Swords From the East (8 page)

So, he wondered, had Paul's life been taken that the souls of two or three barbarians might be saved?

Hugo's head dropped on to his chest as he sat on a bench in the hut. Weary, exhausted by hunger, he slept.

For a while the candles flickered. Then one went out and the other. The cabin was in darkness. Outside the night sounds of the Altai began-the howl of a wolf, the whir of a flying owl.

Chapter III

The Storm

One night in early summer, from the fastness of the Altai, Aruk the hunter heard a whirring in the air, a rustle in the underbrush. Against the stars he made out the flight of birds, going north, down the mountain. Against a patch of snow-for in the Urkhogaitu Pass, the snow never quite melts-he saw black forms leap and pass.

Aruk knew that those leaps were made by mountain sheep. They were running down the rocks from the pass. Near at hand several deer crackled through the saxual bushes. A soft pad-pad slipped past him.

That was a snow leopard, leaving his fastness in the bare rocks of the heights.

Aruk was on foot in a trice, and slapped the halter on his pony without waiting for the saddle. Snatching up his bow, he was off on the trail to Koh.

Behind him black masses moved against the snow, and horses' hoofs struck on stone. An arrow whizzed past his head. Another. The nimble feet of his pony carried him out of range, and presently to the yurt of Ostrim, the falconer.

Reining up at the door, he struck it with his foot and shouted: "Up and ride! 'Tis Aruk that calls."

Too wise to ask questions, the old man got together his several ponies and sprang upon one, the great Bouragut, the golden eagle, on his wrist. Yulga carried the hawk.

"The Kalmucks are in the pass," Aruk called to Yulga. "They are stealing through like ferrets, hundreds of them. Galdan Khan has loosed the vanguard of his dog brothers on our Tatar land."

Yulga, at this, urged her pony the faster with voice and heel. Like three ghosts they sped down to the rolling slopes of the foothills.

"The Krit warrior said," observed Ostrim after a space, "that ten could hold the summit of the pass against a thousand. Why did not Cheke Noyon post a guard in the Urkhogaitu?"

"Because the ten would be food for the crows by now," grunted Aruk. "When did our Tatar folk ever post a guard-"

"The Krit!" cried Yulga suddenly. "We are passing his yurt, and he will be slain in his sleep if he is not warned."

Swearing under his breath, Aruk reined in, calling to the others to ride on and take the news to Koh. He would go for the Krit.

"Be quick!" Yulga was alarmed. "Do not let them take you-"

But Aruk was a fox in the night. The chapel in the grove proved to be deserted, Hugo having gone far afield on his horse that night; and the hunter edged down to the steppe by paths that did not meet the main trail on which the Kalmucks had already passed him in force. He did not fear for Yulga or her father.

"The hut of the Krit will soon be ashes," he muttered, for fires were already making the night ruddy behind him.

The Kalmucks, seeing that their approach was observed, were slaying the people of the countryside and setting fire to their yurts.

Once, crossing a clearing in the gray of the false dawn, Aruk saw a patrol of the Kalmuck Turks surround a nest of tents. He could make out the black, quilted coats of the dreaded riders, could see their round, sheepskin hats and the points of their long lances.

They were driving the flocks of sheep in the clearing, and harrying out the tents whence men and boys ran, half-clothed, to be spitted on lances or hewn down with scimitars.

The wailing of women rose on the air, to subside into moans. Aruk made out the small form of a young girl fleeing toward the trees. Three of the Kalmuck horde ran after her, on foot. The squat men of the Turks dragged her down as dogs pull down a hare.

Only a black blotch showed on the grass of the clearing. Safe within the screen of the poplars, Aruk hesitated, fingering his bow.

"Dogs and sons of dogs!"

From his pony the hunter fitted shaft to string and discharged his arrows swiftly, heeding not whom he struck; for he knew the sheep-herder's child was as good as dead already.

The unexpected flight of arrows from nowhere set the Kalmucks to yelling. Two fell writhing in the grass. Another began to run back toward the yurt. The girl lay quite still on the grass, a shaft through her body.

A last arrow whistled from Aruk's bow, and the fleeing man dropped to his knees.

"Yah allah-il'allah!"

Aruk heard his groan. Others in steel helmets were running out to the sound of conflict. The hunter turned his pony and was off again, changing his course to strike for Koh, leaving the sounds of pursuit behind him.

"I was a fool," he assured his pony's ears, "since the only knows where I will get more arrows. There is small store of weapons in Kob, and Galdan Khan has mustered the hordes from the Kalmuck steppe and the Moslem hills to his aid. A Moslem cried out back there. This is not at all like a joke."

Indeed, the dawn disclosed a forest of spear-tips streaming out from the shadows of the foothills toward Kob. The black coats of the Kalmucks were mingled with the green and red of the Turks. Fur-clad archers from Sungaria rubbed stirrups with the fierce, mailed riders of the Thian Shan.

Behind these, down the broad, grassy trail, sheepskin-clad footmen escorted the creaking carts of the Kalmucks. A camel-train appeared when the sun was high, dragging small cannon.

Above the tramp of the horses, the squeaking of the wagons, the shouts of the drivers, rose the mutter of kettle-drums, the shrill clamor of the pipes, and the hoarse song of disciplined Moslem soldiery.

Like pillars along the line of march ascended shafts of smoke into the transparent air of a mild June day.

On each flank dust rose where the masses of cattle were driven in and turned over in a bedlam of bellowing and trampling, to the butchers who rode among the wagons. Here and there prisoners were dragged in by groups of horsemen, to be questioned briefly by the mirzas and beys of the horde, then to be slain and tossed into ditches.

In this manner came the Kalmucks to the old mud walls of Kob and the moat that had been dry for an age. Before sunset the cannon were set in place, and a roaring, flashing tumult spread around the beleaguered side of the doomed city.

Before darkness served to reveal the flashes of the guns, the walls of mud bricks were caved in here and there. Like disciplined bees, the spearmen and horse of the Kalmucks swarmed forward into the openings.

A half-hour's dust and flashing of weapons where one-eyed Cheke Noyon struggled in fury with his groups of Tatar swordsmen, and the yelling mass pressed in among the houses.

Surprised, ill-prepared for defense, beset by a trained army of relentless fighters, Kob changed masters in the dusk of the June day. The standards of Galdan Khan were carried, through the alleys, into the marketplace. Galdan Khan was preparing to write his name large upon the annals of inner Asia. Chief of the Kalmucks, ally of the Turkish Kirei and the "wolf" Kazaks of Lake Balkash, as well as the Moslem Sungars of the Thian Shan, the Celestial Mountains, he was reaching out from his homeland in the great Sungarian valley.

This Sungaria lay between the Altai on the north and the Thian Shan on the south. Galdan Khan vowed that he would seize for himself the fertile grasslands of the Tatars in the north before turning his sword upon the richer temples and caravan routes of the south.

"I will take to myself the lands of high grass. I will take in my hand the herds, the cattle, the sheep, the furs, and the weapons of the men of the North," he proclaimed in the council of chieftains assembled. "Thousands of captives I will keep to serve my army and do siege work. The rest my men will slay, for a dead enemy cannot strike again."

Years after the events narrated here, Galdan Khan had carved for himself an empire out of the heart of Asia. He had driven the Chinese back across the Gobi; he held the northern Himalayas, Samarkand, Varkand. His men had looted the lamaseries of Thibet. His "wolves" pushed the Russians back from Turkestan.

But his first step was toward the pastures and villages of the nomad Tatar tribes beyond the snow wall of the Altai. And in Tartary a strange thing happened.

"The van of my army," he had explained to the mirzas of the Kalmuck and Kazak hordes, who sat picking their teeth and chewing dates, "will be under your standards. Your scimitars will be resistless as the sword of Mohammed-upon whose name be praise."

Galdan was not a Moslem, but saw fit to cater to his savage allies.

"I will supply you with siege cannon and mailed footmen. You will sweep through the Gate of the Winds like a storm and gobble up Kob. The clay walls of the city of the herdsmen will melt before you like butter. The sack of the city will fill your girdles. Your swords will exterminate the unbelievers, their wives and children. Then you wilt set the captives to rebuilding the walls, this time with stone."

Nothing could have been more to the liking of the chiefs of the wolves.

"By holding the Urkhogaitu Pass, which is the only path into Tartary, and the nearby city of Kob," Galdan had pointed out, "you will make clear the way for the main army which I shall lead to join you, and together we will rub off the face of the earth two hundred thousand Tatars; for, like the plague, we will spread over the valleys of the North, through the lands of the Torguts and Chakars to the far Buriats before they can unite to defend themselves."

By this it might be seen that Galdan was a shrewd schemer, that he arranged to make his allies bear the brunt of the fighting, and that he knew how to appeal to the religious zeal and the lust of men.

Perhaps because of this, the first part of his plan was carried out to a word.

At the first rumble of cannon the wise bay horse of Hugo of Hainault pricked up its ears. Long before dawn that day, Hugo, unable to sleep, had mounted and galloped to the shore of Kobdo Lake, beyond the city.

Returning after sleep for the man and rest for the horse, they met lines of riders, silent women and tired children, bellowing cattle and disordered sheep. Often he had to turn aside into a grove to let a flock of the fleeing pass. There was no outcry.

Pressing on with some difficulty and making his way toward the north wall, by avoiding the main highways that were choked with humanity, he caught the unmistakable rattle of musketry.

Mounting a rise in the plain, his experienced eye could discern the lines of the besiegers on the far side of the city. He traced the cannon by puffs of smoke and the breaches in the clay rampart by clouds of dust. It meant to him merely that it would be difficult to retrace his way to the cabin in the grove.

This had been but a rude hotel for monsieur le comte, and he had fared haphazard on game brought there by Aruk, and grain and fruits bought from Yulga. Still, he found that he was unwilling to leave it. It held him. It was, he reflected, the grave of his brother.

Forcing his way through one of the gates, he beheld the scrawny figure of Gorun, the baksa, his cap gone, his eyes starting from his head. The priest, followed by a cavalcade of his kind, struck and kicked children and animals in a mad endeavor to clear the city.

"My faith," thought Hugo, "he seems as anxious to leave as I am to arrive."

On the heels of the priest came a sheepskin-clad rider, blood flowing from his forehead and his shield broken in two.

"Wo! The wolves of Galdan Khan are in the marketplace!" the man was crying, over and over. "Fly, all who would save their lives. The wolves are here."

Accustomed to tight places, Hugo twisted his mustache and shrugged. Ahead of him in the narrow streets of Kob, between the flat-roofed clay houses, he heard the clash of weapons, saw smoke uprise, to make of the sun a red ball. Behind him, the flood of the flying.

He had no wish to thrust himself into the crowd pressing out of the city. So he drew the bay into an archway and pondered. Soon the alleys around him were deserted.

A last bevy of Tatar riders galloped past-archers without bows, old men, wounded and silent. A man who carried a musket turned and flung his weapon at a group of helmeted, black-coated horsemen.

Hugo saw several Tatars struck down in the doors of the houses they tried to defend.

"The cattle!" he thought. "They are driven like animals. No discipline, no powder for their muskets, no leaders. Pfagh! The Turks at least know what they are about."

A sharp-featured bey of a Kazak regiment led his men up to the alley, stared long at the quiet Frenchman, lifted his hand in a salute.

"Salamet, effendi!"

He called out to his men, who began to run into the deserted houses, laughing and jesting. Hugo, palpably not of the Tatars, remembered that there were Europeans with Galdan Khan, and that the feather in his cap was some kind of a symbol of rank. The bey must have thought him a man of Galdan Khan. Seeking to leave the alleys, he turned back through the arch, into a small square.

Here he reined in sharply with an oath. This was the quarter of the Chinese merchants. In the teakwood doorway of a cedar house sat a fat man in embroidered silk, a knife in his hand. Through the opened door Hugo could see the bodies of several women, some still stirring feebly. There was blood on the knife in the merchant's hand. His broad, olive face was expressionless. Having killed his women, according to the code of his caste, the Oriental was awaiting his own fate.

Hugo could go no farther in that direction. A group of Kalmucks were harrying a small pagoda. Others were intent on seeking out the unfortunates who still lived in nearby dwellings. Captives were being roped together by the necks. Children were lifted on lances, to guttural shouts.

Almost within reach, Hugo saw a Tatar's eyes torn out by a soldier's fingers.

A sound caused him to turn. From a post by the gate of the merchant's house the Kalmucks had cut a stake. Upon this they had drawn the passive Chinese. While Hugo looked he wriggled convulsively, his eyes standing from his sweating face.