Swords From the East (54 page)

The momentum of the marching Horde had ceased. No longer did the drivers back on the steppe cry, "Hoa-hoa!"

"Thank God for that horn," thought Billings, wondering how one of the lamas with Nuralin Khan had been so idiotic as to sound a blast before it was time. He judged that the Kirghiz lines had been placed well back in the hills, to allow as many of the clans as possible to cross the river before the attack was made.

He observed that boys were running here and there in the Red Camel gathering, saddling horses, and that the women were moving back toward the river. The men were fingering muskets and watching the line of alders into which more than one scout had plunged at the sound of the shot.

Then from the brush ran a bareheaded man, waving his arms. Through the telescope Billings saw that his kaftan was torn to shreds. A crackle of musket shots broke out at the back of the fugitive.

The crackling spread along the river, grew to a splitting roar, and smoke began to float up over the pines.

The outcry of the crows was no longer to be heard. The groups of Red Camel men were thinner all at once, for many seemed to sit and lie down. Here and there horses reared. A woman carrying a bundle fell and rolled over, kicking up her booted feet.

In the ford a herdboy slid off the back of a camel into the water and did not appear again. Wailing came to Billings's ears, and a curse sounded from nearby. For the most part, however, the Tatars, schooled to misfortune, were silent even under the sting of wounds.

"Look!" cried Norbo, pointing.

At intervals on the heights across the river whole trees fell over. The round, black mouths of cannon peered out at them. At once they flashed, one at a time, and were hidden in dense, white smoke. The balls thudded into the grass or ripped through the mounted Tatars. Some raised great spouts of sand.

Back in the valleys, a half-mile away across the river, the heads of mounted columns appeared. The patter of the muskets continued steadily.

A few feet beneath Billings a little Tatar girl, her head bound in a clean, white kerchief, was standing hugging a doll. It was one of the household images that every Tatar yurt possesses. Billings saw the child start and look at her plaything blankly.

Red drops showed on the face of the felt doll. Then the girl began to whimper. All at once she screamed and tried to run back up the bank. Her feet failed her, but Billings picked her up.

She had been shot through the chest, over the heart. Knowing that there was nothing he could do to save her life, he laid the child in a hollow in the bank and mechanically picked up the doll to put in her lap.

She continued to whimper more loudly, but could no longer move.

"Loosang will pay for that," Billings promised himself, turning away.

As he was swinging into the saddle of a passing horse he halted, surprised.

Ubaka Khan was again in the saddle. The old Khan had cast off his coat and was bare to the waist. His brown body, heavylimbed as a bear's, was erect as he stood in his short stirrups to see the better. He had grown taller in the last moments, and his glance was hard and quick.

"Khans of the Torguts," his tremendous voice roared out, "ride to me."

The officers were already doing so. Ubaka glanced around and began to swing his naked sword over his head in a flashing circle of steel.

"Where is the tugh? Fetch the standard to me, you curs! Assemble your men, you sheep. Line the ridge with your horsemen."

"Aye," shouted one.

"Tell us what to do, father!" implored another.

"Where is Ubaka Khan-Ubaka Khan?"

Cries were heard in all quarters.

All those on the nearer bank could see the great bulk of the chief under the circle of steel that never stopped swinging.

"Llai-hai-hai!" roared Ubaka, seeing the standard approaching. "The Kirghiz have been building a lopazik
* We will tear it down. Where are my riders? Let me see their steel! Good, good, you sons of dogs."

Norbo threw back his head and bayed. The shouting was taken up along the line that began to fall in at the summit of the knoll. Norbo hurried off to put himself at the head of his clan.

"Where is Zebek Dortshi?" barked Ubaka. "I will put a blade down his lying throat."

"Master of the Horde," spoke up a man on foot who had been one of the first to run back through the ford, "I went with Zebek Dortshi into the forest. Few were with him. He met a lama and two Kirghiz khans and spoke with them, while his followers were cut down. Then we heard the trumpet blown, and the Kirghiz were angry. One of them shot at Zebek Dortshi. I ran away-because I saw that he had betrayed us, 0 Khan."

The man eyed Ubaka's broad blade fearfully.

"Lord, Zebek Dortshi, when he knew that he was to be slain, put his back against a tree and smote down several who came against him."

"The jackal died like a lion," grunted the Khan. Suddenly he knocked the fugitive sprawling with the flat of his sword.

"Let no Tatar run from an enemy this day. My son spoke a true word. By the name of Natagai, Alashan sent us a true warning. He is the son of my loins. We will charge the Kirghiz."

The old man was drunk with pride and fury. But Billings laid his hand on the arm of the Khan. He pointed to where masses of the black hats were deploying from the valleys along a three-mile front, facing them. And on the ridge itself the Tatar horsemen were suffering from the heavy musket fire. Soon the cannon would be shotted for a second discharge.

"You would be an ox in truth," he said angrily, "to move forward into this trap. Let the Kirghiz cross the river, and hold this ridge meanwhile. They have fifteen thousand musket men and lancers, and you have not two thousand armed men here. Look at those cannon!"

The eyes of the Khan glowed red. Then he quieted and gazed long across the river, where the unfortunate clan was being cut down. He paid no further attention to Billings.

Nor did the massacre of the Red Camel clan and the plight of the Tatars on the farther bank hold his gaze, which sought out only his fighting men. He tugged at his mustache while the bullets began to whistle over the heads of those who were listening for his orders.

"For that word," he said under his breath, "you are a free man, Captain Billings. Kai-it is so."

Whereupon Ubaka Khan did a thing that amazed Billings. He ordered all the Tatar cavalry to retreat at once to the steppe.

If the stout shade of Starshim Mitrassof could have looked down from the everlasting quarters of the faithful Cossacks in the sky and seen what had come to pass on the steppe, no doubt the colonel would have slapped his ribs and chuckled with glee.

It was not a battle such as European marshals fought. It was the final, desperate struggle of a multitude for life, against a pack that lusted to take life and with life, spoil. For the Kirghiz had achieved the first slaying; they had reddened their swords in the bodies of the doomed clan of Zebek Dortshi, and Nuralin Khan himself had stripped the body of Zebek Dortshi, who had once been the hero of the Horde.

And the Black Kirghiz, like wolves, delayed to torture briefly the bodies of the older Tatars, with the children-to violate the younger women who had been caught on the Kara-su, or to snarl over booty loose under their hands. Then they moved forward into the steppe, and behind them came the jackals, the nimble tribesmen of the Kara-bagh, Tajiks, Sarts, and robbers generally who had held off until then to see which side would win the opening skirmish.

Retreating at once into the plain, Ubaka Khan, if he had been leading European troops, would have thrown his regiments into disorder, turned soldiers into fugitives, and laid his supply train open to attack.

But he had no supply train; every man carried what food there was under his saddle. And every Tatar knew how to handle himself in a feigned rout. Two miles back on the waste of clay, what had seemed a disordered mob of men became a gathering of armed clans, dust-grimed and grim, and with weapons ready.

Also, they were beyond range of the Kirghiz cannon and out of the net that had been thrown around the bend in the Kara-su. The delay of the Kirghiz in crossing the river had enabled Ubaka Khan to form into clans some eight thousand riders to oppose nearly twice that number of pursuers.

Windless clouds of dust revealed that camels, cattle, women, and children were seeking concealment in the loess gullies or riding to distant springs or climbing to mesas where they could rest and watch the smoke puffs that marked the line of battle. Strings of riders were hastening to the menaced quarter of the Horde.

"They are like bees when you break into the hive," said Billings to himself. "Or beavers, coming to a hole in the dam. But the charges of those black hats must cut them up before they have formed."

The rattle of muskets began again, and the dust stayed in the air. Billings began to perceive that the Tatars were not holding their ground, nor were they being cut to pieces as he feared. The clans fought separately, drawing the Kirghiz on and turning upon them fiercely with arrows and sabers.

The flintlocks of the Tatars, except those belonging to the Bear clan and the veteran infantry of the Turkish war, were handed to striplings younger than Alashan and to grandfathers whose hands trembled but whose sight was keen.

These held the tops of clay buttes and the sides of dried watercourses, taking cover behind the scrub that covered the breast of the Kangar. Here and there in the groups he saw young girls with bows. They had small, sharp knives thrust through their belts to use on themselves if the Kirghiz should take them.

No one paid any attention to him. As a precaution he had discarded his Cossack hat and coat. He sought for the yurt of Loosang until he sighted it standing apart as usual. There were no disciples in evidence this time.

Drawing his sword, Billings made his way through the curtains. He saw the bed of Loosang and on it a tall figure with a hideous face.

"Turned into an image again, by gad," he muttered, gazing down into the mask. "Can't be too sure, though, on my word!"

So he thrust his blade into the effigy of clothes and wool and found that it was, in fact, not Loosang. The lama had disappeared. Sheathing his sword, Billings wandered to a height where he could make use of his telescope. He wanted to find Norbo or Ubaka.

All he could see were countless bands of horsemen, visible when they topped some rise in the plain, and separating into couples above whom steel flashed in the sun when they came together. Here and there men were sitting on the ground, looking for all the world like shrubs. Stricken horses were stretched in front of him as far as the horizon. Already clouds of vultures were gathering against the blue curtain of the sky.

The sun scorched the back of his neck, and the hot sand under him warmed his blood. Captain Billings nodded once or twice and surrendered to drowsiness, having been without sleep for two days and nights.

A horse, galloping over him, awakened Billings. He found he was shivering; a cold breath was upon the surface of the steppe, indicating that the middle of the night was passed.

Instead of the sun, a huge, orange moon shone down on the carpet of white sand, etching sharply the shadows of the bushes.

Billings staggered to his feet and looked around. The horse had halted in a hollow behind him, where the red glow of a fire revealed a ring of faces. The wind brought to his nostrils the smell of burning flesh. This set every fiber of him to clamoring for food.

Reconnoitering the fire cautiously, Billings made out that the men were Tatars of the Wolf clan, by their belts. They had cut up the hind quarters of a horse and were roasting the meat over the embers, hardly scorching it before they thrust it into their mouths and gulped it down.

This time Billings did not hesitate to follow their example. He swallowed as much of the smoked meat as he could hold down and asked for water. One of the men pointed behind him; and Billings followed a horse track down a gully, at the end of which in the shadows was a pool of black water.

The sand around the pool was trampled, and Billings had to step over the bodies of the dead. He drank until his thirst was satisfied. Judging that dawn was at hand, he moved out on the steppe toward the nearest height to have a look at his surroundings with the first light. He wanted to get a horse and to find Norbo. He had thrown in his lot with the Horde, and meant to see the thing through.

"It would be a dog trick to ride off the field now," he admitted. "Besides, the show isn't over yet. Hulloa!"

The chills chased up his back. He had been stepping out on the surface of the mound when what seemed to be a dead man perched against a boulder extended a hand that gripped his leg.

"Look," said a Tatar's voice, "before you."

Billings looked and made out several tribesmen squatting in a circle. In the center of the ring was a man on his back. It was Norbo, almost under the mapmaker's feet.

"May the way be open before you, Norbo," observed he cheerfully; but then realized that the Master of the Herds was wounded. His chest was wet with a dark liquid that shone in the moonlight; the air wheezed in his throat, so that he could not speak. Only his eyes moved toward Billings.

Gently as the maker of maps tried to pull the hands of Norbo from his chest, he could not force the Tatar's fingers from the wound, to examine it. So he sat down to wait until Norbo should speak or day should come. Presently the labored breath of the wounded man was still.

"The gate in the sky," cried Norbo. "The gate-it is open!"

Surprised, Billings looked up. Crimson was streaking the sky in the east, and the wind was freshening. A moment later Norbo died.

He had not lived to reach the Ili, but death had brought to his eyes a vision that he had sought during the years of his life. As if the first streaks of dawn had been a signal, muskets cracked and the fighting was resumed on the steppe.

It was impossible to learn how the battle was tending. The wind stirred up the dust devils, and before full light a canopy of sand in the air obscured the sun, while whirling pillars reached up into the gray vault of the sky. Billings wrapped his green neckcloth about his nose and mouth. Over his head he could hear the constant flapping of great wings.