Swords From the West (25 page)

"But where I go the Tatar horsemen will follow."

"Allah sends evil with good. This is my country. In the hills are many safe places good for hiding. Abu Harb knows them. And I will not leave my hills."

When Abu Harb returned, leading a packhorse laden with purchases, he spoke briefly with Alai and confided to Nial that he was quite willing to set out to the east, up the Zarafshan. It appeared that certain owners of herds in Samarkand had set a price on his head. He was full of zeal to depart without a moment's delay, explaining that Chagan had ridden off toward Samarkand and that the night in general was full of calamity.

Nothing, however, hindered them as they left Talas behind and rode along a deserted trail by the river until the rising sun gleamed in their faces.

Abu Harb was in the lead, tugging the pack animal after him, until he halted to let Nial come up. Something seemed to amuse him, and he pointed behind them.

"Look!"

All Nial saw was the girl, who had slipped back behind the saddle, and was leaning on a blanket pack tied to the horn, her head on her arms, sleeping quietly.

"Didst thou not swear, Lord Nial, to ride hither alone? The Arab smiled reminiscently. "She will go where she will. Is she not rightly named The Eagle? She seeks the high and distant places, taking no thought of danger. By Allah, thou canst train the young hawk and the leopard to hand, but not the eagle."

Chapter III

Road to Cathay

Late that afternoon they halted in a cross gully where some grass clung to the edge of a dry stream and creeping mimosa offered fuel for a fire. The gray Zarafshan had grown more noisy as they ascended, and the ravine had narrowed to a gorge where the rubble of the steep slopes lay almost at the river's bank. Abu Harb was careful to build the fire where it could not be seen from the trail below.

"At all times," he explained, "riders come down from the Gate. They would not draw rein for me, but they would dismount to plunder thee and this girl."

The fire had died away and they had finished eating the chicken and rice that Alai boiled for them, when the beat of a horse's hoofs echoed down the gorge, drawing nearer. Loose stones began to clatter and roll, and the rider swept past unseeing and unseen, as if reckless of anything but time. The Arab, who had hastened to the horses' heads, went down to stare after him.

"There is smoke far below," he announced, returning to crouch on his blanket by the Scot. "God alone knows what has happened. It is well that we are here and not down there. What is that?"

Nial had taken the message tube from the saddlebag and was inspecting it again in the last of the daylight-knowing that Abu Harb would be eaten with curiosity concerning it, and would probably pilfer it to examine the thing unless his curiosity were satisfied.

"The post to Kublai Khan," he said. "Do not touch the seal."

The Arab had stolen more than horses in his time, but he held it gingerly in his scarred fingers, shaking his head in amazement. Carefully he shook it close to his ear, sniffed at it, and weighed it thoughtfully.

"Ma'uzbillah!" he exclaimed. "May God protect us! What a thing to have. Wilt thou not open it?"

"Nay, I shall give it back as it is."

"But it is too heavy for a writing. It does not smell of musk or sweet scent. It may have emeralds within, or the precious stones from the throne seat of a shah. Or perhaps some rare carved jade which the Tatars cherish. We could not keep such things, but I could sell them."

"Give it back!" cried the girl suddenly.

All the Arab's instincts rebelled at this.

"Only a fool casts away treasure," he growled. "With this Lord Nial can bargain for his life."

"Thou art a blind mole, feeling only the earth under thee! " she scolded him. "Kai, why did the Black Hats slay a courier to get this one thing? Why do the khan's horsemen keep the saddle without sleeping to find it again? Death awaits the holder. And thy greed would take it into a bazaar."

"Eh, eh, I did but think of its value. Is it not Lord Nial's?" He handed the tube back to the Scot, who did not smile at his sudden zeal to be rid of it.

"Thou art leading us, Abu Harb," he observed, "to a safe place of hiding. But here I see only the bare gorge. Where is thy place?"

Tracing in the sand between his knees, the Arab explained. For seven days' ride the Zarafshan wound up toward the heights, ending finally in what he called a wall of ice. It was old ice that never melted, although at times it moved.`
Not quite halfway up the valley there was a trail leading to a nest of small valleys, where good grass, cold water, and game could be found. Abu Harb had spent more than one summer there hunting.

"Perhaps in three days, perhaps in four we will set our feet on the trail," he calculated. "I think that Tatars will follow us up the river, but first that emir, Chagan, will muster fresh riders from Samarkand. By Allah, the Tatars will never come up this valley with less than a regiment. They will not overtake us."

Nial wondered why the men of the Horde, who seemed to have no fear of anything, should wait for a thousand sabers before entering this deserted gorge; and he remembered Neshavan's warning at the Hawk House.

"Aye, so. Yet, Abu Harb, this road comes not to an end at the ice. Surely it goes on to the East, for caravans once passed over it."

"Who knows where it goes? By the blood of Ali, I have not seen the man who knows."

Neshavan had said that wanderers had turned back from fear. Nial knew that both Tatars and Moslems dreaded the high passes, saying that the spirits of the upper air were encountered there, meaning that cold and storms made such passes hazardous.

"If there is a road," he pointed out, "we could follow it."

This time Abu Harb shook his head and laughed good-naturedly.

"Besides the ice stands the Gate," he vouchsafed. "Within it is the breeding ground of the Kara Kalpaks, their city. They are vultures, feeding on the dead, but they are watched ever by Gutchluk Khan."

"The Wizard King," Nial translated the name into Arabic. "What is he?"

"What is the voice of the wind? What is the sound of the storm? I have heard his call, but of him I know only that he is an ifrit. He is a devil, biding himself on the height."

"Yah ahmak," cried Alai impatiently. "0 witless! Would a devil send written missives upon a pigeon, or send his men to slay Neshavan? Gutchluk Khan is a man who hides from sight. Because he is hidden and feared, the cities pay him a tribute, also the caravan merchants. They lie who say otherwise."

"Shway, shway," murmured the hunter. "Softly, softly, little Alai. I have seen Gutchluk in the shape of a white vulture who settled down beside me and spoke."

During his summer in the upper valleys near the Gate, Abu Harb had tried to cut out horses from the Kara Kalpak herd until the day when, watching from a rocky ravine, he had seen a white vulture circling over him, and descending upon the bones of a markhor not a lance toss away. Instead of plucking at the bones, the great bird had sat motionless, its red eyes upon him, and a voice had come from it cursing him by the blood of Kerbala; and Abu Harb had fled without looking behind him to his horse. No other man had been in the ravine.

Alai mocked him, chin on hand. "Other fools tell other tales of how Gutchluk spoke to them from the face of a cliff where nothing could be. Aye, and how he hath a trumpet that resounds down the valley a day's ride. I tell thee the truth, that he hath gained power over the Kara Kalpaks, until they serve him like slaves and spread the fear of his name with their swords."

Considering this, Abu Harb grunted.

"A man, perhaps, he may be. But then he bath devils to serve him. And I would be worse than the fool thou hast named me if I drew my reins within the Gate."

Still muttering, he went off to seek his blankets. Alai chuckled to herself as she settled down to sleep near Nial, but presently she raised herself on her elbow.

"Lord Nial," she whispered, "wilt thou go with Abu Harb or try to follow the road through the Gate?"

"Only God knows," the Scot answered frankly.

"In your land, the place you come from, do the women wear veils and chew mastic?"

"Nay, kuchik khanim."

"Lord Nial, I am not a little woman, I am a strong girl. Wallahi, have I braided up my hair as the women of any man? Do the girls of your land take off their boots when they go into the tents at night?"

"They take off everything when they sleep at night, and they keep very quiet, like young antelope."

For awhile Alai considered this, her eyes dim in the twilight.

"Still," she ventured, "when the buran blows cold, as it does here from the snow, they would not take off everything?"

"Certainly not," he assured her. "But they would keep quiet."

He was half asleep, after the hard riding of the last three days, while the Tatar girl had managed to doze in the saddle. He heard her whisper to herself, and was conscious of the faint scent of dried roses. Abu Harb had volunteered to keep guard down by the trail, and Nial dropped off to sleep without misgivings.

When he roused and glanced about before sunrise, he saw the Arab sitting up in his ragged blanket and scratching his head, where Alai had been.

"Only God knows," exclaimed Abu Harb, "what is in the mind of a woman. She came down in anger a little after starlight and took my place. But I was glad to sleep."

It was Alai who discovered the riders on the trail behind them, early in the afternoon of the fourth day. The two men had noticed nothing; even the Scot's keen sight could not penetrate the sun's glare reflected from the bed of the valley. But after long scrutiny Abu Harb admitted that the girl was right.

"The vultures," he explained. "They rise and follow after something. Nay, it is not cattle going at such a pace."

And he searched the ground ahead of them with an anxious frown.

They had penetrated to the upper reaches of the Zarafshan, where the valley walls stood back from the river and the trail ran along the gravel bed, circling round buttresses of red clay cut by centuries of erosion into the shape of gigantic lions' paws. The scent of juniper and stunted sage clung to the hollows, but when they topped a rise they were buffeted by the icy wind from the heights. Above the bare red walls of the valley loomed peak upon peak, carpeted with fresh green that gave way to bare black basalt, which in turn was covered by white snow caps. "The White Ones," Abu Harb had said when the summits first came into sight.

Here was silence, except for the swift rush of water over the stones. The songbirds had left the air to the vultures, and black eagles began to appear. The valley had grown vast, but now it was dwarfed by the huge ranges above it. Nial felt that he was approaching the ramparts of space itself.

Only once had he caught a glimpse of the gut in this barrier. Before the last sunset Abu Harb had shown him a distant break in the mountain barrier. At either side of the gut rose two stone pinnacles, bloodcolored against the black rock behind them. They looked tiny at that distance, but Nial knew they were high. They might have been the sacrifice stones of vanished giants.

"The Pillars of Silence," the Arab had said simply.

Now he quested along the river like a dog on a scent until he found a brush-filled ravine up which the horses could force their way. Nial and the girl dismounted, scrambling over loose rocks until they halted in a small clearing hidden from the trail beneath.

"Now," Abu Harb explained, "we will see who comes after. Ma'uz- billah!"

Open mouthed, he stared beyond them, his face suddenly gray with fear. Glancing over his shoulder, Nial saw a brush-covered slope and what looked like a rude hut. Stones had been piled together and roofed over with poplar poles, with horns of antelope and mountain sheep fastened on the ends. Weather-gray poles leaned about it crazily, and rags moved drowsily in the wind. On the highest pair of antelope horns perched a great white vulture.

"Like to that one was Gutchluk!" Abu Harb whispered. "Look, it awaits us upon a shrine, a grave."

He listened anxiously but the vulture did not speak, and when Nial tossed a stone toward the shrine it flapped away clumsily.

"Evil power is here," the Arab insisted, "and now it is too late to go back to the trail. Go thou and watch from those rocks."

With a nod the Scot climbed past the shrine up a chute of broken rock to a pinnacle where, lying down and edging forward between two boulders, he could see the trail, but could see nothing of the clearing where Abu Harb and the girl were tethering the horses. It was some time before he made out horsemen coming around a bend in the river trail, and longer before he recognized them as Kara Kalpaks, fully armed.

Alai came up to the lookout and crouched beside him, without excitement.

"Many of those dogs come and go," she whispered. "Why should they follow us?" Then she added thoughtfully, "Soon we will be where the roads cross. Promise me now that you will come with the hunter to his hiding place in the valley."

Still intent on the groups of riders below, Nial answered absently:

"How can I promise, little Alai? Have I not said that I mean to follow the road to the East?"

"Fool! Have you a token from Gutchluk to open the way?"

Her eyes were angry, her white teeth showing between her parted lips, her small hands clenched on her knees. Her white, intent face had lost its boyish playfulness; she turned to him wistfully, confidingly.

"Have you not said," he responded, "this Gutchluk Khan is a man, not a magician? Why should I fear him more than the Tatars?"

"Because he is truly a khan, who rules men. I have spoken with one who saw him, sitting alone upon a black stone with an unchained eagle beside him and a panther asleep at his feet. He seemed to be asleep, but suddenly he whispered and the panther rose and snarled, and this man fled away for his life. You are like a lion cub, being stubborn and stupid, and Gutchluk will be amused when you stand bound before him. When I watched the herds for Neshavan, I often thought that I would go and sit at the feet of this man whose power is a thunderbolt, who is feared by the Tatar Horde. Perhaps I shall go."