Swords From the East (47 page)

Her own bag was visible in a corner of the yurt, but the store of coins that had passed into the hands of the lama was not to be seen. Evidently he had disposed of them in some way.

Meanwhile the lama had bent his head to one side as if listening.

"I hear the voices of the council, the sarga of the Torguts, that is assembled in the tents of Ubaka Khan," he said. "They are cattle, those ancient ones of the Horde who bend the head to Natagai."

"True," assented Nadesha, wondering what he was leading up to.

She had known the council was in session to debate a message received from General Traubenberg, who was pursuing the Horde. The Russian offered pardon to all clans that would turn back with him to the Volga. So this night the issue must be decided, whether to press on to the Ili or retrace their steps to the Volga.

Seeing the hunger written in the thin cheeks of the girl, Loosang handed her a bowl of sweetmeats.

"The Khan is still as great as the lama," he observed dryly. "He is a yak, but the herd follows its leader. So-I hear his words:

"'My brothers of the tents, we are knit together as flesh with bone. Where one clan goes, all must ride. Or we shall be dust before the wind. Who would be a slave?...

Loosang mimicked the slow, heavy tones of the Khan and threw his voice so that it seemed to come from the tent top. The girl ceased eating and waited anxiously.

"Ubaka is saying that at the end of the road ahead lies the valley of the Ili where are the graves of their fathers. There the gate in the sky can be seen, and the souls of the old Torguts may look down upon them."

"And what is the will of the council?" asked Nadesha, nibbling again at a date.

"Wait! And you will hear with your own ears."

Loosang motioned her back into the shadows behind him. Nadesha heard a small bell tinkle over her head several times. Soon came a footfall outside and a voice familiar to her.

"Norbo, Master of the Herds, is here to speak with the chutuktu. The sarga seeks the wisdom of the priest."

It occurred to her for the first time that Loosang had a watcher posted outside the tent in the shadow of the side of the gorge and that this man warned Loosang by ringing the bell of the approach of others. She smiled at the way her father clipped his words. Norbo had no love for Loosang, who opposed the old traditions of the Tatars cherished during the long stay in Russia.

Loosang, the priest, made a sign for Nadesha to remain quiet, where she could not be seen.

Norbo sat just within the yurt entrance facing the fire.

"Ubaka, our Khan," began Norbo bluntly, "has spoken in council. He says rightly that we should seek the skies of our old home. So does Zebek Dortshi say. But many of the noyons are wavering. So the vote was to send for your word."

Plainly the old chief did not relish his mission. The lines in his leathern face were deep as he scowled at Loosang through the heavy smoke.

As Loosang kept silence, Norbo repeated surlily.

"To press on, or turn our horses' heads? What is your word? For my part I follow Ubaka to the Ili with my clan."

The hand of the priest scattered more roots thickly in the fire.

"Look!" he croaked suddenly.

The glow of the flames died and a swirl of gray smoke swept up. Out of the smoke a stunted tree took form. Nadesha could even see branches in the semi-darkness.

She caught her breath and looked again. The tree was standing there, upright in the coils of smoke. Then a flicker of fire crept up, blazed, and the likeness of the tree was gone.

Norbo glanced up at the ceiling, then at Loosang, and bit his mustache.

"Go!" ordered the priest. "Say to the council you have seen an omen."

"What means the omen, chutuktu?"

"This. Out of fire and smoke will grow up the rooftree of the Torguts. The clans must go to their own land. I will show them the way."

Norbo's shrewd eyes snapped.

"Ai-a, that was the word of the mighty Genghis. It is a good word."

When he was gone, Loosang rose and stretched, chuckling to himself.

"You have heard, my little owlet. The lion asks counsel of the leopard. The lion thought he was strong and swift, but the steppe is wide. Oh, the steppe has a voice and a lure. It is like a fair woman. Men give their lives up to it. Now the lion limps, for he is lame-lame."

While speaking he walked slowly to the side of the hearth by the open flap, tossing upon the embers some brown powder he had taken from his robe. Again a thick smoke came up to the tent top where there was not the customary air vent. Nadesha choked.

Suddenly she sprang up with a cry. The fumes were strangling her. She started to run past the fire, holding her sleeve against her mouth, but Loosang thrust the girl back. Wavering, she sank down to the floor, her eyes closed, her lungs laboring. The lama, standing in the fresher air, coughed, and presently stepped outside, drawing shut the flap behind him.

Still muttering to himself, he hastened to the gully behind the yurt where his two disciples had been busied during the greater part of the evening. They had built up a shrine of stones, in which were stuck sticks bearing shreds of rags. It was customary with Loosang to mark in this fashion the places where his yurt had stood.

Now when he came to the pile of rocks the lama placed therein the bag of money Nadesha had given him and watched while the two men covered it up with more stones.

"For him who travels in the desert," he laughed quietly, "a landmark."

Chapter V

Loosang Sleeps

Rain was falling thinly as the Master of the Herds rode to find the quarters of his clan. The sky was broken-a cloudy dawn.

Norbo's powerful arms swung against his hips. Dried blood had stiffened one side of him, where shoulder and hip had been cut open by an enemy's sword. He had not eaten for two nights and a day, but tied to the peak of his wooden saddle was a hind quarter of an antelope, given to Norbo by a hunting party that he had met coming in from the marshes.

The old chieftain rode with his head raised. He was looking for the fires in the sky*
that he had heard were to be seen above the valley of the Ili.

Very tired was Norbo, and he felt he would like to ride up into the gate where the souls of the elder heroes would come to meet him and all would have horses' meat and drink. He had been near to the gate that night, for the Baskir tribesmen had attacked the rear of the Horde in force.

Picking its way among huddles of soaked men and women, who lay sometimes half-submerged in water, the pony by instinct sought out its own clan. Norbo remembered a dawn last winter when he had passed by such silent groups, among them the body of his sister. The Tatars had frozen when fuel for the fires had given out.

"By the mane of my grandsire," he growled under his breath, "there is one who lies at ease."

His eye had lighted on the yurt of Loosang. Nearly all of the Torguts' wagons had fallen to pieces or been broken up for firewood; Loosang's was intact. The lama had given out word that he was about to sleep, in a trance, for nine days. During the nine days no one was to come within a spear's cast of his yurt.

Two disciples of the lama, armed, kept watch by the carved and painted wagon.

Norbo saw that a flag of yellow silk flapped above the wagon shaft. It was a prayer flag, and it had been hoisted when Loosang went into the trance.

His own yurt, together with that of the Khan, having been split up to be made into fresh spear hafts, Norbo's camp consisted only of a felt tent before which a half-dozen ponies stood obediently. He dismounted stiffly and splashed through a puddle, to peer into the entrance.

"Nadesha," he summoned, "I have meat; cook it. The clan must go forward within an hour."

Instead of the girl, Billings crawled out of the tent. His cheeks were pinched but shaven clear. After drinking from a bowl that had stood outside during the night, he offered it to the noyon without result and then emptied it over his head.

"Nadesha has not been here for a day and a night, uncle," he drawled.

Then, after shaking the water from his hair and rubbing it from his eyes, he set to work with flint, steel, and a pinch of powder to ignite some dry leaves and twigs he had kept dry in his blanket.

This done, the two men gave all their attention to nourishing the flame, first with broken pine branches, gathered during the last day's march against the possibility of food to be cooked, and then with damp birch sticks culled from a nearby thicket.

As the crackling grew, the smoke thickened, and the odor of sizzling meat spread in the air, men came to stand and look at the two. Norbo, who was gulping down his portion half-scorched, motioned them to come and partake of the meat.

"A plague on these savages," muttered Billings, cutting himself off a piece and roasting it on his long knife. "Raw or seasoned, 'tis all the same to them, and as for salt-"

With a sigh he contemplated his ragged garments, neatly sewn in a dozen places, and glanced over the plain of high grass, muddy and treacherous as a bog.

"Who among you has seen Nadesha the last day and night?"

Their faces, black with exposure to the sun, smoke, and grime, were expressionless. They had not seen the girl. Her pony, though, was missing from Norbo's herd.

"She chose her horse, yet took no weapons," Norbo grunted, frowning.

By noon he had no word of Nadesha. It was strange that the girl could have gone off from the clan in the center of the Horde without being seen. Billings, too, was thoughtful. He remembered that Nadesha had, when he last saw her, warned him to keep near to Norbo until this moon should be at an end. A blare of powerful horns caused him to glance up. The yurt of Loosang was approaching, rolling over the uneven ground, escorted by the two young priests, both armed. The yellow flag snapped and fluttered.

Billings watched it pass and kept his horse standing after Norbo's caval cade had passed on. He was allowed to do pretty much as he chose in these days of mutual suffering. Riding alone, Billings had espied Alashan.

"Dwell in peace, brother," he smiled as the boy came up. "I have a word for you.

Alashan glanced at him coldly, but reined in and the two rode on in silence after the joggling cart.

"Nadesha," observed Billings, "has vanished. She is no longer in the Horde."

"And you?" The boy gritted his teeth.

"I am her anda. You are her betrothed. Good. This is a dark matter. I smell treachery, and so I would speak to you, as her brother."

Alashan became grave.

"You speak fairly. Do not forget that I have sworn to lift my sword against yours, until one of us dies."

"Meanwhile, Nadesha. The daughter of Norbo has been to talk with Loosang, not once, but several times. Now she is gone and the lama is not to be seen. No other Tatar, I think, would harm Nadesha. That is my word."

"What says Norbo?"

"Naught. But he is troubled."

"Then I will have speech with these snakes, and learn what evil Loosang has put upon Nadesha."

When Alashan spurred up to the sacred yurt, Billings was close behind. As the boy came within a spear's throw of the wagon, one of the disciples wheeled his horse.

"Back, Tatar! Away from the dwelling place of the lama whose spirit is with the living Buddha in the sacred city."

Alashan, however, kept on; and, his pony being the heavier, the gylong, the young novice, staggered aside, his loose lips shedding a venomous flood of curses. A second disciple, portly, and uncomfortable in the rain, faced Alashan from under the shelter of a purple canopy, held by two servants.

"Rascal unsanctified!" he bawled, taking care that his voice should carry to groups of herdsmen who had halted to watch the scene from a distance. "Ubaka Khan will set thee on a stake for this-"

Recognizing Alashan, the novice blinked, and his fat cheeks twitched.

"Is Loosang within?" demanded the boy calmly.

"The chutuktu's body lies in the tent. In Sonkor, where he was abbot-"

"Stand aside. I would speak with the lama."

Such presumption made the pseudo-priest gape. His eyes grew round. All at once his stout body quivered. Snatching the umbrella from his attendant, be struck at the boy, who took the blow on his arm and reached out with his other hand. It closed on the crystal rosary the other wore, and he twisted it tight with no gentle touch. The mouth of the gylong opened wider and his eyes bulged.

"Harken," hissed the boy, "keep silence if you would not wear a noose instead of a rosary."

With a parting twist Alashan released the gylong. But the man was too startled to be reasoned with. As the boy jumped from his saddle to the wooden steps leading up to the front of the wagon, the fat fellow began to bawl again, sounding indeed very much like a cow.

As the son of the Khan raised the covering over the entrance, Billings saw the other gylong slip up the steps. The disciple had drawn a knife from the wide sleeve of a cassock. Billings had anticipated amusement, but matters were growing serious. He reined his horse up to the platform and caught the wrist of the gylong. A heave of the shoulders and the man was jerked back, to fall into a mud puddle.

Meanwhile the yelling of the fat disciple had brought the watching Tatars nearer. A glance showed Billings that they were from a clan unknown to him, and even in his rage the gylong had been careful not to mention the name of the son of the Khan.

The behavior of the two convinced Billings that Alashan had stirred up a hornet's nest. Drawing his sword, he swung from the saddle to the platform, shoving off the frightened servant who had been holding the reins. Alashan had disappeared within the yurt, and Billings was wondering what the boy had seen. But by now the herdsmen, convinced that something was very wrong, were beginning to run toward him. They shouted, brandishing knives and pikes.

Not so long ago Billings had encountered such a mob. He realized that Alashan had gone too far. With the fat priest crying them on, the Tatars would probably beat him to a pulp before they listened to any words from the boy.