless expanse of rolling ground, its vast spaces where the blast of the wind was more to be feared than Tatar arrows—its isolated burial mounds where spirits could be heard crying at night. Kirdy knew it well.

Nada, her coat collar turned up over her hair, her slim waist girdled tight, and her hands thrust into the wide sleeves, looked about her and turned to him curiously.

“Would you follow the Nogais, who have followed Otrèpiev?”

“Aye,” he said.

She pointed to the leaden bank of the sky in the north that seemed to spread darkness over all the world.

“It is coming, the snow. Before morning, perhaps before night, it will end the trail. Look at Toghrul!”

The old man was stamping about by the horses, cursing the Nogai camp that had left not a bit of grazing on this part of the river; his impatience and uneasiness were unmistakable.

“Can I get hay at your Wolf's Throat?” Kirdy asked.

“Aye, and meat.”

“Where lies this Wolky Gorlo?”

“Yonder.”

Nada pointed inland, diagonally away from the track of the Nogais.

“Is it a Tatar yurta?”

The girl laughed gleefully.

“Ask the black-haired people!” she cried, dropping into the dialect of the tribes. “Ask—if they come near the Wolf's Throat!”

“In the name of Allah the Compassionate!” Toghrul's plaintive cry drifted up to them, “Are the horses to stand until their bones stiffen?”

Kirdy knew that he must go first to the Wolky Gorlo for food and forage for his horse, and then must take his chances at tracking down Otrèpiev in the open steppe.

“Come!” Nada called to him.

Toghrul drove as if possessed, swaying on his seat, singing to the three black heads and the manes that tossed like surf under the beat of the wind. The kabardas sped as if; possessed by devils—or as if scenting their stables—over long ridges and the black beds of streams without sign of a road. Kirdy's charger gathered himself together and did his brute best to follow. The other man and the two mustangs were left far behind.

“Come!” Nada's clear voice came back to him. “O Kazak, do you fear this road?”

The road, to be sure, was unprepossessing. Winding through barren uplands, it dipped among a nest of rock gullies where the charger stumbled and came up blindly. The gray sky pressed lower, and the sleigh was beyond sight; only the tinkling of the bells was to be heard. This ceased, and when the wind blew from her direction Kirdy caught the girl's voice lifted in song that mocked the oncoming storm.

A somber twilight fell, while Kirdy plied his whip, and watched the landmarks on either hand. It seemed to him that they were descending sharply. Soon whirling flakes, heavy and damp, shut out everything except the horse and the trail.

He reined in the charger to listen, and to look for Karai. By the rock walls, rising in pinnacles and mounds on both flanks, he judged they were entering one of the long ravines that break the even surface of the steppe.

Yellow eyes glared at him from a bend in the trail, and he snatched at the sword before he was certain from the behavior of the horse that it was Karai and not a wolf that waited his coming. The dog, contrary to his usual custom, pressed close to the charger's legs, his hair stiff on shoulders and neck, and his fangs a-gleam.

Wind devils whined above his head, the towers of black granite closed in on him and the drifting flakes stung face and hands. The charger snorted and edged cautiously between two boulders.

The storm had set in, and all trace of the sleigh was lost. Nothing was to be seen, but Kirdy rode on stubbornly, sure that there could be no other way. He had the feeling of coming out into an open valley, when Karai bounded forward, and he beheld two eyes of light in the distance. A few paces more and he saw the glow of windows upon the falling snow, and the black mass of a log cabin.

IRDY dismounted and knocked with numb fingers on the door. Then he stepped aside, because he was now across the river and it is not well to venture out of darkness into sudden light in the steppe, where Asia begins.

“Ai Kazak! Do you fear because you have come to the Wolf's Throat?”

Nada's voice from within challenged him, and he strode to the charger, leading him around the cottage to the lean-to that served as stable. When the saddle was off and the horse was blanketed, he entered the cottage, stooping under the lintel.

By the white-tiled stove sat an old man, shielding a candle from the blast of air that swept through the open door. He rose, leaning on a staff and peered at the young warrior.

“Chlieb sol,” he said, and bowed. “My bread and salt is yours.”

Once he must have been as tall as Kirdy, because he bent over, resting heavily on his stick. He moved stiffly, in his Turkish robes, but his boots and shirt were of Cossack make. Though his face was lined and his long hair gray around the forehead, he had the clear and alert eyes of middle age.

What held Kirdy's silent attention was the man's head-gear—a white wolfskin, with a great broad head overhanging his brow. The white muzzle with the long fangs surely had belonged to a monarch of the wolf-folk.

“Omelko am I,” vouchsafed his host, “and it is a day of days that brings to my choutar a hero of the Cossacks.”

“Health to you,” responded Kirdy. “Rest I would have and meat and forage for the horse. My road is far to the end.”

Omelko hobbled to the stove and filled a long horn with hot brandy, offering it to his guest. Kirdy took it, and spilled a few drops to the four quarters of the winds, and lifted it.

“Hai, bratiki kozàki—to the Cossack brothers! To the heroes of other days.”

“Glory to God, young warrior.”

“For the ages of ages!”

Kirdy emptied the horn—not to do so would have been an insult to his host, and the blood warmed in his chilled limbs. Although he had never heard of a Cossack living beyond the river, he felt sure that this man was Cossack-born. If so he was as safe within the four walls of the choutar as in the barracks of the Siech. He unslung his sword, threw off his sable coat and stretched his boots toward the stove.

“A splendid borzoi,” Omelko observed, “and full three-quarters wolf. How did you come by him?”

“Found him three-quarters starved beyond the Jaick, and fed him. He has not left me. Down, Karai!”

He knew that his host had taken note of his Cathayan garments, but Omelko, rubbing Karai's throat, was too courteous to question his guest before they shared food—or else Nada had already spoken with him. The girl brought them supper—mutton, with barley cakes, cheese and honey, and filled his horn with brandy in utter silence.

“Nada is a devilkin,” Omelko remarked, shaking his head. “When she is off like that, there is always trouble. Last time she came in with her horse nearly dead and a chambul of Tcheremis' stag hunters at her heels. Eh, they drew rein at the Wolf's Throat!”

“Why?” asked Kirdy, who desired to know.

“No Tatars will enter the gorge, past the two rocks. When they trade, they leave their gear outside and Nada takes it in, putting in place of it what we will give them. But for two days the storm will close all the paths.”

The hut was built of pine logs, roughly smoothed, the chinks filled with moss and clay. The floor was sand, neatly raked, and there was a pleasant odor of herbs. Above the table Kirdy noticed a long yataghan with a fine ivory hilt, and an ikon stand with a gilded painting of the good Saint Ulass.

By the roar of wind in the trees above the gorge and the rattle of hard snow against the horn windows, Kirdy knew that the storm would last, as his host had said.

“That is Nada's sword,” nodded Omelko, and his lips twisted under the beard. “Ekh, I would not let her take it, this time, because she is too swift to draw steel, and she is no match for a swordsman. The blade of yours'—I have seen it before.”

“It was Khlit's—the koshevoi ataman's.”

Omelko was silent for a while, ruminating.

“I am glad of the storm,” he said, “because you will tell me of Cossack deeds, and the wars of the heroes.”

Far into the night the two Cossacks talked over the wine horns, until Nada, who had been sewing in silence on the other side of the stove, slipped away to her room. With the garments of a Cossack maiden, with the kerchief and beshmet, a shyness had come upon her, and Kirdy, glancing covertly from under his brows, wondered at her flushed cheeks and lowered eyes and wondered still more if this were the girl he had followed in that swift ride through the Wolf's Throat.

When he had stretched out on his coat to sleep, Omelko went to the shelf by the ikon stand and took down a parchment-bound book, reading far into the night. At times he closed the book to gaze at the face of the sleeping warrior; and at times he raised his head as if to listen to the note of the wind.

Then Karai would spring up silently, and trot back and forth behind the door.