Warriors of the Steppes Read online

  Warriors of the Steppes

  © 2006 by the Board of Regents of the

  University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lamb, Harold, 1892-1962.

  Warriors of the steppes / Harold Lamb; edited by Howard Andrew Jones; introduction by David Drake. p. cm. - (The complete Cossack adventures; v. 2) ISBN-13: 978-0-8032-8049-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn-io: 0-8032-8049-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) i. Cossacks—Fiction. 2. Steppes—Asia, Central—Fiction. 3. Asia, Central —History—16th century—Fiction.

  I. Jones, Howard A. II. Title. PS3523.A4235W37 2006 8i3'.52-dc22 2005035140

  Set in Trump by Kim Essman. Designed by R. W. Boeche.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  The Lion Cub

  III

  VI

  The Skull of Shirzad Mir

  Said Afzel's Elephant

  III

  Prophecy of the Blind

  Rose Face

  Ameer of the Sea

  III

  IV

  VI

  VII

  Law of Fire

  Save in the wind . . .

  The Bride of Jagannath

  “Honor to Jagannath!” screamed the voice of Bhimal

  The Masterpiece of Death

  “Peace!” ejaculated the servant of the ameer. “Mak

  The Curved Sword

  IV

  Geron gave a grunting cry and sank to the earth, c

  “Leave us,” he said harshly to the onlookers.

  Appendix

  About the Author

  Source Acknowledgments

  Contents

  Foreword vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii

  The Lion Cub i The Skull of Shirzad Mir 78 Said Afzel's Elephant 105 Prophecy of the Blind 128 Rose Face 153 Ameer of the Sea 178 Law of Fire 300 The Bride of Jagannath 360 The Masterpiece of Death 420 The Curved Sword 488

  Appendix 621 About the Author 631 Source Acknowledgments 633

  Foreword

  When he began seeing print in magazines like Argosy and AllStory, Harold Lamb's fiction was competent but unremarkable. At first his work for Adventure was no better; Lamb wrote several forgettable South Sea tales and some stiff, contemporary pieces . . . and then suddenly he found his voice. In 1917 Harold Lamb created a wandering Cossack named Khlit and truly launched his career.

  The tales of the wily Cossack helped transform Lamb into one of Adventure magazine's most popular writers. Khlit traveled through the plains of Mongolia, Tibet, China—places painted vividly by Lamb's prose, each exotic and deadly and teeming with adventure. In all, Khlit appeared in nineteen stories, and the historical accuracy of the series helped give Adventure its sterling reputation as a magazine of quality—Newsweek once proclaimed it the “dean" of pulp magazines.

  In a little over two years Lamb had drafted ten Khlit stories, most of them novellas, but he took various short breaks from the saga to write other tales. There was such a demand for fiction at this time that the pulp magazines were printed frequently— Adventure was appearing on newsstands at least twice a month.

  Prior to the first story in this collection, Lamb created Abdul Dost, who narrates four of the tales reprinted here and is a pivotal player in the short novel that follows them. Like Khlit, Abdul Dost is a talented swordsman and veteran warrior, though he is more straightforward than the Cossack. He is a devout Muslim and a loyal follower of his lord, Shirzad Mir. And therein lies the trouble, for Shirzad Mir is out of favor and unjustly imprisoned. The new Mogul emperor, Jahangir, turns a deaf ear to Shirzad Mir's defenders, and thus Abdul Dost must find a way to free his lord, avenge the wrongs done to him and his people, and clear Shirzad Mir's name. Fortunately for Abdul Dost, he soon meets a traveler from Frankistan well versed in all the stratagems Abdul Dost is not—and to say much more would spoil the tale.

  Lamb had become fascinated with India, more precisely, India in the reign of Jahangir and his spectacular wife, Nur-Jahan, about whom Lamb would eventually write a novel. Both you, the reader, and Khlit were introduced to her in the final story of the first volume of this series.

  While researching Khlit's time period Lamb probably was inspired to write tales set in India in which it would have been difficult for Khlit to play a part, and thus he developed Abdul Dost. Once through with Abdul Dost's story cycle Lamb wrote one more solo story of Khlit—the tale that opens this collection— and then seems to have decided to throw Khlit and Abdul Dost together to see what would happen. It may be that Lamb intended to unite the two characters the moment he created Abdul Dost—a note by Adventure editor Arthur Sullivan Hoffman indicates that Lamb was at least considering that idea from the start. I like to think Lamb realized the Khlit stories needed a new element, for the last two solo Khlit adventures, “The Rider of the Gray Horse" and “The Lion Cub," while enjoyable, lacked some of the fire and immediacy found in the high points of the series.

  However Lamb came to combine the characters, the result worked; from the climactic story of their meeting in “Law of Fire" to their final scene together in “The Curved Sword," Lamb is once more on his best footing. Indeed, “The Curved Sword" is one of the best entries in the entire Khlit saga, and, strangely, like “Law of Fire" and “Masterpiece of Death," has not been reprinted since its appearance in Adventure magazine in 1920. It was likely intended to bring the series to a close; there is even a suggestion that Khlit's curved saber has been shattered in the battle that concludes the story, and there would be nothing more final than that, for the weapon was a touch point for many of the Cossack's adventures and his constant companion. Near the end of the story Lamb writes only that Khlit carried a shattered sword, but what other weapon might it have been?

  Fortunately for himself, Lamb had not been explicit in the matter, for come 1925 he was to begin a final series of Khlit adventures in which the aging Cossack has handed over his famed saber to his grandson Kirdy and instructs him in the ways of adventure, Khlit style. But those tales, and the exploits of the Cossacks Ayub and Demid, will be found within the pages of volume 3.

  For now, relax with ten swashbuckling tales abrim with action and adventure in perilous times and fantastic places, your guides none other than the daring Abdul Dost and Khlit of the Curved Saber.

  Enjoy!

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank Bill Prather of Thacher School for his continued support, encouragement, enthusiasm, and friendship. I also would like to express my appreciation for the tireless efforts of Victor Dreger, who pored over acres of old maps to compile a map of the locations that appear in the final version printed within this book. Thank yous also are due to the tireless Bruce Nordstrom, Dr. Victor H. Jones, and Jan Van Heiningen for aid in manuscript acquisition, as well as S. C. Bryce, who kindly provided a timely and time-consuming last-minute check of some key issues of Adventure, and Dr. James Pfundstein and Doug Ellis for similar aid. A great deal of time was saved because of the manuscript preservation efforts of the late Dr. John Drury Clark. I'm grateful to the staff at the University of Nebraska Press, for their support of the project and for efficiently shepherding the manuscript through the publication process. I'm likewise appreciative and delighted by the hard work of cover artist and map artist Darrel Stevens. Thank you all for your hard work and dedication—you have helped bring Khlit the Cossack and his world to life.

  Introduction

  David Drake

  The setting of Harold Lamb's Cossack stories is utterly different from the world of their readers, whether in this volume or in Adventure magazine in 1920, where the pieces first a
ppeared. The difference isn't particularly a matter of geography; the hills of Afghanistan (where most of them take place) are mentioned, but rarely described in detail. Rather, it's culture. The stories are set in human society, and the mindset of the characters is nothing like that of the Western world.

  A few of the stories include Sir Ralph Weyand, an envoy of the (British) East India Company attempting to gain trade concessions. They're not told from his viewpoint, however, and he's generally referred to by the deliberately un-English form “Sir Weyand." The reader either enters the world of the Weyand stories through the eyes of a local or is guided by an omniscient narrator who describes events, however horrific, with a complete absence of emotion.

  And the events often are horrific; murder, torture, mutilation, and ruthless greed are the norm here. Faithlessness is almost universal among the nobility and common at all levels of society, so it's only among simple soldiers and crippled mendicants that fair dealing is to be expected. Courage and strength are as much the province of evil men as good ones, however, while intelligence is consistently the tool of amoral brutality rather than honor.

  Khlit the Cossack, a major figure in most of the stories collected here, is shrewd but explicitly not as intelligent as the high-ranking villains he ranges himself against. What carries Khlit through to success—to the confusion of his enemies, at least— is experience, a very different thing. Even experience wouldn't be enough were not Khlit willing to accept the cost of victory to himself, his friends, and his allies, because victory in these stories never comes cheap.

  Lamb makes his alien world real by making it concrete. The clothing, equipment, and administration of Afghanistan in the early seventeenth century are described precisely and in contemporary terminology. The author keeps the real historical background a shadowy presence enveloping his stories instead of trotting it out to prove his erudition, but the more a reader knows of that background, the more certain he becomes that Lamb had all the details at his fingertips.

  And this brings me to a personal anecdote with which to conclude these introductory remarks. My friend Manly Wade Wellman was a pulp writer, but he was a successful journeyman whereas Harold Lamb was “one of the lions," as Manly described him in his journal.

  They met once. Manly's brother Paul Wellman wrote bestsellers in the '30s and '40s. When his publisher gave him a book-launch party in New York City in the late '30s, Harold Lamb was invited as an equal and Manly was invited as Paul's brother. Manly vaguely alludes to the meeting in his journal, but the only details are those which he told me in person after dinner one night.

  According to Manly, he and Lamb began talking about the relative merits of the Turkic composite bow and the English longbow. Lamb said, “But Manly, a Turkish bowman could send an arrow two hundred yards." Manly retorted, “Two hundred yards was a clout shot for an English longbowman!" Whereupon Lamb, crushed, turned his back and walked away.

  Do I believe that story? Yes, absolutely, but that's because I know what Manly did not know: he misheard what Lamb must have said.

  Sir Joseph Banks's secretary in 1797 described a marble track in Constantinople where the best shots of the Turkish sultans were marked in gold. The longest shot had been over 800 yards. Lamb was certainly alluding to this record.

  In the clamor of the party, Manly mistakenly heard “two hundred" for “eight hundred," and he didn't have sufficient background knowledge to realize that he must have misunderstood. Lamb walked away, presumably because he recognized the pointlessness of an argument in which one party relies on facts and the other on emotion.

  That observation provides an insight into the strengths and weaknesses of both men's work. The reader of a Harold Lamb story may find himself without an emotional connection to its alien characters, but he can never doubt the reality of the factual background which Lamb paints in such bright, vivid colors.

  Warriors of the Steppes

  The Lion Cub

  Who can lift the veil of the unseen? And who can read the handwriting of Fate?

  Jhilam the Mighty, the stronghold of the hills, had been fief of the sires of Sattar Singh since the time of Ram. Now Sattar Singh,

  Lord of Jhilam, was dead.

  And Rani Begum, wearing the white robe of widowhood for Sattar Singh, brought the keys of Jhilam castle and laid them before Jahangir, the Mogul, as was the law. But her heart was heavy.

  “Lord of the World,” cried Rani Begum—and her fear was a great fear at sight of the mask of anger that overspread the face of the Mogul—“my Lord Sattar Singh swore that the keys of Jhilam of the Hills should be held by none but our son Rao Singh. Such is our right.”

  “Is the oath of a hill chief greater than the word of the Mogul?” said Jahangir. So it came to pass that Jahangir the Mogul, Lord of the Punjab, of the Dekkan, of Sind and all Hindustan, gave the fief of Jhilam to one Shaista Mirza, a Persian. But the allegiance of the men of Jhilam he could not give.

  Allah in his mercy laid the hand of death upon Rani Begum.

  It was written that this should be.

  Who can look beyond the veil of the future? Yet the thought came to mein a vision that the treasure of Jhilam should befound.

  And in the vision was the dark form of the Angel of Death.

  From the tale of Ahmad Rumi

  The hour of sunset prayer was past. Ahmad Rumi, teller of legends, folded his prayer-carpet neatly and placed it within his bundle and seated himself at the side of the caravan-track. This was the trail from the Wular lake to the southern border of Kashmir. And it was the year 1609 of the Christian era.

  Carefully the legend-teller adjusted the folds of his white turban and ate sparingly of dates which he took from his girdle, leaning on his staff the while. The sun had gone down behind the willows at his back; the shadows lengthened, dwindled and formed again under the pale light of a new moon.

  Except for the loom of the turban against the underbrush, touched by the faint fingers of moonlight, the form of Ahmad Rumi was invisible. He sat very quiet, sensing the change of hour by the night chill. For Ahmad Rumi was blind.

  He lifted his head at a sound from above him on the caravan-track. Other sounds reached him, blended and confused, but clear to the blind man. Three horses were approaching.

  Three Arabian horses, bearing heavy men perhaps in armor. So reasoned Ahmad Rumi and drew farther back into the willows. Years had taught him the different tread of a Turkoman's pony, a Kirghiz's quick-moving horse and the stolid gait of a Kabul stallion. He could distinguish between the bell-bearing mules of a Bokharan caravan and the laden beasts of Chinese merchants.

  Slowly the three Arabs passed. They minced along after the manner of their kind, and their riders spoke Persian. The horsemen did not perceive Ahmad Rumi.

  “Fresh horses, held in check," muttered the legend-teller to himself, “and going warily. Aye, verily, the tale of the Wular peasants was true. Insh’allah!"

  He leaned slightly forward, facing up the trail expectantly and stroking the gray beard that fell to his girdle. His wide, brown eyes were closed, and the moonlight outlined shadows under his high cheekbones. Then he lifted his head again eagerly.

  This time he scrambled to his feet, aided by his staff, and stepped into the highroad to confront the rider who trotted swiftly under the willows.

  “Back, beggar," cried a high voice, not unkind nor harsh. “I have no silver—"

  “I am blind," responded the teller of legends quickly.

  He felt for the bridle of the horse that had been reined in sharply. His lean hand touched the bridle and the silk shoulder-straps, halting at the wrought silver ornaments.

  “The Wular stallion," he muttered. “Allah is merciful."

  A quick indrawing of breath escaped the rider.

  “Back, Muslim. I must pass."

  “Nay, Rao Singh. Not until you and I have spoken together."

  For a space the rider was silent, peering at the fragile form in his path. He sat his mount easily, a slend
er figure nervously erect, in a plain white tunic with silk girdle bearing a light sword and a small, peaked turban.

  “What seek you? How knew you my name?" he demanded suspiciously.

  Ahmad Rumi felt for the hand of Rao Singh and pressed it to his forehead.

  “Thrice blessed is this hour!" he exclaimed joyfully. “Aie— should I not know the name of the son of my lord? It is sweeter than the wind in the pine-tops in the hills and more fragrant than the scent of the lotus by the lake.

  “Dismount, Rao Singh; dismount! At a distance of a bowshot wait those who would slay you and scatter your ashes on the wind of death. By the ford they watch—three, with arms and perhaps coats of mail."

  Rao Singh lifted his dark head and glanced warily about into the thickets. In that age it was well to keep to horse on the caravan-routes, even within sight of the camp of the Mogul, as he then was.

  But Ahmad Rumi was alone. Youth and aged man seated themselves on the bank by the willows.

  “How know you this thing?"

  Rao Singh spoke with the directness of a boy—which he was, barely attained to man's figure.

  “You could not see them?"

  Suspicion was in the last words and Ahmad Rumi smiled gently.

  “They spoke Persian, which I know. They will wait at the ford for the one they seek. I heard the rattle of their weapons. Death is in the air tonight—for Rao Singh."

  “Whence came the three?"

  “From the Jhilam path."

  “How knew you I should come?"

  The teller of legends sighed, stroking his beard.

  “Many are the mouths that will utter evil. The master of horse of the Lord of Jhilam spake to the slaves, the stable slaves, and they whispered to the cutters of wood, who bore the news to the forest men. Hence I, who wait at the Wular gate, heard that this night Rao Singh was to be slain at the ford near the outpost of the Mogul camp.