Swords From the West (23 page)

"What did they see to frighten them?"

Neshavan still smiled.

"Nothing. But they heard much and turned back."

Again he fell silent. Karabek, the Tatar bowman, came to the rug hastily, without apology.

"Tura," he grunted, "two Kara Kalpaks ride to thy threshold."

The effect upon the master of the house was instantaneous. His eyes opened wide and he drew a long breath. Then he made a sign with his hand toward the alcove, glanced moodily about the chamber and strode to the door. Nial, hearing horses' hoofs on the hard clay, was at his side-wondering whether a pair of the Tatars, knowing this trail and the Hawk House, had come up.

Instead he saw in the light of a torch held by a servant, two tribesmen who looked like gaunt wolves on weary horses. They wore ragged black lambskin headgear, like that of the two slayers of the courier, and Nial understood how they came to be named Kara Kalpaks-Black Hats. The taller of the pair reined forward impatiently, his pony wincing from a prod of the sharp stirrup edge.

"In the name of Allah," he cried, "give us water."

His slant eyes flickered restlessly as Neshavan turned and gravely ordered the man with the torch to fetch a jar. Karabek lingered by the door, bow in hand, tense as a hound scenting game.

"Water," said Neshavan, "thou shalt have, in peace."

He took the filled jar from the servant and stepped forward. The tribesman leaned down and, as Neshavan held out the clay jar, whipped a curved knife from his waistband. Swift as a panther's paw the Black Hat's hand shot out, plunging the knife into Neshavan's throat.

The master of the Hawk House staggered aside, clutching at the ivory hilt projecting from his beard. Then with a queer whine he collapsed on the ground, blood rushing from his mouth. His slayer had drawn scimitar and, with no more excitement than if dealing with a jackal, slashed the forearm of the dazed servant holding the torch.

"Strike down the dogs!" he shouted.

A girl's scream rang through the room, and Karabek turned instinctively to catch in his arms the slender figure that darted from the alcove toward the dying Neshavan. And out of the darkness emerged a dozen Black Hats who must have been waiting beyond the torchlight for just this moment. They flung themselves from the saddles, and their leader lifted his head to laugh.

"Yartak bish yabir-the young woman awaits ye, 0 my brothers!"

Nial had drawn his sword instinctively. Seeing bows in the hands of the men who remained in their saddles, he stepped back into the room, caught a glimpse of Karabek carrying the struggling girl into the alcove and picked up his roped saddlebags. The quarrel was not his affair, and it would be sheer folly to stand his ground against these raiders.

But they were on his heels with a rush and, in a hot wave of anger, he whirled at the curtain of the alcove, striking down the sword of the foremost and laying the face of another open with a side-long slash.

They snarled and hung back, peering into the gloom of the alcove. Then Nial felt a hand on his shoulder and heard Karabek's quiet voice.

"Come."

He stepped back between the curtains, saw Karabek hastening down a passage and ran out into darkness that reeked of cattle and manure. A lantern on the ground guided him to the stable shed, where the Tatar and the girl loosed a horse swiftly.

"Take thine!" Karabek grunted at him, and Nial made out his Turkoman still saddled beside him.

He untied the rein and swung himself into the saddle as the girl ran off, tugging at the halter of a pony. He followed her past the shed, down a path that brought them under heavy trees. Here he heard his companion stop and busy herself with the pony's head, putting on a headstall as he judged by the click of the iron bit against rebellious teeth. She was sobbing quietly, while the shouts of the Black Hats echoed in the house behind them, above the screaming of the excited hawks.

Then she must have climbed to the pony's back, for he heard them moving off. He followed.

"Where is your servant, Karabek?" he asked.

He repeated the question before she answered, in a whisper:

"Nay, he was Neshavan's servant and foster-brother. He would not go. Ai-a, may God grant that he slays that dog -born dog!"

She would say nothing more, even when they came out upon the road beyond her home and looked back to see a red glare rising among the trees. The Hawk House was burning, and around it the raiders were carrying spoil to their horses. Nial waited, but she was not weeping now.

"Karabek has not come," he ventured. "Will you go on to Talas?"

She lifted her head, brushing back the thick tresses from her eyes, and in the starlight he could see only her small white face.

"Why not," she responded calmly. "All places are alike to me now."

Chapter II

The Seal of the Khan

After the noon prayer the next day, when the streets of Talas were deserted except for black goats, a gaunt Kara Kalpak rode at a footpace across the one bridge, paying no heed to the beggars who sprawled in the shadow of the creaking waterwheel.

Guiding his horse through alleys where the sun beat remorselessly upon clay walls, drawing a stench from the trodden ground, the tribesman glanced from side to side until he came to a rickety wooden door marked with two red stains. They might have been uplifted crimson arms, or rude towers, but they satisfied the Kara Kalpak and he dismounted. He yawned, spat, muttered an invocation, "Hazz-shaitan-Satan in his abode," fidb eted with his waistband, and finally knocked on the door.

It was opened by a lame boy who did not trouble to brush the flies from his sore eyes.

"Hast thou no key?" he exclaimed with the insolence of a child who knows he is protected from harm.

"Nay, little one," the tribesman muttered pacifically, "no key was given me; yet have I gone beyond the Gate."

"So have many," the child sneered. "By what token?"

"I have heard the voice that is not seen."

"What brought thee hither?"

"A message-tidings for him who sits behind the red towers."

"Of silence." The boy laughed, pointing to the marks on the door. "Nay, these are but gateposts and thou art a braying ass without wit. Come and bray."

Without taking offense, the Kara Kalpak led his horse into the courtyard, turned him loose in the shade, and followed the limping boy up an outer stair to a room on the second floor that overlooked the roofs of Talas. He went slowly, as if coming with empty pockets to a moneylender who held long-overdue interest against him. Leaving his peaked riding slippers on the mat, he advanced slowly into the shadow toward a young Persian who knelt by a low table that bore a silver cup of mastic and sugared fruits. He touched the carpet, then his forehead with his right hand, clumsily as a performing bear.

"Ai, tura," he vouchsafed, "I have tidings from the caravan road for him who sits behind the outer gateposts of silence."

The Persian did not smile. He had blue eyes, bloodshot from too many opiates or too little sleep, and soft, protruding lips. His turban cloth was immaculate white silk.

"I am Mir Farash," he said idly, "a poor interpreter of dreams, but I will hear thy tale."

Squatting on the carpet, the tribesman fingered his beard uneasily.

"As the command came, so it was done," he began. "Two of us waited beyond the first well of the great road. We watched in turn, six-eight days. Then when the sun was high we beheld the light flash twice and twice again from the tower of the ruined mosque above Samarkand. We went down to wait in a gully for the rider of the yam. We came out before him, and Yussuf slew him with one stroke when he would have swerved past us."

He paused to glance restlessly behind him at the window.

"The boy watches," Mir Farash observed. "And then?"

"Lord, it was Yussuf who took the silver tube. It bore a Tatar seal."

"Thou hast it not?"

"Yussuf had it. But, Honored One, before we could ride off a strange horseman came to the dying Tatar."

"And ye twain, being greedy of more than payment, lingered to loot him! "

"Nay, by the ninety and nine holy names! We feared that he had seen. He knelt there, unaware-"

The youth's dark eyes flashed.

"He had seen, and yet knelt unsuspecting! What poor lies are these?"

The big tribesman rocked on his haunches. Although he was girdled with weapons and the slender interpreter of dreams looked harmless as a girl, his voice thickened with fear.

"Kulluck! I am thy slave! My words are dull, but it is all true. Am I not here in the dust at thy feet? Do not let anger come. Hearken, we thought to ride down this horseman. He turned like a panther. He struck Yussuf such a blow it slit him open.

"Who was I to ride in where Yussuf had fallen? Nay, a thought came to me, and I hastened along the road to the well, calling upon some dob born Afghans to aid me. I swore that this nameless one had slain the courier and Yussuf also. We gave chase, swift as the black storm wind. At the next station we should have caught him, but he tricked the Tatar guards and went off on a good horse. The officer of the station joined us with ten and two men, after I had sworn to the murder of the courier."

"This nameless one-he had taken the silver tube?" Mir Farash murmured. "And thou, 0 sharp of wit, thou didst tell the Tatar officer of this also?"

"Nay," exclaimed the tribesman with pride. "I was like a fox in guile. I said only that the yam rider had been robbed and his wallet torn open. Those Afghans had seen that. The Tatars could follow the man's trail. After the last light he turned off into the hills, toward Talas. The Tatars were like a dog pack, with their noses to the ground. They made torches and followed slowly. I decided to cast ahead, along the upper trail to Talas. I did not see the thief, but the Hawk House was burning."

Mir Farash nodded reflectively.

"What was he like, this nameless one?"

"A batyr-a matchless swordsman-like to no other I have seen." The tribesman gave a shrewd description of Nial, while visibly he pondered something else. "Surely he must come out of the hills upon this river. The Tatars are behind him, and they will not turn back. Give command to hunt for him here."

Again the Persian nodded, impassively.

"I understand. Thou hast failed."

"Kulluck! But I alone know his face."

The Kara Kalpak tugged at his beard anxiously.

"Then wait below until I summon thee."

When the tribesman had gone off, grateful to escape punishment for the present, at least, Mir Farash nibbled at one of the sugared fruits. Then without enthusiasm he rose and went up to the roof of his house, where he leaned against the parapet in the full glare of sunlight. Idly he scanned the vistas of alleys below him. Talas sprawled from the river halfway up a stony hill, and his house was one of the highest.

It was a dangerous thing to do; for that was the siesta hour and groups of women were lying under canopies on the flat roofs, where layers of fragrant grapes had been spread to dry. A good Moslem dislikes to be stared at, and will resent violently having his women watched from a roof, no matter how distant. Although Mir Farash's white turban reflected the sunlight, drawing instant attention to him, neither taunts nor arrows came his way. Instead, some of the younger women near him began to chatter in the hope that he would notice them.

But he continued to inspect the narrow valley, the twin slopes of gray stone cut up into terraces heavy with grapevines, the turgid Zarafshan*
River, and the empty bridge. The great waterwheel groaned and wheezed. A breath of cooler air from distant heights passed down the valley, mingling with the warm odor of tamarisk, of mulberries ripening in the sun, and the dung and offal of the alleys. Mir Farash called a boy to him and gave command to send watchers to the gates and others to search along the river for a solitary rider-a tall infidel with blue eyes and a lion's mane, who spoke both Arabic and the speech of the Tatars.

By midafternoon he had another visitor, a Kara Kalpak who was as voiceless as the first had been voluble.

"Neshavan hath found his grave," he reported.

"And where," Mir Farash asked, "is the proof?"

Reaching into a wicker basket beside him, the tribesman lifted out a human head and placed it before the Persian. It had a long black beard, clotted with dried blood.

"The keeper of the hawks," grunted the Kara Kalpak, and took a second head from the basket. "Karabek, the archer."

Drawing a sharp knife from his waistband, he slit an ear from each and pouched these two pieces of evidence of the success of his mission before rising silently to depart. Mir Farash smiled fleetingly.

"But what of the girl, Alai?" he questioned.

The Kara Kalpak swept his arm outward.

"Gone into the night, like an arrow lost among reeds."

"She will cause trouble. Watch for her and bring her to me. Hast thou seen a tall infidel with blue eyes and a lion's mane? He hath only one straight sword and two saddlebags."

"Allah tzei! Yes, we have seen him and his sword. He also escaped because Karabek stood upon their trail with his bow."

"Go thou and search for him. Let no one plunder him, but bring him hither with all he carries."

The creaking of a far-off waterwheel roused Nial late that afternoon. His first thought was for the saddlebags under his head, and when he had sat isfied himself that the silver tube was safe, he looked around for the Tatar girl. She was not in sight, although her pony stood by the piebald horse.

Nial pushed through the poplar grove in which they had taken refuge early that morning, for both were tired and neither wished to ride into Talas in daylight. The girl was sleeping in a hollow, curled up on saddlecloths, her white linen headgear drawn over her face. She did not stir when he stood beside her nor when he knelt and lifted the white cloth gently.

Her eyes were closed-long eyes that slanted upward a little under heavy lashes darkened with kohl. Her full lips were blood-red against her white face, the face of a weary child. Around her throat curled the mass of her unbound hair, black as night itself. But, seemingly asleep, she was watching him under the veil of her lashes. And when the tall Scot would have gone away, she looked him full in the face, curiously, without a word.