Swords From the East (39 page)

Elegantly dressed under-officials attached to Kichinskoi's staff drew closer to inspect the emblem on the clasp; uncouth-looking Cossack captains drew back with scowls.

Captain Billings was sensitive, and was acutely conscious of the belt. He could not discard it-he had no other means of holding up his breeches.

Whispers came to his ears.

"The stranger has held commerce with those across the river."

"He had been tempted by the archfiend."

"No, a witch ran off with his horse and left him astraddle of the strap. I know that for a fact."

A giant of a man, bearded to the eyes although the front portion of his head was bald, joined Billings by the stove where the captain was warming his boots. As Kichinskoi had made no mention of meat and drink, the adventurer did not choose to remind the company that he was hungry. To eat in such a crowd was distasteful to him.

"To purgatory with Satan," growled the newcomer. Billings recognized the voice of the singer. "I am the starshim, Mitrassof, Colonel of the Volga Cossacks, and by the Heavens I know the different handiwork of witches and vampires. Vampires climb up behind horsemen. First they stupefy the traveler with a poisonous breath, then they suck the man's blood until he is half-drained and goes about for the rest of his life like an idiot or a cripple.

"A vampire takes the form of a child," nodded the starshim. "Always. Wasn't this one like a boy or girl, captain?"

"A stripling, and a rapscallion at that."

"Of course." Mitrassof pointed to the slit in the leg of Billings's trouser. "Ai-a, brother, you had it there. Don't you feel faint?"

"Somewhat-yes, devilishly faint."

There was no doubt about that, Billings having gone hungry since dawn.

"Well, that settles it. Within a week your limbs will begin to shrivel. Too bad, too bad. You should have dismounted at once and stuck your dagger in the ground and made the sign of the cross three times. A vampire can't stand that. He would have run down the dagger and into the ground."

"I have a better trick than that," spoke up another. "When a little girl vampire out on the Tatar steppe tried to seize my leg, I cut off her head with my saber-pouf, like that! Then when I reined in and rode back to see if she had changed into an animal, the body was gone. It was night, a moon like this, and I heard an old woman wailing in the thicket."

"True, true," nodded Mitrassof. "Vampires are more daring than witches, every time."

Kichinskoi's thin lips wore a skeptical smile. He was sitting on a couch fitted with a silk cover. Beside him was a plump German woman, his mistress. She wore an enormous round crinoline in the new fashion and made great play with a fan.

The woman with her airs contrasted grotesquely with the bare beams of hewn pine and the tiled stove. Kichinskoi sprawled at ease, receiving compliments from his entourage as a prince might.

Mitrassof's explanation had cleared the air for Billings. He was no longer bothered, and a hum of voices rose, drowning out the notes of a balalaika strumming somewhere in the shadows. Suddenly talk and music ceased.

A young lieutenant of Polish dragoons had entered, saluted Mitrassof, and come to a stand before the pristof. Billings noticed that the nerves of the assembly seemed not of the best and that everyone listened to hear what the newcomer had to say.

He had been out with a patrol across the river. He had to report that the Torgut chieftains were in council, and preparations were under way among the yurts for a movement of some kind. Cattle were being herded.

"Cattle?" Kichinskoi's brows went up.

"You come to me with a tale that children are herding Tatar cattle? What rot!"

The Pole flushed. He was a youngster in gallant attire in damask surtout and gilt spars, and obviously had thought he had done something well worthwhile.

"But it's at night, excellency. And the fires are going in all the family tents."

"Fires? You'll be assuring me next that the savages are eating breakfast."

"They are, excellency."

Kichinskoi snorted: the woman beside him hid her laugh behind a fan; the under-officials smirked in harmony. When the pristof set the tune it was up to them to dance attendance. Mitrassof alone became moody at the tidings of the Pole.

"But, excellency! That is no tale. Tatar outlaws have unsheathed the sword on the Volga. A band of them attacked and slew a Cossack sotnik approaching Zaritzan on the ice with a sled from Astrakan."

"Your mother blessed you with little sense, lieutenant. Come! A few robbers plunder a sled-you see a rising."

A crash startled the listeners. Mitrassof had flung upon the floor the glass of brandy he was holding. His beard was bristling.

"My men slain-by Torguts! Hey, there shall be an answer for that. I scent treachery." His scowling glance swept the room and fell upon Billings. "My soldiers were convoying your instruments and luggage."

"Then, sir, they were a cursed poor convoy."

Mishap upon mishap had fallen Billings's way in the last few hours. Except the clothes he stood in and his weapon, he was now stripped of the last of his worldly possessions. Now Captain Billings was no believer in that faithless jade, Fortune. Scratch bad luck, he would say, and you find somebody's ill-will. Somebody had planned to steal his belongings.

"You say that-you!" Mitrassof's temper flared. "You talked with one of the spawn of Satan, and gave up to him your horse so that he could escape us. Eh, I can see under a haystack like this one. A Tatar rider leaves you, gives you his tribal emblem to wear."

Now the boy, Alashan, or whoever he was, must have exchanged belts with the mapmaker in the darkness. Certainly Billings had known nothing of it. The death of his men had driven all metaphysical fancies from the Cossack's head, inflamed by drink.

"You have sold yourself to the Torguts, and you came here to spy upon the fortress."

Good-natured ordinarily, Mitrassof's savage, moody soul was violent when his feelings were roused. Billings could have answered that it was absurd that he should arrange for his baggage to be stolen, or to permit his own horse to be made away with voluntarily.

Instead he held his peace and glanced at Kichinskoi. It was up to the pristof to clear him. But Kichinskoi was frowning, his thin lips pinched together. He was not displeased at the quarrel, because the Cossack's words showed him how he might possibly humble Billings.

Suddenly the German woman, who had been whispering to the Pole, spoke up shrilly.

"A mounted patrol pursued the robbers, excellency, and the sergeant in command reports that the leader of the Tatars was riding the horse of Captain Billings. He saw the captain riding in Astrakan."

"Ha!" Suspicion leaped into Kichinskoi's gray eyes. He pondered the possibility that Billings could have been sent by Beketoff to stir up the Tatars to revolt. The suspicion died, to be replaced by a shrewd gleam of satisfaction.

Kichinskoi knew that he had sent for Billings himself, that both the captain and Beketoff were above such conspiracy; but he saw a way to gain a fresh hold, he thought, on the mapmaker.

Meanwhile Mitrassof was reasoning along other lines, or rather had ceased to reason at all.

"If you were a man and not a runt, I'd teach you a thing or two with a sword," he growled.

Instantly Billings's blade was out. Twice the flat of the heavy campaign rapier slapped the Cossack's red cheeks. It stung Mitrassof to blind fury.

"To one of us, death!" he gritted, sweeping out his saber.

There was no thought of seconds, no bothering about the code of duelists. The Pole, it is true, tried to herd the fluttering women out of the room. Kichinskoi, seeing that his sofa was well out of the combatants' way, leaned forward curiously. Hitherto no one in Zaritzan had cared to match strokes with the giant ataman. He might still have prevented the fight, but made no move to do so.

Billings was smiling, his teeth shining under the yellow mustache. A swift, sliding thrust severed a corner of the Cossack's black beard. It was a clever trick, appreciated by the watching soldiers; and it brought a wild glare into the widened eyes of the big Cossack.

"Akh!" he cried. "To one of us death!"

His saber flashed and fell, until the clashing of the two blades was merged into a single ringing grind. Billings stood close in, giving no ground, keeping the weapons engaged close to the hilts where the sweep of the saber was less potent.

Mitrassof was a slow thinker when his muscles were not in play, but he moved with alert swiftness. Springing back, he gained space for a full stroke and smote down at his adversary's head. The blow would have broken the other's blade like a wooden lath. Billings, however, was not there when the saber fell.

Consternation began to grow in the faces of the watching officers. Kichinskoi sprang up with a muttered command to stop the fight. The young Pole shook his head. It was too late.

But in the eyes of the woman on the sofa was a morbid eagerness. She was watching for the moment when one of the swordsmen would be pierced through or slashed into oblivion. So blinding was the play of weapons, she feared that she might miss the instant of the blow.

"Stop them!" cried Kichinskoi. "Or they are both lost!"

Both men were necessary to his plans.

Mitrassof was cutting at the smaller man's ribs. No longer could Billings step aside. The rapier darted at the Cossack's beard, and rasped the skin from the jaw bone.

Stung anew, the giant stepped forward, slashing without intermission. He walked across the room, literally hearing Billings down before him. Yet as he came forward the rapier caught once in his arm and again in his ribs.

Feeling his wounds, Mitrassof grinned, the blood running into his teeth and choking him. Billings halted, crouching, his sword upright; and for a second the two blades were locked. The faces of the two were not a yard apart.

A black arm caught at the chest of each man, and the priest Obe thrust himself between them, straining to push them apart.

"In the name of God, forbear!" he cried, keeping his grip with difficulty.

Billings wrenched free and stood ready to engage again.

The pristof hurried up.

"Quarreling in my presence," he exclaimed. "Colonel, captain, this won't do at all. Gentlemen-"

The panting Mitrassof paid as much attention to Kichinskoi as to a wandering fly. But the pale face of the priest kept in front of him.

"This is the command of the Church! Do you hear, Cossack?" There was the ring of authority in his thin voice.

Mitrassof became calmer and sheathed his saber. Scowling at Billings, he stared obediently at the priest, as a dog at its master.

"I will remember this in your favor," Kichinskoi was moved to say to Father Obe.

The priest seemed flurried by the condescension, blinked, and became once more his unobtrusive self.

When the gathering left the room, Billings noticed that Mitrassof remained behind. He returned to the door and saw that the Cossack was busied rubbing a mixture of gunpowder and earth on the cuts in his jaw and arm, moving stiffly to favor the side where his ribs had been slashed.

Also he had foraged for himself some cold mutton and bread. This he began to munch while he sought for a brandy bottle that still had some honor in it.

Noticing the adventurer, his beard bristled in a grin.

"Hey, that was a good bout," he observed, "you are the devil of a fellow to tackle."

Billings bowed stiffly, but yearned toward the cold meat. Suspecting this, Mitrassof poked the platter toward his guest. The duel had restored his good humor and cleared his head, and he ignored his hurts. They found brandy, and Billings relaxed.

"You're a swordsman yourself, colonel."

Lifting his glass, Mitrassof bowed.

"Not at all," he muttered politely. "You are my master with the blade. Aye, you would have let out my life before I could have cut you down. Health to you."

"Health to you!"

With a nod Billings responded to the toast and fell to attacking the mutton. He began to like Mitrassof. They talked long over the bottle, and the Cossack's song was not lacking. When dawn outlined the windows, the colonel conducted the visitor to his room.

Mitrassof insisted that Billings occupy his pallet. The big ataman went over to some skins in a corner, flung himself down like a dog, and was snoring almost at once.

Chapter II

Kichinskoi Writes

When smoke is in the sky, somebody has made a torch.

-Cossack proverb

The next day rumors sprang up from no one knows where along the Volga. It was whispered among the huts of the fishermen that the Devil himself had been seen walking along the opposite bank, as high as the stars and with eyes that flamed like two pine torches. And after his passing a star had been seen to glow with uncanny fire in the cast.

It was observed that the Cossacks in Mitrassof's command were moodier than usual, which might have meant either aching heads after a night of drinking, or a sense of foreboding in these half-wild men, who were blood kin to the Tatars.

Heedless of rumors or portents, the Great Commissioner Kichinskoi sat at his table penning a report to the Russian ministry. In it he gave the lie to his rival Beketoff's warnings concerning a revolt of the Tatars, and suggested that the eldest son of each family of noyons-the Torgut no bles-be taken hostage and brought up in Russian cities, "For these savages do seem to cherish great affection for the oldest boy in the family."

With even more zeal he composed a memorandum to the treasurer of the Empress, explaining that he had found a man who would undertake the perilous task of making a survey for a trade route across the steppe as far east within the countries of the tribes as Lake Balkash. A stranger would not be looked upon with suspicion by the Tatars, who were jealous of their rights and seemed to dislike all Russians, being under the influence of an arch-witch from Tibet, who was most likely a harmless mummer.

Kichinskoi then sent a servant to find Billings and bring him to the office. The man returned, declaring that the English captain had asked for a horse and gone off in the direction of the river. Billings had called back that he was about to look for the miscreant who had taken his luggage and horse.