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Published in Shadow of the Hun, 1975.
| Prologue | 1 | 2 |
A calm held the great warship in a level ring of the landless sea. The brass and gold work glittered in the sun, the idle sails flapped against the mast. On the high-flung poop three men sipped wine and conversed idly. Save for one feature, they were types as far apart as might be imagined, but in one way they were alike: each had the appearance of the born warrior.
Athelstane the Saxon was a giant; six and a half feet he towered from his sandals of bull’s hide to his shock of flaxen hair. His crisp beard was as golden as the massive armlets he wore, his eyes large, calm and grey. He wore a corselet of scale mail and even as he drank and talked, he held across his knees his two-handed broadsword in its worn sheath.
Don Roderigo del Cortez was tall, dark and spare, clad in plain, unornamented armor. His dark eyes were deep and somber, his manner stately and courteous. He wore no beard but a thin mustache, and his only arm was a long narrow sword—forerunner of the rapier.
Turlogh Dubh O’Brien was not as tall as either of his companions, though he was well over six feet. His dark face was clean shaven, his black hair cropped short. From under heavy black brows gleamed his volcanic eyes—blue, and full of shifting gleams like clouds passing across some deep blue lake. Long-limbed, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, his every motion betokened his iron strength and cat-like litheness. He was, in some ways, more the complete fighting man than his friends, for he possessed a dynamic quickness the Saxon lacked, and sheer strength beyond the power of the slender Spaniard.
He was armed in black, closely-worked chain mail, and a green girdle held a long dirk at his hip. Close by in a weapon rack rested more of his arms: a plain vizorless helmet with a mail drop, a round buckler with a keen spike in the center, and a single-handed axe. This axe partook of the lethal quality of its owner; with its keen single edge, perfectly made handle of oak that would notch a sword, it was the weapon of a master. It was lighter than most of the axes of the age, and built on different lines. A short keen spike on the back and one on the top of the head added to its deadly appearance.
“Don Roderigo,” rumbled Athelstane, refilling his goblet, “what of these Easterners we are sailing against? Thor’s blood, I have crossed steel with all the war-men of the Western world, but these I have not seen. Many of my comrades have fared to Mikligaard, but not I."
“The Saracens are brave and cruel warriors, good sir,” answered the Don. “They fight with javelins and curved sabers. And they hate our fair Lord Christ, for they hold to Muhammad.”
“As I gather it,” pursued Athelstane, “east, whither we are sailing, lies the neck of water which divides Europe from Africa. The infidel Saracens hold both Africa and the greater part of Spain. And beyond lies, on one side of the Middle Sea, Italy and Greece, and on the other the eastern part of Africa and Holy Land which the Arab jackals defile. And thereabouts is Constantinople, or Mikligaard as the Vikings name it—and beyond, what?”
Don Roderigo shook his head. “Beyond lies Iran—Persia-and the wilderness wherein swarm pagan Turks and Tatars. Beyond—they tell wild tales of Hind and Cathay—but who knows? Between lies deserts and mountains full of pagans and evil spirits, dragons and—”
Turlogh suddenly interrupted with a shake of his head. “There are no dragons, Don Roderigo, though truth to tell there are many perils for the wanderer, both from beast and men.”
The others glanced curiously at him. It was not often the Gaelic outcast opened his lips to speak of his long wanderings. But now it was his mood.
“I was some seven years younger,” said he, “when I sailed one day from Erin on a raid—by my axe, it was a lengthy raid, for it was more than three years ere I set foot again on Irish land. Mind you, Athelstane, in those days of my outlawry I had a ship of my own; aye, and a crew.”
“I remember,” muttered the Saxon. “My Viking comrades had scathe thereby and villages smoked on England’s western coast. But what of the unknown lands to the east whereof I spoke?”
“If you land on the south-easternmost coast of the Baltic Sea,” answered Turlogh O’Brien, “and wander southward and eastward, you will come to a great inland sea—the Caspian Sea. Between them lie a vast land of forest and rivers, and wide, rolling plains, with few trees but grown with tall grass—a vast, grey, desolate land—”
Across the leaden, grey steppes, beneath the grey, leaden sky flew a few herons. As far as eye could reach stretched the drab, waving grass, ruffled by a chill wind. A few scanty clusters of stunted trees broke the monotony and in the distance there was discernible the outline of a great river that wound, serpent-like, through the wilderness. Reeds grew tall and thick there and waterfowl circled above.
Turlogh O’Brien gazed out across the wastes and the gloomy desolation entered into his soul. Then he started. Out of the growth about the river broke four figures, which his keen eyes made out as horsemen, racing toward him—one in advance of the others. Turlogh held in his hand the reins of a great roan stallion. Now he mounted swiftly, unslung axe and buckler and rode into a sparse clump of trees which stood nearby. He did not believe the oncoming riders were coming to attack him; their attitude was such as to make him believe that the three behind pursued the fourth. And the Gael was curious to know what manner of men inhabited this wilderness.
They approached swiftly and soon Turlogh saw that his surmise was correct. The man in front swayed in his saddle, and one arm dangled limply. He guided his steed with the other hand and held a broken sword between his teeth. He was tall and young and he rode like the wind, his shock of yellow hair flying in the breeze. But the pursuers were swiftly closing the gap. They were shorter in stature than he they hunted, and mounted on smaller, nimbler steeds. As they approached the Celt’s refuge, Turlogh saw they were very dark, were clad in light silvered mail shirts and wore turbans. They bore light round shields and curved scimitars.
Turlogh’s mind was made up in an instant. This was none of his quarrel; but yonder three armed men hunted a wounded warrior, who was certainly of a tribe more akin to Turlogh’s own people, than the pursuers. These were Turks, the Gael decided, though he had supposed their ranges to lie considerably more to the south. An instinctive hatred burned up in his breast. It was the old, old feud between Aryan and Turanian, so strong that it sends the distant descendants of primitive warriors at each others’ throats.
Now the yellow-haired youth thundered past the scanty grove, and now the foremost of the pursuers was almost abreast it. A lifted scimitar gleamed in a dark hand and a fierce yell of triumph rose to the skies—to be changed to a gasp of surprise as an unexpected shape shot from the trees.
Like a bolt from a catapult, the great roan crashed full against the steed of the Turk. There was no time to rein about and avoid the impact. Striking from the side, the heavier horse hurled the lighter off its feet and headlong, flinging the rider underfoot where a lashing hoof dashed out his brains.
Turlogh reined about to meet the onset of the remaining Turks who howled like wolves in amazement and rage, but assailed him from either side. The Gael spurred to meet the nearest, ere the other could come at him from the other side. The curved scimitar lashed at Turlogh’s head, but the Gael, guiding his horse with his knees, caught the blade on his shield and struck almost simultaneously. The keen edge bit through the turban and split the shaven skull beneath. As the Turk slumped from his saddle, Turlogh wheeled back to parry the scimitar that already hovered over him. The yellow-haired youth had seen the fray and was charging back to his rescuer’s aid, but the fight was over before he could reach it.
The remaining Turk charged in from Turlogh’s left, howling and hacking like a madman, believing the Gael could not reach him with his red axe without turning his steed or shifting the weapon to his left hand. But as he plunged in, slashing, the yellow-haired youth saw a trick of battle of which he had never heard. Turlogh rose in his stirrups, twisted in his saddle and reversed the usual procedure. He parried the whistling blade with his axe and struck with his buckler as a boxer strikes with a heavy cestus. The Turk’s howl of triumph broke in a ghastly gurgle as the spike in the center of the shield tore his jugular vein. Blood flooded Turlogh’s buckler and the Turk lurched to the earth where he died, clawing at his red-dabbled beard.
Turlogh turned to see the wounded youth reining his steed near. He spoke in a tongue the Gael could understand:
“I thank you, brother, whoever you are. These dog-brothers had carried my head back to Khogar Khan, had it not been for you. Four of them started me among the reeds of the river. One I slew—by Saint Piotr, he’ll never eat sunflower seeds again. But they shattered my sword and broke my arm and I fled perforce. Tell me your name, that we may be brothers.”
“My name is Turlogh Dubh, that is to say, Black Turlogh,” answered the Gael. “My clan is the O’Brien, my land Erin. But now I am an outcast from my people and have wandered for many moons.”
“I am Somakeld,” said the youth, “and my people are the Turgaslavs, the steppes dwellers. My clan is camped just beyond yonder skyline. Come with me and let my people welcome you.”
“Let me first see to that arm,” said Turlogh, though the youth laughed at the scratch, as he called it. Turlogh, skilled in the dressing of wounds, set the broken bone and bandaged the deep saber slash as well as he could with mud and spiderwebs taken from the stunted trees. Somakeld uttered no murmur of complaint and when the task was done, thanked the Celt with quiet courtesy. Then they rode toward the Slavic camp.
“How is it you speak my tongue?” asked the lad.
“I have wandered for months among the great forests,” answered Turlogh. “The forest tribes are akin to the steppes dwellers and their tongue is much the same. But tell me this, Somakeld, whence come those Turks we slew? I have seen Tatars, who ride even into the great forests sometimes, but I had thought that the empire of the Turks lies far to the south.”
“Aye, so it does,” agreed Somakeld. “But these dogs were driven out by their kin.”
Somakeld spoke at some length, and Turlogh found him to be far more frank and keen witted than the sullen forest people his late wanderings had led him among. Though a youth, the young Slav had journeyed far “—to the yellow sands of the south, where the caravans ply behind Rhoum and Bokhara, east beyond the Blue Sea (the Aral Sea), beyond the northern reaches of the Volga, and west to the great river called the Dnieber.” His was a wandering, nomadic tribe and he himself had more than his share of the wanderlust.
These Turks were wilder, fiercer cousins to the Seljuks before whose onslaught the Arab caliphates of Islam were crumbling. This particular tribe had been overthrown in the incessant border warfare, either by the Persians or by some kindred Turkish clan; Somakeld was not sure. But they had fled the pasture lands of their ancestors and had wandered far beyond the loose boundaries of their race.
They had come into the steppes where the nomadic outposts of two rival races bickered and mingled; where the easternmost drift of the last Aryan wanderers snarled and snapped at the westernmost drift of the Tatar herders.
The usual desultory warfare had ensued: skirmishes and raids for women and horses on both sides. The roving bands of Tatars took first one side and then the other as their whims led them. But of late the war had taken on a new aspect. A new khan had arisen among the Turks who held the grazing lands beyond the river. This one was Khogar Khan, who gained his leadership by murdering the former khan. His ambition was great. He dreamed of power—of the sovereignty, not of a waste of grazing land and wandering tribes, but of a great empire, reaching from the heart of the steppes to the Caspian Sea. It was no mad vision, commented Somakeld, who had heard the old men talk of mushroom empires that sprang up almost overnight in the teeming mazes of the East, to sweep across the curve of the world like a prairie fire, and as quickly to burn itself out.
But Khogar Khan had one obstacle to overcome first: the Turgaslavs, hereditary lords of the steppes. His first, main step must be to crush them.
Already the Turks, fired by their warlike leader, had routed the Tatar clans in the vicinity, slaying many, forcing some into a sullen subjection and driving the rest away. Now the Moslems were gathering their forces for a powerful drive on their Aryan foes to the west. Riders were scouring the steppes, gathering the Turgaslavic clans. His people had no villages, Somakeld explained, but followed the grass. The various clans of the tribes were scattered wherever fancy might lead them, over a radius of a hundred miles.
Spies had reported the movements of the Turks, and it was while returning from a distant clan that Somakeld had encountered his hereditary foes. His tribe was not a large one, said the young Turgaslav, but for centuries they had overcome their foes. Once they numbered many thousands, but tribal wars had thinned them and branches of the tribe had split off and wandered westward, there to forget their pastoral life and become tillers of the soil. Somakeld sniffed in disdain.
“But you, my brother,” he exclaimed suddenly, “you have not told me how you have come to wander alone so far from your own pasture land. Surely you were a chief among your own people.”
Turlogh grinned bleakly. “Once I was a chief in an island far to the west, called Erin. My king was an ancient man and very wise, and his name was Brian Boru. But the great king fell in a mighty battle with red-bearded sea-rovers called Danes, though his people won the battle. Then followed a time of feud and intrigue and the spite of a woman and the jealousy of a kinsman cast me forth from my clan, an outlaw to starve on the heath.
“But though I was no longer one of the Dal Cais, my heart was still bitter against the Danes who had ravaged my land for centuries and I drew to me certain masterless men and outlaws like myself, and by devious ways we took a galley from the Danes.”
And with swift words Turlogh sought to picture for the young Slav that red phase in his restless and battle-haunted life.
His ship was The Raven which he re-named Crom’s Hate after an old heathen Celtic god. Trickery and savage fighting won her, and the scum of the seas manned her. Not one of her crew but had a price on his head. To Turlogh flocked rogues and thieves and murderers, whose only virtue was the reckless abandon of desperate men who have nothing to live for.
Irish outlaws, Scottish criminals, runaway Saxon thralls, Welsh freebooters, gallow’s birds from Brittany—these steered and rowed Crom’s Hate and fought and looted at their savage lord’s command. There were men with cropped ears and slit noses, men with brands on face arid shoulder, men whose limbs bore the marks of rack and shackle. They were without love and without hope and they fought like blood-hungry devils.
Their only law was the word of Turlogh O’Brien, and that law was adamantine. There was no sentiment between them; they snarled about him like wolves and he cursed them for the vermin they were. But they feared and respected his ferocity and fighting prowess and he recognized their desperate savagery. He made no attempt to impose his will upon them in ways of other leaders whose hand is not against the world. He demanded of them only that they follow him and fight like demons when he gave the word. Nor did he give an order twice. In the hellish environments in which he found himself, all the slumbering tiger awoke in the Gaelic chief and of all the red-handed crew he himself was the most terrible.
When he gave an order, a man obeyed instantly or drew his weapon as swiftly. For the penalty of disobedience or hesitancy was an instant dashing out of the mutineer’s brains beneath the savage chieftain’s axe. Men who had followed Turlogh O’Brien in the days before his outlawry would have gaped at him now as he stood on the bloodstained poop of Crom’s Hate, eyes blaring and axe dripping, yelling commands to his motley horde in a voice that was like the maddened yell of a panther.
He was a pirate who preyed on pirates. Only when his supplies were at ebb would he swoop down and harry the fertile coasts of England, Wales or France. The almost insane hatred for the Vikings that burned in his heart sent him ravaging the strongholds of the raiders in the Hebrides, the Orkneys and even on the coasts of the Scandinavian mainlands. When driving sleet and winter gales lashed the western seas, Turlogh and his tatterdemalions rode the bitter wind, freezing, starving, suffering, to fall on their foes with torch and sword.
It was a hard service the Gael offered the men who came to him from chains or the shadow of the gallows. He promised them only a hard, bitter life, ceaseless toil and warfare and a bloody death. But he gave them a chance to strike back at the world and to glut themselves in slaughter—and men followed him.
When even the stout Norsemen had their longships in the shiphouses and were pent in sturdy skallies, drinking ale and listening to the skalds, Turlogh and his thieves roamed the foaming wastes, to smite their enemies in their security and leave smoldering embers of strong steadings.
It was a day in deep winter. A bitter gale lashed the Baltic, driving before it a stinging sleet that froze on mast and rower’s bench. Waves burst clear across the low waist of the dragon-ship, drenching the rowers and clotting their beards with ice. Even these men, inured to all hardships, who lived like wolves, were on the point of collapse. On the foredeck, with one hand on the arching prow that terminated in a dragon’s head, Turlogh O’Brien strained his eyes, striving to pierce the veil of sleet and freezing spray.
There was ice on Turlogh’s mail, and blood that caked his shoes was frozen stiff. But he gave no heed; at birth he had been flung into a snowdrift to decide his right to live. He was harder than a wolf. And now his heart burned in him so fiercely that no outer cold could harm him.
He had ventured far this voyage, and he had left smoldering ruins slaked in crimson, on the coasts of Jutland and the shores that hem the Skaggerack. Not content, he had swept on up into the Baltic and now believed he was in what was called by some the Gulf of Finland.
Suddenly he sighted a flying shape in the mist, and yelled fiercely. A longship! Some Viking farer who had put out to meet him, doubtless, having gotten wind of his ravaging and not wishing to be caught napping in his skalli, as had those sea-kings whose skulls now adorned the shield-rail.
Turlogh, eyes fixed on that racing shadow, shouted a command to alter the course and lay her alongside. His lieutenant, a grim, one-eyed Scotsman, dared an objection.
“We’ve got to hold her in the wind; if we veer half a point, a broadside sea will break her in two. It’s mad enough to venture among such seas in a ship with never a deck to her—”
“The devil takes care of his own!” yelled Turlogh. “Do as I say, you spawn of hell—there! She’s faded into the sleet—I can’t see her—”
The huge ice-crested waves tossed the long, low craft like a chip. The Scotsman was right; only a madman would have ventured into those winter seas. But Turlogh had a tinge of madness in his soul that broke its rein at times.
Suddenly and without warning a beaked prow loomed out of the driving mist on their port bow. The men of Crom’s Hate saw the horned helmets and the fierce blond faces of the Norsemen who lined the rail, yelling and brandishing their weapons.
“Run alongside and board her!” yelled Turlogh, as a cloud of arrows whistled through the howling wind. Crom’s Hate leaped forward like a spurred horse, but an instant later the strongest man at the sweep, a giant Saxon with the brand of a runaway thrall on his face, dropped with an arrow in his heart, and the kicking sweep head resisted the efforts of his fellows. Turlogh yelled fiercely, and others sprang forward, but the galley, out of control, veered away, tossed and trembled to the impact of a broadside sea that swept half a score men overboard, and the Viking galley rammed her.
The iron beak of the Norsemen did not strike squarely, else it had sheared straight through the waist, but it ripped a great rent near her prow and scraped down the sides, with a deafening splintering of oars. The longships locked almost rail to rail, and the bulwarks were instantly thronged with howling, hacking figures that slew and died in a red holocaust of hate.
Men died like flies along the rails where axes shattered helm and skull, and swords broke in mailed bosoms. But the Scotch mate sought Turlogh where he slashed and hacked like a blood-hungry demon, and yelled: “The seas will tear us apart at any instant and Crom’s Hate is sinking under our feet!”
“Lash them together!” yelled Turlogh, eyes ablaze and foam flecking his lips, his latent madness burst all bounds. “Lash them rail to rail and we’ll drag these swine into Hell with us! We’ll sink together and slay while we drown!”
And with his own hands he flung the first grappling hooks. The Vikings realized his intentions and sought to draw away, but too late. Locked together, there was no steering either ship. They were at the mercy of the winds and waves that tossed them and raced them dizzily along, while the crews closed in a last desperate grapple. Hacking and slashing in a red cataclysm of howling hell, Turlogh was vaguely aware that a great roaring ripped the din, like waves dashing on a rock-bound coast. But the berserk madness of slaying was on him and on all the rest and they ceased not to howl and ply their red axes as the two tortured ships, mastless, prowless and with splintered oars and timbers, hurled headlong through the surf to shatter on the foaming coast.
“And you alone lived?” asked Somakeld, breathlessly.
“I alone,” answered Turlogh somberly. “Why, I know not. In the midst of the tumult, darkness fell upon me and I awaked in the hut of a strange people. Some whim of the waves cast me ashore when all the rest died. But not alone was I washed ashore. Many others the sea cast up, but only I had a spark of life in me. The rest were slain of wounds, water or cold. Many froze. I too, the people said, was almost frozen. And my buckler and axe were gripped in my hands so tightly they could not loosen them, and I still gripped them so when I came to myself.
“Well, these folks were Finns—kindly people who treated me well. With them I abode a space, but their land was a barren one of ice and snow and when the time came when I knew it was early spring in southern lands, I left them. I had a horse of them, and I wandered south through the great forests full of wolves and bears, and evil beasts whose shadows and footprints only I saw.
“I came upon fierce pagan tribes in these forests, some of which I fled from and some of which I tarried with. Some of these folk defied the grandsons of Rurik and I was well pleased to strike a blow against the Norsemen again. So I wandered for many months, first on the horse the Finns gave me, then on steeds I stole or bought, lastly on this great stallion that a pagan chief gave me. When I left the huts of the Finns it was late winter there. Now it is nearly winter again and I am still far from the southern lands my heart craves.”
“Come with me and dwell in the tents of my people, oh, my brother,” urged Somakeld. “We are a brave people and we love warlike deeds. You shall be a chief. The girls of the Turgaslavs are fair. Dwell with my people.”
Turlogh shrugged his shoulders. “I will ride with you, Somakeld, for my steed is weary and I am hungry. I will abide with you awhile because there is the smell of war in the land; aye, the ravens are gathering and I would not be put aside when the swords come to their quenching.”
Night had fallen when the companions rode up to the encampment of the Turgaslavs. Turlogh had seen Tatar camps and this Slavic camp did not differ materially from them. The same high lumbering wagons, the same peaked saddles heaped carefully about, the same rings about the fires, where women cooked meat and passed about drinking horns of milk and mead. The Aryan and the Turanian nomad had progressed and evolved on much the same lines. Turlogh realized that he was gazing on a phase of Aryan life which was swift passing. The Aryan nomad was gradually quitting the pastoral life in favor of the agricultural life, or was being absorbed by the Tatar nomads.
Turlogh saw plenty of evidence that amalgamation was already taking place among these ancient Aryan steppes lords and the Mongolian peoples. Many of the Turgaslavs had the broad faces and black hair that betokened a Tatar strain, and there was a fair sprinkling of pure-blood Tatars, though the bulk of the tribesmen were tall and big boned, with the light eyes and flaxen hair of the primitive Aryan. The admixture had already begun such as in later centuries was to produce the Cossacks.
The horses of these Aryan wanderers were tall and heavier than those ridden by the smaller Turks and Tatars, and their swords were long, straight and heavy, with both cutting edge and point. They were also armed with heavy axes, long spears and daggers, and bows, lighter and less effective than the bows of their Turanian rivals.
Their armor was crude and scanty, consisting largely of iron helmets, rude corselets of iron plates laced to heavy hide jackets, and round wooden, leather-covered and iron-braced bucklers. They wore as clothing, garments of sheepskin. The men were tall, upright in carriage and frank and open of countenance, while the women were pleasing in appearance.
Sentries on horseback roamed the steppe and these challenged the companions, but gave back at the word from Somakeld. A moon was rising as Turlogh and the youth trotted up the slope of the slight eminence whereon was pitched the Slavic camp, and sweeping the plains with his keen glance, Turlogh saw dark shadowy figures and lurching bulks cross the distant horizons, converging toward the camp on the rise.
“My people answer the call of war,” said Somakeld, and the Gael nodded, his eyes glittering in the gloom as dim ancestral memories stirred vaguely in the sleeping deeps of his soul. Aye, the clans were gathering to feed the ravens as the Aryan clans had gathered in the dim lost ages—as the Gael’s own ancestors had gathered on these very steppes, lurching along in clumsy wagons, or swinging on half-wild horses.
As they rode up to the fires a shout of welcome greeted them. Turlogh instantly picked out the chief—his name, as Somakeld had said, Hroghar Skel. He was old, but his long beard was still flaxen and when he rose to greet the stranger with simple stateliness, the Gael saw that he was mighty in stature and that age had not dimmed his eagle eye nor withered his iron muscles.
“Your face is new to me,” said the chieftain in a deep calm voice. “You are neither Slav, Turk nor Tatar. But whoever you be, dismount and rest your steed. Eat and drink at our fires tonight.”
“This is a noted warrior, oh ataman,” exclaimed Somakeld. “A bogatyr, a hero! He has come to aid us against the Turks! By the honor of my clan, three Turks he sent to howl at the gates of Hell this day!”
The ancient inclined his lion-like head. “Our lives are yours, bogatyr.”
As Turlogh swung from his saddle he noted another man squatted by the fire, a man in early middle life it seemed, with the broad, short build of the Tatar. This man had the bearing of a chief and beneath his sheepskins was the sheen of silks and the glimmer of silvered mail. His broad dark face was immobile, but his small beady eyes flickered as they rested on the splendid roan stallion. Behind the chief squatted a slim handsome youth, evidently his son. The Tatar’s eyes rested long on the roan stallion.
Turlogh saw to his horse before he attended to his own needs, and assured that the roan was well cared for, he took a seat at the chieftain’s fire. Somakeld, proud of his new acquaintance and of his own admission to the fire of the leaders, told the tale of his meeting with the Gael, and repeated the story of Turlogh’s wanderings. All listened interestedly, and the new-comers, who were arriving in a steady stream, pressed close to gaze curiously at the Celt and to hear whispered versions of his exploits from folk of the outer rings.
“You have the look of an eagle, bogatyr,” said Hroghar Skel. “Little matter to tell me you were a chief in your own land; well I know that you are a ruler of men. Well, the men of the Turgaslav need keen swords and strong wills. Khogar Khan moves against us and who knows how the war may go? The Turks are mighty fighters, and they have scattered like birds before the winds the warriors of Chaga Khan.” And he nodded at the Tatar who sat drinking mare’s milk.
“Aye,” the Tatar’s voice was like the rasp of a sword from its scabbard, “they were like wolves among sheep—by Erlik, they are madmen!”
“There is madness in them so that they fight as a stepped fire burns the grass,” nodded Hroghar Skel. “There is magic in them that upholds them in the teeth of the spears. Khogar Khan claims descent from that red-handed scourge of old times, Attila the Hun. And more: he wears in his girdle the very sword which the Hun quenched in the blood of kings.”
Turlogh gave a surprised exclamation.
The beady eyes of Chaga Khan turned on him.
“I saw it,” the Tatar grunted, poising his drinking jack. “It was a red flame in his hand and with it he fed the kites. By Erlik, old Death ran before his steed and a black wind howled behind. When he smote it was as if a horde smote and no man could stand before him. He heaped my warriors in crimson ranks behind him to mark his course.”
Silence reigned for a space. The night wind sighed through the high grass and the lurching rumble of distant wagons was heard, and the challenge of the outposts. Hroghar Skel shook his head and his iron hand was twisted in his beard.
“They gather fast; by dawn all the clans of the Turgaslav will be encamped and clamoring to be led against their enemies. But a cold doubt lies at the base of my brain. It is more than mortal men we fight.”
All eyes turned toward Turlogh. Primitive people are swift to snatch at portents and supernatural conclusions. It seemed to them that Turlogh’s coming was no chance thing, but that strange forces that work behind the veil had sent him to their aid. But the Gael merely said: “I will sleep.”
As he stretched out on the sheepskins in Hroghar’s tent, again deep ancestral feelings stirred in the Gael as he listened to the night sounds of the nomadic camp. All seemed friendly and familiar to him, the crackle of the fires, the scents of the cooking pots, the smell of sweaty leather and horseflesh, the jingle of bridles and the creak of saddles, the singing of the tribesmen and their laughter. These Slavs were of the very foundations of the Aryan race—the root and the stock. They clung close to that pristine existence that Turlogh’s ancestors had abandoned so many centuries ago. Somakeld’s people were fundamental, strong and clean with primal life and principle. They were knit close to the tie-ribs of existence, to the raw, red realities of life.
As he drifted into slumber, Turlogh’s last vague, waking thoughts were that though half a world lay between them and his people, the blood of these nomads was his own, and after centuries and wandering in alien lands, he had come home at last. Then he sank into sleep haunted by dreams wherein he, light-eyed, wild, skinclad, traversed endless leagues of forest and plain in lurching, oxen-pulled wagons, or on the backs of half-wild horses, and in company of his wild, light-eyed, skin-clad kind, roared and slashed in nameless battles in dim, lost lands, fought man and beast and foaming torrents, and trampled tottering civilizations that were old when the world was young—so in his dreams he wandered and fought again down dim, lost ages.
Hroghar swept his hand around in a gesture that took in all the camp, where women cooked food and mended harness and men whetted swords.
“These are all my people. I can muster but seven hundred warriors, strong able men, neither too young nor too old to fight. Some three hundred Tatars hunt with us; they will fight for us as long as the arrows fly, but we cannot depend upon them to stand when it comes to sword strokes. Khogar Khan has a good thousand riders, and five hundred Tatar allies.”
“What of Chaga Khan?” demanded Turlogh.
Hroghar shook his head.
“The Tatars are like wolves that make a ring about two warring bulls, to devour the loser. Chaga Khan sent to us to ask for aid, but joined battle before we could come to his help. He feels he owes us nothing. His people have withdrawn far to the east. He waits to see how we will stand up against the Turks. These Tatars who cleave to us, and they whom Khogar Khan has impressed into his service are of small roving clans. Chaga Khan’s tribe is the most powerful one in this part of the steppes. Despite his defeat by the Turks, he can still muster a thousand riders.”
“Then in the name of the Devil,” snapped Turlogh, “can you not make him understand that if he joined forces with you, you would defeat the Turks?”
The old Slav shrugged his shoulders. “Little use to argue with a Tatar. Khogar Khan struck fear into him and he is afraid to go up against the Turk. And I am not so sure that he wishes to aid me, anyway. He will watch which way the feather falls. If we win, he will come back to his old pasture lands. If the Turk wins, he may retire further into the East, even into the deserts of his people, or he may join forces with Khogar Khan. He believes that the Turk will be a great conqueror, like Attila his ancestor, and it is good to follow the banners of a conqueror.”
“Then why not ally yourself to Khogar Khan?” Turlogh watched the old chiefs face narrowly. The mighty hand on the spear-shaft shook with anger; Hroghar’s eyes blazed.
“We white-skins have been lords of the steppes for untold ages. Hence went conquering hordes to people the world. When we were many we lashed the dark-faced people back into the Eastern deserts. Now that we are weak and few, we make them the same reply our ancestors made: ‘Death to you, dog-brothers!’ Our fair Lord God made us the masters of all other races. If I treat with these Moslem jackals for peace, may the heart rot in my bosom!”
Turlogh grinned hardly and bleakly. “There is iron in you, old man! But you have overlooked one thing: even if we win, the tribe will be greatly weakened, and Chaga Khan and his jackals may swoop down and wipe out what is left of us.”
Hroghar plucked his beard. “True; but what can we do?”
The Gael shrugged his shoulders. “How will you fight these Turks?”
“Why, lord sir, in the same manner we always fight; we will mount our steeds and gallop across the steppes until we meet their horde and then we will shout our war-cry and charge in and cut them down like grain.”
“And will they not bend their bows and shoot you out of your saddles before you can come to grips?” Turlogh growled.
“There will be a flight of arrows,” agreed the Turgaslav. “But these Turks are not like the Tatars; they like sword strokes. They will loose a cloud of shafts as they charge and then rush in with naked steel. Chaga Khan’s warriors had the better of it as long as the battle was an exchange of arrows, but when the Turks rode in among them, they could not stand before them. The Moslems are bigger men and better armed.”
“Good,” grunted Turlogh. “You are bigger men than the Turks and will have the same advantage with them that they had with the Tatars. But the Turgaslavs must come swiftly to exchange of sword strokes if they are to win.”