Swords From the East (10 page)

At this, silence fell again. The chiefs who squatted, looking into the fire, were leaders of tribes but not of nations. There was no one to give commands in the place of Cheke Noyon.

They were not afraid. They knew not how to build a fort to oppose Galdan Khan, even if they all went to hold the Urkhogaitu. And if they did that, there would be no one to keep the mirzas hemmed in Koh.

So each one avoided the glance of the others, and the Buriat who was a famous sword slayer snarled in his throat as he drew lines in the sand.

At length Yulga, who had left the council-ring, reappeared at Aruk's side and whispered to the hunter.

Aruk looked surprised; but his eyes gleamed, and he rose.

"Good sirs," he said, "Hu-go, the Krit lord, will hold the Urkhogaitu Pass."

The khan of the Buriats grunted and smoothed the lines in the sand with his sword.

"He is mad!"

"Not so. For the plan you have just heard, the plan I bespoke, was his. Yulga brought me the word."

"With what will he hold the pass?"

"Noble khan, with twice a hundred picked men, bold men-he asks that they be from your clan."

Pleased, the Buriat grunted and looked around.

"He must have likewise," went on Aruk, "all the powder in our bags, and steel shirts for the warriors, and we must seize him cannon from the broken walls of Kob-"

"This is a wise khan," barked the Buriat. "He is no madman."

"But," pointed out Gorun, who squatted behind the council-ring, "he cannot work wonders."

To this old Ostrim from the outer ranks made rejoinder: "Once, when the horde of the Krits in another land were being slain in battle by a powerful foe, the prophet of the Krits went to a mountain, and talked to God, holding up his hands the while. So long as his hands were held up, the Krits conquered; and before very long they had cut off the heads of their enemy and taken many horses. Kai! It is true."

"But why," asked the khan of the Buriats, "will Hugo Khan go against Galdan?"

At this Yulga broke the custom of ages, and a woman spoke in the council.

"Tome he said it. My lord Hugo would sleep in comfort in his own yurt. Galdan Khan is like a buzzing fly that keeps him from sleep. He said that he was tired of the buzzing and would drive away the fly."

For a space the flippant answer of Monsieur le Comte d'Hainault sorely puzzled the councilors. Then the khan of the Buriats struck the sand before him with the flat of his sword, roaring: "That lord is a great lord. He is a hero. The men will follow him. He thinks of Galdan Khan as an insect. No fear of Galdan Khan has he!"

"No fear has he," echoed others.

"I will go!" cried Aruk, and his voice was followed by many others.

In this way did Hugo offer to defend the mountain pass. The thought had come to him that these people were after all the people to whom his brother had ministered, and if they were slain the work that Paul had done would be lost.

Chapter V

The Bed of Monsieur le Comte

Galdan Khan, general of the Turco-Kalmuck army, was not disturbed when for three days he received no couriers from the mirzas who had captured Kob. The mirzas were officers who would rather fight battles than report them.

With pardonable pride he watched the van of his well-trained army surmount the slope of the Altai, cutting away trees on either side of the trail through the timber belt to make room for his wagon-train, and bridging over the freshets. He planned to make the passage of the Urkhogaitu in one day, so as not to pitch camp in the snow at an altitude where sleep was hard to come by and horses bled at the nostrils.

The approach to the pass was a wide rock plateau, something like a vast Greek theater, from which the glaciers rose on either side to the white peaks that stood against the sky like the banners of Galdan Khan.

From the plateau the advance of his army-irregulars, supported by a regiment of Black Kalmucks-filed into the ravine that ascended to the Urkhogaitu. One curve in the ravine, and they would be at the summit of the pass.

Galdan Khan announced that the plateau was an auspicious spot-he would break his fast there while his men crossed the pass. It was a clear day, the sky as blue as the kaftan of a dandy of Samarkand. Pleased with himself, Galdan drank spirits and chewed dates.

Came one of the stunted, skin-clad irregulars who prostrated himself.

"0 lord of the mountains, there is a great crevice in the pass that we cannot surmount."

"Bridge it," growled the khan, "with rocks and the bodies of wagons from the rear."

The man hurried off, but presently there was a stir among the officers under the standards, a murmur of whispering, and a helmeted bey of the Kalmuck regiment approached his leader. Men, hostile to Galdan, held the other side of the crevice. They would not be dislodged by arrows; horsemen could not get at them.

Angrily Galdan spat dates from between his sharpened teeth.

"Let a company of janissaries climb into and over the ditch; let the horsemen cover them with arrow-flights. Begone, dog, and if you value your head do not delay the march!"

But the march was very much delayed that day. The Kalmuck bey died at the ravine with many scores before Galdan decided to ride up and see for himself what was holding up his advance.

When he rounded the turn in the ravine he growled under his breath. Here the glacier sides rose steeply, and the footing-the bottom of the pass was the dry bed of a watercourse-was treacherous. Snow was everywhere save on a massive rampart of rocks built on the far side of the broad ditch, rising to the height of three spears.

Both flanks of the rampart were protected by rough towers of stones fitted together, as broad as they were high. Flanking the towers were the moraines, where no man could stand on the ice.

When Galdan saw that the ditch had been blown out of the frozen earth with gunpowder, he was puzzled. An organized force of his enemies stood against him. Yet there should be no enemies between him and the victorious mirzas.

He ordered a storm, by Turkish spearmen, and withdrew behind the bend in the ravine. It was well he did so. Cannon roared in the pass, and the groans of wounded rose into the air.

At noon the mirza of the Turks came to Galdan wrathfully.

"Lord," he cried, "send your own men against the wall of rocks. Mine are lying in the pass, slain by arrow and cannon while they climbed the ravine. The river of the pass runs again-with blood!"

Galdan snarled and laid hand on sword. Remembering that he must have the aid of the Turks, he stifled his rage. He learned for the first time that two pieces of artillery were in the hands of his foes-one in each tower, so that they cross-raked the narrow chute leading up to the ditch.

"Send men to climb the slopes above the rampart," he ordered.

The Turk sneered.

"By Allah, the all-wise, do you think my soldiers are birds, to fly up a slope of ice!"

"Then stand aside," growled the Kalmuck. "Tomorrow I will pitch my tent beyond the pass."

After thinking for a while, he ordered scouts to be sent out on either flank to explore the nearby slopes of the Altai for another way into the plain of Tartary.

It was dusk when they returned, wearied, and reported that single men might perchance climb the snow summits here and there, but the army with its horses, its wagon-train, and cannon must go through the Urkhogaitu or not at all.

The lips of Galdan Khan smiled, but he did not touch the food that was brought to his pavilion on the plateau. He had learned that there were but twice a hundred defenders in the pass. Well, he would crush them like ants upon a stone.

He wondered how the stone fort had come to be built. It was contrary to the custom of the haphazard Tatars.

He did not know that for three days and nights before his coming, two hundred men had grappled with the stones of the ravine, mortaring them together with moist dirt, thrown up by the explosion of mines in the bed of the ravine, and fixing between the stones the pointed trunks of trees, under the orders of a man who knew more about fortification than Galdan Khan.

For three days the big Buriats had labored, trembling with fatigue in the thin air, bleeding at the hands and ears, sleeping only fitfully and chilled by the cutting wind that swept the pass, scarce warmed by fires of pine branches. They had been cursed by their commander, beaten by the flat of his sword.

When the hundred paces of massive rampart had been built, and the wide ditch excavated, they murmured when he commanded the erection of towers for the cannon that, plundered from Kob, had just been brought up.

Whereupon the blue-faced commander ordered them to flog each other until they were exhausted. Under the lash of his tongue the bartizans had been erected laboriously. And in the evening of the third day the Frankish commander had approved the work.

"Our bellies are empty, father," they said. "We cannot fight with empty bellies."

The Frank had foreseen this, and ordered them-all except a half-dozen sentries that he kept by him at the rampart-to repair to the abode of Aruk down the mountain where there was mutton and huge fires and liquor and a place to sleep in comfort. He wondered when they staggered off whether they would come back.

Before dawn they did come back, and he heard them from quite far away. They were quarreling among themselves, and staggering, though not from weariness this time. They sang guttural songs and roared a demand to be shown their enemy. They clutched their bows and heavy swords and surged round him.

Monsieur le comte drew back his soiled cloak from their touch and snarled at them. And then came Galdan Khan and the first day of the attack.

The dawn of the second day showed a change in the aspect of the ravine. During the night, patrols from the Kalmuck camp had almost filled in the ditch with stones, small trees, and bodies of the dead. This the Tatars had been unable to prevent.

It was just after sunrise had made clear the outlines of the rampart that the attackers came up the ravine, silently at first, then with a clamor of kettle-drums and wailing of pipes as if to frighten the defenders by the very noise.

They ran full into arrow-flights that splintered shields and tore through chain armor. Notwithstanding this they pressed forward until there was a yellow flash from each tower and a rain of small shot cut up the ranks in the rear. Now the Kalmucks were accustomed only to round shot, and they gave way with cries and oaths.

But they were re-formed by the beys and advanced again, this time with picked men in the front ranks. These crossed the ditch and began to climb the steep slope of the rampart, despite the slow discharges of the cannon.

They were met with battle-ax and sword from above, and, clinging to the sharp rocks, could use their spears only at a disadvantage. Those who gained the top of the rocks were hurled back on their comrades.

It was, for a time, a hand-to-hand affair in which the steel helmets and mail shirts of the struggling defenders saved them from being cut to pieces by the spears and scimitars of the Kalmucks and Turks.

The sun was high enough to cast its light full into the ravine, and Galdan Khan, seeing that the fort was on the verge of falling, had ordered up fresh clans from the plateau, when the explosion came.

The rock walls of the gorge echoed thunderously, and a pall of smoke rose from the center of the Kalmuck ranks. Stones hurled into the air fell back upon the bodies of dazed men.

As he had done more than once before, Hugo had constructed a mine midway down the ravine, bringing a powder-train, deep in the frozen earth where the moisture of the snows could not penetrate, back to the rampart. He did not know, of course, whether the powder-train would burn.

But the mine had gone off. Probably Hugo himself had not foreseen the full consequences of this. The shock of the explosion displaced masses of ice and rock on the morains at either side. Single stones falling from the buttresses that led to the peaks carried others along with them.

The echoes were still in the air when the crashing of the boulders began. One of the towers of the Tatar fort was wrecked. The Tatars themselves, protected by the stone mound, did not suffer greatly; but the havoc among the Kalmucks was a grim thing. Bodies lay where men had stood a moment before. Then the bodies were covered with glacier ice. Stones still muttered and rolled down the length of the ravine.

The thinned groups of Kalmucks that made their way back down the gorge looked like men fording a river of snow. They had no thought but to escape from the rocks before a second blast went off.

Never having experienced a mine before, it was a blow to their morale; and the avalanches seemed to them to be the work of demons.

Galdan Khan knew otherwise. After midday prayers that day, he sent a Kalmuck officer with a white flag up to the gorge and the rampart. For the first time it had come to the ears of the khan that a Frankish lord commanded the fort on the heights.

The message the Kalmuck bore was for the ears of the Frankish lord alone, and it was brief:

The prayers and greetings of Galdan, Khan of the Kalmucks, of the Thian Shan, of Sungaria, to the lord commander of the fort. You, lord, have a hundred unwounded men; I have fifty times a thousand. If you keep on fighting beside the Tatar dogs, your bones will never leave the Urkhogaitu; if you surrender to me, I will give you ten thousand thalers and five regiments for your command. You are a brave man; I think you are also wise. Salamet!

The Kalmuck added under his breath: "Lord, there are Greeks and Wallachian officers with Galdan Khan. He will keep his word with you, and will cut off the faces of these, your men, so that no one will know what has passed. Otherwise he will bring up the cannon and make dust of the stones you hide behind."

Hugo twirled his beard and raised one eyebrow. It was a fair offer, all things considered, and the cold of the Urkhogaitu had eaten into his bones. He had not slept for three days, and his eyes were burning in his head.

Taking the Kalmuck away from the staring Tatars, Hugo led him a little down the ravine to the point where they could see the northern plain. Some herds of Tatar cattle were visible; but no smoke rose from the villages, and the quiet was ominous to the eyes of the invader.