Swords From the East (35 page)

There was but one soul in the land between the Syansk and the Gobi that would not feel fear at the anger of Ermecin. And that was Cherla.

She had sprung from a line of chiefs, and at one time a Manchu noble had been among her ancestors. Her back was straight as a horse's leg, her long hair dark as a horse's mane. She walked with pride among the Buriats, for she had been told that she was of the white-boned folk-the leaders of men. While Ermecin and the mass of the other Buriat hunters were, she believed, black-boned men, commoners.

Cherla had a smile like the flash of sunlight on a running brook. When her eyes softened, they were dark flowers. When she ran to gather in her father's cattle, the strength of her young body and its grace enchanted the eyes of men who watched her-and many did.

So was Cherla running, or rather skipping, one noon where the heat of the sun was softened by a grove of ash. Ermecin saw her and whirled his horse across her path. When she halted, eyes flashing, he laid one hand beneath her chin.

He could feel the pulse beat in the round throat under his fingers. The girl's eyes burned into his, unafraid. Twice she struck him in the face, but he did not move or speak.

That night Ermecin drove up to her father's yurt a herd of horses. The horses he gave to Cherla's father; the girl herself he took from the ring of her frightened sisters.

There had been no consulting of the match-makeress, no ceremony of the gifts of the night. Only one herder of Ermecin's rode before them and stuck into the right-hand wall of his master's tent the white-adorned arrow, and placed before the yurt itself the trunk of a young birch as a symbol of the fruit of the marriage.

But Ermecin had sent out couriers that afternoon, and the Buriats gathered when he prepared a great feast of slaughtered sheep and horses, of richly brewed kumiss. Long into the night they ate and drank, and the father and brothers of Cherla were among the most drunk.

When Ermecin thrust his great body through the tent entrance after the feast, Cherla did not give him the nimeleu qatvarkin, the greeting from wife to husband. She sat erect on the bearskins, the headband about her smooth forehead and the silver ornaments in her tresses seeming to mock the ice of disdain in her face.

"You are a beast," she said. "You have black bones."

And the disdain did not pass from her eyes until death came to the yurt.

Cherla was not long in the yurt, for she ran away. Angry tears were in her eyes when she ran to the tents of her father and asked him to kill the beast Ermecin.

But when the master of many herds, the strongest of the Buriats, rode up to the tent where Cherla had taken shelter and dismounted without a weapon in his hand, no man drew sword or knife. Ermecin glanced at them all in turn and lifted Cherla in his arms. He flung the girl over the peak of his saddle and leaped behind her.

He rode home as if the foul fiend itself were after his horse. Not once did she cry out from the pain of the jolting or the bruising of the saddlehorn where it tore the skin from her soft flesh.

Ermecin flung her down in his yurt entrance and pointed at the fire.

"My woman," he said, and his deep voice was not hasty or loud, "I have paid the price of a girl. The birch has been planted in front of my house. I want to have sons so that the fire of my hearth will not go out."

He pointed in turn to the weapons, the bows and spears on the felt wall of the tent, to the kumiss cask, and the cooking-dishes, to the woolen cloths from which garments were made, and the furs that covered the floor. He told her, as if he was talking to a refractory colt, the things she must do for him. (Ermecin, in common with many Tatars, was gentle with horses, and used his voice in training them.)

"You are no better than a big beast," she said, her chin lifted. "I will never cease to hate you."

With a peculiar curiosity in his deep-set eyes Ermecin watched the slight form of his wife as she turned to prepare meat and mare's milk for the evening meal.

"Good," he muttered to himself at length; "she has mettle. She will bear me a rare son."

So Cherla was diligent in the care of the yurt, even while her pride was like a veil between them. Ermecin rode by day and sometimes by night over his lands, caring for his growing herds. But more often he was away fighting, or drunk at the festivals.

Among the Buriats, no male member of her family may look into the face of a woman that is married. Cherla sat alone in the tent, and when the match-makeresses gossiped to her about the mighty encounters of her husband her full lips pressed together and her eyes were cold.

Nor did she speak to Ermecin when he galloped up after two days in the saddle, to find a small hut built near his yurt and Cherla lying in pain among the old women who had clustered to a birth.

Custom forbade his going to the hut where Cherla was, but the old hags, after their kind, painted to him the suffering of his woman and said that the evil demon of sickness was within her.

Ermecin did not linger, but took two fresh horses from the group always kept near his yurt and spurred away toward the fastness of the Syansk where the clever witch-doctor Botogo had his hut.

Seventy miles he rode before dawn.

"We will take four fresh horses of your herd," he told Botogo, whose wrinkled face was intent and fearful. "And if you do not ride fast and send away the demon from Cherla, you will make magic for Erlik Khan in the place of the dead. Come!"

Alone among the Buriats, Ermecin did not respect the arts of the witchdoctor who could summon and dismiss the spirits of the sky. On the other hand Botogo was really afraid that his neck would be broken if Cherla should die. He made haste.

Seeing, when he came to the hut, that the woman was in no bad way, he regained much of his authoritative air.

"The demon," he admitted to Ermecin, "that has entered your woman is a menkva, a dark spirit of the secondary order."

Furthermore, he explained, to induce the demon to withdraw it would be necessary to offer it a horse to ride away on, furs to dress in, and boots to cover its feet. Ermecin at once ordered them to be prepared and given to the witch-doctor, who fell to his hideous incantations and the hubbub of brazen gongs that was indeed enough to cure or kill a very sick person.

"The menkva has a brother," he informed Ermecin after a space, "who is more powerful than he. Three horses and more furs will be needed-"

"That is easily done," growled the master of the yurt impatiently.

Botogo wished he had asked for more. He was still afraid, however. Even after a son had been born to the exultant Buriat and the witch-doctor had been sent away with many additional presents, Botogo nursed his enmity against Ermecin. He had been frightened, and to frighten some men is to make enemies of them.

No need for him to have been frightened. A Tatar is hospitable, and his guests are looked upon as an honor. Ermecin especially liked to have numbers of visitors in his tents. When a traveler would halt, to explain that some of his horses had been lost, the big Buriat would laugh: "What! Is that all, good sir? Dismount and drink, and before you have filled your belly I will have your horse here at the yurt. Look and see if I don't, now."

With that he would be off, on the first mount to hand. Being a skilled tracker and knowing the plain like a book, he would make good his prom ise, more often than not. If the stranger's horse should actually have disappeared, Ermecin would insist on giving another in its place.

"Will I have it said that a man was the loser by riding through my lands!" he would roar. "By the hide of Erlik Khan, I will not have it said! Come now, take your pick of this rotten herd, good sir. They are poor beasts at best."

Despite the fact that his sword was feared from the Syansk to the Gobi, numbers of poverty-ridden Buriats hung about the quarters of the strong man. They ate of his meat, and laughed with him when he chuckled at the antics of his six-month-old son, when the boy would be brought to the fire by Cherla at his request of an evening.

"Look," he cried once, "the son of Ermecin can stand. Now we will see!"

With the back of his hand the warrior tapped the child gently on the chest. It fell over backward, bumping its head hard on the earth. But without a whimper it rose dizzily and stood, its sturdy legs planted wide.

"What did I say?" bellowed the delighted father. "It will be a strong one, like me. It has its life from the old buck, my friends, not from the doe."

And he got himself royally drunk for two days, and slept for a third.

"Eh," he chuckled when he woke and rose from the skins in his corner, none the worse for the long bout, "that is a boy out of my loins. He will be like his father, -eat me if he isn't. Come, good sirs, we are getting fat as men of the hat and girdle with all this stuffing and swilling. Let's mount for the Syansk and a good run after a stag. Or better still, a few good blows at the Torgut Mongols."

It was noticeable that few of the henchmen who surrounded Ermecin's fires followed his horse as he galloped off to the hills. They knew that meat was always to be had from his servants, and that when he returned after a scrimmage or so there would be spoil to be gambled for because Ermecin was almost invariably the victor in the clan combats. At the time of his marriage he was in the fullness of strength. He was able to ride in the saddle for two days and a night, eating only a little as he rode. The experience of middle age had begun to cool the headstrong temper of his youth.

He seemed to stay home only to play with his son or to look over his herds. His home was spoken of as the armaci-ralin, the "house of the strongest."

But never when he came home did Cherla say the nimeleu qatvarkin, the "Hail, my husband!"

Sitting by the fire in the fine garments of silk that she made, studded with silver, she would stare into the smoke, her fine eyes half-closed; and only when she nursed the boy did the light of happiness come into her eyes.

The boundary of the province of Cha-tsong Chien, tao-tai of the northwestern banners, should have ended before the lands of the Buriats began.

Cha-tsong Chien, being a Manchu, was arrogant; and because a Manchu is of the same blood as the Tatars, he was a hardy person. He had been colonel of a thousand in the Manchu army, and his counsel had resulted in the successful storming of the walled city of Lan-liang when his men had ripped up the houses and the women of a thousand merchants and sent the Mings themselves out of the world headlong, or, to be exact, shortened by a head.

As governor of the Gobi, Cha-tsong Chien pushed his boundaries into the fertile regions of the North, where Tatar horse herds and sheep made the game worthwhile. He encouraged wandering priests and mountebanks to bring him news of yurts within reach of his province where the plundering was good enough for an exalted person like Cha-tsong Chien.

There was little danger in this for Cha-tsong Chien, because the Tatar clans were so busy fighting each other that they could not unite to defend themselves. And reprisals across the Gobi against the soldiery of the Manchu were not to be thought of.

So Cha-tsong Chien was pleased one day in late spring after the freshets of the Tatar mountains had abated, when he heard of a horse festival of the rival clans the Torguts and Buriats near Ubsa Lake. He headed there at once, taking in his haste only a half-dozen bowmen and a lesser number of servants.

He knew that by playing his role of governor and setting one clan against the other he could exact a goodly tribute of horseflesh without danger of armed conflict. If he brought more men, the Tatars might take it into their thick heads to withdraw to their home yurts. So Cha-tsong Chien was riding toward Ubsa Nor when he met a solitary witch-doctor who saluted him servilely and fell into talk. This witch-doctor was Botogo, and he held the attention even of the exalted personage at his side when he related that the yurt and cattle of a wealthy Tatar were scarce a day's ride to the north, some distance from the Ubsa festival.

"0 my honorable father and mother," said Botogo-ex officio the Manchu governor was a magistrate, and the witch-doctor addressed him with the requisite title-"the Tatar is a thief and a murderer, and the men of his clan live in fear of him. He has raped women from the tents of his neighbors. He has angered the good spirits of the air."

Cha-tsong Chien merely grunted and asked again the size of the Tatar's herds and the name of the man.

"On his lands are as many head of horses and cattle as at the Ubsa festival, 0 Exalted Son of Benevolence and Justice. His name is Ermecin."

Seeing a flash in the black eyes of his superior, the witch-doctor hastened to say-"Ermecin is at Ubsa Lake and by now is as drunk as a fish that lies on the land."

When, that night, Cha-tsong Chien drove the camels and travelers out of an inn, so his nostrils should not be polluted by the smell, he made much of Botogo and weighed silently in his mind the tales he had heard about the prowess of the strong warrior Ermecin against the veracity of Botogo, who said the Tatar was absent and drunk.

Dawn found Cha-tsong Chien riding fast with his men to the north, still silent, but wishing for a greater retinue. Then Botogo would have made excuses and left the cavalcade, but the tao-tai was no man's fool and kept him at his stirrup.

"If Ermecin and his riders are at the yurt, we will pay him out of our benevolence a visit of felicitation on the birth of his son."

Cha-tsong Chien knew the law of Tatar hospitality.

"And I will have heated mercury poured into your mouth to kill the devil of lies in your throat. If Ermecin is indeed at Ubsa, then your two claws will have cool silver poured into them-"

The round face of the governor broke into a smile. He liked his jest. And he smiled the more when he found the yurt of Ermecin deserted by all but a brace of herders and one or two hangers-on who fled at the first glimpse of the embroidered coat of Cha-tsong Chien. One herder was off like an arrow; the other died fighting.

Cha-tsong Chien walked into the yurt of Ermecin. A servant woman groveled, and he kicked her out and peered into the shadows where a comely girl nursed a six-month-old child.