Swords From the East (11 page)

"Tell Galdan Khan what you have seen," smiled Hugo. "Say that he will never see his mirzas again. On the first clear night I will come into his lines and speak with him."

But on that night, and for three days, no men crossed the rampart of the stone fort. Clouds gathered, above and below the pass. Snow came, and hail.

The loose snow in the pass was covered with an icy coating at the touch of the wind that screamed through the walls of the Urkhogaitu. The temperature dropped many degrees; and the few sentries on either side were changed often, or they would have frozen to death.

Truly was the pass the Gate of the Winds-the winds that brought with them the cold of outer space, and snow. Attackers and defenders alike retreated down below the snow line and camped under the canopy of the forest, Galdan Khan going down to the main body of his troops among the foothills, and Hugo to the camp of Aruk, where his men slept, allowing their wounds to heal.

On the sixth night of the siege the stars were clearly to be seen. The snow flurries passed from the peaks of the Altai, leaving the white pinnacles framed against the sky in the light of a three-quarters moon.

Promptly Hugo returned to his battlement with his Tatars and some others who had come up to the pass for news.

Hugo, his tattered cloak wound around his tall figure, stood in the snow of a towertop and stared reflectively into the gleams and shadows of the ravine. In the half-light he could see no bodies; for the storm had blanketed the slain, and the dark outline of a frozen limb or a rusted weapon was softened by the moon.

The wind, gentle now, stirred in the ragged beard of monsieur le comte and caressed his hot eyes. He lifted his eyes to the stars, picking out the ones he knew.

It reminded him of a night when he had made the rounds of the guard on the wall of a mountain fort in the Pyrenees. There had been snow on the ground, and he remembered a chapel bell that tolled during an allnight mass. But he had listened, then, to the song of a woman in the chateau of the town-a fair woman, that.

He hummed to himself the air of the chanson, twirling his mustache with a hand that trembled from the cold-

Well, the woman, whose slipper he had kissed, was no doubt dead-as dead as the soft-hearted Paul who had prayed for her soul.

"Paul," murmured Hugo, making a sweeping bow with his hat-on which the plumes were quite bedraggled-"I commend her to you, a beautiful and a virtuous woman. There were few like her, my brother. Paul, will you tell me why in the name of the I should waste my life on these brats of yours back yonder, these Tatars who make but sorry Christians at best? That would be but a foolish end to a career that at least has had its distinctions."

Replacing his hat, for he was cold, Hugo reasoned tranquilly, although the rarefied air, as always, made him a little dizzy. Galdan Khan would bring up his cannon. A slow and difficult matter that, and not much gain in the end. But another assault over the ravine floor, leveled by the snow, and over the broken rampart-Galdan Khan would take the fort, such as it was, on the morrow.

Well and good. Then why should Hugo stay where he was, like a cow in the butcher's pen?

"That is not how I would choose to be remembered at court," he reflected. "Monseigneur the cardinal-if he is still monseigneur the cardinal-would laugh over his cards at such a droll thing. And then everyone else would smile because, forsooth, monseigneur made a jest. That would be droll. Perhaps they have forgotten Hainault. By the horns of Panurge, if I should return-"

Hugo laughed, reflecting that the soul of Pierre would be offended, up among the stars; for Pierre, the valet, had always believed that monsieur le comte would never break his word, even to a Tatar.

Well, it was too cold to stand there any longer. So Hugo, his long sword clanking at his side, strode down to where his men had gathered in a black bulk behind the rampart. For the first time they had horses in the pass, one to each man.

They numbered a hundred and twenty, Hugo counted. Respectfully they waited for him to speak.

"Eh, my dogs," he cried, "have you your weapons? Have you eaten well?"

"Father, we have."

"And each warrior has a horse? Good. It is time-time. Will you come with me, my dogs?"

A guttural murmur answered him.

"Aye, father. We will go with the Wolf-Chaser."

Tugging at his mustache, Hugo slapped Aruk on the back, a twinkle in his eye. He no longer minded the smell of sheep that exuded from the Tatars.

"You will do better in the saddle than behind a wall-eat me if you won't. You have called me Wolf-Chaser. Eh, we will look for the wolf."

So saying, Hugo mounted a shaggy pony that made its way with some difficulty over the rocks of the rampart on the hard-packed snow. The others followed irregularly.

They headed down the ravine toward the Kalmucks. Keeping close to one side of the ravine, they were within the shadow, and the snow dulled the sound of the horses' hoofs. So it was some time before a shape rose in the shadow to challenge them.

Two Tatars spurred past Hugo and cut down the Kalmuck sentry, with only a dull clink of steel on mail.

Other figures were stirring, though, down the ravine, which was broader here where they neared the bend in the gorge. Hugo quickened to a trot.

A pistol flashed and roared, echoing from the rocks.

The Kalmuck patrol shouted and turned to run; but they were afoot, and the rider from the upper gorge caught them up at the curve in the ravine. A few blows, and the bodies of the Kalmucks sprawled in the snow.

"Swiftly now," instructed Hugo.

The Kalmuck camp in the plateau into which the ravine gave was occupied only by two regiments of foot. These ran from their tents, snatching up the first weapon to hand as the Tatar horsemen reached the lines of the encampment. A few muskets barked, and arrows flickered in the moonlight.

The Tatars shot their arrows as they galloped, for here the snow surface was level. Their beasts crashed in among the tents, trampling belated sleepers-for an attack from above had not been thought of.

Over the horses' heads sabers flashed and rose again. Men leaped to grapple with the riders. The fight was silent except for the scream of an injured horse and the wild shout of a Tatar who felt death.

More slowly now, the horses pressed forward. Old Ostriin, shooting the last of his arrows, drew an iron war-club and laid about him.

"Hai!" he muttered. "Taste this, wolves."

His arm was caught, and a tall Sungar warrior buried a knife in the chest of the falconer. Ostrim was pulled from his horse and disappeared.

Many had fled from the camp, believing themselves lost. But when the struggle had spread to the center of the tents, other warriors began to appear, running up from below where the main body of the Kalmucks had taken alarm. The tangled knots of men had been pushed almost to the edge of the plateau, and more than once a horse or man crashed off to fall on the rocks below.

The cries of "Hai!" grew fainter, and fewer horsemen were to be seen. Reinforcements came up to the Kalmucks, but the Tatars did not give ground, choosing instead to die where they were.

Galdan Khan, riding up with his officers, heard from fugitives what had happened.

"It is the Frankish lord," they cried. "He has come to seek you."

Starting, the khan clenched his fist. For three days he had pondered the message sent back by Hugo, wondering whether the Frank meant to come over to him.

"He has slain a score," reported those who approached the khan. "His sword is like a spear, and we cannot slay him. He looks for you, and shouts that he has kept his word to you."

But, being a prudent man, Galdan Khan did not desire to face Hugo. So the chief of the Turks remained below the plateau until the fighting was at an end. Meanwhile it was only too clearly to be seen that the courage of his men was shaken, that they stared uneasily into the pass where they had encountered once too often the grim visage of death.

It was late the next day when a crowd of Tatars rode up the trail toward the pass, from Kob. They found the debris of the fort, on which perched Aruk, the keeper of the gate, his shoulder slashed in two, his armor cut and bloodied.

Beside him stood a single Tatar, a Buriat, looking down the gorge to the south. By the fire the two had kindled, a badly wounded man lay, moving restlessly. Yet the snow around them was unstained and marked only by the hoofs of scores of horses.

The khan of the Buriats strode to Aruk.

"The work at Kob is finished-the wolves scattered," he said. "What of the pass, 0 keeper of the gate?"

"Galdan Khan has gone back to his own land."

Galdan Khan was a shrewd man. News leaked in to him, brought by stragglers over the Altai, that the mirzas were cut up and their followers scattered. Including the affair at the plateau, he had lost two thousand warriors at the pass. Meanwhile he knew the Tatar clans had gathered in the northern plain, heartened by victory. His men, disheartened by the night attack, were murmuring.

So Galdan Khan knew that the hour for the conquest of Tartary had passed.

"What of Hugo, the Krit?" asked the Buriat khan, when he had heard the details of the defense of the pass.

Aruk pointed to the single sentry who stood over a figure covered by a cloak that had once been elegant with bows and satin lining. The khan of the Buriats drew back the cloak and looked into the dead face of Hugo. He lifted his hand toward the rocks of the gorge.

"He kept his word," he said.

Aruk nodded.

"Aye, did I not say he was a falcon, a wolf-chaser? Kai. It is so."

"It is so," echoed the Tatars.

After consulting together they buried the body of Hugo beside that of his brother the priest, in the flame-blackened hut where the crucifix was still to be seen over the altar. In this fashion did Hugo and Paul come to sleep in the same bed.

In time the name of Hugo of Hainault, and that of Paul his brother, were forgotten in the stirring of the troubled land of their birth. But the children of Aruk and Yulga and their children after them came to the hut, repeating prayers that grew more indistinct with time because they did not know the meaning of the words.

I

The Shadow

The gong in the palace courtyard struck the third hour of the morning, awakening Mingan, prince of Cathay, from what would otherwise have been his last sleep.

He was a boy of fifteen, and the echoes of the gong had not died in the upper corridors of the slumbering palace before he was wide awake, before he had slipped from his teak pallet and opened the lid of the ebony chest beside it.

The day was the fifth of the fifth moon, and it was to be a feast day-the feast of Hao, in midsummer of that year of the Ape, by the Chinese calendar, otherwise the year of Our Lord iioo. But what had aroused Mingan was the recollection that at dawn the old emperor would assemble the court and ride forth on the customary hunt of the festival of Hao.

The hunters would go from the palace, out of Taitung-the Western City-to the Western Gate of the Great Wall, and beyond, to where Cathay ended and the wide desert began. Mingan wished to be ready in plenty of time. He was quivering a little with excitement-and the damp air that swept through the open arches of the sleeping chambers-as he took out from the chest the new garments he was to put on.