Swords From the East (36 page)

He watched while Cherla covered her breast and rose to stand before him. Cha-tsong Chien was even taller than Ermecin, though not so massive in shoulder and arm.

"Welcome to the yurt of Ermecin, tao-tai," she said in blundering Man chu. "I am of the blood of your august fathers, and I can try to serve the guest fittingly. Will you be pleased to sit until Ermecin can be sent for?"

Cherla's heart was pounding under the embroidered silk of her tunic. She had often thought with reverence of the governor across the border. He was of the white-boned caste, and the splendors of his palace must be beyond telling.

But his moist eyes seemed to her like the eyes of a fish. Why had the soldiers of the governor struck down the herder? Cherla did not understand; she only knew that she was Ermecin's wife and must extend the hospitality of Ermecin's ill-suited tents to the august visitor.

The glance of Cha-tsong Chien ran around the weapons on the walls and came back to the woman as a group of his men clustered in the yurt entrance.

"Break those bows and spears," he commanded at length. "Fetch in the cattle and horses to the last one. Not until then can you have this woman for your sport. Make haste!"

Now as the men were tearing down the weapons from the felt sides of the tent one of them stepped upon the child, which began to cry. Indifferently, the soldier picked it up and tossed it to earth to silence it.

Cherla's heart stood still. But the son of Ermecin wriggled about on the furs where he had fallen and stood up, his fat legs planted wide.

"A strong boy!" exclaimed Cha-tsong Chien in surprise. "Aye, and there may be Manchu blood somewhere in his veins. We will take him with us."

With a scream Cherla cast herself over the boy, hugging him to her. Two bowmen tried to drag her away from the child. In her slender body was a surprising strength.

It was minutes before they had beaten her unconscious with the butts of their weapons. They tore the silver ornaments from her silk garment and in so doing ripped the tunic from her.

Cha-tsong Chien jerked them back angrily.

"Dogs-get you to the herds. We must be off at once. Give the child to a coolie to tie to his horse."

Botogo had spoken the truth, yet not quite all the truth. Ermecin was at the horse festival; but he was not drunk. In fact, drink never kept him off his feet, and just then he was watching the horse races with critical appreciation.

When the herder from his yurt galloped up on a steaming beast and shouted to Ermecin, the big Tatar became dead sober in that moment. In the next he was on his horse and off, over the plain.

The burning stacks of hay, the broken corrals, and the tumbled huts of his followers he took in with a glance. Passing by a group of curious and silent Buriats, he strode into his yurt, now empty of skins and ivory and ornaments and filled with broken weapons.

"Where is the son of Ermecin?" he asked his wife, scarcely noticing her torn clothes and the sweat on her disordered hair.

His deep voice was slow as if it had been dragged forth from his chest. His veined hands clasped and unclasped on his belt. Only his eyes glowed as if from a fire within.

"They have taken him away from you," she wailed. "They have taken him from me and put him on a horse while you were drunk at the festival. Oh, you are a beast, you are a beast!"

"They threw him on the ground," she cried, pointing to the spot. "But he did not die, because he is strong, strong. And they have taken him away from you, you-"

Ermecin had passed from the yurt. Cherla dragged herself to the entrance in time to see him go to the best of the horses that the Buriats had ridden up-the Buriats who had been his guests. As she watched the big, stooped figure gallop off alone after circling the yurt, there was a curious fire in her dark eyes. Her lips moved as if she was praying.

When the outpost that Cha-tsong Chien had stationed in the rear of his caravan of animals rode up to report a single horseman coming over the long slopes in the plain where the plain is like the waves of the sea, meeting the sand of the Gobi, Cha-tsong Chien smiled for the first time in some hours.

It was then nearly dusk. The one rider, so reasoned the tao-tai, could be disposed of by his bowmen. Then night would fall.

Their course across the northern corner of the Gobi would be undisturbed, and by dawn they would be beyond reach of any really formidable pursuit.

So he called in three of his bowmen, and then a fourth, from the herd. The two other bowmen and all the servants but one that carried Cha-tsong Chien's sword were needed to drive the uneasy animals.

The Tatar, Cha-tsong Chien mused, would rush up like an angered ox and would be stuck full of arrows in a trice.

The six men sat their horses with bowstrings taut and arrows fitted, while the pursuer galloped up over a rise and gave a shout at seeing them.

"Wait until he is close," ordered the tao-tai. "The light is bad."

Actually he was willing that one or two of his men should be shot down-he knew the skill of a Tatar archer-in order that the others should make sure of their kill. As for Cha-tsong Chien, he had a breastplate of Turkish steel under his robe. He had inherited it from his fathers and found it useful at times like this.

The rider headed toward them, and they saw a short, massive bow gripped in his left hand.

"Wait," counseled Cha-tsong Chien as his men stirred, "another spear's throw."

But then the rider swerved and began to circle the group at the full speed of his horse. As the herds with their guards had passed on, the plain about the Chinese was clear.

"Hai!" he shouted. "Hai-hai!"

With each cry he loosed an arrow. The shafts came as if expelled from a siege engine. One of the bowmen was knocked to earth, transfixed. The horse of another screamed and went to its knees.

The volley of arrows from the bowmen went wide, falling behind the bent figure that seemed to skim the ground on its shaggy pony. The Chinese bows were longer than the Tatar weapon, but their tension was less. Their shafts at that distance did not carry in a straight line, while they could scarcely see the darts of the Tatar that whirred in the air.

Cha-tsong Chien heard a thud, and saw the skull of a horse beside him shattered as a shaft hit.

"That is Ermecin!" cried his servant. "He is a champion. We must

"Dog!" roared the aroused official, striking the man with the flat of his sword. "We are four and he is one-a Tatar."

Lifting his voice, Cha-tsong Chien bellowed for his men with the herd to leave the animals and ride up.

"Shoot down his horse!" he instructed his archers.

By an accident his followers made good his wish. The frightened servant turned his mount to flee. Ermecin halted his beast, took time to direct an arrow, and the coolie was knocked sprawling. But the moment's pause gave the Manchu bowmen their chance, and Ermecin's horse went down.

"We have him now," announced Cha-tsong Chien. "Let us await our comrades."

They waited long. Ermecin trotted off into the dusk in ungainly fashion. He was little used to being on his own feet. Presently he appeared again on another knoll, mounted. Following the herd, he had caught a stray horse and in doing so had met with one of the returning archers and killed him.

The other soldier and the servants remained hidden in the plain, perhaps not hearing the governor's shout, perhaps unwilling to ride into the danger that lurked in the deepening dusk.

Cha-tsong Chien felt a cold chill steal up the base of his stout neck at sight of the Tatar rider returning. But he made up his mind quickly.

"We must attack him," he said. "Come, a handful of gold to the one who lets out his life."

By keeping his distance and harassing the Chinese through the night, Ermecin would have fulfilled the wisdom of his experience. But at sight of them riding toward him, all the cool strategy life had taught him deserted him. Was Ermecin to turn his back on his foes?

So perhaps had Cha-tsong Chien reasoned as he kept prudently behind his men. Ermecin stood his ground. It was nearly dark.

Masterless groups of horses galloped by the band of Buriats, who followed cautiously by torchlight the trail of the herd that night.

"That is good," they said. "Ermecin has scattered the Chinese, and the herd seeks its home pastures. Aye, there are the cattle, going back."

Some left the torches to carry off beasts from the groups that straggled back. They preferred to steal in the dark because there was no telling when Ermecin might ride up to them. Had not the Chinese left the herd?

They halted at a place where two dead bowmen lay with a coolie stretched out a short distance away. From here they followed horse tracks for the distance of a bowshot.

"Ah, here was a fight for you, good sirs," they assured each other as they halted a second time.

A Manchu bowman, doubled up, was under their feet, an arrow projecting from his back. A few yards farther on they heard a groan. It came from another of the Chinese soldiers, his clothing torn, his hands dark with dried blood. The man's chest was cut nearly in two, and the air bubbled from his severed lungs as he struggled, dying, for breath.

Under him lay a Manchu body without a head. And near these two was the tall form of Cha-tsong Chien, the silk robe ripped from his mail, the steel hacked and bent. His sword was in his hand. He was quite dead, and the ground here was trampled as if two heavy bodies had churned it with their feet.

The broken halves of Ermecin's sword were here also, but of the Tatar warrior they saw no trace until they heard a thin cry in the night air. Others of their band who had investigated the plain reported that the Chinese coolies must have fled.

"Then that was a spirit of the sky crying to us," observed Botogo the witch-doctor, who was far from at ease. "They have snatched up Ermecin, for he is not here and he did not ride back to his yurt-"

Botogo spat on the form of the Manchu, and the others stared at him in awe.

Nevertheless Ermecin was there. When they followed the sound they had heard they found him on the ground, his body drooped forward, propped up on one elbow, his head and shoulder on the grass. His bare chest was agape with wounds, and he had bled out his life some time ago.

Under his kneeling form was the plaintive, struggling bundle of his child.

They took the boy back to Cherla, while fires were lighted about the armaci-ralin, the house of the strongest, and the Buriats flocked to eat roasted sheep and drink up the stores of kumiss beside the hut where Ermecin lay. Botogo was there in his role of master of ceremonies, for which he would be well paid.

Cherla sat in the yurt entrance, clad in a new dress, her tresses ordered. She was staring blankly into the fires.

"Only once did she speak," said the gossip crones to the men who surrounded the fires. "That was when the body of Ermecin was brought in to her. We have not heard her say it before. She said, 'nimeleu gatvarkin- hail, to my husband."'

Cherla, however, spoke again before the night was done. A gleam came into her dark eyes when the baby, hungry, began to pummel at her breasts with its sturdy fists.

"Ah, you, too, will be an ermecin, a strong man."

And in her voice was tenderness and a great pride.

Chapter I

An Account of How Captain Billings Lost His Luggage

He who sets forth upon the road knows not what the road will bring; nor does he know the hour of his return.

-Mongol proverb

"God go with you, my excellent sir. Keep to the highroad, by all means, and don't fail to watch the verst-posts, my good gentleman. It's a matter of some twenty versts to Zaritzan, maybe thirty or forty."

The stranger who had stopped to eat a hasty supper at the frontier post on the highroad from Astrakan to Zaritzan sprang into the saddle of his pony and pulled the fur lapels of his greatcoat up around his ears. This made the soldier curious, for in the year of Our Lord 1771, in the beginning of February when the ice on the Volga was solid enough to support a coach and six, few travelers ventured alone along the frontier between Russia and the Tatar tribes.